Focus and aims

This Core Activity structures the research design used for deliberative experimentation to be undertaken in the Make it Happen stage after the setup and testing of the M4D2 platform.
 It contributes in particular to the general objective of designing and testing whether the alleged transformative power of deliberation can be used to address some of the weaknesses of liberal democracies, reconcile citizens with political representatives at different levels and reduce their estrangement from the European project via innovative deliberative experimentation.

Deliberative experimentation will involve about 1,300 citizens from 10 different cities of 5 different EU countries (i.e., France, Germany, Ireland, Italy and Poland) with the purpose of testing the hypotheses developed in WP4 and assessing the potential of deliberative innovations on the key conceptual dimensions addressed by the project. Since virtual deliberation has been proved to be a promising and cost-effective way of engaging citizens, stimulating them to confront with other viewpoints and strengthen their commitment to the common good, the general objective of this Core Activity is to test whether the alleged transformative power of deliberation can be used to address some of the weaknesses of liberal democracies, reconcile citizens with political representatives at different levels and reduce their estrangement from the European project.

In order to test whether initial participation in a transnational deliberative setting influences people’s attachment to the EU, their sense of identity and views about the appropriate level to handle the issue under debate, participants will follow two different deliberative patterns. Half of the deliberative groups will start their interactions at the local level (participants and politicians from the same city), will then move to the national level (participants from two different cities of the same country and national politicians) and will conclude deliberative experimentation at the European level (participants from different EU countries and European politicians). The second half of the groups will follow the opposite pattern, meeting other European citizens first, joining other national subgroups with similar characteristics in a second stage and concluding their deliberative experience at the local level. This procedure will also provide a way to test whether in-group identification and considerations based on ‘particularistic’ interests are less likely to be observed when citizens start the deliberative experience as a part of a broader European public and not as informal representatives of their municipalities.

Following each deliberative round, participants and non-participants from the ten cities will be administered common questions in regard to their attitudes towards the EU and the issues under discussion. This strategy will allow us to compare their positions at different stages of the deliberation process, and ascertain whether participants’ attitudes and policy preferences, including their support for EU-wide solutions, were somehow shaped by contextual factors or events that are independent of deliberation.

Over the course of the experimentation, participants will have the opportunity to interact in synchronous and asynchronous ways, in moderated and unmoderated settings. Using an experimental design with random assignment of participants to treatment (deliberative) and control (non-deliberative) groups, it will be possible to assess how different deliberative settings impact on the quality of deliberation, the outcomes produced, and the way people engage in public discussions during and after the deliberative experience.

Method

The deliberative experimentation entails a series of steps as follows, mostly repeated at all levels of interaction, namely local, national and European:

• Recruit participants from a representative sample of individuals residing in two large/medium-sized European cities;
• Conduct a survey of national representative samples to assess possible differences between local and national residents’ predispositions, attitudes and policy preferences;
• Randomly assign participants recruited through the online survey to discussion groups on the basis of their position and attitude strength on the issues under discussion (polarised groups, cross-sectional groups, like-minded groups, cross-sectional groups in social media environment). Two additional groups will also be organised with people who are likely to be excluded from any form of virtual deliberation because part of the digital disadvantaged group. Deliberation will then take place according to the research design for 4 months from the local to the European deliberative stage, or vice versa. This period includes one month of unmoderated interaction following the last phase of asynchronous deliberation;
• Coordinate moderation, including the recruitment of moderators, the setting up of a moderation room, the recruitment of disadvantaged people and their training and the moderation during the event. 
  Provide participants with balanced information on the topics under discussion in the form of documents, infographics and videos prepared by the EuComMeet research team;
• Administer a pre-deliberation survey to participants, with the purpose of ascertaining the effect of the information material on the participant’s initial stances;
• Manage the synchronous and asynchronous deliberation in the EuComMeet deliberative spaces;
• Administer a post-deliberation survey to participants, containing most of the questions asked in the pre-deliberation survey and some evaluation questions about the quality of the event.

Who’s in the first line

All the Universities involved in the Project will undertake this activity under the lead of University of Siena, with the contribution of Mission Publiques.

Meet our Team Members!

Expected outcomes

D3.1: Dataset of preliminary survey to local citizens – Questionnaire (in all languages), codebook (in English) and dataset of the preliminary survey administered to local citizens. 

D3.2: Dataset of preliminary survey to national citizens – Questionnaire (in all languages), codebook (in English) and dataset of the preliminary survey administered to national citizens. 

D3.3: Briefing material – Briefing material (in all languages) made available to participants in the different deliberative sessions. 

D3.4: Dataset of pre-deliberation surveys -
Questionnaire (in all languages), codebook (in English) and dataset of pre-deliberation surveys. 

D3.5: Dataset on deliberation – Timestamps, sequences of interaction and transcripts of participants’ comments in synchronous and asynchronous interactions. 

D3.6: Dataset of post-deliberation surveys – Questionnaire (in all languages), codebook (in English) and dataset of post-deliberation surveys. 

Most of these outcomes will be made publicly available. Find them here once ready!