Centre for Digital Citizenship Institute of Communications ...

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Centre for Digital CitizenshipInstitute of Communications Studies

The Internet, Web2.0 and ‘having your say’

Ann MacintoshProfessor of Digital Governance

Email: A.Macintosh@leeds.ac.uk

“Now is the time to shift our view of computers from communications medium to negotiation medium, from knowledge processing to interest processing” Carl Adam Petri, 1962

Can digital technologies help citizens to participate in government as well as to elect it?

Overview

Context: the need for deliberative engagement

What’s gone before: a decade of online public engagement

Socio-technical challengesOn-going research

Context: Three starting pointsHay, C. 2007. Why we hate Politics. Cambridge. Polity Press.

Stoker, G. 2006. Why Politics Matters: Making Democracy Work. Palgrave Macmillan

Fishkin, J.S. 1991. Democracy and deliberation. Yale University Press.Dryzek, J.S. 2000. Deliberative democracy and beyond. Oxford University Press

Blumler, J.G. & M. Gurevitch 2001. The New Media and Our Political Communication Discontents: Cyberspace. Information, Communication & Society 4(1) 1-13.

Dahlgren, P. 2005. The Internet,

Public Spheres, and Political Communication: Dispersion and

Deliberation. Political Communication, 22(2) 147-162.

Potential for technology to enhance democracy

Not a new research area: e.g.Dutton, W. H.: Political Science Research on Teledemocracy. Social Science Computer Review 1992Hague, B. N., & Loader, B. D. Digital democracy: An introduction. 1999

e.g. Recent survey: Panopoulou E., Tambouris E., Tarabanis K.: eParticipation

initiatives: How is Europe progressing? European Journal of ePractice 2009

Real-world online engagement initiatives

Example from 2002

Macintosh A. & Smith, E. 2002. Citizen Participation in Public Affairs. Proceedings of 1st International Conference on Electronic Government eGOV2002. France.

http://itc.napier.ac.uk/e-consultant/scfrio/viewtopic.asp?TopicID=8

2002 example: forum

Example from 2007

Fagan, H., McCusker, P., Murray, M., Newman. D.R. & O’Donnell, D. (2007). Evaluation of the Houses of the Oireachtas Pilot e-Consultation for Proposed Broadcasting Bill. http://www.oireachtas.ie/documents/econsultation/ECRG_Report.doc

2007 example: forum

http://www.econsultation.ie/ec/econswip.nsf/(webstartpage)/5?opendocument

2010 Example: Web2.0

http://crossroad.epu.ntua.gr/

Potential for technology to enhance democracy –> so far not realised

Expecting too much of government & politicians

Macintosh, A., Coleman, S. & Schneeberger, A. (2009). eParticipation: The Research Gaps. In Macintosh, A. & Tambouris, E. (Eds), Electronic Participation: Proceedings of First International Conference, ePart 2009, LNCS 5694. (pp.1-11). Germany: Springer-Verlag. ISSN 0302-9743.

Expecting too much of technology

Expecting too much of citizens

Complexity of policy development

How do you tackle urban deprivation?How do you end international drug trafficking?What do you do about climate change?

Rittel, H.W.J., and M. M. Webber. 1973. Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences, 4:155-169

Not easily definedNo clear stopping rulesNo right or wrong approachNo clear measures of successAn iterative processSolution are discoveredEach are uniqueLevel of detail a matter of judgementStrong moral & political pressure against failure.

Complexity of policy development

R. Roger (2009) Mapping Public Web Space with the Issuecrawler. In Brossard C. & Reber B. (Eds.), Digital Cognitive Technologies: Epistemology and Knowledge Society. London: Wiley. 115-126.

Policy issues discussed on social network sites

Some socio-technical questions

Make sense of unstructured text Know what critical questions to ask Identify which issues are importantFacilitate reasoned contributionsDetermine relationships between

contributions to policy development

How to

Argument mapping: making sense of complex problems

Visualisation language http://compendium.open.ac.uk/institute/community/showcase.htm#pubpol

Example from Scottish Parliament: Banning smoking in public places

Example from Scottish Parliament

Renton, A. & Macintosh, A. (2007). Computer Supported Argument Maps as a Policy Memory. The Information Society Journal, 23(2), 125-133

IMPACT: Integrated Method for Policy making using Argument modelling & Computer assisted Text analysis

Argument mining– machine learning & data mining algorithms, to support

reconstruction of arguments from information sources.Policy modeling & analysis

– computational models of argumentation, to enable comparison between effects of different policy proposals.

Polling tool– computational models of argumentation, where questions

are generated automatically from existing debate.Argument analysis, tracking & visualization

Walton, D. (2006). Fundamentals of Critical Argumentation. Cambridge University Press.

Summarising

The need for online deliberation around policy development

Current socio-technical design does not meet this need

Social networking sites are changing the shape of discussion on policy issues

Argumentation systems have the potential to provide a deliberative environment

Conclusions

Coleman, S. & Blumler, J. G. (2009). The Internet and Democratic Citizenship. New York: Cambridge University Press

Macintosh, A., Gordon, T. F. & Renton, A. (2009). Providing Argument Support for eParticipation. Journal of Information Technology & Politics, (JITP).6(1), 43-59Okada, A., Buckingham Shum, S. & Sherborne, T. (Eds.), (2008). Knowledge Cartography: Software Tools and Mapping Techniques. T. Springer: Advanced Information and Knowledge Processing Series

On-going research on how argumentation systems can add value to participatory policy development

“How can vast numbers of people engage in collective talk without the voices of individuals being drowned out by the noise of the crowd?”

Centre for Digital CitizenshipInstitute of Communications Studies

Thank you