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. It argues that 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. To address this gap, 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 their diverse configurations. The chapter also 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 in various anti-corruption initiatives.