Berkman Center for Internet & Society
at Harvard Law School
Online
Deliberative Discourse Research Project
Phase 1:
Specification for Online Environment Platform
_____________________________________________________
Introduction
The
Internet’s speed and efficiency as a communication tool for the global exchange
of information and personal expression has raised expectations about its
potential for group decision-making. The range of possible applications is vast:
from a small panel of jurists considering a pending case, to a multinational
corporation’s shareholders debating a merger, to a nation’s citizenry voting on
candidates for leadership. The utility is easy to imagine, but key questions
remain before the promise can be made real. What rules and tools would an
online community need in order for it to engage in effective, meaningful debate
so that decisions are generally accepted by its members? Can they produce a
better-informed and more responsible constituency? Can online – and
increasingly offline as well – communities govern themselves – online?
With the experience of thousands of years behind us, our sense of how traditional communities operate is well developed. No doubt, evolution of our social structures and our own evolution as a species are intertwined. In contrast, online communities are only a few decades old, and the chasm of difference evident between the two leaves us without full benefit of the lessons of experience. For example, members – or citizens – of self-organizing online communities come to one another and communicate as equals, stripped of many of the social cues present in physical encounters. Much of the effective “social glue” that binds physical communities is altogether lacking in their online counterparts. So are various forms of physical coercion that keep traditional geo-communities together in times of significant disagreement and conflict.
With
the administration of ICANN as our impetus, the Berkman Center for Internet
& Society considers online deliberation and proposes a design for its
implementation. However, the importance of the questions we address extends far
beyond the issues of online governance raised by ICANN. The growing number and
importance of online organizations and the increase in offline organizations
(including governments) moving toward some online operation suggest that the
questions we asked are becoming universal, and that interest in solutions we
offer may be widespread, as well. Accordingly, we sought to shape a solution
whose utility extends naturally beyond ICANN.
Which
technologies provide robust management tools that are also compatible with easy
access and widespread use? We present our answers in what we think will be the
most useful form: a conceptual software specification describing the principles
underlying deliberative discourse and the features and tools we believe would
best facilitate it in a networked environment. Many of these tools are already
in use, but we suggest improvements and other modifications to make them better
suited to focused deliberation. We seek through our analysis and in the details
of the code’s implementation to advance both the discussion and the art of
online discourse and decision-making.
We
intend two primary uses for this specification: as the seed for wide, practical
discussion of online governance, and as the basis for a software project
management team and its coders to prepare a technical implementation plan,
which could then be built and disseminated to the entire cyberspace community.
Discussion
The
promotion of online debate and decision-making is a problem of governance: how
may an online community appropriately rule itself? How does it balance the
freedom to communicate and participate with the maintenance of a productive and
encouraging environment that attracts and retains members?
Although
open communities in cyberspace are usually formed by those who share like
values and a desire to use their shared online spaces for mutual enjoyment,
virtual communities rarely achieve long-term peaceful cohabitation, much less
the ability to inform themselves or discuss and decide important issues.
The
very nature of online discussion contains this signal paradox: although greater
anonymity online distinctly encourages both valuable conversations among those
who likely would never interact offline and the recognition and respect of
voices which would otherwise never be heard, it also fosters an
irresponsibility which deeply undermines online discussions. Flaming, off-topic
barrages, arguments about process, and endless fruitless discussion without
decision-making are endemic. Methods that have been successfully used to
preclude or limit these problems in offline debate typically rely upon features
of shared physical space, making them inapt for the online context. By
necessity, online groups resort to moderators and filtering: to refuse to use
these methods of control and thus to tolerate high proportions of obnoxious and
irrelevant communication guarantees that many members will abandon their
participation in frustration.
Most self-organizing online communities
reflect a judgment we share: that democracy is the best means by which
cyberspaces may be governed. The demonstrated nature of online communities as
places where communication and discussion are valued suggests that deliberative
discourse (i.e., reasoned communication that is focused and intended to
culminate in group decision-making) is the form of democracy most prized
online. Cyberspace also naturally supports another feature that is highly
desirable for deliberative discourse: equality among the participants,
including especially an equal ability to disseminate information to contribute
to reasoned decision-making.
Governance
of online communities requires the consent of the governed in a way and to a
degree that physical communities do not. Coercive power over the body of a
participant, the ultimate if often unspoken tool of offline governance, does
not exist over the incorporeal citizens of online communities. Control by those
in authority online ends, as does that of offline counterparts, at the borders
of whatever spaces comprise the polity. However, unlike in offline
jurisdictions, online authorities have no significant means by which to force
their citizens to remain in those spaces. This is a difference at the most
basic level: not even the presence of members of self-organizing online
communities is assured. For any reason or no reason at all a member can simply
leave the community, sacrificing whatever social investment he has made there,
usually without financial or physical loss. This essential fact of online
participation demands a structure that is encouraging, egalitarian, productive
and rewarding. If the process of online discourse and decision-making is
unpleasant, elitist, non-productive and/or time wasting, then people will vote
with their browsers by failing to log on.
Our
report attempts to address real problems of online decision-making. It
recognizes and designs barriers to the true miscreants in cyberspace, those who
seek to disrupt and derail rather than to cooperate for the good of shared
online communities. Our primary focus, though, is given to the more serious
problem of large numbers of well-meaning and unselfish members who try to
cooperate and discuss constructively but still find themselves unable to reach
consensus or other acceptable forms of decision. Here, our effort is to design
the online structure to support, reward and make their participation effective.
In
considering which features and characteristics promote deliberative discourse,
we examined both offline and online experiments with democratic decision-making
and the tools used in those contexts. We chose many online tools that have
already demonstrated success and designed adaptations of offline tools that
seem promising. In shaping the environment and tools for online discourse, we
remained vigilant to the danger that perfect control would defeat our
overarching goal of promoting democratic decision-making. We are explicit about
the values we pursued and how we determined which to privilege when they
conflicted with one another. We do so to maintain our own accountability, but
more importantly to enable organizations considering adoption of these tools to
determine whether they share our philosophy and our judgments balancing these
values. The tool set we have designed is flexible and can be implemented in any
number of ways, permitting organizations to make their own determinations of
priorities and balance suited to their particular philosophies and needs.
The
Internet is perceived as the next great leap forward in political and
organizational interaction. However, the technology on which it rests is
complex and often hidden from view. Computer programmers are in some respects
the cyberspace equivalent of politicians’ smoke-filled back rooms. If political
processes are to move online, it is essential that the code, which facilitates
and constrains the discussion and measures the community’s opinion, must be as
open and transparent as the systems of democratic government that we most
admire. Public interest sponsorship of
such code as described in Appendix D is critical if online deliberation
is to become a trusted and valuable tool of democracy.
For
additional information, please contact:
Berkman Center for Internet & Society
at Harvard Law School
1563
Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge,
MA 02138
(617)
495-7547
Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard
Law School
Online
Deliberative Discourse Research Project
Phase 1:
Specification for Online Environment Platform
_____________________________________________________
Table of Contents
2. Guiding Principles and Rationales
2.6.
Documentation of procedure and substance is vital to legitimacy.
3.1.3.
Restrictions on Access to Contact Information for Participants
3.2. Discussion
Group Configuration
3.2.1. Structured
Threaded Messaging
3.5.1. Possible
Control Tools and Recommendations
3.5.1.1.
Empowered Administrators and Moderators.
3.5.1.1.2.1.
Responsibilities of moderators.
3.5.1.1.2.2.
Training and guidance of moderators.
3.5.1.1.2.3.
Selection of moderators.
3.5.1.2.2.
Top-down filtering.