Word.ws English Dictionary

participation-washing

participation-washing noun: the strategy or practice by organizations (such as companies and governments) of a process of "hollow" (fake) consultation of citizens or members, despite no (or little) interest in such participation, in order to improve their public image, gather attention and sympathy by creating an illusion of openness.

Noun

participation-washing (uncountable)

  1. The strategy or practice by organizations (such as companies and governments) of a process of "hollow" (fake) consultation of citizens or members, despite no (or little) interest in such participation, in order to improve their public image, gather attention and sympathy by creating an illusion of openness.
    • Participation can be used tokenistically - and ‘participation-washing’ is a common concern in data systems and beyond.2023 July 25, The Open Data Institute
    • Participation washing can take many forms, including practitioners not respecting the needs and ideas of participants, not providing them with clear instructions about what they’ll be expected to contribute or not compensating participants sufficiently.2023 December 12, Lara Groves, Ada Lovelace Institute

Origin of participation-washing

Apparently coined in 2020 from participation + washing

Questions about participation-washing

What does participation-washing mean?
Participation-washing means the strategy or practice by organizations (such as companies and governments) of a process of "hollow" (fake) consultation of citizens or members, despite no (or little) interest in such participation, in order to improve their public image, gather attention and sympathy by creating an illusion of openness.
What part of speech is participation-washing?
Participation-washing is a noun.

Words near participation-washing in the dictionary

  1. participatingly
  2. participation
  3. participation points
  4. participation trophies
  5. participation trophy
  6. participation-washing
  7. participational
  8. participationism
  9. participationist
  10. participationists
  11. participations

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: participation-washing (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “participation-washing.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/participation-washing. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.