Digital Deliberation: Searching and Deciding About How to Vote

相当数量的政治活动正在转向互联网。这包括候选人、政党、议题提倡者、运动、政府、新闻和舆论媒介以及个人针对公民和潜在选民的信息传播。它还包括公民在社交软件（如博客、意见论坛、讨论组等）介导的交互式数字环境中的积极参与。虽然主要使用调查方法对这一运动的大规模人口统计学进行了大量研究，但很少有使用实验和观察方法对参与数字民主的个人进行近距离研究。也缺乏经验的用户研究来支持软件界面的设计，以支持数字民主。在这个项目中，人们将被密切观察，因为他们使用数字材料来做出投票决定。在模拟投票练习中使用真实在线材料的一系列实证研究将检查该领域的用户行为。研究问题包括人们用来理解政治信息、浏览和决策策略以及个性化的概念类别。另一组研究将调查数字信息的更多社会用途。问题包括与他人共享概要信息、注释和意见的兴趣，共享信息对决策的影响，以及隐私和信息共享的交互。所有的研究都将比较来自不同背景和情况的参与者。在实证研究中收集的信息将用于帮助设计选民信息门户网站，为公民组织政治信息并帮助他们做出决定。该门户网站将使用常用搜索引擎找到的互联网信息，并允许选民将其重新组织成以用户为中心的类别，对其进行注释和分享。在这方面将审查隐私和道德问题。这个项目的智力价值包括理解人们希望如何使用和使用新兴技术来学习、记忆、推理和在公民和政府活动的背景下做出决定。影响该提案的影响非常广泛，因为由此产生的系统可以影响许多背景和环境的公民，并且可以被政府、私人组织和学术机构的开发人员和实施决策者利用。该项目的教育目标包括制作数字政府系统，鼓励公民学习公民问题。让数字政府为所有公民服务的目标，特别关注公平和数字鸿沟的问题，解决了多样性的目标。

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.