Can online deliberation transform citizens

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Can online deliberation transform citizens?

• Preliminary findings from an internet field
  experiment in the UK

Informing Public Policy Friday 24th April 2009
Hisako Nomura, Research Associate Institute for
Political and Economic Governance University of
Manchester
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The project

• One element of the Rediscovering the Civic
  research programme
• Funded by ESRC/CLG/NWIN
• Joint project of University of Manchester
  (Institute for Political and Economic Governance)
  and University of Southampton (Centre for
  Citizenship and Democracy
• Variety of experiments (RCTs, design experiments)
  on aspects of civil engagement (voting,
  recycling, lobbying, pledging etc)
• http//www.civicbehaviour.org.uk/research/

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Background on online deliberation

• Attempts to encourage deliberation on public
  policy are often local and small scale (e.g.
  citizens juries)
• Information and communication technology (ICT)
  potentially offers new possibilities for public
  engagement
• Opening a new public sphere of the sort
  envisioned by Habermas (1962, 1989)
• For the public, a new way to engage with others
  to discuss
• Online discussion
• For the public sector, a new way to extend their
  reach
• Online questionnaires
• Discussion forums
• Webchats, texting, e-mailing responses,
  ePetitions, Interactive voting, opinion meters
  etc.

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Online deliberation

• The internet allows for an opportunity to
  scale-up - to involve large numbers without the
  costs of physically bringing people together
• It is often claimed to promote honesty,
  directness in political exchanges and contact
  with people from different backgrounds which is
  appropriate for deliberation exercise (See
  Dahlberg 2001, Witschge 2004)
• On the other hand, anonymous encounters online
  can exert normative group influence (Postmes,
  Spears, Lea, 1998)
• In that case, it runs the risk that the online
  deliberation experience may be diluted or even
  counterproductive

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Information only vs Deliberation

• There is an ongoing debate in the literature on
  deliberative democracy as to whether it is
  information alone or information plus
  deliberation that has an effect on judgements
• Goodin (2003) argues that internal reflection (or
  reflective deliberation) is enough interaction
  between citizen is not the important factor
• Others from public opinion theory argue that
  exposure to disagreement (i.e. interaction with
  others) does indeed contribute to more
  deliberative opinion formation (Price, Cappella
  and Nir, 2002)

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RCT on deliberation

• Social scientist have evaluated deliberative
  forums to see if participants change their views,
  knowledge and opinions (Drysek 2002, Fishkin
  1997, Delli Carpini et al 2004, Price, Nir and
  Cappela 2006)
• Few randomised control trials testing for the
  effect of deliberation (exceptions are Farrar et
  al 2003, Iyengar 2005)
• Moreover, existing studies have been confined to
  small numbers mini publics of participants who
  are able to participate in a face-to-face
  deliberation.
• No experiments testing the deliberative potential
  of online discussion forums

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Research Questions

• To what extent does online engagement amongst
  large numbers lead to shifts in policy
  preferences and knowledge?
• To what extent can online engagement amongst
  large numbers be termed deliberative?
• What is the value of citizens interaction
  compared to the provision of information alone?

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The RCT design

• 6,000 participants from Ipsos-MORI survey panel
  using random quota sampling.
• Randomly allocated to 4 treatment and 2 control
  groups
• 2 x deliberation groups
• Goup 1 youth anti-social behaviour (ASB)
  followed by community cohesion (CC)
• Group2 community cohesion (CC) followed by youth
  anti-social behaviour (ASB)
• Access to discussion boards and background
  information
• 2x information-only groups (video clips and
  documents)
• 2 x control groups
• All participants completed three surveys
• T1 (before experiment), T2 (after first issue),
  T3 (after second issue)

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CONSORT Flow Diagram
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Hypotheses

• H1 An internet deliberative forum has an impact
  on participants views, knowledge and opinions.
• H2 Information alone has an impact on opinion
  change
• H3 The order of the topic can make an impact on
  opinion change.
• H4 The impact of deliberation is greater than
  information alone
• H5 Deliberation results in more opinion shift in
  youth anti-social behaviour than in community
  cohesion

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The initial findings

• Just over 50 of the treatment groups took part
  in the online activities
• Completion of survey was much higher
• 77.5 who had anti-social behaviour topic
  completed T2 survey (73.2 of them completed
  community cohesion questionnaire in T3)
• 76.5 who had community cohesion topic completed
  T2 survey
• (71 of them completed anti-social behaviour
  questionnaire in T3)
• No obvious large-scale shifts in opinions.
• Many of the threads read like speak your brains
  rather than exchange of opinions and considered
  reflection.
• There was lack of responsiveness

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Further analysis

• Application of propensity score matching of those
  who actually took part in online deliberation in
  the treated group with similar members of the
  control group for further analysis
• Application of adapted Discourse Quality Index
  for qualitative analysis