Related papers: Online Assemblies: Civic Technologies Reshaping th…
The emergence and ongoing development of Web 2.0 technologies have enabled new and advanced forms of collective intelligence at unprecedented scales, allowing large numbers of individuals to act collectively and create high quality…
The broad adoption of the web as a communication medium has made it possible to study social behavior at a new scale. With social media networks such as Twitter, we can collect large data sets of online discourse. Social science researchers…
Two substantial technological advances have reshaped the public square in recent decades: first with the advent of the internet and second with the recent introduction of large language models (LLMs). LLMs offer opportunities for a paradigm…
This report first provides a brief review of various forms of dialogue-based participation, e.g., Citizen Assembly, Citizen Lottery, Citizen Jury, Deliberative Polling, and Participatory Budgeting. Challenges associated with these…
This essay argues that a new form of democracy - an "Emergent Democracy" - will develop as a result of the use of Internet communication tools and platforms such as blogs. The essay explores a variety of tools available and explores the…
Citizens' assemblies are an increasingly influential form of deliberative democracy, where randomly selected people discuss policy questions. The legitimacy of these assemblies hinges on their representation of the broader population, but…
Trust and confidence in democratic institutions is at an all-time low. At the same time, many of the complex issues faced by city administrators and politicians remain unresolved. To tackle these concerns, many argue that citizens should,…
Given the stated preferences of several people over a number of proposals regarding public policy initiatives, some of those proposals might be judged to be more ``divisive'' than others. When designing online participatory platforms to…
Crowdsourcing is rapidly evolving and applied in situations where ideas, labour, opinion or expertise of large groups of people are used. Crowdsourcing is now used in various policy-making initiatives; however, this use has usually focused…
Online spaces provide individuals with the opportunity to engage in discussions on important topics and make collective decisions, regardless of their geographic location or time zone. However, without adequate support and careful design,…
A citizens' assembly is a group of people who are randomly selected to represent a larger population in a deliberation. While this approach has successfully strengthened democracy, it has certain limitations that suggest the need for…
People nowadays express their opinions in online spaces, using different forms of interactions such as posting, sharing and discussing with one another. How do these digital traces change in response to events happening in the real world?…
Social media has become globally ubiquitous, transforming how people are networked and mobilized. This forum explores research and applications of these new networked publics at individual, organizational, and societal levels.
Social technologies are the systems, interfaces, features, infrastructures, and architectures that allow people to interact with each other online. These technologies dramatically shape the fabric of our everyday lives, from the information…
Online discussion platforms are a vital part of the public discourse in a deliberative democracy. However, how to interpret the outcomes of the discussions on these platforms is often unclear. In this paper, we propose a novel and…
Assessing political conversations in social media requires a deeper understanding of the underlying practices and styles that drive these conversations. In this paper, we present a computational approach for assessing online conversational…
Online communities are increasingly becoming a venue for socializing, engaging in politics, and conducting business. Ironically, the same enabling social media technology is encroaching into everyday life and reconfiguring relations of…
Participatory design initiatives, especially within the realm of digital civics, are often integrated and co-developed with the very citizens and communities they intend to assist. Digital civics research aims to create positive social…
In an era of increasing societal fragmentation, political polarization, and erosion of public trust in institutions, representative deliberative assemblies are emerging as a promising democratic forum for developing effective policy…
The advent of the digital era provided a fertile ground for the development of virtual societies, complex systems influencing real-world dynamics. Understanding online human behavior and its relevance beyond the digital boundaries is still…