Online Deliberation and Its Outcome-Evidence from the Virtual Polity Experiment

摘要

In this article, findings are presented from a pilot experiment carried out online via a platform designed specifically for citizen deliberation. The purpose of the experiment was to assess how online deliberation works in practice and also to test several hypotheses concerning the effects of taking part in an online deliberation has on participants. Additionally, an examination is made to ascertain whether a variation in the deliberative procedure affects the outcome. The findings show that carrying out an online deliberation has its problems-especially technical ones. Moreover, the effects of deliberation are somewhat modest. Knowledge gains and opinion changes were indeed traced, but regarding other potential effects, only a few significant changes were found. The article also comes up with some recommendations regarding the organization of online discussions.