Technology and the quality of public deliberation: a comparison between on and offline participation

Abstract

International audienceThe empirical turn in deliberative democracy has recently generateda considerable amount of academic work. Scholars have tried to operationalisethe theoretical dimensions of deliberative democracy into robust criteria inorder to evaluate the quality of public discussion. Few of them however havesystematically compared online and offline deliberation to analyse the link between the technological formats deployed in a deliberative procedure and thequality of the discussion. This is what this paper aims to do through a Frenchcase study of a national public debate. Drawing from a revised version of theDiscourse Quality Index, we will theoretically discuss and propose a codingscheme for quality analysis which rests on an enlarged definition of deliberation. Our results suggest a dynamic appropriation of the various settings each presenting features in which actors strategically position themselves

Linking News Value Theory With Online Deliberation: How News Factors and Illustration Factors in News Articles Affect the Deliberative Quality of User Discussions in SNS’ Comment Sections

“…The theoretical complexity of inclusiveness is reflected in empirical research. Although some studies focus on the share of voice to investigate the potential domination by a few users (Stromer-Galley, 2007), others investigate the diversity of socioeconomic characteristics among participants, such as age, gender, or education (Monnoyer-Smith & Wojcik, 2012). Overall, these studies have found that the diversity in comment sections is low and comparatively few users write a high share of comments (Blom, Carpenter, Bowe, & Lange, 2014; Diakopoulos & Naaman, 2011).…”

Do discussions in like-minded groups necessarily lead to more extreme opinions? Deliberative democracy and group polarization

“…Thus, logic would state that online discussion venues built on principles from deliberative theory – and thus employing facilitated deliberation – would be more likely to bring about discussions with beneficial outcomes for democracy than normal everyday online discussion (e.g. Manosevitch, 2010; Smith and Wojcik, 2012). Early evidence from experiments in online deliberation (see Strandberg and Grönlund, 2014 for indepth review) indeed lends some support for this notion of beneficial effects stemming from democratic design of online discussion between citizens.…”

Inspiring and Informing Citizens Online: A Media Richness Analysis of Varied Civic Education Modalities

“…Design choices concerning participant interaction are key because a basic deliberative discourse feature is the opportunity for participants to "exchange opinions as well as incorporate and respond to others' viewpoints" (Wilhelm, 2000, p. 88). With this in mind, researchers have contrasted face-to-face versus computer-mediated interaction designs (Baek et al, 2012;King, Hartzel, Schilhavy, Melone, & McGuire, 2010;Monnoyer-Smith & Wojcik, 2012;Pedrini, 2014;Tucey, 2010) and explored variations in online formats (Davies & Chandler, 2012;Shaw & Benkler, 2012;Towne & Herbsleb, 2012).…”