La qualità della deliberazione online

Within the national project the objective of the Bologna Research Unit is the anlysis and evaluation of on-line deliberative processes and their comparison with face-to-face (F2F) deliberative processes. On-line deliberation is of great interest because it has the potential to overcome some of the problems of F2F processes, such as the participants' limited time, the difficulties and costs connected to transportation and logistics, and so forth. Besides, it is important to test empirically whether on-line deliberation effectively delivers what it promises, and particularly whether the quality of the dialogue and deliberation can stand up to the quality of F2F interactions. In this perspective, the unit's project aims at answering the following questions: a) which specific features and which advantages/disadvantages do the on-line deliberative processes compared to F2F? b) which are the critical elements (setting, interaction rules, technology, access to information, participants' skills, presence of experts. Etc.) that must be taken into account in order to define the quality of on-line deliberation? And finally, more broadly, c) which is the Internet's and the ICT's potential to improve the effectiveness of deliberative processes, and to empower democratic participation in policy making processes, at the same time curbing coordination and governance costs? We start with the hypothesis that ICT play an essential role in the definition of the quality of deliberation. ICT may themselves structure the setting and may themselves regulate the interaction, inasmuch as they embody rules and templates for interaction. The local unit project therefore aims at examining the influence of the technological mediation on deliberative processes and at evaluating the possibility of using the Internet as a medium for policy-oriented deliberation. The project will develop in five partially overlapping phases: 1) an appraisal and assessment of the main experiences and studies on on-line deliberation in the existing literature; 2) the construction of a model prototype for the assessment and evaluatio of on-line deliberation, which will be done in close interaction with the other research units; 3) the application of the model prototype to empirical cases of deliberation on-line , that have already been completed or that are still in progress, with a codification and comparative evaluation of the quality of the deliberative process in relation to to F2F empirical cases (Cohen's inter-coding reliability test); 3 Ministero dell'Istruzione dell'Università e della Ricerca 4) the analysis of the implications of the research findings for a number of important themes, like the design of the institutional and organizational settings of on-line processes, the role of the Internet and the communication media, the reflexive capabilities and organizational learning of the groups of actors engaged in deliberation; and last, 5) the production of research reports on the research findings.