Digital Divide?: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide
Digital Divide?: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide
The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier
The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier
Web of Politics: The Internet's Impact on the American Political System
Web of Politics: The Internet's Impact on the American Political System
Cyberpolitics: Citizen Activism in the Age of the Internet
Cyberpolitics: Citizen Activism in the Age of the Internet
Modeling social media support for the elicitation of citizen opinion
Proceedings of the International Workshop on Modeling Social Media
Intentional modeling of social media design knowledge for government-citizen communication
MSM'10/MUSE'10 Proceedings of the 2010 international conference on Analysis of social media and ubiquitous data
Local election blogs: Networking among the political elite
Information Polity
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Two contemporary promises of participatory democracy are addressed in the present article; (a) democratic decisions reached in small group deliberation between lay citizens and (b) the possibility to exploit information and communication technology in democratic dialogue and decision making. Initially, a quasi-experimental approach was used to explore the potential and impact of face-to-face deliberation between citizens. In this design, a random sample of adult citizens was first surveyed and invited to take part in the experiment. The original face-to-face experiment was a one-day event where the participants received impartial information, questioned an expert panel and discussed in small groups. The participants were randomly allocated to 12 small groups consisting of a dozen persons each. The question at hand was whether a sixth nuclear power plant should be constructed in Finland. Later on, the face-to-face experiment was replicated virtually. The article has two main research questions. First, it investigates how a virtual environment can be used for deliberation and decision making. Second, it examines how information and deliberation in small groups affect participants' knowledge and opinions on energy politics. It is found that both modes show considerable resemblance in their outcome.