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

参与政治辩论和审议对民主至关重要。浏览政治材料是获得有关公民活动，政府运作和当今问题的知识的直接方式。这个项目研究了一种快速增长但鲜为人知的新型政治参与：Web 2.0技术背景下的在线信息寻求，审议和决策。本研究包括三个相互交织的研究线索：（a）以用户为中心的设计增强搜索/浏览工具和跨应用程序，用户生成的互联浏览器：（B）实验室研究如何潜在的选民浏览和决策的社会计算环境;以及（c）对小说，在至少三个美国选举周期中使用的社会化政治搜索/浏览工具。中心研究问题是如何接触和参与社交网络活动的影响信息寻求和决策的政治。一个重要的实际成果将是用于公民参与和政治讨论的搜索/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。该研究将有助于在数字政治领域的审议理论和工具的设计，用于暴露和导航的结构，网上政治对话。更广泛的影响：工具和理论开发从这个项目将提供背景下，扩大参与公民生活的机会，在21世纪世纪，从而有助于弥合数字鸿沟。 这项工作还将通过培训研究生和博士后研究人员而使教育受益。

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.