Public Deliberation Consortium
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Review of Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration by Teresa M. Bejan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017)
No full textReview of Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration by Teresa M. Bejan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017)
Testing Assumptions in Deliberative Democratic Design: A Preliminary Assessment of the Efficacy of the Participedia Data Archive as an Analytic Tool
No full textAt smaller social scales, deliberative democratic theory can be restated as an input-process-output model. We advance such a model to formulate hypotheses about how the context and design of a civic engagement process shape the deliberation that takes place therein, as well as the impact of the deliberation on participants and subsequent policymaking. To test those claims, we extract and code case studies from Participedia.net, a research platform that has adopted a self-directed crowd-sourcing strategy to collect data on participatory institutions and deliberative interventions around the world. We explain and confront the challenges faced in coding and analyzing the Participedia cases, which involves managing reliability issues and missing data. In spite of those difficulties, regression analysis of the coded cases shows compelling results, which provide considerable support for our general theoretical model. We conclude with reflections on the implications of our findings for deliberative theory, the design of democratic innovations, and the utility of Participedia as a data archive
The prism of the public sphere: The COP15 coverage by the Brazilian media system
No full textCurrent studies of political communication offer valuable contributions to assessing and measuring mediated deliberation. But in our understanding of the news media\u27s role in a deliberative system a number of questions remain unanswered, especially concerning problems posed by social complexity. This paper aims to contribute to closing this gap by conducting an empirical analysis on how distinct contributions to public deliberation – namely the provision of publicity and intelligibility – are articulated via outputs offered by different types of media outlets, specifically in the case of the Brazilian coverage of the 15th UN’s Climate Change Conference (COP15). Our results suggest that this coverage seems to have fostered citizens to search for more information about this Conference and augmented the visibility of UN’s climate negotiations. This gives support to the idea that news media system works like a prism of the public sphere, promoting accountability of complex governance processes by offering information and public scrutiny adequate for a heterogeneous citizenry
Focus Group Discussions as Sites for Public Deliberation and Sensemaking Following Shared Political Documentary Viewing
No full textThis study examines the potential that shared political documentary viewing coupled with public deliberation via focus group discussion has for political sensemaking and civic engagement. Specifically, we examine college students’ perceptions of sensemaking, future civic engagement, and benefits of participating in group discussion following the shared viewing of D’Souza’s political documentary 2016: Obama’s America. Focus group participants reported that engaging in discussion served to clarify, affirm, and reinforce some initial impressions while opening their eyes to new insights and information. Focus group participation triggered a desire to seek out and hear additional diverse points of view and offered participants the opportunity to diffuse negative emotions and reflect upon media content. Participants reported that they enjoyed participating in this form of guided discussion, reported increased confidence in their abilities to engage in public political deliberation, and reported feeling a call to future civic action. Our findings show that political documentary viewing coupled with focus group discussions can be a productive site for public deliberation that can lead to enhanced sensemaking and positive future civic behaviors including intentions to extend discussions to personal networks and to research issues raised in the discussion or documentary. We address implications for deliberative pedagogy and focus groups as public deliberation
Tracing the Impact of Proposals from Participatory Processes: Methodological Challenges and Substantive Lessons
No full textOur understanding of participatory processes is increasing rapidly. However, one area that has received sparse attention is the impact of the proposals from participatory processes on the policy and practice of public administrations. Which proposals are converted into actual policy and practice; which are modified or simply ignored? The field lacks a systematic understanding of the fate of proposals. This paper reflects on the methodological strategy adopted by the Cherry-picking project to analyze the fate of proposals from participatory processes in Spanish municipalities. The innovative project studied the impact of 611 proposals from 39 participatory processes across 25 municipalities. The paper not only describes and discusses the methodological challenges faced by the project, but also presents preliminary findings and a review of the substantive lessons learned through the design and fieldwork process
The Magic Sauce: Practices of Facilitation in Online Policy Deliberation
No full textOnline engagement in policy deliberation is one of the more complex aspects of open government. Previous research on human facilitation of policy deliberation has focused primarily on the citizens who need facilitation. In this paper we unpack the facilitation practices from the perspective of the moderator. We present an interview study of facilitators in RegulationRoom – an online policy deliberation platform. Our findings reveal that facilitators focus primarily on two broad activities: managing the stream of comments and interacting with comments and commenters – both aimed at obtaining high quality public input into the particular policymaking process. Managing the immediate goals of online policy deliberations, however, might overshadow long-term goals pf public deliberation, i.e. helping individuals develop participatory literacy beyond a single policy engagement. Our contribution is twofold: we unpack the practice of human facilitation in online policy deliberation, and suggest both design and process implications for sustainable growth of civic engagement environments beyond the individual case we analyze
Assessing Deliberative Pedagogy: Using a Learning Outcomes Rubric to Assess Tradeoffs and Tensions
No full textTeaching deliberative decision-making is a method of encouraging students to think critically, engage public problems, and engage in both public speaking and public listening. College instructors have begun to use deliberation as a pedagogical tool, yet further research is needed to understand the learning outcomes of deliberative pedagogy. We argue that the deliberative principle of “understanding tradeoffs and tensions” is a key learning outcome of deliberative pedagogy, and demonstrate an avenue for evaluating it through a learning outcomes rubric, and through critical-interpretative methods of rhetorical criticism. In our analysis, we demonstrate that students with prior training in deliberation achieve higher levels of understanding tradeoffs and tensions through their rhetorical behaviors of embodying a deliberative perspective, expressing inclusivity, and working through public problems
Equity and Inclusion in Online Community Forums: An Interview with Steven Clift
No full textOnline forums pose unique challenges and opportunities for creating equitable public discussions. In this interview, Steven Clift, Executive Director and Founder of E-Democracy.org, shares lessons learned about how to attract new immigrants and refugees to place-based online communities, seeding and facilitating discussions among ethnically diverse residents, and fostering civil discourse. He emphasizes that building a thriving and diverse neighborhood forum online depends on providing spaces where people can discuss community life, exchange free goods, and talk about civic issues in ways that arise organically from people’s everyday concerns, rather than recruiting people to a primarily political forum, which tends to attract privileged residents whose voices often dominate in offline politics. Clift also reflects on the implications for equity of the changing technological landscape for online deliberations, from the rise of Yahoo! Groups to Facebook Groups to commercial neighborhood sites, such as Nextdoor.com. As the Internet becomes integrated into all aspects of everyday life, Clift’s insights can help us to envision how inclusive online forums can be incorporated into many kinds of public engagement
Equality and Equity in Deliberation: Introduction to the Special Issue
No full textThis article introduces the special issue focused on equality and equity in deliberative democracy. The essay proposes some initial working definitions of equity and equality and offers reasons why scholars and practitioners should attend to both. We outline the basic structure of the issue\u27s three sections and preview the contributors’ articles, with special attention to the opportunities and the challenges of achieving equality and equity within the deliberative system
A Conversation with Jane J. Mansbridge and Martha McCoy
No full textJane J. Mansbridge, Charles F. Adams Professor of Political Leadership and Democratic Values, and Martha McCoy, Executive Director of Everyday Democracy, discuss deliberative equity and equality in theory and practice. They identify potential tensions and trade-offs between the two values and between these values and other deliberative aims. They discuss how practitioners have attempted to promote equal and equitable deliberative processes and the challenges of measuring these concepts in deliberative settings. Their conversation provides insights into best practices for enabling marginalized groups to engage in deliberation and the persistent challenges that remain. Together, Mansbridge and McCoy outline opportunities for future theoretical and empirical progress in better understanding and ultimately building effective deliberative groups, institutions, and systems