Keywords

1 Introduction

Rural development is a core concern of European policy initiatives that foster the implementation of information and communications technology (ICT) together with civic participation. The LEADER approach is one of the most notable and long-standing of such programmes. An important starting point for this liaison of technology and participation was the 2016 Cork Declaration 2.0. It calls for policies to unleash the potential offered by rural connectivity and digitisation. By treating ICT as an opportunity to overcome rural challenges and improve the quality of life, the associated ‘smart village’ concept is gaining prominence in the rural development agenda, too (ENRD 2019). However, to be smart does not only mean to appreciate digital technologies but to pay attention to local conditions and the diversity of rural areas which in fact has led to multiple ideas of what a smart village really is or should be. Apart from this, characteristic building blocks can be identified. This concerns the use of digital tools but mainly refers to a community which takes the initiative for shaping their local circumstances, thus making the smart village just as smart as its citizens who can enjoy their own rights and opportunities.

We want to join the discussion not with questions of definition but advice for practical implementation, paying attention to local community involvement and participation. While visions about the smart village have sparked much enthusiasm with the COVID-19 crisis as a further catalyst, it is still an under-researched topic with a dearth of in-depth insights. In order to derive our recommendations, the focus of this chapter rests on the civic use of digital applications, in particular in terms of emulating and fostering participation. Our recommendations, which especially regard young people as one of the target groups, are based on case studies from rural areas in Eastern and Western Germany.

2 Rural Areas: The ‘Smart’ Way

The many challenges of rural areas are well known. Although they may not be equally pronounced or urgent in every country, rural regions in Eastern and Central Europe are struggling with out-migration with especially young people leaving for urban areas (ENRD 2021). Securing and maintaining jobs is another challenge, yet it is precisely the professional prospects that make urban areas more attractive (Auclair and Vanoni 2004). This can intensify the demographic trends of population loss and aging. Adding to this is the declining provision of infrastructure and an overall poor socio-economic environment, which is particularly evident for Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, the Baltic States, Poland, parts of the Czech Republic and some of the eastern regions of Germany (ENRD 2021). These downward trends reinforce each other and raise questions about the future viability of rural regions which previous political interventions have only been able to address to a limited extent.

In facing these challenges and thinking about rural development in a ‘smart’ way, two major trends can be distinguished. Firstly, there are changes in the strategic direction of rural development, one that accounts for the enormous diversity of rural regions (Neumeier 2017). The insufficiency of top-down policies suggests a shift towards endogenous regional development. However, relying on a region’s genuine resources can, in fact, deepen the existing disadvantages which is why neo-endogenous approaches have called for a balanced interplay of external and internal resources (Biczkowski 2020; Terluin 2003). In that respect, the EU promotes regional development with a variety of funding and policy instruments with the LEADER approach as one of the most forceful expressions of present rural development strategies.

Secondly, with the diffusion of ICT, harnessing the digital transformation for regional development is both a blessing and a curse. Technology levers are championed as a means to combat the penalty of being rural, yet at the same time providing such infrastructures becomes a major concern. With regard to the EU context, the emphasis on ICT adoption and access can date back to the Cork Declaration 2.0 in 2016. The declaration acknowledged the problematic state of rural areas, specifically the urban-rural divide, rural exodus and youth drain, where ICT may help to address such challenges. Hence, smart village conceptions are associated with ‘the potential of rural areas and resources to deliver on a wide range of economic, social and environmental challenges and opportunities benefiting all European citizens’ (see p. 1 in ENRD 2016).

EU policy is an important factor in this process, which conceives the smart village as an object of political decision-making and support. In this view, smart villages are home to ‘rural citizens taking the initiative to find practical solutions [and] using digital technologies when they are appropriate’ (see p. 7 in ENRD 2018), whereby digital technologies are not only perceived as new opportunities but understood as indispensable for the development of rural regions that are home to smart citizens thriving on the available socio-technical affordances.

Apart from EU policy and its priorities, the notion of smart villages has also found its way into academic research that examines a wide range of ICT applications for civic purposes (for overviews, see Sustainability Special Issue 2022; Guzal-Dec 2018; Patnaik et al. 2020; Visvizi et al. 2019; Zavratnik et al. 2018). When it comes to prerequisites, Wolski and Wójcik state that ‘creating structures, environments, and climates at the local level’ is necessary (see p. 40 in 2019). Similarly, Slee proposes that ‘a smart village could thus be thought of as one that has confronted developmental challenges successfully to increase its resilience, often using social innovation as the basis of such practices and ventures’ (see p. 636 in 2019). In exploring the relationship between rural areas and their residents, references are also made to the smart citizen and explicitly to a ‘smart citizenship’ (e.g. see Calzada 2020). In a narrower context, the role of ICT and, for example, digital rights are emphasised, while a broader understanding of citizenship includes the empowerment of citizens and their active engagement within the local community.

For all its manifold instantiations, research and policymaking agree on the point that smart village ventures require technical structures as well as social structures where smart villages ‘build on their own existing strengths’ (see p. 7 in ENRD 2018). Just as regional development takes diversity into account and rejects a one-size-fits-all solution, so does the smart village. In particular, ICT and a more participatory stance are believed to help reach and mobilise younger people. Yet while young people thus feature prominently in these schemes and their justifications, they are nevertheless difficult to reach, and actively involving them and ensuring their participation is far from straightforward. In light of the fact that more than 90% of young people in the EU use the Internet on a daily basis, they might be particularly responsive to digital tools and come to engage in rural development processes as digital citizens (Collin 2015; Eurostat 2022; Mossberger et al. 2008).Footnote 1

3 Context and Material

The recommendations we offer in this chapter stem from case studies in three rural areas in East Germany and West Germany within the framework of a research project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (Universität Leipzig 2022). The project is guided by the general research question on how participation processes in rural regions can be designed digitally, also taking into account effective combinations with offline formats. The research was conducted between 2021 and 2022; the selected case regions were part of policy schemes, e.g. as part of LEADER or connate national strategies which support the idea of smart villages.

Since 1991, the European Union’s LEADER programme has been promoting local development concepts. For post-socialist states, its policies and funding opportunities have been implemented as part of their EU membership. In turn, the approach is recognised as an element of Europeanisation that influences policy processes, institutions and politics (Ray 2006; Székely 2017). In contrast to top-down government, the empowerment and participation of local actors lies at the heart of the LEADER concept. This bottom-up approach includes the creation of area-based Local Action Groups (LAGs), which are multi-sectoral partnerships operating throughout the EU to support participatory local development in rural areas, and the local community itself. By now, there are 3134 LEADER regions in total, with, for example, about 300 LAGs in Germany and in Poland, circa 250 in Romania, 180 in the Czech Republic and 100 in Hungary and Slovakia (ENRD 2022).

There are links between existing EU funding such as LEADER and the smart village concept, i.e. the focus on innovation and community-led actions (see p. 64 in Nieto and Brosei 2019). In fact, LEADER is an instrument to realise the vision through advice and grants so to support smart villages, and LAGs have started to use digital participation (see p. 40 in ENRD 2018). This is not limited to the European level but in line with global initiatives and tendencies, and it is promoted on a country-specific basis even when these do not use the same nomenclature. Smart villages in Poland and Germany and the EU project Smart Rural 21 are such programmes. As mentioned, the common aim is to promote regional development with the help of the local community coupled with an emphasis on the benign use of ICT.

The reported results are based on an analysis of official documents from the regions, three to four interviews of local stakeholders per region, focus groups and participant observations. The stakeholders are responsible for managing and servicing local actions and can serve as intermediaries. As such, they maintain important links between top-down schemes and the local population (Wolski and Wójcik 2019). Accordingly, representing the level of government closest to citizens, they play a crucial role in encouraging citizens’ participation and promoting European values around active participation, democratic aspirations and the making of a viable future.

4 Recommendations for Local Actors

Based on case studies, we have formulated recommendations for civic participation in rural regional development with a particular focus on reaching target groups. They can be applied to offline-only endeavours, but we particularly highlight and demonstrate the added value of using digital participation.

4.1 Communicate Relevance and Set Task-Related Goals

With the bottom-up approach in mind, a key concern in the rural regions we studied was to involve the local population in regional development issues. The most important prerequisite for participation is the phase before the actual participation which must prioritise the provision and dissemination of information. For prompting active participation, the initial goal is to communicate relevance to the intended target groups.

On this token, it was apparent in the case studies that people were more likely to participate when it became clear to them that they were directly affected by the outcome. Furthermore, the reason for participation activities had to be made explicit and tied to tangible projects. Accordingly, offering information did not only include highlighting the added value for participants but also providing information about the conditions and concrete goals of an initiative. This applies to projects on the federal, state or EU level but also regarding regional ventures that also needed to provide reasons for people to join and carry them out.

This too implies to stress the significance of a project within a region and the positive outcomes that accrue from it, for example, with respect to creating job opportunities or enhancing the image of the region so to perhaps attract younger people. In fact, when it comes to the form of address, a target-group-specific approach is particularly effective. Hence, young people can be better reached with social media, and specific apps are also increasingly being used in Germany, for example, the app Digitale Dörfer. The aim then is to communicate the future viability of a region with more personal messages and no institutional jargon. In the regions we studied, due to the need to communicate more and before the start of an actual initiative, an increasing amount of the project budgets had been dedicated to information and communication, compared to the implementation and support of participation. Since it is important in this phase to spread information via many outlets, digital channels function as a supplement which is potentially able to not only reach more citizens but also groups hitherto untouched by official publications and local press, like younger people.

Closely related to communicating relevance is the observation that intermediaries must consider in advance what goal is to be achieved through participation. Digital participation offerings, like those offline, need to have a task-related objective and be no end in themselves. More than serving legitimation purposes, this requires some level of openness towards the course of the process and its outcomes. For example, in our case studies, participants had negative experiences when asked to select only from a pre-identified menu of challenges and fields of action, instead of coming up with new thoughts, for instance, with the help of open-ended questions. This however requires that the intermediaries involved have some agency to take up the impulses from the population. Digital participation can only be effective if the public administration is willing and able to listen to the suggestions, proposals and demands from the citizens, to transfer them into corresponding political actions and to implement them.

Trust and transparency are certainly two issues here whose foundations should be laid in the beginning and are difficult to rewire at a later stage. For later phases, communication then could turn its focus to feedback which helps to give participants the sense that their input is important and makes a difference in the manifest results. Again, digital tools might help to communicate such kind of feedback. In case intermediaries knew what goals they want to achieve with participation and are open to its results, it was also easier to convince the local population of its benefits, so it was one insight of our study. In case the administration acted as a catalyst and positive example, the local community was able to sense the motivation of those involved. Overall, the emphasis on the relevance of the citizens’ input increased transparency and created the basis for building trust between the actors involved. As our respondents kept stressing, when such a foundation was laid in the initial phase, the commitment of those involved remained stronger during the ongoing process.

4.2 Exploiting Synergy Effects

The second recommendation that can be taken from our case studies points us to the harnessing of synergy effects and, if necessary, activities towards centralisation. Exploiting synergy effects is also a matter of productively using and expanding existing social networks.

A major challenge, especially in larger, sparsely populated regions with scattered information sources, was to gain an overview of the activities and respective partners. A means to address it that has been mentioned several times are digital information and communication services that can sustain networking efforts. Especially when there are many initiatives in the region with overlaps, e.g. youth work, participation projects, volunteers and civic associations, it makes sense to bundle such activities together and provide a common overview or gateway for information and contact. It has been shown, for example, that participation could be increased as soon as the offerings were available on a common website, e.g. the general website of the region. One of our regions already had a region-specific app, which another local project then used for facilitating additional participation. In another case study, an extra association was established so to present local initiatives and projects on a website and thus to provide a central point of information and contact. In this context, cooperation was not seen as an additional expense but rather as an opportunity to pool resources and organise activities. This does not necessarily require the creation of new communicative overheads; it can also be integrated into an already existing website or services. Furthermore, some target group and topic-specific events were already realised together, e.g. from youth work, political education and regional networking, thus generating a higher attendance.

In addition, the funding landscape can become confusingly diverse as it moves on multiple federal levels or along different time horizons but often in similar directions. Here too concrete synergy effects should be taken into account, and in terms of the effective use of resources, a joint or even concerted approach for reaching goals together is advisable. Overall, the centralisation of participation offerings was deemed a success factor that hinged on the need to determine its scope and context without losing sight of a bespoke, target-group-specific approach. This also requires identifying and applying appropriate participation methods, e.g. a combination of offline activities with digitally based ventures and social media channels. And all such sought synergy effects must also acknowledge the resources of the actors involved, from citizens to intermediaries and partners. Especially in rural regions, the use of participation offerings depends on their local commitment as well as the time, enthusiasm and money they can put into networking and sustained active engagement.

4.3 Use and Co-creation of Experience Spaces

The third recommendation goes beyond user orientation and synergy effects and underscores the differences between target groups. Realising rural development with place-based approaches assumes that they are strongly relying on local knowledge and resources which are held by different public administrative and private actors. For example, a previously underrepresented issue can mean different things to different target groups which may require a more responsive approach that caters to these sensibilities and exigencies. Here, ICT may facilitate exchange and networking as it allows the different groups involved or targeted to make their needs and expectations transparent and get a sense of what others would want from a local initiative or could, in turn, bring to the table to make it work.

A starting point for this was offered by the ‘experience spaces’ of young people who tend to be more active in the digital world, especially on social media and apps. These spaces allowed for a more targeted advertising for participation projects or recruitment. Meeting stakeholders and potential participants in their communicative and media habitats was not limited to digital space; offline spaces like youth parliaments or youth recreation facilities as well as event-related occasions could also play a role. To get an overview of such experience spaces in the first place, one of the regions we studied conducted a network analysis which consisted of a survey following snowball sampling. It resulted in a target-group-specific analysis and a mapping of key players from different sectors.

In addition to meeting actors at existing places, which are embedded in their everyday activities, shared spaces of experience could be created. One example from the case studies was a digital volunteer exchange. It was installed in order to relieve the workload of volunteers, address the decline in volunteerism and at the same time create incentives to take up a volunteer position by providing a low-threshold entry point. Another region was creating a joint forum with the help of a website and through a specially created club meant to bring together the ‘smart’ actors and projects of the region.

Seen together, digitisation was used here to promote offline engagement where digital space was perceived to pose a lower barrier for engagement than a brick-and-mortar venue, as suggested by the higher number of participants reached in the case regions. Furthermore, digitisation was employed to expand participation with digital offerings that allowed it to reach additional target groups. Besides this, offline opportunities such as living labs were created to potentially reduce reservations regarding digitisation. They offered spaces for joint workshops where participants had the opportunity to creatively deal with the possibilities of digitisation or acquire skills in navigating them. Such endeavours established spaces of experience not only between different actors but also between the offline and digital worlds along a target-group-specific approach, so as to reduce reservations or provide digital competencies.

5 Conclusion

In sum, digitisation can help to (re)connect the local community and to reach different target groups specifically. What is more, with digital participation offerings and digital services, local actors support (younger) citizens to actively shape a region, make it more attractive, support identification and as a result increase the likelihood of staying. Through this, people practise participation on a local level which may as well further engagement in other arenas.

Especially EU policy programmes such as LEADER open opportunities to learn about the variety of programmes at the federal, state and EU levels and promote networking and knowledge transfer as well as practising collaboration. Depending on the location of the region, we also found forms of cross-border cooperation in our case studies, e.g. within the Interreg programme. In this way, the support for cooperation can bring together local, regional, national and cross-border actors to engage and develop communal visions for rural areas.

Yet although rural development programmes are structured similarly, we must be cautious that it is key to see the ‘smart’ village as a proactive approach embedded in social practices and to emulate these practices in participatory endeavours. It has been shown that given existing participatory routines and a set of responsive citizens, digitisation can strengthen a benign circle of participatory rural development and may foster it also in regions that lack such prerequisites. In all cases, the use of digital tools must be tailored to the local population and their needs, and there is no neat, toolkit-like transfer of lessons learnt in one place to another. Rather, there is always a moment of translation and adaptation.