Online Forums and Deliberative Democracy

The Internet is rapidly becoming a part of the everyday lives of a majority of people in the Western world. People perform various activities on the Internet & one of them is discussing politics & society in so-called online forums. In this article, we present an overview of some of the empi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Acta politica 2005-09, Vol.40 (3), p.317-335
Main Authors: Janssen, Davy, Kies, Raphaël
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Computer Mediated Communication
Deliberative democracy
Democracy
Discussion
Empirical research
Information society
Internet
Methodology
Political opinions
Politics
Public Sphere
Regression analysis
Western civilization
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Summary:The Internet is rapidly becoming a part of the everyday lives of a majority of people in the Western world. People perform various activities on the Internet & one of them is discussing politics & society in so-called online forums. In this article, we present an overview of some of the empirical research that evaluates the quality of political conversations in online forums. In the first section, we distinguish research on Usenet groups, web-based political forums & e-consultation forums, & discuss some its findings. In the second section, we elaborate three original categories of variables that attempt to explain differences observed in the quality of deliberation. The third, more extensive section deals with methodological issues. It discusses the operationalisation of deliberative quality & the application of a set of criteria for the idealized public sphere to online conversations. In the conclusion, we present some objections to the previous research & offer some ideas for a more comprehensive approach to online forum analysis. 34 References. Adapted from the source document.
ISSN:0001-6810
1741-1416
DOI:10.1057/palgrave.ap.5500115