Carpini, Michael X. Delli. Talking together: Public deliberation and political participation in america. 1 February 2010.
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Carpini, Michael X. Delli. Talking together: Public deliberation and political participation in america. 1 February 2010.
Contents |
Public deliberation
Gastil
- Problem analysis
- Criteria specification
- Evaluation
Chambers
- Participants willing to revise preferences in light of discussion, new information, and claims by others
- "Reasoned", "informed"
- Goal-oriented, solutions, legitimated
Fishkin's "incompleteness"
- When arguments by one participant go unanswered by others
Discursive participation
- Citizens talking about
- Discussing
- Debating
- Deliberating
- Formal, informal discourse about "public issues"
- Where are the boundaries to "public issues"?
- Goals?
- May be solution-oriented
- May be consensus-building
- Need not lead to conventional political/civic act
- "Talk" is political in many forms
- As much a text to a friend as a public hearing
Why does this matter?
We assume
- Less territorial
- More faith in democratic process
- Empowering
- More engaged/active in civics
- More tolerant
- Etc, etc
Counter argument
- Too infrequent, uncommon
- Little more than "enclave", "gated democracy"
- "Usual suspects"
- Contributes to rather than challenging biases
- Idle talk disconnected from "formal apparatus of power, authority"
- Lacking skills, opportunities to deliberate effectively
- Might lead to greater division
- Manipulable by power
National survey of discursive participation
- National RDD phone survey
- Center for Research & Analysis at the Roper Center
- Land-lines only?
- February-March 2003
- 1001 respondents 18+
- Oversample of 500+ respondents who had attended a forum in last year
- National rep sample of U.S. Adults, (n = 1501)
- National rep sample of deliberators, (N = 756)
- Self-reported participation based on prompt, examples
- Questions concerned the "last forum attended"
- Guarding against exaggeration, lying: the following questions regarding attendence would have been difficult to answer
Initial findings
- 25% had attended a formal meeting f2f, 4% online
- 68% talkers, 24% internet talkers
- 47% persuade on an issue
- 31% persuade on a vote
Demographic breakdowns indicate that
- There is some bias but
- "Extreme" concern re: elites-only doesn't hold up
Deliberative experience
Attendence at formal meetings
- Frequently invited by friends, family
- Significance of social network
- Among non-attendees (84.3%) reported "never having been asked"!
- Further more, reasons for not going tended to be more often scheduling than disinterest
Why attend?
- Tended to be community/duty
- Runner-up, social opportunity/obligation
- (Note: self-reporting bias)
Where was the meeting?
- Tended to be school or church
- Upended expectation that it would be in a home
Who was there?
- In nearly every case, attendee knew at least a few of the other people at the meaning
- Fewer than 2% knew "none"
What kind of meeting?
- 81.1% were run by a formal facilitator (attempting "neutrality")
- Less frequently included an "expert" (~60%)
- Less frequently included representatives of certain stakes (~63%)
- Roughly 2/3 (~66.7%) received written material
- Most people participating to some extent
Outcome?
- 93% said they agreed with the outcome of the meeting
- ~60% said they would be very likely to attend another similar mtg
Q&A
What makes talk "public"?
- e.g. email, txt?
Could "public" talk be sponsored by "private" actors?
- e.g. Facebook privacy deliberation?
- Public comments regarding Google?
- YouTube video testimonial?
- Hybrid spaces?
Town Hall media spectacles?
- Where did they come from?
- Aberrant events? Or aberrant representations?
- Who were the participants? Sponsors?
- How do we parse out "grassroots"/"astroturf"?
- Questions of authenticity?
- Is a paycheck the hard boundary?
- Were the events misrepresented?
- Either thinking people presented as screamers?
- Or screaming people presented as thinkers?
References
- Gastil, 2000
- Gutman
- Chambers, 2003
- Habermas
- Dewey
- Fishkin, 1995
- Mendelberg, 2002
- JS Mill
- Sanders, 1997 (counter argument)
