HCC: Medium: Social Search and Deliberation in Digital Political Information and Collaboration Domains

参与政治辩论和审议是民主的关键。浏览政治材料是获取关于公民活动、政府运作和当今问题的知识的直接方式。这个项目考察了一种快速增长但鲜为人知的新型政治参与：在Web 2.0技术背景下的在线信息寻求、审议和决策。这项研究包括三条相互交织的研究线索：(A)以用户为中心的搜索/浏览工具和跨应用程序、用户生成的互连浏览器的增强设计；(B)对潜在选民如何在社交计算环境中浏览和做出决策的实验室研究；以及(C)通过至少三个美国选举周期对新颖的、具有社交功能的政治搜索/浏览工具的用户进行纵向观察。一个重要的实际成果将是公民参与和政治话语的搜索/浏览工具，这些工具将与许多人现在每天使用的社交网络环境相结合。这项研究将有助于数字政治领域的审议理论，以及用于揭示和导航在线政治对话结构的工具的设计。广泛影响：从该项目开发的工具和理论将提供背景，扩大参与21世纪公民生活的机会，从而帮助弥合数字鸿沟。这项工作还将通过培养研究生和博士后研究人员来造福教育。

Participation in political debate and deliberation is critical to democracy. Browsing political material is a direct way of acquiring knowledge about civic activities, the operations of government, and the issues of the day. This project examines a fast growing, but little understood new type of political participation: online information seeking, deliberation and decision making in the context of Web 2.0 technologies. The research includes three intertwined threads of study: (a) user-centered design of enhancements to a search/browse tool and a cross-application, user-generated interlinkage browser; (b) laboratory studies of how potential voters browse and make decisions in social computing environments; and (c) longitudinal observation of users of novel, socially-enabled political search/browse tools through at least three U.S. election cycles.Intellectual Merit: The central research question is how exposure to and participation in social networking activities influences information seeking and decision making in politics. An important practical outcome will be search/browse tools for civic participation and political discourse that are integrated with the social networking environments that many people now use every day. The research will contribute to theories of deliberation in the domain of digital politics and to the design of tools for exposing and navigating the structure of online political dialog.Broader Impacts: Tools and theory developed from this project will provide contexts that broaden opportunities for participation in civic life in the 21st century, thereby helping to bridge the digital divide. The work will also benefit education through the training of graduate students and post-doctoral researchers.