Design and metrics of a 'democratic citizenship community' in support of deliberative decision-making

Abstract

The participation of citizens in government issues can bring to life the principles of democracy, making use also of the electronic channels. However, when the citizens are asked to participate in consultative and deliberative processes, they individually receive information from different communication media. Thus, it is not possible to verify whether the individuals have reached maturity in the issues discussed on the Web. The purpose of this paper is to show our proposal to evaluate the degree of maturity during the democratic decision-making process on the Web, engaging citizens by using a virtual community. The 'Democratic Citizenship Community' (DCC) was specified based on an investigation of a Government-Citizen Interaction Model, oriented toward discussion and voting. The Degree of Maturity Method (DMM), used to evaluate the DCC, is structured into levels: Immature, Poorly Mature, Mature and Sufficiently Mature, using a set of metrics to verify the effectiveness of the e-Participation process. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.