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

D-BAS - A dialog-based online argumentation system

In this paper, we present D-BAS, a dialog-based online argumentation system, tailored to support e-participation processes. The main idea of D-BAS is to let users exchange proposals and arguments with each other in the form of a timeshifted dialog where arguments are presented and acted upon one-at-a-time. We highlight the key research challenges that needed to be addressed in order to realize such a system, provide solutions for those challenges, report on a full scale implementation of D-BAS and summarize the findings from a real world e-participation process, where D-BAS provided the infrastructure for online argumentation

Audience and Expert Perspectives on Second Screen Engagement with Political Debates

Televised debates remain a key point in elections, during which there are vast amounts of online activity, much of it conducted through personal devices or second screens. Amidst growing recognition of the influence of online political discourse, we explore the issues and opportunities arising at this specific point in election cycles, using a design-led multi-stakeholder approach to understand both the audience and expert perspectives. Workshops with debate viewers highlighted six key issues and possible solutions, which were encapsulated in four speculative design concepts. These were used to prompt further discussion with political and media experts, who were able to identify the implications and challenges of addressing the opportunities identified by the participants. Together, these perspectives allow us to unravel some of the complexities of designing for this multifaceted problem

Deliberation and Decision Making Online: Evaluating Platform Design

This thesis explores the potential of ICT and online communication to deepen democracy and support large scale online deliberation. It draws together the most promising current practices in online deliberation, presenting a theoretical and empirical exploration of innovative online deliberation platforms. ICT and online communication is increasingly sophisticated and ubiquitous in public life yet its democratic impact is ambiguous. Online engagement is characterised by low quality, disorganised deliberation. Experimental platforms have emerged which utilise novel design, argument visualisation, and machine learning to support large scale deliberation. The fields of informal logic and collective intelligence have been influential on the developments of these platforms. But the platforms and the perspectives that influence them have been neglected by wider research into online deliberation. The thesis seeks to address the question: to what extent can developments in informal logic and collective intelligence address problems in the theory and practice of online deliberation? The theoretical analysis explores the insights that emerge from a comparison of the approaches of informal logic, collective intelligence and deliberative democratic theory. Models of argumentation and reasonableness from collective intelligence and informal logic reveal ways in which deliberative theory is under-defined, as well as providing techniques to structure, support and analyse deliberative processes. The empirical element draws together and analyses the experiences of online deliberation practitioners to provide a deeper understanding of the opportunities and challenges ICT presents for democracy. These novel technologies indicate how challenges associated with knowledge coordination, participant behaviour and information overload can be ameliorated. Yet analysis of the platforms also identifies resourcing, recruitment, collective attention and the application of AI as barriers to developing effective online deliberative spaces

A CRITICAL REVIEW OF CURRENT APPROACHES AND PRACTICES IN COMPUTING ETHICS EDUCATION

Recent scandals caused by the results of negligent, malicious, or shortsighted software development practices highlight the need for software developers to consider the ethical implications of their work. Computing ethics has historically been a marginalized area within computing disciplines, so educators in these disciplines do not have a common background for teaching the topic. Computing ethics education, although often a required part of coursework, can vary widely in the method of implementation from university to university. In this report I summarize the insights I gained from interviewing four educators from three different institutions on their pedagogical approaches to computing ethics. I found there to be a few terms that had very different contextual meanings for the different educators. Case study and group discussion in particular are two terms with a diversity of purposes, methods of use, and literal meanings among the interviewees. I summarize three different methods of extending engineering ethics education beyond one ethics course. I review software tools designed to assist with ethical reflection or to encourage thoughtful discussion, and I make an argument for which elements of those tools seemed to assist in thoughtful consideration and discussion. Finally, I propose a sketch of an ethically sensitive software design, and consider the implications of applying software to ethical reflection. I conclude with some areas for future study that could benefit the development of a software intervention for ethics, as well as the field of ethics education in general

A Review of Research on Participation in Democratic Decision-Making Presented at SIGCHI Conferences : Toward an Improved Trading Zone Between Political Science and HCI

We present a review of 80 papers representing efforts to support participation in democratic decision-making mostly related to local or national governments. The papers were published in leading human–computer interaction (SIGCHI conferences) venues. Most of this literature represents attempts to support assembly- oriented participation, wherein decisions are made through discussion, although referendum-type participation, involving decision-making based on voting, has gained attention too. Primarily, those papers addressing agenda-setting have examined organization-led forms, in which the agenda is controlled by those issuing the call for participation. Accordingly, the authors call for more research into support for representative models and participant-driven agenda-setting. Furthermore, the literature review pinpoints areas wherein further interdisciplinary engagement may be expected to improve research quality: in political science, HCI-informed methods and new ways of using physical input in participation merit more research, while, from the HCI side, cultivating closer relationships with political science concepts such as democratic innovations and calculus of voting could encourage reconsideration of the research foci. These observations speak to the benefits of a new research agenda for human–computer interaction research, involving different forms of participation, most importantly to address lack of engagement under the representative model of participation. Furthermore, in light of these findings, the paper discusses what type of interdisciplinary research is viable in the HCI field today and how political science and HCI scholars could usefully collaborate.Peer reviewe

Cognitive Dissonance pada Konteks Berkomunikasi dan Mencari Informasi di Ruang Digital: Fenomena Selective Exposure

In the digital space that is now increasingly dominating our lives, there are challenges and new social situations that require us to adapt. Cognitive Dissonance Theory (CDT) places a focus on seeing human behavior in situations that are incompatible with the cognition he has. After six decades of CDT's existence, there have been many derivative concepts that can be used to analyze causation in this dissonance situation. Selective exposure is a concept derived from CDT that has received attention from researchers in analyzing the phenomenon of filter bubbles and echo chambers. To examine the application of CDT in a contemporary context, in this digital space, this study was conducted by making a literature review that focuses on elaborating on the theory and context of CDT in use. Using qualitative content analysis from a collection of previous studies, this study maps the relevance of theory to the context of situations in the digital space. The conclusion is that CDT, both based on basic assumptions and derived concepts tested by other researchers, can objectively predict the cause-and-effect of a situation that triggers dissonance in a person's cognition when a situation with similar conditions occurs

Cognitive Dissonance pada Konteks Berkomunikasi dan Mencari Informasi di Ruang Digital: Fenomena Selective Exposure

In the digital space that is now increasingly dominating our lives, there are challenges and new social situations that require us to adapt. Cognitive Dissonance Theory (CDT) places a focus on seeing human behavior in situations that are incompatible with the cognition he has. After six decades of CDT's existence, there have been many derivative concepts that can be used to analyze causation in this dissonance situation. Selective exposure is a concept derived from CDT that has received attention from researchers in analyzing the phenomenon of filter bubbles and echo chambers. To examine the application of CDT in a contemporary context, in this digital space, this study was conducted by making a literature review that focuses on elaborating on the theory and context of CDT in use. Using qualitative content analysis from a collection of previous studies, this study maps the relevance of theory to the context of situations in the digital space. The conclusion is that CDT, both based on basic assumptions and derived concepts tested by other researchers, can objectively predict the cause-and-effect of a situation that triggers dissonance in a person's cognition when a situation with similar conditions occurs