Collaborative Research: Improving Online Deliberation with Computational Supports for Frame Reflection

这项研究将涉及设计、实施和评估计算工具，以支持在线政治参与过程中的框架反射。从寻求政治信息到参与政治讨论和审议，互联网、社交媒体和在线交流作为政治参与的平台具有巨大潜力。通过网络提供的丰富内容可以使讨论更有见地，而且讨论可以在比面对面论坛更大的规模上进行，这一事实为许多不同群体的参与提供了潜力。然而，到目前为止，网上政治参与并没有被证明是完全民主的。相反，它倾向于在政治谈话中再现先前存在的不平等和巴尔干化。每天不断迅速增加的政治内容也可能难以理解和评价，特别是在问题的框架方面。后者尤其重要，因为正如许多研究人员所表明的那样，问题是如何被框定的？也就是说，它们是如何根据熟悉的假设、隐喻和形象来表述的？深刻影响公民对这些问题的理解、评估和行动。该项目将利用现有的计算技术并开发新的分析方法，以鼓励公民识别和评估支撑问题竞争立场的框架。通过对两种现实环境的评估，公共审议论坛和政治博客的读者，这项工作将做出两种不同的贡献。首先，这个项目将为涉及复杂计算技术的交互工具和可视化开发人机交互设计原则。这些原则将有助于确保这些工具被设计为对用户有用、可理解和可解释的。其次，通过检查各种计算干预的影响，这项工作将加强对在线政治审议的政治和社会科学理解，无论是在技术如何调解审议过程方面，还是在审议如何通过提高对框架的认识和反思来改善方面。这项研究的直接影响将采取在现实环境中与政治参与用户部署工具的形式，即通过与无党派的在线论坛召集人合作，以及通过在政治博客读者中公开部署。此外，本项目开发的工具将随时供其他人使用，以支持政治审议进程或在其他情况下使用。从长远来看，这项工作在提高对政治审议的理解方面具有重大潜力，并为探索技术在支持政治参与方面可以发挥的其他作用提供了机会。

This research will involve designing, implementing, and evaluating computational tools to support frame reflection in processes of online political engagement. The internet, social media, and online communication have great potential as a platform for political engagement, from seeking political information to participating in political discussion and deliberation. The wealth of content available via the web can make for more informed discussion, and the fact that discussion can take place on a much larger scale than face-to-face forums offers the potential for participation by many and diverse groups. However, thus far, online political participation has not proven radically democratic. Rather, it has tended to reproduce preexisting inequalities and balkanization in political talk. The constantly and rapidly increasing quantity of political content produced on a daily basis can also be difficult to understand and evaluate, particularly with respect to how issues are framed. The latter is especially important given the fact that, as numerous researchers have shown, how issues are framed?that is, how they are formulated in terms of familiar assumptions, metaphors, and images?profoundly affects how citizens understand, assess, and act upon those issues.This project will both leverage existing computational techniques and develop novel analytic approaches to encourage citizens to identify and evaluate the frames that underpin competing positions on issues. Through evaluation in two real-world settings, public deliberative forums and readers of political blogs, this work will make two distinct sets of contributions. First, this project will develop human-computer interaction design principles for interactive tools and visualizations involving complex computational techniques. These principles will help ensure that such tools are designed to be useful for, comprehensible to, and interpretable by users. Second, by examining the impacts of various computational interventions, this work will enhance political and social scientific understanding of online political deliberation, both in terms of how technology mediates the deliberative process, and in terms of how deliberation can be improved through increased awareness of and reflection about framing.The immediate impacts of this research will take the form of tools deployed in real-world settings with politically engaged users, namely through a partnership with a non-partisan convener of online forums, and through public deployment among readers of political blogs. Additionally, the tools developed in this project will be made readily available for use by others, either in support of political deliberative processes or in other contexts. In the long term, the work has significant potential to improve understanding of political deliberation, and it provides an opportunity to explore alternative roles that technology can play in supporting political participation.