Centre for Digital Citizenship Institute of Communications Studies

1. Centre for Digital CitizenshipInstitute of Communications Studies The Internet, Web2.0 and ‘having your say’ Ann Macintosh Professor 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

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

3. Overview • Context: the need for deliberative engagement • What’s gone before: a decade of online public engagement • Socio-technical challenges • On-going research

4. Context: Three starting points Hay, 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 Dahlgren, P. 2005. The Internet, Public Spheres, and Political Communication: Dispersion and Deliberation. Political Communication, 22(2) 147-162. Blumler, J.G. & M. Gurevitch 2001. The New Media and Our Political Communication Discontents: Cyberspace. Information, Communication & Society 4(1) 1-13.

5. Potential for technology to enhance democracy • Not a new research area: e.g. • Dutton, W. H.: Political Science Research on Teledemocracy. Social Science Computer Review1992 • Hague, 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

6. Example from 2002 http://itc.napier.ac.uk/e-consultant/scfrio/viewtopic.asp?TopicID=8 Macintosh A. & Smith, E. 2002. Citizen Participation in Public Affairs. Proceedings of 1st International Conference on Electronic Government eGOV2002. France.

7. 2002 example: forum

8. 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

9. 2007 example: forum http://www.econsultation.ie/ec/econswip.nsf/(webstartpage)/5?opendocument

10. 2010 Example: Web2.0 http://crossroad.epu.ntua.gr/

11. Potential for technology to enhance democracy –> so far not realised Expecting too much of government & politicians Expecting too much of citizens Expecting too much of technology 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.

12. Complexity of policy development Wicked Problems Rittel, H.W.J., and M. M. Webber. 1973. Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences, 4:155-169 How do you tackle urban deprivation? How do you end international drug trafficking? What do you do about climate change? Not easily defined No clear stopping rules No right or wrong approach No clear measures of success An iterative process Solution are discovered Each are unique Level of detail a matter of judgement Strong moral & political pressure against failure.

13. Complexity of policy development Policy issues discussed on social network sites 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.

14. Some socio-technical questions How to Make sense of unstructured text  Know what critical questions to ask  Identify which issues are important Facilitate reasoned contributions Determine relationships between contributions to policy development

15. Argument mapping: making sense of complex problems Visualisation language http://compendium.open.ac.uk/institute/community/showcase.htm#pubpol

16. Example from Scottish Parliament: Banning smoking in public places

18. 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

19. IMPACT: Integrated Method for Policy making using Argument modelling & Computer assisted Text analysis Walton, D. (2006). Fundamentals of Critical Argumentation. Cambridge University Press. • 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

20. 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

21. Conclusions On-going research on how argumentation systems can add value to participatory policy development • Macintosh, A., Gordon, T. F. & Renton, A. (2009). Providing Argument Support for eParticipation. Journal of Information Technology & Politics, (JITP).6(1), 43-59 • Okada, A., Buckingham Shum, S. & Sherborne, T. (Eds.), (2008). Knowledge Cartography: Software Tools and Mapping Techniques. T. Springer: Advanced Information and Knowledge Processing Series “How can vast numbers of people engage in collective talk without the voices of individuals being drowned out by the noise of the crowd?” • Coleman, S. & Blumler, J. G. (2009). The Internet and Democratic • Citizenship. New York: Cambridge University Press

22. Centre for Digital CitizenshipInstitute of Communications Studies Thank you