Paper by Lucy J. Parry, Nicole Curato, and John S. Dryzek: “Deliberative mini-publics are forums for citizen deliberation composed of randomly selected citizens convened to yield policy recommendations. These forums have proliferated in recent years but there are no generally accepted standards to govern their practice. Should there be? We answer this question by bringing the scholarly literature on citizen deliberation into dialogue with the lived experience of the people who study, design and implement mini-publics. We use Q methodology to locate five distinct perspectives on the integrity of mini-publics, and map the structure of agreement and dispute across them. We find that, across the five viewpoints, there is emerging consensus as well as divergence on integrity issues, with disagreement over what might be gained or lost by adapting common standards of practice, and possible sources of integrity risks. This article provides an empirical foundation for further discussion on integrity standards in the future…(More)”.
Integrating Artificial Intelligence into Citizens’ Assemblies: Benefits, Concerns and Future Pathways
Paper by Sammy McKinney: “Interest in how Artificial Intelligence (AI) could be used within citizens’ assemblies (CAs) is emerging amongst scholars and practitioners alike. In this paper, I make four contributions at the intersection of these burgeoning fields. First, I propose an analytical framework to guide evaluations of the benefits and limitations of AI applications in CAs. Second, I map out eleven ways that AI, especially large language models (LLMs), could be used across a CAs full lifecycle. This introduces novel ideas for AI integration into the literature and synthesises existing proposals to provide the most detailed analytical breakdown of AI applications in CAs to date. Third, drawing on relevant literature, four key informant interviews, and the Global Assembly on the Ecological and Climate crisis as a case study, I apply my analytical framework to assess the desirability of each application. This provides insight into how AI could be deployed to address existing challenges facing CAs today as well as the concerns that arise with AI integration. Fourth, bringing my analyses together, I argue that AI integration into CAs brings the potential to enhance their democratic quality and institutional capacity, but realising this requires the deliberative community to proceed cautiously, effectively navigate challenging trade-offs, and mitigate important concerns that arise with AI integration. Ultimately, this paper provides a foundation that can guide future research concerning AI integration into CAs and other forms of democratic innovation…(More)”.
Democracy online: technologies for democratic deliberation
Paper by Adam Meylan-Stevenson, Ben Hawes, and Matt Ryan: “This paper explores the use of online tools to improve democratic participation and deliberation. These tools offer new opportunities for inclusive communication and networking, specifically targeting the participation of diverse groups in decision-making processes. It summarises recent research and published reports by users of these tools and categorises the tools according to functions and objectives. It also draws on testimony and experiences recorded in interviews with some users of these tools in public sector and civil society organisations internationally.
The objective is to introduce online deliberation tools to a wider audience, including benefits, limitations and potential disadvantages, in the immediate context of research on democratic deliberation. We identify limitations of tools and of the context and markets in which online deliberation tools are currently being developed. The paper suggests that fostering a collaborative approach among technology developers and democratic practitioners, might improve opportunities for funding and continual optimisation that have been used successfully in other online application sectors…(More)”.
Searching for Safer, Healthier Digital Spaces
Report by Search for Common Ground (Search): “… has specialized in approaches that leverage media such as radio and television to reach target audiences. In recent years, the organization has been more intentional about digital and online spaces, delving deeper into the realm of digital peacebuilding. Search has since implemented a number of digital peacebuilding projects.
Search wanted to understand if and how its initiatives were able to catalyze constructive agency among social media users, away from a space of apathy, self-doubt, or fear to incite inclusion, belonging, empathy, mutual understanding, and trust. This report examines these hypotheses using primary data from former and current participants in Search’s digital peacebuilding initiatives…(More)”
Open government, civic tech and digital platforms in Latin America: A governance study of Montevideo’s urban app ‘Por Mi Barrio’
Paper by Carolina Aguerre and Carla Bonina: “Digital technologies have a recognised potential to build more efficient, credible, and innovative public institutions in Latin America. Despite progress, digital transformation in Latin American governments remains limited. In this work, we explore a peculiar yet largely understudied opportunity in the region: pursuing digital government transformation as a collaborative process between the government and civil society organisations. To do so, we draw from information systems research on digital government and platforms for development, complemented with governance theory from political science and conduct an interpretive in-depth case study of an urban reporting platform in Montevideo called ‘Por Mi Barrio’. The study reveals three mutually reinforced orders of governance in the trajectory of the project and explain how the collaboration unfolded over time: (i) a technical decision to use open platform architectures; (ii) the negotiation of formal and informal rules to make the project thrive and (iii) a shared, long-term ideology around the value of open technologies and technical sovereignty grounded in years of political history. Using a contextual explanation approach, our study helps to improve our understanding on the governance of collaborative digital government platforms in Latin America, with specific contributions to practice…(More)”.
A systematic analysis of digital tools for citizen participation
Paper by Bokyong Shin et al: “Despite the increasing use of digital tools for citizen participation, their ecosystem and functionality remain underexplored. What digital tools exist, and how do they help citizens engage in policymaking? This article addresses this gap by examining the supply side of digital tools for citizen participation. We compiled a comprehensive dataset of 116 digital tools from three public repositories. Using the collective intelligence genome framework, adapted for the e-participation context, we systematically examined the dynamics and trends of these tools through cluster analyses. Our findings highlight the potential of digital participatory tools to facilitate the flow of information from citizens to governments using advanced technologies. However, a prominent deficiency was identified in disseminating accountability information to citizens regarding how policy decisions are made, realised, and assessed. These findings offer valuable insights and notable gaps in the digital tool ecosystem…(More)”.
Taking [A]part: The Politics and Aesthetics of Participation in Experience-Centered Design
Book by John McCarthy and Peter Wright: “…consider a series of boundary-pushing research projects in human-computer interaction (HCI) in which the design of digital technology is used to inquire into participative experience. McCarthy and Wright view all of these projects—which range from the public and performative to the private and interpersonal—through the critical lens of participation. Taking participation, in all its variety, as the generative and critical concept allows them to examine the projects as a part of a coherent, responsive movement, allied with other emerging movements in DIY culture and participatory art. Their investigation leads them to rethink such traditional HCI categories as designer and user, maker and developer, researcher and participant, characterizing these relationships instead as mutually responsive and dialogical.
McCarthy and Wright explore four genres of participation—understanding the other, building relationships, belonging in community, and participating in publics—and they examine participatory projects that exemplify each genre. These include the Humanaquarium, a participatory musical performance; the Personhood project, in which a researcher and a couple explored the experience of living with dementia; the Prayer Companion project, which developed a technology to inform the prayer life of cloistered nuns; and the development of social media to support participatory publics in settings that range from reality game show fans to on-line deliberative democracies…(More)”
Illuminating Lived Experience
Lab Note from the Sydney Policy Lab: “The lived experiences of people involved in care – from informal and formal care workers to the people they support – is foundational to the Australia Cares project. To learn from the ways people with lived experience are included in co-design and research methods, the Sydney Policy Lab initiated reflective research that has resulted in a Lab Note on Illuminating Lived Experience (pdf, 1MB).
Through a series of interviews, dialogues and collaborative writing processes, co-authors explored tensions between different approaches and core concepts underpinning lived experience methods and shared examples of those methods in practice.
Illuminating Lived Experience poses questions that may help guide researchers and policymakers seeking to engage people with lived experience and three core principles we believe are required for such engagements.
The Lab Note aims to encourage researchers to be creative in the ways co-design and lived experience are approached while being true to the critical roots of participatory methodologies. Rather than prescribing methods, the principles and practices developed are offered as a guide – a starting point for play…(More)”
Enrolling Citizens: A Primer on Archetypes of Democratic Engagement with AI
Paper by Wanheng Hu and Ranjit Singh: “In response to rapid advances in artificial intelligence, lawmakers, regulators, academics, and technologists alike are sifting through technical jargon and marketing hype as they take on the challenge of safeguarding citizens from the technology’s potential harms while maximizing their access to its benefits. A common feature of these efforts is including citizens throughout the stages of AI development and governance. Yet doing so is impossible without a clear vision of what citizens ideally should do. This primer takes up this imperative and asks: What approaches can ensure that citizens have meaningful involvement in the development of AI, and how do these approaches envision the role of a “good citizen”?
The primer highlights three major approaches to involving citizens in AI — AI literacy, AI governance, and participatory AI — each of them premised on the importance of enrolling citizens but envisioning different roles for citizens to play. While recognizing that it is largely impossible to come up with a universal standard for building AI in the public interest, and that all approaches will remain local and situated, this primer invites a critical reflection on the underlying assumptions about technology, democracy, and citizenship that ground how we think about the ethics and role of public(s) in large-scale sociotechnical change. ..(More)”.
Handbook of Public Participation in Impact Assessment
Book edited by Tanya Burdett and A. John Sinclair: “… provides a clear overview of how to achieve meaningful public participation in impact assessment (IA). It explores conceptual elements, including the democratic core of public participation in IA, as well as practical challenges, such as data sharing, with diverse perspectives from 39 leading academics and practitioners.
Critically examining how different engagement frameworks have evolved over time, this Handbook underlines the ways in which tokenistic approaches and wider planning and approvals structures challenge the implementation of meaningful public participation. Contributing authors discuss the impact of international agreements, legislation and regulatory regimes, and review commonly used professional association frameworks such as the International Association for Public Participation core values for practice. They demonstrate through case studies what meaningful public participation looks like in diverse regional contexts, addressing the intentions of being purposeful, inclusive, transformative and proactive. By emphasising the strength of community engagement, the Handbook argues that public participation in IA can contribute to enhanced democracy and sustainability for all…(More)”.