Procedures and methods for cross-community online deliberation

Abstract

In this paper I introduce a model of self-regulated mass online deliberation, and apply it to a context of crossborder deliberation involving translation of contributions between participating languages, and then to a context of crosscommunity online deliberation for dispute resolution, e.g. between opposing ethnic or religious communities. In such a cross-border or cross-community context, online deliberation should preferably progress as a sequence of segmented phases each followed by a combining phase. In a segmented phase, each community deliberates separately, and selects their best contributions for being presented to all other communities. Selection is made by using the proposed mechanism of mutual moderation and appraisal of contributions by participants themselves. In the subsequent combining phase, the selected contributions are translated (by volunteering or randomly selected participants among those who have specified appropriate language skills) and presented to target segments for further appraisal and commenting. My arguments in support of the proposed mutual moderation and appraisal procedures remain mostly speculative, as the whole subject of mass online self-regulatory deliberation still remains largely unexplored, and there exists no practical realisation of it .