SoCS: Geodeliberation: Enabling Democratic Decision-Making in Local Communities Through Place-Based Deliberative Dialogues

该项目旨在发现支持社区地理空间决策背景下的地理审议所需的新知识。地理审议是指（在当地社区内）对复杂和有争议的地理定义问题进行民主审议，涉及使用地理信息和在线、异步审议技术。这项研究解决了两个关键的知识缺口。一是在进行在线异步地理讨论时缺乏对人类信息和交互行为的理解，以及支持社区规模的复杂地理空间问题讨论而不是持续参与的方法挑战。在理想的公众参与水平与目前社会技术解决办法所能支持的实际参与水平之间存在着更大的差距。为了解决这些差距，本研究采用了民族志指导的参与式研究方法：(1)确定利用地理审议赋予社区权力的机会和障碍；(2)研究可视化计算方法，使人类参与和促进地理审议过程。这项研究将有助于地理审议科学的基础，包括对关键过程的理解和一套用于地理审议的社会和视觉计算支持的设计技术。它将侧重于与个人经验有关的问题叙述，综合不同的地理规划观点和问题的意义，以及发展公众判断和相互理解和集体行动的共同基础。这些研究活动围绕着一个原型——GeoDeliberator进行整合。该方法将结合来自三个领域的方法：视觉表示和界面的认知动机设计；社区协商话语和决策模式；积极促进大规模地理审议，以提高一致性和有效性。该研究涉及三种更广泛的影响。首先，该项目将展示利用信息技术改善社区层面公民参与的潜力。第二，对地方政府进行社会技术支持的设计研究，为地方政府提供具体模式。第三，本项目将培养一代具有在民主决策实践中应用社会技术解决方案的意识和职业潜力的本科生和研究生。

This project seeks to discover new knowledge required to support geodeliberation in community geospatial decision-making contexts. Geodeliberation refers to democratic deliberation (within local communities) on complex and controversial geographically-defined problems and involves the use of geographical information and online, asynchronous deliberative technologies. This research addresses two key knowledge gaps. One is the lack of understanding about human information and interaction behavior while engaging online asynchronous geodeliberation, and the methodological challenges of supporting community-scale deliberation of complex geospatial problems over sustained engagements. A more formidable gap is between the desirable level of public involvement and the practical level of participation that can be supported by the current social-technical solutions. To address these gaps, the research applies an ethnographically-guided participatory research approach to: (1) identify opportunities and barriers in using geodeliberation to empower communities; and (2) investigate visual-computational methods to enable human participation and facilitation of geodeliberation processes. This research will contribute to the foundations of a science of geodeliberation, including both an understanding of key processes and a set of design techniques for social and visual-computational support of geodeliberation. It will focus on issue-related narratives about personal experiences, sensemaking with respect to synthesizing disparate geo-planning views and issues, and the development of public judgment and common ground for mutual understanding and collective action. These research activities are integrated around a prototype - GeoDeliberator. The approach will incorporate methods from three domains: cognitively-motivated design of visual representations and interfaces; models of deliberative discourse and decision-making in communities; and active facilitation of large-scale geodeliberation towards better coherence and effectiveness. The research addresses broader impacts of three kinds. First, this project will demonstrate the potential of using information technology to improve civic engagement in community-level. Second, the design research investigation of socio-technical support for geodeliberation will provide a concrete model for local governments across the nation. Third, this project will prepare a generation of undergraduate and graduate students with consciousness and career potentials in applying social-technical solutions in the practice of democratic decision-making.