Anti-corruption from the grassroots in digitalized societies: from websites and social media platforms to chatbots and artificial intelligence applications
This chapter provides an overview of current understandings of the relationship between digital technologies and anti-corruption. Existing knowledge predominantly stems from studies adopting a distant, instrumental perspective, often overlooking the grassroots dynamics of how digital technologies influence anti-corruption efforts and, in turn, how these efforts shape the use of such technologies to enhance transparency, accountability, and integrity. The chapter introduces the concept of anti-corruption technologies as a heuristic for examining the creation and application of digital tools in grassroots anti-corruption initiatives. This approach emphasizes the materiality of these technologies, the discourses and imaginaries surrounding them, and the social interactions they foster. It highlights the importance of speaking about anti-corruption technologies in the plural to capture diverse configurations. The chapter discusses four types of anti-corruption technologies, and explores the role of Artificial Intelligence and Generative AI in grassroots anti-corruption. Finally, it considers key challenges for their effective use.
Year of publication: 2026
Author: Alice Mattoni