hansard + voxpolitics event

I was at the Hansard Society's event on Tuesday night, the 7th, about the Internet and elections. I tohught it was OK, bit of a copy-cat of four years ago, as Colemn pointed out. Same old same old, except it's new media we're talking about. You can read some reports online, Bill Thompson's, Brian Wheeler's (BBC), VoxPolitics.

I was impressed with Phil Nobles' performance, partly because it was the first time I saw him presenting. Between a missionary and a visionary, with a good graps of what's going on with politics and technology. It's the beginning, of the beginning of the beginning, that was his mantra on the night. Revolution and all the rest. I have to admit I was fascinated by the extent of evidence he marshalled in favour of the revolution, on the one hand; of no-nonsense political campaigning, on the other. Campaign revolution then. Beware: the cyber-otpimists are back. Now they have some data.

I knew how good a speaker Stephen Coleman is, no surprise there. He wasn't happy when Phil slapped him on the back dubbing him a 'data man'. Don't be fooled: he is not, he's a political theorist. Event though I liked the data on use of Internet at last American election: importnace of email networks (surpire surprise) and youth doing different things (surprise surprise), and the Internet replacing other media(sorry, am I being repetitive here?). Well, not. I really enjoyed it. I especially liked the last question they asked in the questionnaire: "During the election, I used the Interent for..." and the nice theme analysis which was presented. Of course, the question is leading, and results should be taken with an extra granum salis. Thouhg this is the kind of questions that should get asked more often in relation with Internet and politics, Internet and Society, Internet and your gran'ma.

Today I've used the Internet for...

Well done Stephen.

I liked the seraphic Brian White, MP, dry humour to say the least, and the understated awaress that sic transit gloria mundi. I'd vote for him, if i wasn't involved back home to try to send Berlusconi back to his villas. One thing at a time, time will maybe come when I'll spell 'baked beans', take the oath, wave the flag, sing the song, handkiss the Queen and join 59,000,000 subjects.

Questions were a bit sheepish to my taste, the so-what question wasn't asked in the end, and I was too tired to ask it myself. I was inbetween two days of research interviews, and a bit drained. Can I ask it now, too late? So what? So what for democracy: as Coleman said in the conclusions, does the internet matter for those reading the Sun, muttering under their breath as they read 'Those bloody basterds'. Maybe they'll ask me to spell that instead. In that case: Albion, I'm coming.

public opinion survey hits the field

We have just finalised the questionnaire for the e-Society public opinon survey.

The survey examines Britons' attitudes and use of the Internet to contact their representatives, politicians and political institutions. Sample size wil be in the region of 2000, questions will probe both extant use and wilingness to adopt the internet for a range of political transactions in the near future.

The survey wil hit the field next week, all being well. We will get the results around Christmas, and press release the results in January 2005. Multvariate analysis will begin in February. Stay tuned, results will be thoroughly blogged.

better e-consultations?

[ from discussion on the do-consult list]

This debate is timely. More and more bodies are 'consulting' online, formally and informally.

There are three aspects to the ‘better’ consultation issue, at least in my view.

The first aspect is the clear definition of the aims of consultation. Often, these rules are unwritten though embedded in the code, statute, practice of the entity organising the consultation. Be it a local government, a legislative assembly, a select committee, a party (thinking here of labour’s big conversation), a newspaper, the local parish, etc, etc. These are in addition to the formal ‘terms of engagement’. Critical discourse analysis is needed to determine what the intended and unintended aims are of the consultations.

Second, there are external _criteria_ drawn from various theories of deliberation on how and under which conditions reasonable debate occurs. I realize that 'reasonable' is controversial here, but could find no better term. Alas, this has been reviewed, hasn't it, in countless articles on deliberation online, the public sphere online, free speech online, anonymity and the internet, early CMC studies, etc. I have quite an extensive biblio, and this is not really my area :) Iyengar, of recent; Fishkin, for years now; David Newman's stuff; Steve Schneider’s thesis. And you can borrow from dozen of related disciplines: CSW, education studies, small group research, mediation, etc, all those fields dealing with, ehm, interpersonal communications?

All in all, can we settle for the following criteria to guide the ‘ideal’ consultation (or ‘better consultation’ for the incrementalists on the list):

Openness – free access for all
Equality – all contribution are equally important
Relevance – discussion should include all and only those participants affected by its outcomes
Agenda setting – topics can be endogenously generated
Responsibility – all contributors should be visible
Anonymity – contribution can be anonymous under specified conditions
Diversity – opinions should diverge, controversy be welcome
Incrementalism – contributions should build on each other
Peacefulness – personal attacks are intolerable
Effectiveness – contributions should be fed to the policy making circuit by formal mechanisms
Transparency – discussion should be visible from ‘outside’
Efficacy – the consultation should effect change, or not, which reflects the balance of preferences expressed

Borrowing wildly here. Would anything else make for a 'better' consultation, generally speaking?

Third, what are the methods one can use for analysing such non-naturally occurring conversations. In my research I used:

0. discourse analysis of texts, oral and written, guiding the consultation
1. ex-ante questionnaires of participants;
2. content analysis of contributions, according to ad-hoc coding schemes;
2.1 factor and cluster, MDS, latent class
3. structure analysis of conversation;
3.1 log file analysis, using a variety of tools
4. conversation analysis of utterances and speech acts analysis; paper and colour pencils here;
5. grounded theme analysis, Atlas-ti
6. social network analysis, using a variety of tools
7. ex-post debriefings with participants, and experimental control with ex-ante results
8. semi-structured interviews with consultation organisers, moderators, policy-makers.

At times I thought one was more suitable, given the format of the consultation, and time-budget constraints. At times I thought that a ‘better’ study would incorporate them all, treating the alleged multi-semic social text – the consultation I mean – as formally and structurally multi-semic, for once.