10,000 random citizens in online debate experiment

A German pilot project seeks to involve 10,000 randomly-selected German citizens in political debate and policy-making. Launched this month, it is one of the largest programmes of its kind ever undertaken.

Large scale online deliberation is not entirely new – it has been extensively used in the UK over the last eight years, including for the Sustainable Development Commission’s 600-strong ‘Advisory Panel’ and various consultations by Government and business. 

Some public consultation and engagement companies specialise in online-processes. Questions remain, however, about how online deliberation compares to deliberation conducted in a face-to-face context. The universities of Manchester and Southampton used a random control trial approach to test the quality of online deliberations. The results of this project raised questions around whether or not deliberation, in the theoretical sense, was possible in an online environment.

Another important issue in online engagement is the issue of access. Currently 10 million people in the UK are still offline. Digital inclusion is therefore a necessary dimension of ensuring the success of projects like this one. A number of Government initiatives currently seek to address this and include: the Government’s digital inclusion strategy, the Digital Inclusion Champion, and RaceOnline2012.

As budgets tighten, online dialogue and deliberation may be seen as a more cost-effective option for engaging large numbers of the public. It will therefore be interesting to see how this German pilot plays out and whether it will give new insights into what does and doesn’t work in online dialogue.