Hybrid deliberation: Citizen dialogues in a post-pandemic era

This report first provides a brief review of various forms of dialogue-based participation, e.g., Citizen Assembly, Citizen Lottery, Citizen Jury, Deliberative Polling, and Participatory Budgeting. Challenges associated with these long-lasting practices are identified and hybrid deliberation is proposed as a concept to address the challenges. The report then analyzes six leading examples of digital or hybrid formats of citizen dialogues. Through the comparison of the cases, the report concludes about the hurdles/risks, success factors/opportunities, and best practices for a complementary use of digital and analogue participation formats. Hybrid deliberation is proposed to be the future direction for dialogue-based participation that involves masses and generates high-quality outcomes

Nudge for Deliberativeness: How Interface Features Influence Online Discourse

Cognitive load is a significant challenge to users for being deliberative. Interface design has been used to mitigate this cognitive state. This paper surveys literature on the anchoring effect, partitioning effect and point-of-choice effect, based on which we propose three interface nudges, namely, the word-count anchor, partitioning text fields, and reply choice prompt. We then conducted a 2*2*2 factorial experiment with 80 participants (10 for each condition), testing how these nudges affect deliberativeness. The results showed a significant positive impact of the word-count anchor. There was also a significant positive impact of the partitioning text fields on the word count of response. The reply choice prompt showed a surprisingly negative affect on the quantity of response, hinting at the possibility that the reply choice prompt induces a fear of evaluation, which could in turn dampen the willingness to reply.Comment: CHI 2020, 10 page

Procedural Justice in Online Deliberation: Theoretical Explanations and Empirical Findings

This article reviews extant conceptualizations of procedural justice and reports the results of an empirical study testing the effects of fair deliberation. From a communicative action perspective, we argue that Habermas’s conceptions of speech conditions and validity conditions can be used to evaluate the discursive and substantive dimensions of procedural justice in deliberation. That is, fair deliberation is built on the fulfillment of discourse norms and the communicativeness of dialogic interactions. The communicative measures are compatible with extant procedural justice measures and provide a communication-centered ground for evaluating deliberative outcomes related to procedural justice. The case study involves public discussion of the Singaporean government’s population policies on an online deliberative platform. The results show that when procedural justice is presented in the realization of both speech conditions and validity conditions, it fosters participants’ beliefs in the rightfulness of deliberative policymaking. Additionally, speech conditions play a more important role than validity conditions in predicting citizens’ specific policy support after online deliberation. The findings illustrate one instance of how communicative norms are prioritized in different deliberative settings and what deliberative benefits a fair procedure can achieve. The results shed light on the theorization of procedural justice and advance the extant knowledge of evaluating procedural justice in deliberation

SNSs and deliberative governance in a polarised society : the role of WhatsApp groups in Kenyan counties

Kenya has experienced polarisation that has sometimes resulted in conflict. As a remedy, the Kenyan constitution, reviewed in 2010, and other legislation prescribes deliberative governance as one of the solutions to polarisation in sub-national Kenyan counties. The legislation mandates counties to use the mainstream and social media platforms for deliberative governance to promote national cohesion and integration. This study examines the growing use of WhatsApp groups for such deliberations. It is based on the proposition that the outcomes of deliberative governance and its impact on polarisation depends on the quality of deliberation and, in particular, on the platform’s (WhatsApp’s), structure and norms. The deliberative norms analysed here are based on the Habermasian model of tolerance, inclusivity, diversity, incivility, and heterogeneity of viewpoints, whilst the deliberative structure examines WhatsApp group’s affordances and composition. Based on these propositions, this study empirically explores the impact of deliberative governance on polarisation in WhatsApp group platforms in four Kenyan counties. Guided by a critical realism paradigm, the study uses an original mixed-methods approach involving a quantitative (online survey) and qualitative (WhatsApp-based focus group discussion). The study revealed that the socio-demographic profile of WhatsApp groups participants is predominantly young males with high educational attainment, similar to other SNSs participatory platforms. The research also suggests that achieving deliberative norms such as civility, tolerance, and inclusivity is challenging in WhatsApp groups. Therefore, the quality of deliberations in WhatsApp groups falls short of the Habermasian deliberative ideals, and this has worsened because WhatsApp has enhanced the sharing of stereotypes, misinformation, and conflict frames which have aggravated polarisation. Consequently, deliberations in WhatsApp groups have further augmented polarisation around county governance issues. Regarding the deliberative structure, the study proposes that the platform’s affordance, the composition of participants, the information sources, and the discussion topics in WhatsApp groups affect the quality of deliberations and polarisation. Additionally, this study makes a significant contribution by using an fresh, integrated methodological approach based on WhatsApp’s affordances for data collection and analysis