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Supporting argumentation in online political debate: Evidence from an experiment of collective deliberation

Supporting argumentation in online political debate: Evidence from an experiment of collective deliberation
Supporting argumentation in online political debate: Evidence from an experiment of collective deliberation
In this article, we report the results of an e-democracy experiment in which a group of supporters of a large political party were asked to debate online about ways to reform the electoral law. We compare a traditional forum with an online collaborative argumentation platform to capture the various proposals and their associated pros and cons. The aim of this study is to assess the capability of this tool to support online collective deliberation in a real-world case, as compared to an online discussion supported by a forum. By comparing users’ experience across several metrics related to usability, activity levels, and quality of collaboration, our findings show that the forum produced more activity and ideas and its users perceived a better quality of the collaboration process, while the argumentation tool helped to reduce the amount of self-referential arguments and encourage viewing and rating of others’ posts.
1461-4448
1320-1341
Iandoli, Luca
f058b31a-f1ac-4bfe-a1b0-1c6ca2a74615
Quinto, Ivana
c3727fca-8b76-4948-a724-2e36d9daea2a
Spada, Paolo
aa830424-63f7-4baa-aecc-0bba595b8221
Klein, Mark
52efffec-1425-49e2-b23b-ab0e9bd6b1ac
Calabretta, Raffaele
44c51e4a-57cb-45cb-ba73-3841ea8d23e8
Iandoli, Luca
f058b31a-f1ac-4bfe-a1b0-1c6ca2a74615
Quinto, Ivana
c3727fca-8b76-4948-a724-2e36d9daea2a
Spada, Paolo
aa830424-63f7-4baa-aecc-0bba595b8221
Klein, Mark
52efffec-1425-49e2-b23b-ab0e9bd6b1ac
Calabretta, Raffaele
44c51e4a-57cb-45cb-ba73-3841ea8d23e8

Iandoli, Luca, Quinto, Ivana, Spada, Paolo, Klein, Mark and Calabretta, Raffaele (2018) Supporting argumentation in online political debate: Evidence from an experiment of collective deliberation. New Media and Society, 20 (4), 1320-1341. (doi:10.1177/1461444817691509).

Record type: Article

Abstract

In this article, we report the results of an e-democracy experiment in which a group of supporters of a large political party were asked to debate online about ways to reform the electoral law. We compare a traditional forum with an online collaborative argumentation platform to capture the various proposals and their associated pros and cons. The aim of this study is to assess the capability of this tool to support online collective deliberation in a real-world case, as compared to an online discussion supported by a forum. By comparing users’ experience across several metrics related to usability, activity levels, and quality of collaboration, our findings show that the forum produced more activity and ideas and its users perceived a better quality of the collaboration process, while the argumentation tool helped to reduce the amount of self-referential arguments and encourage viewing and rating of others’ posts.

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More information

e-pub ahead of print date: 9 February 2017
Published date: 1 April 2018

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 434836
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/434836
ISSN: 1461-4448
PURE UUID: b8baa5a8-424c-4d29-a140-714130a4326c
ORCID for Paolo Spada: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-7050-2079

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 11 Oct 2019 16:30
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 03:39

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Contributors

Author: Luca Iandoli
Author: Ivana Quinto
Author: Paolo Spada ORCID iD
Author: Mark Klein
Author: Raffaele Calabretta

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