Bridging the digital divide in online political participation. Six inclusion infrastructuring strategies

Digital democracy platforms are promoted as scalable tools to broaden citizen participation, yet they commonly attract limited and socially patterned engagement. This article asks how participation promoters attempt to reduce digital inequalities in platform-based political processes and make “inclusive participation” practically possible. It draws on an international qualitative dataset combining 65 semi-structured interviews conducted between 2019 and 2026 with platform developers, public servants, civic tech activists, consultants, and NGO leaders, complemented by platform and document analysis, press material, and ethnographic observations of participatory assemblies and events. The analysis identifies six inclusion infrastructuring strategies, ordered from mediatized to more human-based interventions: technical solutions, communication, fixed supports, social events, mobile supports, and face-to-face settings. Across cases, inclusion emerges as ongoing organizational work that extends platforms through staff, physical devices, partnerships, and coordinated outreach. Overall, the article shows how inclusion is actively infrastructured through heterogeneous sociotechnical arrangements, while their effects on participatory inequalities remain context-dependent and insufficiently evaluated.