Online deliberation is a term associated with an emerging body of practice, research, and software dedicated to fostering serious, purposive discussion over the Internet. It overlaps with, but is not identical to, e-democracy.
Online deliberation is very interdisciplinary, and includes practices such as online consultation, e-participation, online deliberative polling, online facilitation, online research communities, interactive e-learning, civic dialogue in Internet forums and online chat, and group decision making that utilizes collaborative software and other forms of computer-mediated communication. Work in all these endeavors is tied together by the challenge of using electronic media in a way that deepens thinking and improves mutual understanding.
Open international conferences on online deliberation were held at Carnegie Mellon University in 2003, Stanford University in 2005, and the University of California, Berkeley in 2008. Attendees of the 2005 conference voted to create an international society for online deliberation, but no formal organization has yet been established. Other events of interest have been sponsored by the Online Deliberative Democracy Consortium.
See also
- Collaborative software
- Computer-mediated communication
- Computer supported cooperative work
- Deliberative democracy
- E-democracy
- E-participation
- Group decision support systems
- Online consultation
- Online research communities
- Public sphere
External links
- Developing and Using Online Tools for Deliberative Democracy - the first conference on online deliberation, Carnegie Mellon University (June 2003)
- Online Deliberation 2005 / DIAC-2005 - the Second Conference on Online Deliberation: Design, Research, and Practice, Stanford University (May 2005)
- Deepening Online Deliberation - invitational workshop sponsored by the Online Deliberative Democracy Consortium, University of Minnesota (June 2005)
- Tools for Participation: Collaboration, Deliberation, and Decision Support (DIAC-2008/OD2008) - the Third Conference on Online Deliberation, University of California, Berkeley (June 2008)
- Demosphere Project — The wiki & global project to develop a community based e-democracy framework using open source and interactive software. (Wikinews article)
- Facilitating large-scale online deliberation with collaborative debate maps - Allowing all voices and arguments to be represented and weighed transparently in context.
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