With application in my memeio project in mind I offer the following
formalized view and generalization of deliberation for comments.

Deliberation is the formal consideration of a document. Such
consideration has the following properties:

    1. A (document).
    2. One or more contributing (authors).
    3. Prior art, a (reading list) of related documents.
    4. A deliberating body (debators).
    5. A target audience (readership).
    6. A pragmatic statement (goal).
    7. A formal statement of (methodology).
    8. Mediators/(moderators).
    9. (Process) adminstrators.
   10. A (record).
   11. A chronology and (timeline).
   12. A specified (conclusion).
   13. A recordable (action).
   14. A recordable (response).
   15. A specified (review) process.

I would like to see other enumerations of methodology but I suggest
the following.

    1. Executive decision by a specified individual.
    2. Consensus decision by a jury.
    3. A vote by the deliberating body.
    4. A vote by observers (readership).
    5. A vote by the deliberating body and observers.
    6. Open deliberation (no vote or executive decision).

Points of clarification.

Examples of a goal include the following.

    1. Publication of the document.
    2. Revision of the document.
    3. Deletion of the document.
    4. A published mandate (direction).
    5. A published standard (guidelines).
    6. A published authority (information).

A jury consensus differs from other voting by observers and
deliberating body in that a jury is considered to be a collection of
peers in direct contact and close proximity.

Your comments appreciated.

With respect,
Steven

–
Dr. Steven Ericsson Zenith
http://www.semeiosis.com
http://www.memeio.com

I have asked for input on formal structures of deliberation. Please see:

http://www.online-deliberation.net/conf2005/blog/?p=678

Sincerely,

Steven

--
Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
http://www.semeiosis.com
http://www.memeio.com

A lot depends on the environment in which the deliberation took place,
what the risk / reward psychology is, who the participants are, who
the moderators are, what the scope of the subject matter is, how the
deliberation led to decisions and affected the participants.

If you can enlighten us on these factors I can make a more useful
response.

With respect,
Steven



--- In deliberation_research@yahoogroups.com, "M. Wu" <wume20@y...> wrote:
> Dear deliberation researchers:
>
> This is my first message to this list. Thank you all
> for contributing a lot of interesting ideas on
> "deliberation." I've been working for two years on a
> large empirical project (over 450,000 postings) of
> global Chinese net forums (which are a moderated
> discussion board system for political discussion most
> popular in the Chinese Internet) and am writing a
> series papers on my research findings. One part of my
> content analysis is about the "deliberation" (quality
> of political talk) in the Chinese context. One of my
> concerns is that the computer-mediated "publicness" of
> the digital talk may bring about a new form of
> political deliberation. Instead of concerning with the
> good or bad deliberation, it may be more illuminating
> to think why the online talk in general (worldwide and
> cross cultures) does not have the quality of
> "deliberative democracy"? Does it indicate a general
> pattern of political talk in small groups? Or a
> general pattern of the political talk conducted over
> the new medium? Or both?
>
> Wu Mei, PhD
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Communication
> University of Macau
> (853)3974243 (o)
> Email: meiwu@u...
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com

I'd like to echo Jenny's sentiments and especially the kudos and thanks to
Todd.

--On Tuesday, May 24, 2005 5:50 PM +0000 Jenny Stromer-Galley
<jstromer@...> wrote:

> Well, I've just returned from a terrific weekend at Stanford. The
> Second Online Deliberation Conference was one of the best conferences
> I've attended. Bringing together computer scientists, practitioners,
> and researchers made it possible to experience the full range of
> enterprises and research being conducted on online deliberation.
>
> Some of you already know about the blog the conference organizers
> set-up. You can find the blog at:
> http://www.online-deliberation.net/conf2005/blog
>
> I think that Todd Davies, the organizer of the conference (three
> cheers to Todd!), will announce in the near future that the
> participants voted to create a new International Society for Online
> Deliberation. Todd also plans to create an email list initially
> composed of attendees of the conference. Todd is a member of this list
> and knows that we might wish to merge forces at some point in the future.
>
> It was a terrific conference, and I look forward to continuing the
> discussion.
>
> ~Jenny
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>



Peter M. Shane
Distinguished Service Professor (Adjunct) of Law and Public Policy and
Chair of the Board of Advisors, Institute for the Study of Information
Technology and Society
(InSITeS)
H. J. Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management
Carnegie Mellon University
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213
614-688-3014
FAX:  614-688-8422
E-Mail:  pshane@...
URL:  www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/pshane

Well, I've just returned from a terrific weekend at Stanford. The
Second Online Deliberation Conference was one of the best conferences
I've attended. Bringing together computer scientists, practitioners,
and researchers made it possible to experience the full range of
enterprises and research being conducted on online deliberation.

Some of you already know about the blog the conference organizers
set-up. You can find the blog at:
http://www.online-deliberation.net/conf2005/blog

I think that Todd Davies, the organizer of the conference (three
cheers to Todd!), will announce in the near future that the
participants voted to create a new International Society for Online
Deliberation. Todd also plans to create an email list initially
composed of attendees of the conference. Todd is a member of this list
and knows that we might wish to merge forces at some point in the future.

It was a terrific conference, and I look forward to continuing the
discussion.

~Jenny

Immediacy and the clarification of intent in exchanges in online
deliberation are particularly important. I have just issued a public
draft of an XML schema aimed at addressing these issues. I hope that
some of the systems under development will give formal consideration
to the importance of these questions. Hopefully it will stimulate some
creative debate.

This is my request for comments submitted to the W3 XMLSchema
development list:
—
the memeio project

DRAFT SCHEMA: REQUEST FOR COMMENTS
Released: Monday, May 23rd, 2005 - 15:00 Pacific.

I have just made the first release of the schema that my project at
http://www.memeio.com will use to generate immediacy and intent
metadata over memeio documents.

The schema can be found at:
http://xml.memeio.org/0.0.2/memeio.xsd

Details of the memeio project can be found at http://www.memeio.com

To view the schema in a visual form I recommend that you download the
free version of XMLSpy from:

http://link.altova.com/download_spy_home.html

Sincerely,
Steven

--
Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
http://www.semeiosis.com
http://www.memeio.com

Dear deliberation researchers:

This is my first message to this list. Thank you all
for contributing a lot of interesting ideas on
“deliberation.” I’ve been working for two years on a
large empirical project (over 450,000 postings) of
global Chinese net forums (which are a moderated
discussion board system for political discussion most
popular in the Chinese Internet) and am writing a
series papers on my research findings. One part of my
content analysis is about the “deliberation” (quality
of political talk) in the Chinese context. One of my
concerns is that the computer-mediated “publicness” of
the digital talk may bring about a new form of
political deliberation. Instead of concerning with the
good or bad deliberation, it may be more illuminating
to think why the online talk in general (worldwide and
cross cultures) does not have the quality of
“deliberative democracy”? Does it indicate a general
pattern of political talk in small groups? Or a
general pattern of the political talk conducted over
the new medium? Or both?

Wu Mei, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Communication
University of Macau
(853)3974243 (o)
Email: meiwu@...

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com

The following is a repost a comment I made on the Deliberation 2005
conference Blog.

Beyond the logistical benefits of technology that enables online
deliberation there are a number of questions that come to mind. If
Friedrich Hayek and Karl Popper were alive today they would have much
to say about online deliberation and in some sense they have
complimentary concerns.

Despite the geographic distribution that online deliberation allows I
see that Hayek would be rightly concerned that this technology can
effectively centralize power and planning in political cartels that
exclude those without the skills, access or comfort to engage with it.

Further, it is my professional opinion that technology and the
associated engineering professions are not sufficiently mature to
allow the development of online systems that the public can trust. In
particular, the voting systems themselves, the human factors and
pyschology involved are poorly understood and open to easy abuse. Nor
am I confident that simply translating the offline deliberative
process into the online domain is the obvious good idea that it at
first appears to be.

My fear is that such systems could ultimately come to undermine the
basis of consensus building in the community and lead to greater problems.

Caution is in order.

With respect,
Steven

--
Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
http://www.semeiosis.com
http://www.memeio.com

Folks at E-Democracy.Org would like your input on how to hardwire
deliberative elements into the new open source GroupServer platform.

This is the first time in a decade that we've had the resources to
embed our democratic practices into the discussion platform that we are
using.

Some simple examples:

1. Virtual Talking Stick - Our two posts a day rule is now
technologically driven with a no more than 2 posts in a 24 period.  A
talking stick is way to ensure that people takes their turn in a
discussion rather than dominating the discussion - when you have the
stick you can talk.  We still have people who talk twice a day every
day, but with out the rule and now technology they'd go nuts and drive
away our participatory audience.

2. Real Names and Member Directory Pages - We default people to using
their real names when the register and combine them into their login.
Then when they post we automatically insert a direct URL their member
page, for example: http://forums.e-
democracy.org/factory/contacts/stevenclift/  (you need to login to see
the details I've decided to share)  - Outcome: greater accountability
and civility

From your research backgrounds, what ideas do you have?

We plan to raise further funding to implement things that people will
use and with its open source release <http://e-
democracy.org/groupserver> the benefits can be shared widely.

If you want to help us figure out future deliberative features for NGOs
and governments, join us here:

http://forums.e-democracy.org/factory/groups/gs-ngogov

GroupServer will be a great opportunity for those interested in
building tools for online deliberative democracy that really connect
with citizens in their everyday lives.

Cheers,
Steven Clift
E-Democracy.Org

hi,

just a notice on a "dicovery" I just made:

the following newly established scientific online-journal with free
access in accordance with the open access movement
(http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html)
might be of interest to most of us:

http://services.bepress.com/jpd/

regards,

christoph

-----Original Message-----
From: deliberation_research@yahoogroups.com [mailto:deliberation_research@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of hamlettp
Sent: Friday, April 15, 2005 10:55 AM
To: deliberation_research@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [delib] some feedback on coding deliberation

There are some works detailing the necessary elements of "good"
deliberation:

   * Burkhalter, Stephanie, John Gastil, and Todd Kershaw. 2002. "A
     Conceptual Definition and Theoretical Model of Public Deliberation
     in Small Face-to-Face Groups." Communication Theory 12(4): 398–422.

   * Rowe, Gene, and Lynn J. Frewer. 2000. "Public Participation
     Methods: A Framework for Evaluation." Science, Technology, & Human
     Values 25(1, Winter): 3–29.

   * Rowe, Gene, and Lynn J. Frewer. 2004. "Evaluatiing Pubic
     Participation Exercises: A Research Agenda." Science, Technology,
     & Human Values 29(4, Autumn): 512–57.

I am more concerned to see focused research dealing with specific
affective & cognitive pathologies seen as part of deliberations than I
am in the general criteria of "good" or "bad" deliberation. Problems
such as polarization cascades, affective cascades, distorting decision
heuristics, etc., strike me as more central to the research agenda for
deliberation scholars. Some references (in addition to Delli Carpini &
Mendelberg):

   * Hibbing, John R., and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse. 2002a. "The Perils
     of Voice: Political Involvement's Potential to Delegitimate."
     Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political
     Science Association. Boston, August.

   * Hibbing, John R., and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse. 2002b. Stealth
     Democracy: Americans' Beliefs About How Government Should Work.
     Cambridge Studies in Political Psychology and Public Opinion.
     Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

   * Kuran, Timur, and Cass R. Sunstein. 1999. "Availability Cascades
     and Risk Regulation." Stanford Law Review 51(1, April): 683-.

   * Sunstein, Cass R. 2003. "The Law of Group Polarization." In
     Debating Deliberative Democracy, eds. James S. Fishkin and Peter
     Laslett. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

A second theme of interest to me has to do with the goals of any
particular deliberative exercise (and this interest crosses back to
the pathologies issue). Is the goal of a deliberative exercise to have
the deliberators clarify their thinking and their postures toward the
issue in question (pretty much what Fishkin's /Deliberative Polling/
attempts), or is it to have the deliberators actually reach a
consensus they can all endorse? My work, on the Danish-style Consensus
Conference, has always attempted to reach a consensus. I think this is
both more challenging and more useful. The "issue clarification" or
"position clarification" process stops short of asking the
deliberators to offer a possible solution endorsable by all
participants. I am curious about your general take on these two
different deliberative goals.

BTW: Hello to Matthias -- we met at the deliberation conference in
Firenze. I'd like to hear how much progress you've made on your coding
of Internet based deliberations.
========================================
Dr. Patrick W. Hamlett
Science, Technology & Society Program
Box 7107
North Carolina State University
Raleigh NC 27695-7107 USA
Tel: 919.515.7999 || Fax: 919.515.1828 || Cell: 919.260.4370
Matthias Trenel wrote:

There are some works detailing the necessary elements of "good"
deliberation:

    * Burkhalter, Stephanie, John Gastil, and Todd Kershaw. 2002. "A
      Conceptual Definition and Theoretical Model of Public Deliberation
      in Small Face-to-Face Groups." Communication Theory 12(4): 398–422.

    * Rowe, Gene, and Lynn J. Frewer. 2000. "Public Participation
      Methods: A Framework for Evaluation." Science, Technology, & Human
      Values 25(1, Winter): 3–29.

    * Rowe, Gene, and Lynn J. Frewer. 2004. "Evaluatiing Pubic
      Participation Exercises: A Research Agenda." Science, Technology,
      & Human Values 29(4, Autumn): 512–57.

I am more concerned to see focused research dealing with specific
affective & cognitive pathologies seen as part of deliberations than I
am in the general criteria of "good" or "bad" deliberation. Problems
such as polarization cascades, affective cascades, distorting decision
heuristics, etc., strike me as more central to the research agenda for
deliberation scholars. Some references (in addition to Delli Carpini &
Mendelberg):

    * Hibbing, John R., and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse. 2002a. "The Perils
      of Voice: Political Involvement's Potential to Delegitimate."
      Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political
      Science Association. Boston, August.

    * Hibbing, John R., and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse. 2002b. Stealth
      Democracy: Americans' Beliefs About How Government Should Work.
      Cambridge Studies in Political Psychology and Public Opinion.
      Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

    * Kuran, Timur, and Cass R. Sunstein. 1999. "Availability Cascades
      and Risk Regulation." Stanford Law Review 51(1, April): 683-.

    * Sunstein, Cass R. 2003. "The Law of Group Polarization." In
      Debating Deliberative Democracy, eds. James S. Fishkin and Peter
      Laslett. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

A second theme of interest to me has to do with the goals of any
particular deliberative exercise (and this interest crosses back to
the pathologies issue). Is the goal of a deliberative exercise to have
the deliberators clarify their thinking and their postures toward the
issue in question (pretty much what Fishkin's /Deliberative Polling/
attempts), or is it to have the deliberators actually reach a
consensus they can all endorse? My work, on the Danish-style Consensus
Conference, has always attempted to reach a consensus. I think this is
both more challenging and more useful. The "issue clarification" or
"position clarification" process stops short of asking the
deliberators to offer a possible solution endorsable by all
participants. I am curious about your general take on these two
different deliberative goals.

BTW: Hello to Matthias -- we met at the deliberation conference in
Firenze. I'd like to hear how much progress you've made on your coding
of Internet based deliberations.
========================================
Dr. Patrick W. Hamlett
Science, Technology & Society Program
Box 7107
North Carolina State University
Raleigh NC 27695-7107 USA
Tel: 919.515.7999 || Fax: 919.515.1828 || Cell: 919.260.4370
Matthias Trenel wrote:

Hi Steve and Jens,

Thanks for your thoughts here.

I'm thinking of "good" in the sense of good for democracy and good for the
people talking politics in helping them to become better citizens (grounded in
good ol' Habermas--he seems inescapable ;-).

Your suggestion, Jens, about confirming whether people have an intuitive sense
of what is good and bad talk from ideal deliberation is an intriguing one. I
conducted interviews awhile back with people who talk politics in organic
spaces online (like Usenet and Yahoo!'s chat). I was interested in why they
were doing it, and it was clear that in general they were frustrated with the
types of talk that empiricists and theoriticians have characterized as bad
talk (i.e. much personal attack, people who come to the forum to rant but not
listen, people who won't change their mind in the face of good evidence,
etc.). I've written some conference papers on the research, but haven't yet
had luck getting publications out of it.

Steve, I'm with you in your observation that some experiments creating
deliberative opportunities create near-ideal deliberation, but they're hard to
sustain beyond the experiment (if I am understanding you correctly). Naturally
sustaining deliberative groups tend to operate at a slightly less-than-ideal
level of deliberation I suspect, but I think that's okay. I'll take
less-than-ideal deliberation over no deliberation from an "it's good for
democracy" perspective.

Best,
~Jenny

Steve, are you coming to the Stanford conference? I see Scott Aikens is
presenting . . . I've never met him in person, and am looking forward to it.



>
>
>  > -----Original Message-----
>  > From: Jens Steffek [mailto:jens.steffek@...]
>
>  > I think that the question of how to operationalize or measure
>  > deliberation is closely related to what you actually want to
>  > know about deliberation. Good or bad for what? If you want to
>  > know under what conditions deliberation produces 'good'
>  > results (like new ideas) you might need other indicators than
>  > if you want to know if deliberation is 'good' in the sense of
>  > democratic.
>
>
>  This seems to be a very important question. I sense that many (online)
>  deliberative experiments are too detached from real world political
>  processes.  On the other hand, I also feel that many poor political
>  outcomes could be diverted/changed with a bit more deliberation.
>
>  With E-Democracy.Org we strive toward "civility" and
> "discussion" with
>  an eye toward community agenda-setting and respect among participants
>  for those who express differing views as an "outcome."  Perhaps I
> am
>  wrong, but the sense I get from those working toward a higher standard
>  of "deliberation" is that you end up with a nice process, but not
>  necessarily the cost-effective generation of enough positive outcomes to
>  warrant a repeat of the process.
>
>  Any thoughts?
>
>  Cheers,
>  Steven Clift
>
>  P.S. The E-Democracy model explained in our new 60 page guidebook:
>  http://e-democracy.org/uk/guide.pdf
>
>
>  Steven Clift - http://publicus.net - Reply to: clift@... Join
>  DoWire: http://dowire.org
>  E-Democracy: http://e-democracy.org
>
>
>   Yahoo! Groups Links
>   To visit your group on the web, go to:
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/deliberation_research/
>   To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> deliberation_research-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>   Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.

---

Yahoo! Groups Links

• To visit your group on the web, go to:
• http://groups.yahoo.com/group/deliberation_research/
•  
• To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
• deliberation_research-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
•  
• Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.

Steven asks whether good (online-) deliberation is actually just a
nice process and whether it's really worth the effort to strive for
good deliberation, at least in the sphere of politics. Like Jens I
think, the question is when and for whom striving for good
deliberation is worth the effort. Apart from influencing politics,
participants (often, not always) may wish to test/refine their
opinions and socialise. I would assume that these needs are met with
good deliberation. In this sense, Jenny`s comparison between
"objective" deliberation criteria and lay people's perceptions would
not only be a methodological paper (validating the criteria) but may
also tell us something about the relationship between good
deliberation and outcomes (that justify the effort), in this case the
relationship between good deliberation and participant satisfaction.

Greetings from the Land of good ol´ Habermas ;-)

Matthias

PS: Of course, at the moment it seems especially important to look for
outcomes of good deliberation that benefit those that initiate (and
pay for) those online dialogues, namely the officials/politicians.
Last year, I had the chance to interview a few MPs from the British
Parliament that were involved in online consultations*. Interestingly
(I found) they did not expect new information from deliberating online
with the public. Instead they appreciated to have a wide array of
participants and views to test their own opinion and legitimate their
decisions. While this seems to mesh nicely with the Habermasian ideal
of good deliberation, my interview partners also said that they
particularly appreciated when participants reported their own
experience. MP's said that this helped them to contextualize their
thinking. Also some used citations to illustrate their speeches and
political programs. Therefore, we may need to include a narrative
element into our criteria of good deliberation (among others, one
person working on this is Francesca Polletta).

* Trénel, M. (2004). Möglichkeiten netzbasierter Kommunikation für
Parlamente: Erfahrungen aus Großbritannien. Gutachten für den
Deutschen Bundestag, Büro für Technikfolgen-Abschätzung. [Potentials
of internet-based communication for parliaments: The British
experience. Report to the Office of Technology Assessment at the
German Parliament]. November 2004. Slides in German are at
http://www.zebralog.de/000115.html


On 4/15/05, Todd Davies <tdavies@...> wrote:
>
> Jenny,
>
> I've thought for a long time that the gold standard for real world
> deliberation among the general population is the jury room.  If you agree
> that that's an environment conducive to good deliberation, you might think
> about the elements of a jury trial and jury deliberation that are
> responsible for that.  I don't know of an experiment comparing f2f and
> online deliberation by mock juries, but that would be interesting to
> conduct and could be done with, say, a full videotape of a trial as
> stimulus.  As typing "mock jury" into Google Scholar shows, there is a
> large literature of mock jury studies that could be drawn on for guidance
> in experimental design.  So we could ask, how might your coding scheme be
> used for comparing online versus offline deliberation in such a context?
>
> Just some thoughts.
>
> Todd
>
> On Fri, 15 Apr 2005, Jenny Stromer-Galley wrote:
>
> >
> > Hi Steve and Jens,
> >
> > Thanks for your thoughts here.
> >
> > I'm thinking of "good" in the sense of good for democracy and good for the
> > people talking politics in helping them to become better citizens (grounded
in
> > good ol' Habermas--he seems inescapable ;-).
> >
> > Your suggestion, Jens, about confirming whether people have an intuitive
sense
> > of what is good and bad talk from ideal deliberation is an intriguing one. I
> > conducted interviews awhile back with people who talk politics in organic
> > spaces online (like Usenet and Yahoo!'s chat). I was interested in why they
> > were doing it, and it was clear that in general they were frustrated with
the
> > types of talk that empiricists and theoriticians have characterized as bad
> > talk (i.e. much personal attack, people who come to the forum to rant but
not
> > listen, people who won't change their mind in the face of good evidence,
> > etc.). I've written some conference papers on the research, but haven't yet
> > had luck getting publications out of it.
> >
> > Steve, I'm with you in your observation that some experiments creating
> > deliberative opportunities create near-ideal deliberation, but they're hard
to
> > sustain beyond the experiment (if I am understanding you correctly).
Naturally
> > sustaining deliberative groups tend to operate at a slightly less-than-ideal
> > level of deliberation I suspect, but I think that's okay. I'll take
> > less-than-ideal deliberation over no deliberation from an "it's good for
> > democracy" perspective.
> >
> > Best,
> > ~Jenny
> >
> > Steve, are you coming to the Stanford conference? I see Scott Aikens is
> > presenting . . . I've never met him in person, and am looking forward to it.
> >
> >
> >
> > >
> > >
> > >  > -----Original Message-----
> > >  > From: Jens Steffek [mailto:jens.steffek@...]
> > >
> > >  > I think that the question of how to operationalize or measure
> > >  > deliberation is closely related to what you actually want to
> > >  > know about deliberation. Good or bad for what? If you want to
> > >  > know under what conditions deliberation produces 'good'
> > >  > results (like new ideas) you might need other indicators than
> > >  > if you want to know if deliberation is 'good' in the sense of
> > >  > democratic.
> > >
> > >
> > >  This seems to be a very important question. I sense that many (online)
> > >  deliberative experiments are too detached from real world political
> > >  processes.  On the other hand, I also feel that many poor political
> > >  outcomes could be diverted/changed with a bit more deliberation.
> > >
> > >  With E-Democracy.Org we strive toward &quot;civility&quot; and
> > > &quot;discussion&quot; with
> > >  an eye toward community agenda-setting and respect among participants
> > >  for those who express differing views as an &quot;outcome.&quot;  Perhaps
I
> > > am
> > >  wrong, but the sense I get from those working toward a higher standard
> > >  of &quot;deliberation&quot; is that you end up with a nice process, but
not
> > >  necessarily the cost-effective generation of enough positive outcomes to
> > >  warrant a repeat of the process.
> > >
> > >  Any thoughts?
> > >
> > >  Cheers,
> > >  Steven Clift
> > >
> > >  P.S. The E-Democracy model explained in our new 60 page guidebook:
> > >  http://e-democracy.org/uk/guide.pdf
> > >
> > >
> > >  Steven Clift - http://publicus.net - Reply to: clift@... Join
> > >  DoWire: http://dowire.org
> > >  E-Democracy: http://e-democracy.org
> > >
> > >
> > >   Yahoo! Groups Links
> > >   To visit your group on the web, go to:
> > > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/deliberation_research/
> > >   To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> > > deliberation_research-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
> > >   Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Yahoo! Groups Links
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> * Todd Davies                  * Office: 460-040C (Margaret Jacks Hall)
> * Symbolic Systems Program     * Phone: 1-650-723-4091
> * Stanford University          * Fax: 1-650-723-5666
> * Stanford, CA 94305-2150      * Email: tdavies@...
> * USA                          * Web: http://www.stanford.edu/~davies
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>

Jenny,

I've thought for a long time that the gold standard for real world
deliberation among the general population is the jury room.  If you agree
that that's an environment conducive to good deliberation, you might think
about the elements of a jury trial and jury deliberation that are
responsible for that.  I don't know of an experiment comparing f2f and
online deliberation by mock juries, but that would be interesting to
conduct and could be done with, say, a full videotape of a trial as
stimulus.  As typing "mock jury" into Google Scholar shows, there is a
large literature of mock jury studies that could be drawn on for guidance
in experimental design.  So we could ask, how might your coding scheme be
used for comparing online versus offline deliberation in such a context?

Just some thoughts.

Todd

On Fri, 15 Apr 2005, Jenny Stromer-Galley wrote:

>
> Hi Steve and Jens,
>
> Thanks for your thoughts here.
>
> I'm thinking of "good" in the sense of good for democracy and good for the
> people talking politics in helping them to become better citizens (grounded in
> good ol' Habermas--he seems inescapable ;-).
>
> Your suggestion, Jens, about confirming whether people have an intuitive sense
> of what is good and bad talk from ideal deliberation is an intriguing one. I
> conducted interviews awhile back with people who talk politics in organic
> spaces online (like Usenet and Yahoo!'s chat). I was interested in why they
> were doing it, and it was clear that in general they were frustrated with the
> types of talk that empiricists and theoriticians have characterized as bad
> talk (i.e. much personal attack, people who come to the forum to rant but not
> listen, people who won't change their mind in the face of good evidence,
> etc.). I've written some conference papers on the research, but haven't yet
> had luck getting publications out of it.
>
> Steve, I'm with you in your observation that some experiments creating
> deliberative opportunities create near-ideal deliberation, but they're hard to
> sustain beyond the experiment (if I am understanding you correctly). Naturally
> sustaining deliberative groups tend to operate at a slightly less-than-ideal
> level of deliberation I suspect, but I think that's okay. I'll take
> less-than-ideal deliberation over no deliberation from an "it's good for
> democracy" perspective.
>
> Best,
> ~Jenny
>
> Steve, are you coming to the Stanford conference? I see Scott Aikens is
> presenting . . . I've never met him in person, and am looking forward to it.
>
>
>
> >
> >
> >  > -----Original Message-----
> >  > From: Jens Steffek [mailto:jens.steffek@...]
> >
> >  > I think that the question of how to operationalize or measure
> >  > deliberation is closely related to what you actually want to
> >  > know about deliberation. Good or bad for what? If you want to
> >  > know under what conditions deliberation produces 'good'
> >  > results (like new ideas) you might need other indicators than
> >  > if you want to know if deliberation is 'good' in the sense of
> >  > democratic.
> >
> >
> >  This seems to be a very important question. I sense that many (online)
> >  deliberative experiments are too detached from real world political
> >  processes.  On the other hand, I also feel that many poor political
> >  outcomes could be diverted/changed with a bit more deliberation.
> >
> >  With E-Democracy.Org we strive toward "civility" and
> > "discussion" with
> >  an eye toward community agenda-setting and respect among participants
> >  for those who express differing views as an "outcome."  Perhaps I
> > am
> >  wrong, but the sense I get from those working toward a higher standard
> >  of "deliberation" is that you end up with a nice process, but not
> >  necessarily the cost-effective generation of enough positive outcomes to
> >  warrant a repeat of the process.
> >
> >  Any thoughts?
> >
> >  Cheers,
> >  Steven Clift
> >
> >  P.S. The E-Democracy model explained in our new 60 page guidebook:
> >  http://e-democracy.org/uk/guide.pdf
> >
> >
> >  Steven Clift - http://publicus.net - Reply to: clift@... Join
> >  DoWire: http://dowire.org
> >  E-Democracy: http://e-democracy.org
> >
> >
> >   Yahoo! Groups Links
> >   To visit your group on the web, go to:
> > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/deliberation_research/
> >   To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> > deliberation_research-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
> >   Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

* Todd Davies                  * Office: 460-040C (Margaret Jacks Hall)
* Symbolic Systems Program     * Phone: 1-650-723-4091
* Stanford University          * Fax: 1-650-723-5666
* Stanford, CA 94305-2150      * Email: tdavies@...
* USA                          * Web: http://www.stanford.edu/~davies

Hi Steve and Jens,

Thanks for your thoughts here.

I'm thinking of "good" in the sense of good for democracy and good for the
people talking politics in helping them to become better citizens (grounded in
good ol' Habermas--he seems inescapable ;-).

Your suggestion, Jens, about confirming whether people have an intuitive sense
of what is good and bad talk from ideal deliberation is an intriguing one. I
conducted interviews awhile back with people who talk politics in organic
spaces online (like Usenet and Yahoo!'s chat). I was interested in why they
were doing it, and it was clear that in general they were frustrated with the
types of talk that empiricists and theoriticians have characterized as bad
talk (i.e. much personal attack, people who come to the forum to rant but not
listen, people who won't change their mind in the face of good evidence,
etc.). I've written some conference papers on the research, but haven't yet
had luck getting publications out of it.

Steve, I'm with you in your observation that some experiments creating
deliberative opportunities create near-ideal deliberation, but they're hard to
sustain beyond the experiment (if I am understanding you correctly). Naturally
sustaining deliberative groups tend to operate at a slightly less-than-ideal
level of deliberation I suspect, but I think that's okay. I'll take
less-than-ideal deliberation over no deliberation from an "it's good for
democracy" perspective.

Best,
~Jenny

Steve, are you coming to the Stanford conference? I see Scott Aikens is
presenting . . . I've never met him in person, and am looking forward to it.



>
>
>  > -----Original Message-----
>  > From: Jens Steffek [mailto:jens.steffek@...]
>
>  > I think that the question of how to operationalize or measure
>  > deliberation is closely related to what you actually want to
>  > know about deliberation. Good or bad for what? If you want to
>  > know under what conditions deliberation produces 'good'
>  > results (like new ideas) you might need other indicators than
>  > if you want to know if deliberation is 'good' in the sense of
>  > democratic.
>
>
>  This seems to be a very important question. I sense that many (online)
>  deliberative experiments are too detached from real world political
>  processes.  On the other hand, I also feel that many poor political
>  outcomes could be diverted/changed with a bit more deliberation.
>
>  With E-Democracy.Org we strive toward "civility" and
> "discussion" with
>  an eye toward community agenda-setting and respect among participants
>  for those who express differing views as an "outcome."  Perhaps I
> am
>  wrong, but the sense I get from those working toward a higher standard
>  of "deliberation" is that you end up with a nice process, but not
>  necessarily the cost-effective generation of enough positive outcomes to
>  warrant a repeat of the process.
>
>  Any thoughts?
>
>  Cheers,
>  Steven Clift
>
>  P.S. The E-Democracy model explained in our new 60 page guidebook:
>  http://e-democracy.org/uk/guide.pdf
>
>
>  Steven Clift - http://publicus.net - Reply to: clift@... Join
>  DoWire: http://dowire.org
>  E-Democracy: http://e-democracy.org
>
>
>   Yahoo! Groups Links
>   To visit your group on the web, go to:
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/deliberation_research/
>   To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> deliberation_research-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>   Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jens Steffek [mailto:jens.steffek@...]

> I think that the question of how to operationalize or measure
> deliberation is closely related to what you actually want to
> know about deliberation. Good or bad for what? If you want to
> know under what conditions deliberation produces 'good'
> results (like new ideas) you might need other indicators than
> if you want to know if deliberation is 'good' in the sense of
> democratic.


This seems to be a very important question. I sense that many (online)
deliberative experiments are too detached from real world political
processes.  On the other hand, I also feel that many poor political
outcomes could be diverted/changed with a bit more deliberation.

With E-Democracy.Org we strive toward "civility" and "discussion" with
an eye toward community agenda-setting and respect among participants
for those who express differing views as an "outcome."  Perhaps I am
wrong, but the sense I get from those working toward a higher standard
of "deliberation" is that you end up with a nice process, but not
necessarily the cost-effective generation of enough positive outcomes to
warrant a repeat of the process.

Any thoughts?

Cheers,
Steven Clift

P.S. The E-Democracy model explained in our new 60 page guidebook:
http://e-democracy.org/uk/guide.pdf


Steven Clift - http://publicus.net - Reply to: clift@... Join
DoWire: http://dowire.org
E-Democracy: http://e-democracy.org

Dear Jenny (I address this message to everyone assuming that the discussion
might be of general interest),

I think that the question of how to operationalize or measure deliberation
is closely related to what you actually want to know about deliberation.
Good or bad for what? If you want to know under what conditions deliberation
produces 'good' results (like new ideas) you might need other indicators
than if you want to know if deliberation is 'good' in the sense of
democratic. In the first case you would ultimately judge 'good' deliberation
by what it produces while in the second you would judge it by the way it is
done.

In the first case you could also be quite empiricist, first sampling cases
of successful and unsuccessful deliberation and then try to identify the
decisive differences in the process. That's not advisable because there is a
lot of literature out there but it would be a sound strategy. In the second
case you would normally start from some normative theory (such as
Habermas's) that specifies conditions of 'good' deliberative decision-making
and then operationalize them for empirical research.

In Habermas's work on communicative action, by the way, you can find the
argument that everyone able to use language intuitively knows what good
deliberation is. Every competent speaker, he says, can tell deviations from
the ideal speech situation which is kind of a permanent counterfactual. So
it's not absurd to try to confirm lay peoples' feelings about good or bad
deliberation with scientific methods.

Hope this helps in some way, Jens





*********************
Dr. Jens Steffek
Sonderforschungsbereich "Staatlichkeit im Wandel"
Universität Bremen
Linzer Strasse 9 A, Raum 2004
28359 Bremen
Tel. +49 (0)421 218 8727
Fax. +49 (0)421 218 8721
http://www.staatlichkeit.uni-bremen.de/homepages/steffek/index.php


-----Original Message-----
From: Jenny Stromer-Galley [mailto:jstromer@...]
Sent: Thursday, April 14, 2005 5:39 PM
To: deliberation_research@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [delib] some feedback on coding deliberation


Thanks for this suggestion. I have HCR on my shelf at work (sometimes those
mailed journals come in handy).

I'm operationalizing deliberation as having the following elements: reasoned
argument, interactivity, equality, agreement/disagreement, sourcing, and
personal attack. Those elements come out of theoretical literature as well
as
prior coding projects on deliberation I'd encountered up to this point. I'm
also coding for the type of utterance each statement is according to speech
act theory. I haven't included idea generation as one of the elements,
although that suggests another dimension I hadn't yet considered. With the
forums I've been studying (which has been Yahoo! chat), idea generation
doesn't seem to be an element of the conversation; however, I can imagine in
other deliberation situations, that might be an important element.

Best wishes,
~Jenny


>      I'm not sure how you are operationalizing deliberation, but we did a
> study of
>  idea generation that seems to share your methodological approach.  Our
> approach
>  was to study different elements of group problem-solving (a particular
type
> of
>  deliberation) as delineated in McGrath's task circumplex. We specified a
set
> of
>  elements that the literature identified as essential to idea generation
and
> then
>  developed a coding scheme to analyze idea generation periods in naturally
>  occuring task groups (i.e., real groups in real organizations). The paper
> also
>  discusses the issue of establishing unitizing reliability. What we found
was
>  that idea generation is far from a simple process for groups: it serves
other
>  functions, and it is shaped (and shapes) the political dynamics of a
group.
> The
>  analysis is grounded in structuration theory.  Anyway, it might be
helpful:
>
>  Jackson, M.H. & Poole, M.S. (2003). Idea generation in naturally
> occurring
>  contexts: Complex appropriation of a simple group procedure. Human
> Communication
>  Research, 29(4), 560-591.
>
>  Best
>  mj
>
>
>  -----------------------------------------------------------------
>  Michele H. Jackson            |  jackson@...
>  Associate Professor            |  http://comm.colorado.edu/mjackson
>  Department of Communication      |  v:303-492-8139
>  University of Colorado            |  f:303-492-8411
>  Boulder, CO  80309-0270            |
>  -----------------------------------------------------------------
>  Graduate Study in Group Interaction at CU. see
>  http://comm.colorado.edu/whitec/groupinteraction
>  Associate Editor, Women's Studies in Communication. see
http://www.orwac.org/
>
>  > -----Original Message-----
>  > From: Jenny Stromer-Galley [mailto:jstromer@...]
>  > Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2005 8:54 PM
>  > To: deliberation_research@yahoogroups.com
>  > Subject: [delib] some feedback on coding deliberation
>  >
>  >
>  > Greetings,
>  >
>  > I've been sitting at my computer much of this evening working
>  > on the paper I'll present at the Stanford Online Deliberation
>  > Conference in mid-May (at which I hope to meet some of you).
>  >
>  > The paper I'm presenting will be the first public exposure of
>  > a content analysis project I've begun. The content analysis
>  > aims to measure key elements of deliberation as articulated
>  > through the theoretical and empirical literature.
>  >
>  > I've developed this coding scheme with the hope of using it
>  > across different research projects. Initially, I'm working
>  > with some data gathered by other researchers, and I hope
>  > eventually to conduct some experiments on my own comparing
>  > online and f2f deliberation groups, measuring both outcomes
>  > of the deliberation as well as whether the process of
>  > deliberation is different by medium.
>  >
>  > But, I'm not anywhere there yet. Right now, I'm just trying
>  > to see if the coding scheme on the face of it can
>  > differentiate between "good" deliberation and "bad"
>  > deliberation (good and bad being defined through the existing
>  > deliberation literature). I've never written a methods paper
>  > before, and I'm thinking that a methods paper this is.
>  >
>  > My current draft of this paper includes a justification for
>  > studying the actual deliberation (and not just the usual
>  > effects measures), identifies 8 "ingredients" in the
>  > literature that seem to be required for good deliberation, a
>  > description of the data I'm coding, and then . . . . . I'm stuck.
>  >
>  > My plan was to present what appear to be good samples and bad
>  > samples of deliberation just from a lay-person's perspective,
>  > and then to show how the coding differentiates between the
>  > two, demonstrating that the coding helps to identify "good"
>  > deliberation and "bad" deliberation across several
dimensions.
>  >
>  > I need guidance from others wiser than myself about whether a
>  > "demonstration"
>  > of the utility of the coding of this sort is sufficient for a
>  > methods paper.
>  >
>  > If you don't have feedback on this query but do plan to be at
>  > the Stanford conference, drop me a line nonetheless.
>  >
>  > Best wishes,
>  > ~Jenny S-G
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  > ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor
>  > --------------------~--> What would our lives be like without
>  > music, dance, and theater?
>  > Donate or volunteer in the arts today at Network for Good!
>  > http://us.click.yahoo.com/TzSHvD/SOnJAA/79vVAA/4IYolB/TM
>  > --------------------------------------------------------------
>  > ------~->
>  >
>  >
>  > Yahoo! Groups Links
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  >
>
>
>   Yahoo! Groups Links
>   To visit your group on the web, go to:
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/deliberation_research/
>   To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> deliberation_research-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>   Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.






Yahoo! Groups Links

Thanks for this suggestion. I have HCR on my shelf at work (sometimes those
mailed journals come in handy).

I'm operationalizing deliberation as having the following elements: reasoned
argument, interactivity, equality, agreement/disagreement, sourcing, and
personal attack. Those elements come out of theoretical literature as well as
prior coding projects on deliberation I'd encountered up to this point. I'm
also coding for the type of utterance each statement is according to speech
act theory. I haven't included idea generation as one of the elements,
although that suggests another dimension I hadn't yet considered. With the
forums I've been studying (which has been Yahoo! chat), idea generation
doesn't seem to be an element of the conversation; however, I can imagine in
other deliberation situations, that might be an important element.

Best wishes,
~Jenny


>      I'm not sure how you are operationalizing deliberation, but we did a
> study of
>  idea generation that seems to share your methodological approach.  Our
> approach
>  was to study different elements of group problem-solving (a particular type
> of
>  deliberation) as delineated in McGrath's task circumplex. We specified a set
> of
>  elements that the literature identified as essential to idea generation and
> then
>  developed a coding scheme to analyze idea generation periods in naturally
>  occuring task groups (i.e., real groups in real organizations). The paper
> also
>  discusses the issue of establishing unitizing reliability. What we found was
>  that idea generation is far from a simple process for groups: it serves other
>  functions, and it is shaped (and shapes) the political dynamics of a group.
> The
>  analysis is grounded in structuration theory.  Anyway, it might be helpful:
>
>  Jackson, M.H. & Poole, M.S. (2003). Idea generation in naturally
> occurring
>  contexts: Complex appropriation of a simple group procedure. Human
> Communication
>  Research, 29(4), 560-591.
>
>  Best
>  mj
>
>
>  -----------------------------------------------------------------
>  Michele H. Jackson            |  jackson@...
>  Associate Professor            |  http://comm.colorado.edu/mjackson
>  Department of Communication      |  v:303-492-8139
>  University of Colorado            |  f:303-492-8411
>  Boulder, CO  80309-0270            |
>  -----------------------------------------------------------------
>  Graduate Study in Group Interaction at CU. see
>  http://comm.colorado.edu/whitec/groupinteraction
>  Associate Editor, Women's Studies in Communication. see http://www.orwac.org/
>
>  > -----Original Message-----
>  > From: Jenny Stromer-Galley [mailto:jstromer@...]
>  > Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2005 8:54 PM
>  > To: deliberation_research@yahoogroups.com
>  > Subject: [delib] some feedback on coding deliberation
>  >
>  >
>  > Greetings,
>  >
>  > I've been sitting at my computer much of this evening working
>  > on the paper I'll present at the Stanford Online Deliberation
>  > Conference in mid-May (at which I hope to meet some of you).
>  >
>  > The paper I'm presenting will be the first public exposure of
>  > a content analysis project I've begun. The content analysis
>  > aims to measure key elements of deliberation as articulated
>  > through the theoretical and empirical literature.
>  >
>  > I've developed this coding scheme with the hope of using it
>  > across different research projects. Initially, I'm working
>  > with some data gathered by other researchers, and I hope
>  > eventually to conduct some experiments on my own comparing
>  > online and f2f deliberation groups, measuring both outcomes
>  > of the deliberation as well as whether the process of
>  > deliberation is different by medium.
>  >
>  > But, I'm not anywhere there yet. Right now, I'm just trying
>  > to see if the coding scheme on the face of it can
>  > differentiate between "good" deliberation and "bad"
>  > deliberation (good and bad being defined through the existing
>  > deliberation literature). I've never written a methods paper
>  > before, and I'm thinking that a methods paper this is.
>  >
>  > My current draft of this paper includes a justification for
>  > studying the actual deliberation (and not just the usual
>  > effects measures), identifies 8 "ingredients" in the
>  > literature that seem to be required for good deliberation, a
>  > description of the data I'm coding, and then . . . . . I'm stuck.
>  >
>  > My plan was to present what appear to be good samples and bad
>  > samples of deliberation just from a lay-person's perspective,
>  > and then to show how the coding differentiates between the
>  > two, demonstrating that the coding helps to identify "good"
>  > deliberation and "bad" deliberation across several dimensions.
>  >
>  > I need guidance from others wiser than myself about whether a
>  > "demonstration"
>  > of the utility of the coding of this sort is sufficient for a
>  > methods paper.
>  >
>  > If you don't have feedback on this query but do plan to be at
>  > the Stanford conference, drop me a line nonetheless.
>  >
>  > Best wishes,
>  > ~Jenny S-G
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  > ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor
>  > --------------------~--> What would our lives be like without
>  > music, dance, and theater?
>  > Donate or volunteer in the arts today at Network for Good!
>  > http://us.click.yahoo.com/TzSHvD/SOnJAA/79vVAA/4IYolB/TM
>  > --------------------------------------------------------------
>  > ------~->
>  >
>  >
>  > Yahoo! Groups Links
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  >
>
>
>   Yahoo! Groups Links
>   To visit your group on the web, go to:
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/deliberation_research/
>   To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> deliberation_research-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>   Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.

I'm not sure how you are operationalizing deliberation, but we did a study of
idea generation that seems to share your methodological approach.  Our approach
was to study different elements of group problem-solving (a particular type of
deliberation) as delineated in McGrath's task circumplex. We specified a set of
elements that the literature identified as essential to idea generation and then
developed a coding scheme to analyze idea generation periods in naturally
occuring task groups (i.e., real groups in real organizations). The paper also
discusses the issue of establishing unitizing reliability. What we found was
that idea generation is far from a simple process for groups: it serves other
functions, and it is shaped (and shapes) the political dynamics of a group.  The
analysis is grounded in structuration theory.  Anyway, it might be helpful:

Jackson, M.H. & Poole, M.S. (2003). Idea generation in naturally occurring
contexts: Complex appropriation of a simple group procedure. Human Communication
Research, 29(4), 560-591.

Best
mj


-----------------------------------------------------------------
Michele H. Jackson  |  jackson@...
Associate Professor  |  http://comm.colorado.edu/mjackson
Department of Communication |  v:303-492-8139
University of Colorado  |  f:303-492-8411
Boulder, CO  80309-0270  |
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Graduate Study in Group Interaction at CU. see
http://comm.colorado.edu/whitec/groupinteraction
Associate Editor, Women's Studies in Communication. see http://www.orwac.org/

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jenny Stromer-Galley [mailto:jstromer@...]
> Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2005 8:54 PM
> To: deliberation_research@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [delib] some feedback on coding deliberation
>
>
> Greetings,
>
> I've been sitting at my computer much of this evening working
> on the paper I'll present at the Stanford Online Deliberation
> Conference in mid-May (at which I hope to meet some of you).
>
> The paper I'm presenting will be the first public exposure of
> a content analysis project I've begun. The content analysis
> aims to measure key elements of deliberation as articulated
> through the theoretical and empirical literature.
>
> I've developed this coding scheme with the hope of using it
> across different research projects. Initially, I'm working
> with some data gathered by other researchers, and I hope
> eventually to conduct some experiments on my own comparing
> online and f2f deliberation groups, measuring both outcomes
> of the deliberation as well as whether the process of
> deliberation is different by medium.
>
> But, I'm not anywhere there yet. Right now, I'm just trying
> to see if the coding scheme on the face of it can
> differentiate between "good" deliberation and "bad"
> deliberation (good and bad being defined through the existing
> deliberation literature). I've never written a methods paper
> before, and I'm thinking that a methods paper this is.
>
> My current draft of this paper includes a justification for
> studying the actual deliberation (and not just the usual
> effects measures), identifies 8 "ingredients" in the
> literature that seem to be required for good deliberation, a
> description of the data I'm coding, and then . . . . . I'm stuck.
>
> My plan was to present what appear to be good samples and bad
> samples of deliberation just from a lay-person's perspective,
> and then to show how the coding differentiates between the
> two, demonstrating that the coding helps to identify "good"
> deliberation and "bad" deliberation across several dimensions.
>
> I need guidance from others wiser than myself about whether a
> "demonstration"
> of the utility of the coding of this sort is sufficient for a
> methods paper.
>
> If you don't have feedback on this query but do plan to be at
> the Stanford conference, drop me a line nonetheless.
>
> Best wishes,
> ~Jenny S-G
>
>
>
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Greetings,

I've been sitting at my computer much of this evening working on the paper
I'll present at the Stanford Online Deliberation Conference in mid-May (at
which I hope to meet some of you).

The paper I'm presenting will be the first public exposure of a content
analysis project I've begun. The content analysis aims to measure key elements
of deliberation as articulated through the theoretical and empirical
literature.

I've developed this coding scheme with the hope of using it across different
research projects. Initially, I'm working with some data gathered by other
researchers, and I hope eventually to conduct some experiments on my own
comparing online and f2f deliberation groups, measuring both outcomes of the
deliberation as well as whether the process of deliberation is different by
medium.

But, I'm not anywhere there yet. Right now, I'm just trying to see if the
coding scheme on the face of it can differentiate between "good" deliberation
and "bad" deliberation (good and bad being defined through the existing
deliberation literature). I've never written a methods paper before, and I'm
thinking that a methods paper this is.

My current draft of this paper includes a justification for studying the
actual deliberation (and not just the usual effects measures), identifies 8
"ingredients" in the literature that seem to be required for good
deliberation, a description of the data I'm coding, and then . . . . . I'm
stuck.

My plan was to present what appear to be good samples and bad samples of
deliberation just from a lay-person's perspective, and then to show how the
coding differentiates between the two, demonstrating that the coding helps to
identify "good" deliberation and "bad" deliberation across several dimensions.

I need guidance from others wiser than myself about whether a "demonstration"
of the utility of the coding of this sort is sufficient for a methods paper.

If you don't have feedback on this query but do plan to be at the Stanford
conference, drop me a line nonetheless.

Best wishes,
~Jenny S-G

Dear Deliberation Researchers,
I would welcome your comments and corrections on a survey instrument of
community political participation we are currently drafting (see
below).  The survey is part of a 3-year NSF supported investigation of
citizen-to-citizen deliberation at the local level and the modification of
tools, as needed, to support online that deliberation.  We also are
modifying or designing tools to link local public deliberation back to
local government decision making.
The survey instrument will be administered to a random sample of households
in the town of Blacksburg and surrounding Montgomery County later this
spring.  The purpose of the survey (first of two rounds) is to measure
current community and civic involvement, political participation, political
knowledge, political and collective efficacy, and Internet use related to
these behaviors (along with demographic data).
A draft of our survey instrument is available at (please send me any
suggestions, corrections, etc):
http://java.cs.vt.edu/public/projects/digitalgov/papers

In addition to the survey draft, we would welcome from members of this list
any comments, corrections or other suggestions about our project (projects,
papers, communities, tools we should know about, etc):
http://java.cs.vt.edu/public/projects/digitalgov

Best regards,
Andrea

Andrea Kavanaugh, Ph.D.
Senior Research Scientist
Associate Director
Center for Human Computer Interaction
Department of Computer Science
2160 H Torgersen Hall
Virginia Tech (0295)
Blacksburg, VA 24061-0295
tel: (540) 231-1806
fax:(540) 231-6075
http://www.hci.vt.edu

> 1. Please post some infos or a link to your research project / interests.

I'm interested in the role of facilitators in online deliberation. Here's an
abstract of my phd project which I plan to finish by early next year:
http://www.wz-berlin.de/~trenel#phd_abstract

In a short and unpublished paper, I have compared different research
projects in regard to which dimensions of deliberation have been
investigated (Equality, Rationality, Respect, Interactivity, ...):
http://www.wz-berlin.de/~trenel/tools/quod_2_4.pdf


> 2. If you like, also state in a few words what you expect from this list.

I hope this list will be a place for queries, mutual support and
announcements in the field of empirical research on deliberation. I'm
especially interested in methodological issues that come up when we apply
content analysis to transcripts of deliberation: data selection, coding, ...


Greetings, Matthias


PS: I found this conference last year very insightful "Empirical Approaches
to Deliberative Politics" by Jürg Steiner & André Bächtiger, Florence, May
21-22 2004. All papers can still be downloaded at
http://www.iue.it/SPS/People/SwissChairPdfFiles/SwissChairConferenceMay04.pd
f


---

Dipl. Psych. Matthias Trénel

trenel@...
http://www.wz-berlin.de/~trenel

Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin fuer Sozialforschung
Abteilung Zivilgesellschaft und transnationale Netzwerke
Social Science Research Center Berlin
Research Unit Civil Society and Transnational Networks
Reichpietschufer 50
10785 Berlin
Tel: 	  +49 30 25491 281
Mobile: +49 172 320 3210
Fax: 	  +49 30 25491 254

Greetings.

      I'm engaged in a project to develop an environment to enable public
involvement in transportation planning.  We have been working one and a
half years on a four year project funded by the National Science Foundation.

http://depts.washington.edu/pgist/

      We have grounding in the topic, but as always, there is never
enough knowledge about your research topic.  So we are developing and
integrating software (almost exclusively asynchronous) while examining
our philosophical and scholarly grounding and assembling information on
the current political processes in our region (the Pacific Northwest,
centered in Seattle).

      Deliberation is the focal point in public participation.  We will
examine our assumptions and the environment we develop in a simulation
involving 300 paid volunteers drawn from a sampling of citizens in the
Seattle Metropolitan area.  We have contact with several transportation
agencies that are contributing both data and opinion.  Our simulation
and the resulting analysis is characterized as an
analytical-deliberative process that will elicit and organize public
concerns and preferences in order to inform the political and
bureaucratic elements of government.

      In terms of what I hope to draw from the group, effective
elicitation of information from the public is a primary interest.  The
tension between demands on our part and available time and interest on
the citizens part, means we have a delicate task in maximizing both
collection of information and the perception of a pleasant and effective
participant experience.


Matthias Trenel wrote:
> Dear deliberation researchers,
>
> our list has grown and today we have 46 people on the list from countries
> such as Japan, Italy, US, Slovenia, Netherlands, Switzerland, New Zealand
> and Germany (from what you can tell from the email addresses). Find below a
> list of those subscribed.
>
> Now, for a start I would like to suggest that you introduce yourself
> briefly:
>
> 1. Please post some infos or a link to your research project / interests.
>
> 2. If you like, also state in a few words what you expect from this list.
>
>
> Thank you!
>
> Matthias
>
... snip ...
--
   Charlie Hendricksen, PhD
   Research Collaboration Architect

"Information technology structures human relationships."
"Meaning arises from parsimonious redescription."

Dissertation link: http://depts.washington.edu/bkn/public/pubs/diss.html
DocReview link: http://purl.oclc.org/DocReview/get

Dear deliberation researchers,

our list has grown and today we have 46 people on the list from countries
such as Japan, Italy, US, Slovenia, Netherlands, Switzerland, New Zealand
and Germany (from what you can tell from the email addresses). Find below a
list of those subscribed.

Now, for a start I would like to suggest that you introduce yourself
briefly:

1. Please post some infos or a link to your research project / interests.

2. If you like, also state in a few words what you expect from this list.


Thank you!

Matthias


---

List members as of the 2nd of March 2005

(it's only a list of names that were provided, because I wasn't sure whether
everybody wants his/her email disclosed, but you can see them anyway when
you log into yahoogroups.com)

'alexandrasamuel'
'andrej pinter'
'alj929k'
'compansh'
'carlohagemann2000'
'chaug123'
'clint_on_earth'
'donholeman'
'meurer1973'
'DANIELLE WIESE
'elgo6948'
'Elisabeth Ehrensperger'
'Benjamin  Wiedenmann'
'gustavkus'
'rojas_hernando'
'Michele Jackson'
'jenssteffek'
'jogoldman'
'Jurg Steiner'
'Jenny Stromer-Galley'
'kavan12951'
'kyunsookm'
'robvankranenburg'
'larstorres'
'lucam1968'
'arthur_lupia'
'magfish2'
'Maren_Luebcke'
'global2brain'
'hamlettp'
'Philippe Schmitter'
'Peter Levine'
'ricarda_hh'
'rowinyoung'
'dietram'
'Scott Wright'
'Steven Clift'
'szavo_ii'
'demos_steffen'
'Todd Graham'
'Todd Davies'
'Tiago Fernandes'
'leslietka'
'matthiastrenel'
'Charlie Hendricksen'
'Willirandolph'
'wume20'


---

Dipl. Psych. Matthias Trénel

trenel@...
http://www.wz-berlin.de/~trenel

Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin fuer Sozialforschung
Abteilung Zivilgesellschaft und transnationale Netzwerke
Social Science Research Center Berlin
Research Unit Civil Society and Transnational Networks
Reichpietschufer 50
10785 Berlin
Tel: 	  +49 30 25491 281
Mobile: +49 172 320 3210
Fax: 	  +49 30 25491 254

Steven,

(this reply is only to you and the (by now) 17 members of the new list,
cause I'm not sure whether all the others want to get more mails beyond the
announcement of the new list)

> Matthias,
>
> In terms of online analysis - both automated and manual, what format
> would be the most useful for researchers?
>
> E-Democracy.Org might be investing in a second set of GroupServer
> features (think database-driven e-list with web forum) and I'd like
> to make what we do researcher friendly.
>
> See: http://groupserver.org
> Example: http://forums.e-democracy.org/factory  - see "liftoff"
>
> Cheers,
> Steven Clift
>
> P.S. The tool is Zope/Python-based ... any suggestions on possible
> entrance/exit/yearly online survey would be of interest.

This would make life easier for researchers as far as I can tell:
* provide the database of GroupServer in txt.-format, since that again can
be imported into various programs for analysis both quantitative and
qualitative
* collect as many information as possible in the database, also on "passive"
behavior, that is clicking/reading (number of hits for each message, who
clicked on it, ...)
* include a basic set of questions in a survey that researchers in
deliberation processes are always interested in: e.g. questions on the
social-economic status and ethnic background of the participants, questions
on whether participants learned something (i.e. whether views have changed),
questions on perceived procedural fairness, overall satisfaction with
dialogue (like here
http://dialogues.listeningtothecity.org/WebX?writeDocument@44.FRlNayjEfCh.0@
.ee6b280!doc=11)
* vary interesting dimensions in a systematic way (facilitated vs.
unfacilitated groups; different topics; different framing), those where
you're not sure yourself which way to do it, where you're interested in
someone researching it; this enables comparative studies

Any more ideas?

Regards, Matthias

---

Dipl. Psych. Matthias Trenel

trenel@...
http://www.wz-berlin.de/~trenel

Social Science Research Center Berlin
Research Unit Civil Society and Transnational Networks
Reichpietschufer 50
10785 Berlin
Tel: 	  +49 30 25491 281
Mobile: +49 172 320 3210
Fax: 	  +49 30 25491 254

> ^               ^               ^                ^
> Steven L. Clift    -   -  -  W: http://publicus.net
> Minneapolis    -   -   -  -   E: clift@...
> Minnesota  -   -   -   -   -   - T: +1.612.822.8667
> USA    -   -   -   -   -       MSN/Y!/AIM: netclift
>
> UK Office Hours - 1pm - 11pm  -   -  T:  0870.340.1266
> Join my Democracies Online Newswire: http://dowire.org
>
>
>

*** Call for Participation ***

                 2nd Conference on Online Deliberation:
                     Design, Research, and Practice
                                DIAC 2005

                  Website: www.online-deliberation.net

                             May 20-22, 2005
                   Stanford University, Stanford, CA

Abstract deadline: March 15, 2005

The Second Conference on Online Deliberation: Design, Research, and Practice /
DIAC 2005, will be held at Stanford University from Friday through Sunday, May
20-22, 2005. This conference is a follow-up to "Developing and Using Online
Tools for Deliberative Democracy", a two-day seminar which was held at
Carnegie Mellon University in June, 2003. At the end of the CMU conference,
participants agreed to have a follow-up meeting at Stanford.  We would like to
solidify the conference as a regular event, and to discuss the possibility of
establishing a new society for online deliberation that will bring together
researchers, designers, and
practitioners whose work bears on this area.  This conference is also the
latest in a series of conferences on Directions and Implications of Advanced
Computing (DIAC), presented in association with the Public Sphere Project (a
CPSR Initiative).

We welcome proposals for presentations and workshops from both within and
outside academia. An edited volume of abstracts and selected full papers from
the conference is planned for publication afterward through CSLI Publications,
a division of the University of Chicago Press. Topics of interest include:

* Online deliberation and groupware design
* Computer-supported cooperative work
* Uses and implications of the Internet for democratic participation *
E-consultation and E-rulemaking
* Online facilitation and community-building
* Research on virtual communities
* Uses of groupware in organizations
* Online learning communities
* Social decision procedures for online environments
* Analyzing online dialogue
* Email and listservs
* Chatrooms and instant messaging
* Message boards and blogs
* Collaborative editing and wikis
* Online organizing and petitions
* Teleconferencing
* Mobile communication and "smart mobs"
* Smart rooms and iRooms
* Immersive virtual environments
* Multilingual online communities and machine translation
* Secure communication and voting
* Information systems support for deliberation
* Lessons from "offline" deliberation and democracy
* Distributed design
* IP, ownership and "copyleft"
* Digital divides, usability, and accessibility
* Free speech and censorship online
* Communication across platforms

All of the above topics bear on whether Internet tools for deliberation can
truly deepen democracy -- in groups, communities, and societies --and, if so,
how. But work on these topics is spread over many and diverse disciplines:
computer science, the social sciences, education, law, public policy,
philosophy, social work, and information science, just to name a few. It
involves scholars, designers, and practitioners from all over the world. This
conference, like the one at CMU in 2003, is an attempt to bring these
perspectives together so that we can all widen our horizons.

The focus of the conference is not the Internet, society, and politics
generally, but rather work that is especially related to online
deliberation tools and their use. "Deliberation" denotes "thoughtful, careful,
or lengthy consideration" by individuals, and "formal discussion and debate"
in groups (Collins English Dictionary, 1979). We are therefore primarily
interested in online communication that is reasoned, purposeful, and
interactive, but the power and predominance of other influences on political
decisions (e.g. mass media, appeals to emotion and authority, and snap
judgements) obviously make them relevant to the prospects for deliberative
e-democracy. Topics such as technology policy and social networks are of
interest, but proposals around such topics for this conference should relate
them to online deliberation.

Proposals should be submitted under one of the following categories:

PAPER PRESENTATION
A proposal to present a paper may include an abstract of up to 300 words.
Accepted authors will have until May 1 to upload a draft of their full paper
so that conference attendees and an assigned discussant can read it before the
conference.  Paper presenters will have between 15 and 25 minutes to present
their paper, depending on the time available in the final schedule.  A limited
number of papers will be selected for full-text print publication in a book
that will be issued after the conference. Authors who are invited to publish
their paper in the edited volume will have until July 1 to produce
camera-ready copy.  Papers that are not included in the book willl have their
abstracts published instead.

DEMO OR TALK
A proposal to give a demonstration or talk may include an abstract of up to
300 words, which should describe the presentation that is being proposed.
Accepted presenters will be given 15-25 minutes to present their work,
depending on the time available in the final schedule. Presenters may, at
their option, upload full papers on the conference web site prior to the
conference, but a discussant will not be assigned if the submission is made in
a category other than "paper presentation".
Abstracts will be published in the edited volume that will be issued after the
conference.

PANEL OR SHORT WORKSHOP A proposal for a panel or short workshop may include
an abstract of up to 500 words.  The abstract should include the names of
proposed presenters or hosts, as well as a description of the proposed
workshop/panel.  Workshops/panels are expected to last about 75 minutes.
Presenters/participants may, at their option, upload full papers on the
conference web site prior to the conference.  Abstract-length (500 word)
summaries of each workshop/panel will be published in the edited volume that
will be issued after the conference, and will be due from the workshop/panel
organizers by June 1.  The conference online discusssion forum (linked from
the conference homepage) is available as a venue for networking on panel and
workshop proposals.

EXTENDED WORKSHOP A proposal for an extended workshop may include an abstract
of up to 700 words.  The abstract should include the names of proposed
presenters or hosts, as well as a description of the proposed workshop.
Workshops are expected to last either for a hafl day or a full day.  If a
proposal is not accepted as an extended workshop, the proposed
presenters/hosts may be offered the opportunity to do a short workshop
instead.  Participants may, at their option, upload full papers to the
conference web site prior to the conference. Abstract-length (700 word)
summaries of each workshop will be published in the edited volume that will be
issued after the conference, and will be due from the workshop organizers by
June 1.  The conference online discussion forum (linked from the conference
homepage) is available as a venue for networking on workshop proposals.

The conference will be held at Stanford University in rooms equipped with
overhead and laptop projection equipment, screens, and chalkboards. Presenters
will need to take responsibility for any computer equipment, slides, or other
audio-visual aids needed for their presentations.

If space is available, we will try to facilitate impromptu workshops and group
discussions that are organized informally during the conference. Organizers of
these discussions will also be invited to submit 300-word summaries at the
conclusion of the conference for publication in the edited volume.

Co-sponsored by the Symbolic Systems Program, the Center for Deliberative
Democracy, the Center for the Study of Language and Information, and the
Center for Internet and Society at Stanford University, in association with
the Public Sphere Project (a CPSR Initiative)

For more information, consult the conference website:
http://www.online-deliberation.net/conf2005.






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Hello,

please find an abstract of my phd project at
http://www.wz-berlin.de/~trenel#phd_abstract

Below, I pasted the message that I sent to do-research that sparked the idea
to establish a list especially on research in deliberation - an excellent
suggestion by Jennifer Stromer-Galley.

Hope we will have some fruitful exchange, best regards,

Matthias

---

Stuart,

> Our group is currently collecting and coding (in Atlas.ti) public
> comment datasets from rulemakings with large public comment
> outpourings. The goal is to test certain hypotheses about the
> nature of online deliberation in rulemaking and to develop new
> human language technologies for categorizing and understanding
> large amounts of unstructured text data.

This is very interesting to me as I'm currently involved in a similar task:
I'm coding messages of the Listening-to-the-City Online Dialogue in order to
find out whether facilitated groups show a higher degree of deliberativeness
(i.e. degree of argumentation, interactivity, respect, ...) than
unfacilitated/self-organized groups
(http://www.wz-berlin.de/~trenel#phd_abstract).

In fact, it seems as if there are a lot of researchers out there analyzing
online deliberation to investigate various questions - which of course is
not surprising given the availability of these great data sets. Here are
some I happened to be in touch with in the last couple of months:
- Todd Graham (Amsterdam)
- Francesca Polletta (New York)
- John Kelly (New York)
- Davy Janssen (Antwerp)
- Raphael Kies (Florence)
- Roman Winkler (Vienna)

I've referred to most of these people in a paper that lays out the coding
scheme I use (http://www.wz-berlin.de/~trenel/tools/quod_2_4.pdf). I'm sure,
there are more and maybe people on this list (do-research) want to add their
names?

Apart from dealing with similar theoretical or practical questions, I assume
that we all face similar methodological challenges, for example:
- data retrieval: importing data from the web into the coding software like
atalas.ti (by the way, I use MAXqda)
- selection: which cases to select? and if the number of messages is huge:
how to select a representative sample of messages for analysis?
- codes: which codes to choose for assessing deliberation?
- reliability: how to asses inter-rater reliability?
- ...

Well, I hope that in the near future an opportunity comes up, so that at
least some of us can meet and ponder about these issues - if anybody has an
idea for collaboration, please send it around!

Best regards,

Matthias


PS: I really appreciate how well research and current developments in regard
to "e-rulemaking" is documentend in the US!

---

Dipl. Psych. Matthias Trénel

trenel@...
http://www.wz-berlin.de/~trenel

Social Science Research Center Berlin
Research Unit Civil Society and Transnational Networks
Reichpietschufer 50
10785 Berlin
Tel: 	  +49 30 25491 281
Mobile: +49 172 320 3210
Fax: 	  +49 30 25491 254





> _____________________________________________
>
> Dr. Stuart W. Shulman
> Assistant Professor
> Information Sciences and Public Administration
> Senior Research Associate
> University Center for Social and Urban Research
> University of Pittsburgh
> 121 University Place, Suite 600
> Pittsburgh, PA 15260
> 412.624.3776 (v) 412.624.4810 (f)
> http://shulman.ucsur.pitt.edu/
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>
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