What’s out there: online policy portals and tools

During the NCDD conference, I had a number of suggestions about websites and online deliberation tools to look at.

Let’s start off with a suggested link by Tim Bonnemann: campaigns.wikia.com, which was directly created by wikipedia’s founder, Jimmy Wales. See his open letter to the political blogosphere, which contains good sentiments as well as an invitation to email him with ideas on how to “start the era of net-driven participatory politics.” By the way, the September issue of the Atlantic Monthly has a good article on Jimmy and the wikipedia phenomenon.

Lars Hasselblad Torres led me to another attempt to create a user-created policy portal at moreperfect.org. Co-founders Tim Killian and Chad Maglaque, who happen to be in Seattle with me, critique the wikipedia-type of approach to framing political policy issues (i.e., neutral point of view), but still use wiki software for their site. I definitely need to talk with these guys about their goals and plans.

Chris Heuer, and later, Brian Sullivan led me to an online civic engagement tool at civicevolution.org. The aim is to develop a non-profit organization that hosts the tool and collect case studies, best practices, and other resources to allow any group to constructively bring citizens together on an issue - a broad approach to sparking civic engagement.

Jack Paulus created truthmapping.com in his spare time as an idea-centered online tool for discussion of all sorts of topics, politics and otherwise. I really like the whole depersonalization of arguments, and the fact that Jack’s name can’t be found on the website.

Aside: perhaps that’s another reason why I’ve only encountered other guys who are excited about creating online policy tools and portals – the masculinity of depersonalized arguments as opposed to the femininity of face-to-face deliberation processes.

All of these efforts are just getting off the ground and seeming to be short of the critical mass each of them needs to be really useful. As I said in yesterday’s post, there seems to be something missing from each of these efforts (relative to my personal goals – not to the goals of each creator) in terms of usability and interaction. At least they’ve done something tangible and out in the world, whereas I'm stuck (for now) thinking about it. My question is whether a separate effort is worthwhile or whether an existing effort will turn out to be good enough (with or without my input).

First impressions: after the conference

I’m at the airport gate again, trying to still the voices inside my head – voices that I had heard over the past three days at the National Conference on Dialogue and Deliberation. David Messerschmidt, one of my advisors, is taking the same flight back, and we have talked a little about what we got out of the experience. Here’s my first take on the advice and ideas that I was exposed to:

• Learn and start by just doing it, starting with a content management system and by connecting online via commenting on similar blogs. Feasibility analyses are only good up to a point.
• Incorporate storytelling and non-written communication when talking about policy issues (i.e., don’t be such a wonk, and make it more accessible at the same time).
• Possibly use existing online deliberation tools in order to add depth to the site (i.e., don’t just present the views, but allow and encourage constructive engagement).
• There may be value to such a broad trans-partisan resource, because almost all existing issues guides (if used at all in a deliberation process) are static and necessarily issue-specific.
• The cornerstone of the website must be the trust of users, based upon the integrity of authors to be genuinely trans-partisan.
• There are efforts at online policy-issue tools or other deliberation tools that could be adapted to policy use, but still no prominent website out there that is trying the same approach:
• web2.0, user-generated-content technologies
• broad range of topics
• easy to access and compare viewpoints
• goal of being engaging and entertaining
• flexibility to add local-level or situationally-specific content

I’m sure more will come to me over the coming weeks, as I take down more notes from the conference and as I’m talking with more people and writing the short research paper.

Interaction: and the first question is...

What initial resources do you use to frame the issue(s) to be discussed in your dialogue/deliberation process? Online or in print?

Reading the guide: and the point is?

I finally took a look at the NCDD guidebook to find out (in detail) what I was getting myself into, now that I’m at the airport. This pause at the gate gives me a chance to think of the questions that I should ask at the conference. The focus of the proposed website and the conference are complementary in my mind.

From the point of view of a policy website, deliberation doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Policy information needs to be obtained and absorbed in order for deliberation to start, and one of the outcomes of deliberation is a better synthesis of information that could/should be shared with others.

From the point of view of a dialogue / deliberation process, you need a reason for the multi-partisan policy information to exist.

Therefore, the central, broad question of the conference (from my POV) is:

• What online deliberation tools exist, and how do/should they interact with repositories of policy information?

Other, more specific questions for fellow attendees:

• What resources do you use to lead deliberation? Online or in print? When discussion is caught up over “the facts,” how is that resolved?
• Do you know of a central resource that ties all types of policy viewpoints together in a non-partisan way? Do you think one would be useful? How would it be used?
• Do you know of others attempting to create a website like this? Do you know of people or organizations that might be interested in participating or partnering with an effort?
• What characteristics would you like to have in a useful policy info website? comprehensive, entertaining, interactive, etc.
• How could deliberation be used to “build up” and improve a policy resource (creating a cycle of improvement for both information and the deliberation process)? How are the results of deliberation used now?
• Who are the people you target to participate in deliberation? (How) are you trying to attract those not normally drawn to the idea?
  

TMI: heavy lit review

Onto a book co-edited by Lance Bennett, who I also asked to be my faculty advisor this summer. He is, among many other things, the director of the Center for Communication and Civic Engagement at the University of Washington.

4) Bennett, Lance, and Entman, Robert, editors. "Mediated Politics: Communication in the Future of Democracy." 2001.
How do you interest people in political information? In William Gamson's chapter "Promoting Political Engagement," the three components of the collective action frame are:

• injustice
• identity
• agency

Taking action is not the same thing as learning about issues, but the motivation to do something (whether it is writing a letter to your representative or going to a website) could be similar. In the case of this website idea, I don't see how injustice or agency (believing it's possible to change policies) would fit in. Identity might have a role, though, because the website could allow you to explore your own positions/ideas and develop a fuller political identity. "Oh, I believe this because of these reasons [that I couldn't articulate before coming here]." Are there other, stronger reasons why someone would want to visit the site? Infotainment? Research resource for journalists and students? Partnerships with other, more established organizations such as think tanks (and serving as a convenience portal to more in-depth information or deliberative dialogues)? Settling bar bets? Others?

Shaping the idea: what this thing doesn't look like

Today, I look at an early book on online politics:

3) Davis, Richard. "The Web of Politics: The Internet's Impact on the American Political System." 1999.
The book's introduction by Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute starts out with a doozie:

"Passive individuals who today consume news inadvertently or intermittently are unlikely to change into policy wonks no matter how convenient the Net makes it to access information or play a direct role as policy actor [italics added]."

True enough. However, I don't think that the goal of the website should be to change people into policy wonks. People should be able to access multi-partisan viewpoints quickly, though, and I don't know of a way to do that now. Wikipedia? Google? Try to look up the key issues in the abortion debate, and see how long it takes you to get the gist. Too much information, too little structure (or at least not a conducive structure for comparing and evaluating). The goal of this website is to lower the barrier for quick reference and understanding, and also serve as a portal into deliberation. Secondary goals include self-education among those creating content.

Here's another quote from the introduction: "Deliberation and cyberdemocracy are not easily compatible." I agree with this, but I also want to note that this website will not attempt to expand political powers to the citizen. I'm not a huge fan of the referendum/initiative process as it is being used today anyway, and I sure wouldn't want it to expand (not that I think people are seriously suggesting implementing e-democracy.

Some of the book's topics are dated, but Davis' central thesis is worth looking at:

"The Internet is destined to become dominated by the same actors in American politics who currently utilize other mediums."

Despite all the hoopla about bloggers today, that thesis remains largely true. News organizations and various political interests (govmt, candidates, think tanks) put out the vast majority of information out there. I think that there is also truth in Friedman's idea of superempowered individuals / organizations in his recent books The Lexus and the Olive Tree and The World is Flat. Internet 2.0 applications that emphasis social networking and dynamic content are growing rapidly, and there's no reason why there couldn't be a version of Slashdot or Flickr or MySpace that focuses on political issues. One of the main questions that I need to look at is who else is trying (or has tried) to do this already.

Davis conveniently breaks down the ideas for Internet political participation into three categories:

1. citizen information
2. interaction between citizens and government
3. policy making

I reiterate: this website will not deal with options 2 and 3. I don't anticipate radical changes in how citizens behave or in the U.S. political structure. I think Davis is really talking to all those that really believed in a revolution in 1999, when the hype bubble was nearing its peak.

Finally, I take from Davis' book some must-haves for the website: trustworthiness, flame control, and low tech literacy threshold for participation.

To the Other Most Liberal City: there's no debate

I confirmed today that I'm headed for the 2006 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation in that great liberal bastion, San Francisco. When Prof. Mark Long, my faculty advisor for this summer research, heard that I was thinking of going, his words of advice were to take what I hear there with a grain of salt (more like with a salzbergwerk).

I'm actually pretty excited about going there. The National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD) and the Deliberative Democracy Consortium (DCC) sound like the type of organizations that have done some thinking on the potential of online deliberation. The conference itself has a full day workshop devoted to online deliberation tools that I will unfortunately miss, and the DCC has a working group devoted to online deliberation that is starting a blog with a broader, but similar focus to this blog.

I should also mention that John Gastil, a UW Communications professor, is involved with both of these groups, and will be a featured panelist at the conference. Coincidentally, John and I played tennis a few years back without knowing that we would be interested in similar topics, and I recently contacted him as I was looking for a faculty advisor. Small world.

Steve Smith strikes again: running in circles

After a jaunt over to the campus libraries and hanging out in the JA and JK stacks, I am now armed with five books that have Something to Say.

2) Macedo, S., et al. "Democracy at Risk: How Political Choices Undermine Citizen Participation and What We Can Do About It" Brookings Institution Press, 2005.
The American Political Science Association (APSA) formed a task group that created this text. Here are the high points, vis-a-vis creation of a policy website:

• Steve Smith, my former professor and the first faculty member I talked to about this idea, contributed to this book (okay, probably not a high point, but interesting for me to see who is active in these fields)
• "Civic engagement is any activity, individual or collective, devoted to influencing the collective life of the polity." (e.g, voting, campaigning, protesting, lobbying, volunteering, educating)
• Today "there is a crisis of [quantity/quality/equality of] civic engagement"
• "Political activity is increasingly uninformed, fragmented, and polarized"
• Maximizing civic engagement is not necessarily good, but given the current state, the U.S. could use more/better/more equal participation
• Equality of political knowledge: Carpini and Keete showed that there are gaps between groups: men+ women-, white+ black-, higher income+ lower income-, older+ younger-.
  
• Concept of "healthy partisan competition" (that spurs engagement, esp. if at a local level) vs "destructive polarization." Question: what would the website need to contain to encourage the former instead of the latter? Maybe by its nature of presenting multiple perspectives and an interactive interface
• Note to self: see the Minnesota E-Democracy website
  
• The increasing stratification and polarization associated with residential segregation may be partially addressed online (my conclusion, not the authors')
• The website might be a useful resource or tool for local community groups or non-profits trying to directly increase deliberative dialogues (again, my own thought as I'm reading the book)
• The website might also be a useful tool to increase accountability and governance, if it achieves a high profile (my own thought)
• Citizen participation should be less costly and more interesting (i.e., don't have unrealistic assumptions about increasing the burden on citizens). My conclusion would be that a website needs to be integrated with other efforts, rather than out there as a separate effort that dilutes the field even further.

I'm not convinced by the book's arguments that my proposed website's focus on increasing political knowledge will make a difference in civic engagement. Sure, increased political knowledge is associated with increased participation, but that doesn't imply a direct, one-way causal relationship. That gets me thinking to the ultimate goal of the website: just to increase political knowledge and interest, or to go beyond that? How could you measure the difference before and after the website goes live?

Beyond that, what is the market that I'm trying to reach? If I'm trying to get to those with less existing knowledge, then the profile of the typical internet user (white male) doesn't bode well for success on the equality front.

Finally, what if the website increases political knowledge or interest for groups of people that are more likely to use the information to "win" debates rather than to broaden political discussions. Bringing this website online might only empower the most active, partisan people who are interested enough to go to the website (and drive away those more representative of or underrepresented in the general population).

The vision: so what's this thing gonna look like?

Without having thought it completely through, it's a little early to start speculating on what this website would look like. The whole point of this summer's independent research is to approach this idea methodically: scan the literature, talk with those who have thought about online civic engagement, assess the potential market, and form a detailed plan.

However, when I try to explain the idea to others, I always come back to the same analogy: a voter's pamphlet that gives you the "quick and dirty" view of the issues at stake; the pros and cons and the supporters of each; the essence of the arguments. When I want to know more about a policy issue (and I often do as an MPA student and resident of Left Coast), I don't want to wade through policy reports, or even the executive summary of policy reports. I also don't want to Google or L-N the issue, even though I could probably find what I wanted to know in about fifteen minutes of hunting. Wouldn't it be nice to go to one place, and know that you are going to see concise, non-partisan phrasing of multiple viewpoints?

Better yet, what if the website was entertaining, interactive, and offered links to source materials for those that wanted to learn more? What if the website also partnered with existing organizations that specialized in continuing the interaction through deliberative dialogues, either online or at a local level? What if the online community that generated the content also gained from the experience of distilling multiple perspectives into neutral language?

That would be the type of place I would want to go back to, and perhaps even participate in.