Digital Deliberation: Searching and Deciding About How to Vote

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A considerable amount of political activity is moving onto the Internet. This includes information dissemination by candidates, parties, issue advocates, campaigns, governments, news and opinion media, and individuals which is directed at citizens and potential voters. It also includes active participation by citizens in interactive digital environments mediated by social software such as blogs, opinion forums, discussion groups, etc. While there has been considerable study of the large scale demographics of this movement primarily using survey methods, there have been few close up studies of individuals involved in digital democracy using experimental and observational methods. There has also been a lack of empirical user studies in support of the design of software interfaces to support digital democracy. In this project, people will be observed closely as they use digital materials to make voting decisions. A series of empirical studies using real online materials in mock voting exercises will examine user behavior in this domain. Study issues include the conceptual categories that people use to understand political information, browsing and decision making strategies, and personalization. Another set of studies will examine more social uses of digital information. Questions include interest in sharing profile information, annotations, and opinions with others,impact of shared information on decision making, and the interaction of privacy and information sharing. All studies will compare participants from diverse backgrounds and situations. Information gathered in the empirical studies will be used to help design a Voter Information Portal that organizes political information for citizens and helps them make decisions. The portal would use Internet information found by commonly-used search engines and allow voters to reorganize it into user-centered categories, annotate it, and share it. Issues of privacy and ethics in this context will be examined.Intellectual MeritThe intellectual merit of the project involves the development of an understanding of how people wish to use, and do use, emerging technologies to learn, remember, reason about, and make decisions in the context of civic and government activities. ImpactThere is very broad impact of the proposal in that resulting systems couldinfluence citizens of many backgrounds and circumstances, and can be utilized by developers and implementation decision makers ingovernments, private organizations, and academic settings. The educational goals of the project include the production of digital government systems that encourage learning about civic issues by citizens. The goal of making digital government work for all citizens, with specific attention to issues of equity and the digital divide, addresses diversity goals.