Michael's Paper
From Internet: Knowledge and Community
Since my goal for my education at The Evergreen State College is to develop the knowledge and skills that will make me effective in the field of community organizing, I am very interested in research related to building group intelligence through deliberative processes. My research into this field led me across an article by John Gastil prepared for the University of Washington Workshop on Communication and Civic Engagement on May 19th to 20th in 2000. The article is a wonderful encapsulation of research conducted between 1983 and 2000 that details the role and outcome of face to face deliberation in democratic societies. Not only does the body of information show that participation in these type of processes increases citizens' sense of efficacy within the democratic system and encourage future participation, the evidence also shows that face to face deliberation "allowed the rapid development of group cohesion" (Gastil 3).
Given the evidence presented by John Gastil, I was very surprised at the conclusion he came to calling for further research into computer-mediated forms of public deliberation as a desirable alternative to face-to-face deliberation. Gastil chose to heavily couch his encapsulation of research into public deliberation methods with his view that society has little patience for face-to-face deliberation when technology and the internet offer a more convenient and cost effective method for engaging the public in deliberation (Gastil 2). This attitude of technological triumphalism over traditional public processes illustrates the development and changes in thinking about technology over the ten years since Gastil's article was prepared. It also seems to cloud the author's interpretation of the data he gathered to the point where he sets up a very weak premiss justifying the pursuit of technological alternatives to public deliberation over traditional face-to-face methods.
Gastil suggests:
- Face to face deliberation increases citizen participation in democratic processes.
- Participation in deliberation is recognized as an essential part of democracy.
- The deliberative process should be more widely implemented in society to strengthen our democracy.
- Implementing public deliberation should be carried out in the most convenient and cost effective way possible.
- Online deliberation is less costly and time consuming than face to face deliberation.
/.\ Research should be conducted to see if online deliberation can be as effective in increasing citizen participation as face to face deliberation is.
The fourth premiss seems to be the weakest link in Gastil's reasoning. Waiting to implement any type of important system or process, especially one that is at the heart of legitimizing our democratic system of government, doesn't seem prudent only to assure that the process is developed to be the most cost effective and convenient that it can be. Suggesting this is like saying that you shouldn't begin training your dog until you first determine the system and method of training that will allow your dog to understand you easily and without too much difficulty. Obviously you can not know how your dog will respond to a training methodology until you begin implementing it. Just as you would not be likely to change training methods if you had achieved significant improvements in your dog's obedience and behavior, it doesn't make sense for Gastil to suggest that an alternative to face-to-face deliberation should be developed when the evidence he incorporates into his article seems to show that face-to-face deliberations are well suited to the political arena.
Ten years since Gastil wrote, "... a broad range of democratic theorists recognize deliberation as a central feature of the democratic process, but only a minority argue that such deliberation must take place among citizens in a face-to-face setting. Advocates of face-to-face citizen deliberation will remain the minority in the debate on deliberation unless they can make a convincing argument for its necessity" (2), there have been many independent successful efforts to build and deploy the very processes he seemed to think society would quickly find quaint and ineffective. Instead of technology and the internet replacing face-to-face deliberation with computer-mediated forms of civic engagement, many of the independently developed processes use technology to better organize and cary out the face-to-face interactions and make a wider spectrum of the public aware of opportunities to participate.
Some of the current efforts I'm aware of that focus on strengthening face-to-face deliberation and an ethic of civic participation in decision making are Wisdom Councils (http://www.co-intelligence.org/P-wisdomcouncil.html), Transition Towns (http://www.transitionnetwork.org), The World Cafe (http://www.theworldcafe.com/), and the Coffee Party movement (http://www.coffeepartyusa.com). The Coffee Party and Transition Towns are probably the most obvious example of technology and the internet facilitating large widespread groups of citizens in deliberation. But, neither of these internet based movements replace the vitally important process that occurs when people meet and engage one another face to face with purely computer-mediated deliberation.
In another class I am taking this quarter, Internet: Knowledge and Community, we have been exploring the role that technological advances play in strengthening and weakening communities. Several of the authors we have read from, including Stephen Coleman and Jay Blumler in "The Internet and Democratic Citizenship," present a political philosophy that views citizen participation in deliberation as an essential component to validating our democratic system of government (15-19). Somehow the ethic of ground-up, citizen based, implementation of these deliberative processes exemplified by the efforts I've already mentioned has not yet made it into academic circles. Academia still seems to be plagued by assumptions Gastil made in 2000 about government being the only way widespread public deliberation could take place and act as a legitimizing force within our representative democracy. Although Gastil's article did not state the explicit need for institutionalized implementation of deliberation, his concern with cost, efficiency, and convenience, strongly suggest he saw public institutions as the most likely sector change would come from.
All of the evidence I have been able to review and the dramatic current events example of the Egyptian population peacefully removing a highly entrenched leader, largely through the process of citizen led deliberation and with the help of technology's organizing power, demonstrates that democracy its self is in danger if people are unable to engage in deliberation collectively and have their work validated by the government. Every individual or network of citizens that foster civic deliberation is an example of the deep rooted sense of justice that compels people to seek out ways that their government can validate its rule over their daily lives. My own technological optimism helps me to see society as standing at a very exciting turning point where independent collectives of ordinary citizens will achieve critical mass in their efforts to build networks of deliberation and the amazing affordances technology provides for organizing massive groups of people will create some sort of 100th monkey phenomenon forcing the entrenched interests of politicians and lobbyists to accept that they can not continue governing without consideration for the deliberations of the governed.
Sources Cited: Coleman, Stephen and Jay Blumler. The Internet and Democratic Citizenship. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Gastil, John. "Is Face-to-Face Citizen Deliberation a Luxury or a Necessity for Democracy?" Center for Communication and Civic Engagement February 14th, 2011 <http://depts.washington.edu/ccce/events/gastil.htm>.
