Detecting and Facilitating Deliberation at the Local Level

Andrea Kavanaugh
Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech

Philip Isenhour
Computer Science Department, Virginia Tech

Godara Jaideep
Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech

Matthew Cooper

William Randolph
Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech

Anshul Midha
Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech

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     Last modified: May 2, 2005

Abstract
There is no question that interested citizens around the United States are using information technology to help raise awareness and involvement of fellow citizens in local community issues. But most of this online activity is in broadcast mode (one to many) about facts and figures: the time of a public meeting, the email address of a government official, or the address of a polling station. To what extent is information technology being used for extended citizen discussion, negotiation, and consensus building? What kinds of new or modified tools would allow interested citizens to engage in more deliberative processes online?
Some current efforts to facilitate deliberation involve the introduction of new software programs open to the general public that then depend on recruiting and sustaining new users. We have been using a participatory evaluation and design approach instead in which we have been working closely with different types of local community groups where deliberation is occurring already naturally, such as, local voluntary associations and neighborhood groups. We are helping these groups identify ways that the information technology can migrate some of their offline deliberation online. We have specifically been investigating adaptations to tools related to wikis and web logs (including RSS) for citizen deliberation and ‘trackback’ and referrer logs to link deliberation back to local government decision making.
Our paper summarizes preliminary results from a three-year study (2004-07) funded by the Digital Government program of the National Science Foundation. Using the university town of Blacksburg, Virginia and surrounding rural Montgomery County as a comprehensive case study, we summarize findings from citizen and government interview data, the design and implementation of a random sample household survey (first of two rounds) measuring local political participation and deliberation, and requirements analysis and design prototypes for new and modified tools to support deliberation online.