Technology and the quality of public deliberation: a comparison between on and offline participation

Stéphanie Wojcik (1) , Laurence Monnoyer-Smith (2)

1 CEDITEC - Centre d'Etudes des discours, Images, Textes, Ecrits, Communications
2 COSTECH - Connaissance Organisation et Systèmes TECHniques

The empirical turn in deliberative democracy has recently generateda considerable amount of academic work. Scholars have tried to operationalisethe theoretical dimensions of deliberative democracy into robust criteria inorder to evaluate the quality of public discussion. Few of them however havesystematically compared online and offline deliberation to analyse the link between the technological formats deployed in a deliberative procedure and thequality of the discussion. This is what this paper aims to do through a Frenchcase study of a national public debate. Drawing from a revised version of theDiscourse Quality Index, we will theoretically discuss and propose a codingscheme for quality analysis which rests on an enlarged definition of deliberation. Our results suggest a dynamic appropriation of the various settings each presenting features in which actors strategically position themselves.

Mots clés: e-governance; public debate; waste treatment facility; online deliberation; face-to-face deliberation; technology; coding; DQI; quality of deliberation; evaluation

Domaines: Linguistique; Sciences de l'information et de la communication; Science politique

Stéphanie Wojcik, Laurence Monnoyer-Smith. Technology and the quality of public deliberation: a comparison between on and offline participation. International Journal of Electronic Governance, 2012, 5 (1), pp.24-49. ⟨10.1504/IJEG.2012.047443⟩. ⟨halshs-01148866⟩