Designing for E-Participation and for Deliberation

Chris Birchall has a fantastic new post on his blog about interface design for e-participation and designing systems for deliberation.  He quotes work by Beth Noveck that highlights a set of 10 values "to which online systems must adhere in order to foster real deliberation" as well as Ann McIntosh's "ten key dimensions of e-particpation initiatives".  Check out his great post here.

What are your thoughts about how technology can effectively support deliberation?  What has worked well--and what hasn't--in your experience?

P2 in Nanotechnology Efforts

Kathy Hudson, Ph.D. reports on the use of technology and deliberative democracy in a series of town hall meetings about nanotechnology. Her findings show that more people attended town hall meetings (including community leaders and policymakers), that attendees were more "tech-savvy" and "those with a “point of view”. These meetings also generated more media attention. According to Hudson, "online groups were more representative of the general population, allowed more in-depth discussions, and changes in attitudes could more reliably be tested. However, they had less of an impact on the policy discussion."

The same report (in subsequent pages) discusses other nanotechnology public participation projects. One other project report included uses technology (Tom Beierle's online discussion project).