Using Generative AI Chatbot for enhancing people's digital participation

Aiming to improve communication and increase the access to available channels and tools, chatbots, or conversational agents, are being used to support people´s digital participation and foster civic engagement. However, conversational agents attend only expected cases of participation, that is, those based on e-consulting, e-decision making and e-informing. Hence, chatbots don´t concern non mapped cases of self-mobilization, besides there are problems in human-computer communication and in the transmission of information caused by digital divide that hinder peoples ‘participation. Literature review indicates that generative AI chatbot shall be used in non-expected interactions between human and conversational agents. Therefore, this paper discusses how chatbots could interact within self-mobilizations’ types of digital participation, concerning obstacles like lack of infrastructure and digital illiteracy. Using design science research, we propose the GenPart, a generative AI-chatbot model for enhancing people´s digital participation. We claim that this artifact can be used by researchers and practitioners who want to promote the integration between people, organizations, and information in digital platforms, promoting citizen participation and civic engagement.