Mass Online Deliberation in Participatory Policy-Making—Part I

Rationale, Lessons from Past Experiments, and Requirements
Chapter
First Online:
Part of the Public Administration and Information Technology book series (PAIT, volume 25)

Abstract

This two-part chapter proposes a model and some design choices to build a Mass Online Deliberation (MOD) system, aimed at supporting orderly, fair, inclusive and purposeful participation of a large number of people. According to this model, a deliberation on a given issue, in a given community and at a given time (a “deliberandum”), progresses through a number of phases, roughly corresponding to ideation (moving and discussing proposals, with a proposals’ clustering algorithm operating in the background), consolidation (i.e. editing of one proposal per cluster) and reconciliation (of some among the consolidated proposals from different clusters). Depending on a given context of use, a final selection of one among the remaining irreconcilable proposals may be done by vote either among the deliberants only, or within the whole community (a referendum), or else, within a randomly selected panel of community members. The specific mechanisms defined in our model are as follows: mutual moderation and two- or three-parametric appraisal of each other’s contributions (hence without employing any staff of external moderators or facilitators); semantic clustering of a large number of proposals, performed in the background by the system and mostly based on the distribution of participants’ appraisals among contributions; and also some specific role of experts in the field, whose participation is limited to providing facts and replying to factual questions, not to actively influence participants’ opinions. Multilingual mass deliberation is discussed at the end of the Part II of the chapter.

Keywords

Social Medium Public Participation Trained Moderator Natural Language Processing Tool National Forum 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

References

  1. Aitamurto T., Landemore H. (2015) Five design principles for crowdsourced policymaking: Assessing the case of crowdsourced off-road traffic law in Finland. Journal of Social Media for Organizations, Vol. 2, Issue 1. Google Scholar
  2. Der Standard (2012) Facebook: Strache nicht wegen NSA-Kritik gesperrt. Online edition 17/2/2012, retrieved at: http://derstandard.at/1373512300414/Facebook-sperrt-HC-Strache-aus.
  3. van Ees K., van Geenen D., & Boeschoten T. (2014) Mediating the Black Pete Discussion on Facebook: Slacktivism, Flaming Wars, and Deliberation. First Mind, Vol 19, No. 12. Google Scholar
  4. Eisel S. (2012) Online-Bürgerhaushalte als potemkinsche Dörfer. Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, retrieved at: http://www.kas.de/wf/de/33.31112/
  5. Ertl, S. (2015) Protest als Ereignis – Zur medialen Inszenierung von Bürgerpartizipation. transcript Verlag, Bielefeld, 2015.Google Scholar
  6. Fillmore-Patrick H. (2013) The Iceland Experiment (2009–2013): A Participatory Approach to Constitutional Reform. Democratization Policy Council (DPC) Policy Note, New Series # 02, Sarajevo 2013. Google Scholar
  7. Fishkin J.S. (1991) Democracy and Deliberation: New Directions for Democratic Reform. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.Google Scholar
  8. Fishkin J.S. (1995) The Voice of the People: Public Opinion and Democracy. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.Google Scholar
  9. Fishkin J.S., Luskin R.C. (2005) Experimenting with a Democratic Ideal: Deliberative Polling and Public Opinion. Acta Politica 2005, 40.Google Scholar
  10. Habermas, Jürgen (1984) Theory of Communicative Action, Volume One: Reason and the Rationalization of Society (Book). Translated by Thomas A. McCarthy. Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
  11. Habermas, Jürgen (1987) Theory of Communicative Action, Volume Two: Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason (Book). Translated by Thomas A. McCarthy. Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press. Google Scholar
  12. Habermas, Jürgen (1990) Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (Book). Translated by Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen. Introduction by Thomas A. McCarthy. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press. Google Scholar
  13. Habermas, Jürgen (1996) Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (Book). Translated by William Rehg. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press. Google Scholar
  14. Jonsson M.E. (2015) Democratic Innovations in Deliberative Systems – The Case of the Estonian Citizens’ Assembly. Journal of Public Deliberation, Vol. 11, Issue 1. Google Scholar
  15. Landemore H. (2013) Inclusive Constitution-Making: Epistemic Considerations on the Icelandic Experiment. European Consortium for Political Research Convention, Bordeaux, France, September 2013, https://press.ecpr.eu/Events/PaperDetails.aspx?PaperID=5097&EventID=5.
  16. Lippi M., Toroni P. (2016) Argumentation Mining: State of the Art and Emerging Trends. ACM Transactions on Internet Technology (TOIT), Volume 16 Issue 2. Google Scholar
  17. Marwick, A.E., boyd d. (2010) “I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately”: Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience. New Media and Society. 13(1).Google Scholar
  18. Prosser, A., Müller-Török, R. (2010). Private vs..gv-driven E-Participation. In: Prosser, Alexander, Parycek, Peter, Hrsg. 2010. EDem 2010, Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on e-Democracy. Wien: OCG., Hrsg. Parycek, P., Prosser, A., 163–172. Wien: OCG. Google Scholar
  19. Prosser, A., Müller-Török, R. (2011). Technische Möglichkeiten einer Neuregelung der Großverfahren nach AVG. In: Manfred Matzka (ed.): E-Partizipation im Vrewaltungsverfahren, Wien: facultas wuv, 47–124. Google Scholar
  20. Prosser, A. (2014). Elektronische Demokratie: worauf es ankommt. In: Herausforderung Demokratie, Hrsg. Balthasar, A., Bußjäger, P., Poier, K., 127–139.Google Scholar
  21. Robert H. M. III and others. (2011). Robert’s Rules of Order Newly Revised, 11th ed. (Da Capo Press). Google Scholar
  22. Storsul T. (2014) Deliberation or Self-presentation? Young People, Politics and Social Media. Nordicom Review 35, v.2.Google Scholar
  23. Süddeutsche Zeitung (2012) Eine Stadt verschwindet, online edition 17/2/2012, retrieved at http://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/facebook-auftritt-von-muenchen-eine-stadt-verschwindet-1.1287217.
  24. Velikanov C. (2010a) Mutual Moderation and Appraisal of Contributions in eParticipation. Proceedings of the eDem 2010 Conference, Austrian Computer Society. Google Scholar
  25. Velikanov C. (2010b) Requirements and tools for an efficient eParticipation. Proceedings of the 11th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Online (DG.O 2010), Puebla, Mexico, ACM International Conference Proceeding Series, Digital Government Society of North America. Google Scholar
  26. Velikanov C. (2011) Deliberativeness and other important characteristics of e-participation. Proceedings of the eDem 2011 Conference, Austrian Computer Society. Google Scholar
  27. Write S., Graham T., & Johnson D. (forthcoming) Third Space, Social Media and Everyday Political Talk. In: A. Bruns, E. Skogerbø, C. Christensen, A.O. Larsson, & G. Enli (Eds). The Routledge Companion to Social Media and Politics. Taylor & Francis/Routledge: New York. Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.International Memorial SocietyMoscowRussia
  2. 2.Department of Informations Systems and OperationsWU Wien, Vienna University of Economics and BusinessViennaAustria

Personalised recommendations