How do we design deliberation to be a technology that enables the participation of the widest sectors of society ? Here’s a roundup of this challenge.

The Journal of Deliberative Democracy published a symposium entitled Online deliberation and #CivicTech. The symposium is inspired by the phenomenon of Civic Technology, a global movement involving governments, the information technology industry, international and local NGOs, civil society, and academics. We invited five groups of scholar-practitioners who both think and practice deliberation to envision it as civic technology.

Here’s the roundup of the special issue’s highlights.

Can we imagine deliberation as a type of civic technology?

The answer is yes. As digital tools such as online forums and video chats became commonplace, deliberation increasingly occurs on the internet. In fact, the pandemic has made in-person deliberation almost impossible. The definition of civic technology emphasizes the usage of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for and by the citizens. Deliberation, especially the varieties that involve ICTs, is almost the archetype of civic technology.

Seeing deliberation as civic technology allows three important imaginaries: scale, context, and process. As the term ‘minipublics’ suggests, the citizen panels assembled are often mini, or not of a big scale. While small numbers bring legitimacy concerns (e.g., how can the 500+ citizens represent the entire population?), a more pressing problem is the scale of diversity. Statistical representation through random sampling is far from perfect. More seriously, representation of minority but critical voices could be lost even in a fairly good sample. Can we imagine an online platform that is accessible to everyone in the population? How about a platform designed to make sure minority voices are not buried in majority views? John Gastil’s visionary piece on the creation of an integrated online system linking citizens and policymakers presumes this scale, without which institutional legitimacy is hard to achieve.

Can we imagine an online platform that is accessible to everyone in the population? How about a platform designed to make sure minority voices are not buried in majority views?

How can we design deliberation to serve the citizens?

The context around deliberation practices is no longer limited to democracies. All countries, democratic or non-democratic, may benefit from engaging citizens in public decision making. The empirical studies included in this symposium were from countries outside of the classic liberal democracies (i.e., Brazil, Poland, Singapore). The deliberation studies can learn much from the Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) community about designing in contexts. The asset-based approach to CHI design suggests that before we build anything new, let us see what we already have. Existing platforms are part of what we already have. Patricia Rossini and Rousiley C. M. Maia tell us that Facebook, although being criticized heavily, was more likely to contain disagreement in comments than do news websites. Disagreements found on online platforms are positively associated with both justification and incivility, showing the irony of the reality. Current political institutions are part of what we already have, too. Anna Przybylska took the brave move to negotiate with Polish local governments to adopt a public consultation software inDialogue, both a platform and an institutional re-design to navigate the ambiguities of relevant laws, administrative routines, and political values.

CHI designers often focus on specific topic domains to provide solutions to concrete problems. Probably contrary to the systemic approach to deliberation, the pragmatism of designers turns their focus to contextualizing design case by case. Neighborhood issues (e.g., where to put the community garden) will need different designs compared to moral debates (e.g., how to regulate artificial intelligence). Deliberation researchers can learn from CHI designers how to flexibly choose from whole-sale vs. piece-meal designs according to the contexts.

Before we build anything new, let us see what we already have.

What is deliberation’s offering to civic technology design?

The biggest design challenge in deliberation is how to achieve procedural justice, i.e., a fair process. To the CHI community, including users into the design is a practical matter. Deliberation research says that participatory design is still not enough. Leanne Chang and Weiyu Zhang unpack procedural justice and examine tangible measures. A deliberation design has to design both technologies and processes, so that conditions about what and how to deliberate are created. Deliberation research has repeatedly shown factors surrounding technology, such as people, institution, values and cultures, are more important than technology itself. Sometimes simple technologies such as an interface nudge, designed by Tian Yang and his colleagues, can influence citizens’ inner psychology.

If participatory design is not enough, what else do we need? Deliberation needs to be both a means and an end to designing civic technologies. As a means, civic technologists can learn about how citizens understand a piece of technology through deliberation; as an end, only technological design that has involved citizens in a deliberative process can have their social legitimacy. Deliberation should be central in not only discussing but also designing critical technologies such as gene editing and artificial intelligence.

Indeed, more research needs to be done in this field, and we hope that the symposium on online deliberation and #CivicTech makes a meaningful contribution in this topical conversation.

About the Author

Weiyu Zhang is Associate Professor at the Department of Communication and New Media, National University of Singapore. Together with Todd Davies and Anna Przybylska, she co-edited the Journal of Deliberative Democracy’s symposium on Online deliberation and #CivicTech (Volume 17, Issue 1). She tweets at @WeiyuZ.