ARENAS will be represented at the 7th Local Democracy Forum in Sabadell, Spain, on May 15th. The event is organised by the Federation of Neighbourhood Associations of Sabadell (FAVS) in collaboration with the Sabadell City Council and the ARENAS project. ARENAS also collaborated in the previous edition, held in June 2025, at this important forum for debate between academia and civil society.
The 2026 edition of the Local Democracy Forum, which strengthens this collaboration, is titled “Social Networks versus Democracy” and focuses on the harmful influence of social networks on citizens, especially young people. The event will be opened by the Mayor of Sabadell, Marta Farrés, and will consist of three sessions.
In the first session, dedicated to algorithms and the digital ecosystem, the speaker will be Sergi Soler, a researcher of ARENAS at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), who will speak on “Echo Chambers and Filter Bombs: How Social Networks Amplify Political Polarisation.” At this meeting, which is open to the public, Soler will present some of the results of the research conducted within the framework of Work Package 3 in the ARENAS project which examines the circulation of extremist narratives..
The second session, led by political scientist Ismael Seijo, will focus on youth, political disaffection, and the far right, while the third, centred on the responses that can offer civil society, will be led by Professor of Communication and Journalism, Nereida Carrillo.