Focus and aims

Addressing the issue of polarisation at the micro level that leads to societal polarisation and threatens democracies, the main objective of this Core Activity is to examine further how public deliberation could be used to depolarise societies and polities. 

By expanding previous investigations also encompassing automated moderators, thus exploiting both the platform to be developed within the EUComMeet project and the tool for automated moderator being developed by the Stanford University, this Core Activity will create scientific added value regarding deliberative democracy, like-mindedness and polarisation, as well as policy-implications for local and national governments and the EU. 

With a view at testing the external validity of the potential of deliberative norms and moderation in hindering group polarisation in like-minded contexts, a series of controlled experiments will be conducted in order to examine further how organised citizen deliberation can potentially alleviate polarisation in like-minded groups. This will be done firstly in different countries, then extending the test to online deliberation with the attempt to compare human moderation with a newly developed automated moderator.

Method

More in detail, the following steps are foreseen:

• Design controlled experiments with automated moderator based on both previous research and the results emerging from the Lessons Learned phase;
• Design of controlled experiments to be embedded in the citizens’ surveys in the “Make it happen stage” to disentangle the importance of identity politics for the polarisation of societies;
• Statistically analysing both the two types of controlled experiments; 
• Analyse the results from the previous phases and propose accordingly some scenarios for developing new deliberative protocols to address polarisation.

Who’s in the first line

Åbo Akademy University will lead this activity, with the contribution of the University of Stuttgart and University of Siena

Meet our Team Members!

Expected outcomes

D5.1: Literature review on polarisation and deliberation – Report reviewing the main literature on polarisation and deliberation, on which grounding hypotheses. 

D5.2: Report on experiments with automated moderator – The report will concentrate on comparing how well the automated moderator compares with a human moderator. This knowledge can be used when implementing automated moderators for public deliberation and should be useful for all levels of government. 

D5.3: Report on experiments with known opinion identity – This report will concentrate on the findings of public deliberation in like-minded groups where we prime the fact that the participants think alike to start with. These groups are compared with like-minded groups whose participants are not told that they think alike about the issue at hand. Based on the findings, this can be useful when organising public deliberation or other similar discussions e.g. in culturally, socially or economically homogeneous areas, which are not ideal for deliberation per se. 

D5.4: Proposal for new protocols on polarisation – Report on deliberation and polarisation, including pragmatic proposals, which will be directed to a broad public sphere (officials, politicians, activists and interested citizens).

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