ENCODE workshop on Online Deliberation and Mass Participation

Workshop Description 

In deliberative democracy, a central challenge arises from the conflict between two essential conditions for democratic legitimacy: deliberation on one side and mass participation on the other. Indeed, according to deliberative democratic theory, collective decisions are legitimate when they result from deliberation among all those affected by the decision. When the decision affects large groups of people, this necessitates mass participation. At the same time, it is argued that proper deliberation works best in small groups.

Can transitioning deliberation online alleviate this problem? If so, how do we design deliberation online? This workshop aims to provide insight into the various challenges and questions that arise when designing online deliberation and mass participation. We aim to shed light on the topic from philosophical, computational, and practical angles. 

The workshop is supported by the NWO Vidi ENCODE project (Explicating the Norms of Collective Deliberation), hosted at Erasmus University Rotterdam, and is led by associate professor Frederik Van De Putte.  

Speakers 

The workshop features talks by: 

• Dannica Fleuss – a.o. University of Nairobi & Heidelberg University 
• Dennis Frieß – Düsseldorfer Institut für Internet und Demokratie (DIID) 
• Anna Mikhaylovskaya – University of Groningen 
• Michaël Grauwde – Delft University of Technology 
• Feline Lindeboom – University of Groningen 

Schedule

• 10:30 - 11:30 - Dennis Frieß
• 11:30 - 11:45 - Coffee break
• 11:45 - 12:30 - Anna Mikhaylovskaya 
• 12:30 - 1:30 - Lunch break
• 1:30 - 2:30 - Dannica Fleuss
• 2:30 - 2:45 - Coffee break
• 2:45 - 3:30 - Feline Lindeboom
• 3:30 - 3:45 - Coffee break
• 3:45 - 4:30 - Michaël Grauwde
• 6:00 - Dinner

Abstracts

Dennis Friess - Düsseldorfer Institut für Internet und Demokratie

Title - AI and Deliberation.

Abstract - Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a central topic in contemporary academicdiscourse, particularly regarding its role in shaping public deliberation. This talkexplores various projects at the intersection of AI and online discussions, analyzing howAI tools are currently used to facilitate, moderate, or even participate in deliberativeprocesses. A systematic review will highlight which dimensions of deliberation AIalready supports and where significant gaps remain. Additionally, empirical findings willbe presented on how people perceive AI’s involvement in deliberative settings. The talkwill also address the ethical challenges that arise when AI intervenes in democraticdiscourse. In the final part, participants will be invited to discuss these issues, reflectingon the promises and risks of AI-driven deliberation and exploring possible futuredirections for research and practice.

Anna Mikhaylovskaya - University of Groningen

Title - Nurturing Virtues with Digital Democratic Innovations.

Abstract - Digital democratic innovations (DDIs) have been widely discussed as a promising way of engaging citizens in political decision-making. Extensive research has focused on designing DDIs that are deliberative, inclusive, and representative. However, little attention has been paid to DDIs’ potential for nurturing individual democratic virtues. Our paper aims to address this gap. We argue that the cultivation of democratic virtues should play a more central role when it comes to digital citizen participation. Specifically, we explore how deliberative DDIs can help participants develop virtuous qualities. Beyond providing a more participatory decision-making mechanism, DDIs should be seen as an opportunity for individuals to cultivate virtues and become better citizens. We distinguish between epistemic and moral virtues, and explore how DDIs can nurture them in ways distinct from other forms of deliberative democratic innovations. To this end, we propose practical design features for DDI that could facilitate the cultivation of both epistemic and moral virtues.

Dannica Fleuss - University of Nairobi, Heidelberg University (a.o.)

Title - Utopias, Dystopias—and Realistic Perspectives for Challenging the ‘Rules of the Game’: Upscaling Democratic Deliberation in the Digital Age.

Abstract - 

Contemporary liberal-representative democracies are arguably in crisis: e.g. the (re-)election of Donald Trump, the Brexit referendum, or the rise of populism in many Western democracies are frequently seen as symptoms of citizens’ declining support for established political institutions and elites. Deliberative and suggest that more and more immediate citizen participation can provide a cure for this democratic malaise (Dryzek et al. 2020). At the same time, though, ‘democratic innovations ’such as deliberative mini-publics or consultation forums have been heavily criticised from diverse angles, predominantly because small-scale deliberation needs to be ‘upscaled’ in order to actually have an impact on policymaking and increase democracies’ empirical and normative legitimacy (Fleuss & Deppeforthcoming). 

Deliberative theorists are frequently confronted with the objection that they formulate an ideal that is, given the material, temporal and structural constraints of democratic political participation in contemporary mass democracies, unattainable. Against this backdrop, particularly early ‘utopian’ assessments welcomed digitalisation-associated developments, assuming that digital infrastructures provide more adequate preconditions to realise ‘deliberative democrats’ dream’ (Graham & Witschge 2003). Empirical analyses of digitalisation’s ‘democratizing potentials’, however, arrive at fairly mixed results and frequently find that political communication in digital spaces not only violates deliberationists ’normative standards: online consultation forums and mini-publics all too frequently do not succeed in upscaling deliberation. Against this background, I argue for three claims: (a) digitalisation-associated developments that at first glance bear the most promising potentials for realising deliberation on a large scale also pose the most severe challenges for putting (more)deliberative democracy into practice. (b) Digitalisation-associated developments are, however, not the roots of these challenges: they aggravate previously existing tensions that attempts at increasing democratic legitimacy by upscaling deliberation are confronted with. In sum, realising (more) deliberative democracy at large scale requires foundational changes of the ‘rules of the democratic game’ (Fleuss 2021; 2023).(c) By putting these challenges on the spotlight, digitalisation nevertheless bears a productive, emancipatory potential for deliberative democrats: referring to exemplary recent developments and initiatives, I feature that digital spaces can be one valuable vehicle for democratic renewal and reform: they can, if properly utilised, mobilise people to challenge—and potentially change—the ‘rules of the game’.

Feline Lindeboom - University of Groningen

Title - A voice for minorities: diversity in approval-based committee elections under incomplete or inaccurate information.

Abstract - We study diversity in approval based committee elections with incomplete and/or inaccurate information. As standard in the literature on multi-winner voting, we define diversity according to the maximum coverage problem, which is known to be NP-complete, with a best attainable polynomial time approximation ratio of 1-1/e. In the incomplete information model, voters vote on only a small portion of the candidates. We suggest a greedy algorithm and a local search algorithm that query voters and use the query responses to approximate the total population's opinion. For both algorithms, we prove an upper bound on the number of queries required to get a close to 1-1/e -approximate solution with high probability. We also provide a lower bound for the query complexity of non-adaptive algorithms in this setting. In the inaccurate information setting, voters' answers are corrupted with a probability p in (0,1/2). We provide both an upper and a lower bound for the number of queries required to attain a 1-1/e approximate solution with high probability. Finally, using real data from Polis, we see that our algorithms perform better than the theory suggests, both with incomplete and inaccurate information.

Michaël Grauwde – Delft University of Technology

Title - Stimulating deliberation with a value-based conversational agent for reflection.

Abstract - Deliberation and decision-making are immensely important in a democratic process. However, deliberation requires knowledge on a variety of things. These involve the context in which the deliberation being conducted, the stakeholders involved in the decision-making, and the values of the different stakeholders. How can we mitigate these issues and increase the knowledge of all participants involved in the deliberation to create a productive deliberation; leading to good decisions? Conversational agents may have an advantage here in pre-emptively assisting people in thinking about what matters for them in such deliberations. Conversational agents can in short conversations with numerous stakeholders provide understanding of a context, the values of the person themselves as well as other stakeholders involved in the scenario being discussed. Conversational agents have advantages such as easy scalability, naturalistic conversation, and creating lack of judgment amongst participants. Our work examines the viability of such systems and the dialogue required for such agents through experimentation with various stakeholders.