Widening Civic Space with Civic Tech:
Navigating New Technologies for Public Deliberation in Polarized Contexts
A Collaborative Research Project based at the University of Notre Dame
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This research project involves a collaborative process of peacebuilding experts and practitioners working with deliberative technologies to identify best practices and considerations for effective deliberative public processes in terms of process design and tool sequencing choices. The outcome of this research project will be a website, wiki database, and AI assistant to help navigate and design deliberative public processes and how to choose and use relevant technology platforms.
PROBLEM STATEMENT:
Deliberative technology offers digital tools for supporting public discussion on policy issues, emphasizing citizen participation and collective intelligence. There are nearly 200 such platforms to support civic engagement on pressing policy challenges. Yet government and civil society uptake of these new platforms is low, especially for deliberative technologies.
The use of these platforms requires sociotechnical expertise including 1) designing and facilitating deliberative processes; and 2) choosing between different platforms for different elements of the process. Lack of awareness and understanding of the tools makes it difficult for organizations to choose the right tools and design deliberative processes.
Javascript is required to use Gala.