Register for December’s Tech Tuesday event on MetroQuest

Posted on December 3, 2013 by Sandy Heierbacher

I’m excited to tell you about this month’s Tech Tuesday event, which will be hosted by Dave Biggs, Co-Founder of MetroQuest, on Tuesday, December 17th, from 1-2pm Eastern (10-11am Pacific).

MetroQuest is a new organizational member of NCDD, so some of you may not yet be aware of their work. Dave was a keynote speaker at the recent IAP2-USA conference in Salt Lake, and MetroQuest public involvement software is recommended as a best practice by the APA, TRB, FWHA and other agencies.

Dave will be talking to us about what he has learned about best practices for online engagement, and will give us a demonstration of the MetroQuest software by walking us through several recent case studies. Register today to reserve your spot on this FREE Tech Tuesday webinar!

MetroQuest software enables the public to learn about your project and provide meaningful feedback using a variety of fun and visual screens. It’s easy to mix and match screens to accomplish the engagement goals for each phase of the project from identifying and ranking priorities, to rating scenarios or strategies, to adding comments on maps and much more. To ensure the broadest participation, MetroQuest can be accessed on the web or mobile devises, at touchscreen kiosks and in engaging town-hall style workshops.

MetroQuest is:

the most mature community outreach software available with over 16 years of award-winning projects and continuous refinement;
used successfully by leading consulting and public involvement firms including HNTB, Jacobs, URS, ICF, AECOM, Kimley-Horn, Kittelson, Michael Baker, Golder, CH2M Hill, WRT, Nelson Nygaard, Design Workshop, Consensus Inc, MIG, and many more;
used by hundreds of agencies in the largest urban areas (Atlanta, Chicago, LA, San Fran, Denver, DC) to the smallest towns and villages.

Theresa Gunn, Past President of IAP2-USA has said “MetroQuest is the first online tool I’ve seen that incorporates all of the different elements of a public engagement process into one program and does it well.”

If you’d like to join us on the 17th, sign up today at https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/6501680890695446017.

Tech Tuesday is a new initiative from NCDD focused on online technology. Many in our field are curious about how they can use online tools to support their engagement work, and many tool creators are excited to talk to this community about their innovations. These one-hour events, designed and run by the tool creators themselves, are meant to help practitioners get a better sense of the online engagement landscape and how they can take advantage of the myriad opportunities available to them.

Join me today in supporting the Participatory Budgeting Project

Posted on December 3, 2013 by Sandy Heierbacher

As a member the Participatory Budgeting Project’s advisory board, I wanted to invite you to join me today, on Giving Tuesday, in supporting a group that is doing amazing work bringing Participatory Budgeting (PB) to the U.S. PB is a process that empowers people to decide how tax dollars are spent in their communities. People come together to brainstorm ideas for how to improve their community, work with experts to turn these ideas into concrete proposals, and then vote to decide which proposals get funded. This revolutionary process has been used all over the world to decide how to spend over a billion dollars.

The Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP) makes this happen across North America, and I’m proud to serve on their Advisory Board. Since 2010, PBP has worked with partners in places like New York, Chicago, and California to engage 30,000 people in deciding on how to spend nearly $30 million in their communities. They’ve got a great video if you want to learn more. Or you can read about those who are experiencing the excitement of PB, such as Jenny Aguiar, one of the youth participants in the citywide process in Vallejo, CA:

“I came in for the free pizza … but I stayed because I saw an opportunity to make a change. Before this, I had little to no experience in working with my community, but I had always been interested….

There was a stronger sense of unity that has emerged from PB. Personally, it just opened my eyes to what it was like to actually do something that means something to people… I now know I have the ability to help not just this community, but many more.”

Real Power. Stronger Communities. Better Decisions. These are the results of participatory budgeting, but PBP needs your help to continue this work. Over 20 cities have recently approached them to set up participatory budgeting. There’s a big opportunity to take this movement to the next level and really transform government. Can you make a donation to them today?

By giving today, December 3rd, you can help make your contribution count even more. PBP’s Board and major donors have pledged to match all donations today up to $7,000, meaning that every dollar you give is doubled – give $10 and they receive $20, give $25 and they receive $50, or give $250 and they receive $500.

And when you give you’ll have the opportunity to truly get another taste of participatory budgeting – you’ll receive an email invitation to vote in the group’s own internal PB process, to help them decide how to spend the donations they receive in 2013.

So please, give generously today if you can!

Peter Levine on Making Public Participation Legal

Posted on December 2, 2013 by Roshan Bliss

This post is shared from the blog of supporting NCDD member and professor of Citizenship & Public Affairs in Boston, Dr. Peter Levine. Peter shares a humorous take on the not-so-funny state of public meetings, and highlights the NCDD-supported Making Participation Legal report. For more info about this important intitiative and how it was created, check out our write up on its release.

Making Public Participation Legal

This is pretty much how “public participation” looks when it takes the form of a meeting with officials at the head of the table defending their policies, and their fellow citizens lining up to speak:

The “Parks and Recreaton” satire hits so close to home because public forums usually use awful formats and methods. As Matt Leighninger writes:

The vast majority of public meetings are run according to a formula that hasn’t changed in decades: officials and other experts present, and citizens are given three-minute increments to either ask questions or make comments. There is very little interaction or deliberation. Turnout at most public meetings is very low – local officials often refer to the handful of people who typically show up as the “usual suspects.” But if the community has been gripped by a controversy, turnout is often high, and the three-minute commentaries can last long into the night. On most issues, the public is either angry or absent; either way, very little is accomplished (Making Public Participation Legal, p. 3).

One reason is the laws that allow or require public participation: they are poorly structured. The Working Group on Legal Frameworks for Public Participation has developed frameworks for better state and local laws. Their model legislation and other materials are presented in a new report, Making Public Participation Legal, available from the Deliberative Democracy Consortium (DDC).

You can find Peter’s original post here: http://peterlevine.ws/?p=12660.

“Are We There Yet?” Residents of Central Arkansas use online game to create roadmap for the future

Posted on November 22, 2013 by EngagingCities

This article first appeared on EngagingCities but we’d like to share it here with the NCDD community.

How do you get citizens to give feedback about their ideas for the community, while also educating them on the inherent repercussions of their preferences? How do you involve the public in your 30-year plan, while instilling an appreciation for how every decision affects the overall timeline and outcome?

You get them to play a game.

Playing a game – planning a future

The residents of Central Arkansas have been helping to shape their region’s future through a FlipSides game – an online interactive activity – that allows them to give feedback on topics such as transportation infrastructure, emerging trends, walkability, and funding decisions. Responsive infographics help players envision the effects their ideas would have on the completion timeline for each topic. Appropriately named “Are we there yet?”, this playful tool has provided valuable feedback to the decision-makers for the region’s planning effort, Imagine Central Arkansas.

Since it’s mid-June launch, hundreds of Arkansas residents have played “Are we there yet?”, both online and at events throughout the area. People were encouraged to access the game to let their voice be heard while learning more about the factors that influence the final plan. As an extra incentive, each player was registered in an iPad mini giveaway. The iPad was won by a Searcy resident, but the whole community will benefit from increased understanding of the give-and-take type of decision-making that is native to complex projects.

Real-time results

One of the most valuable features of the game is the immediate visual feedback players receive as they answer questions and define priorities. Not only do citizens get to choose how to achieve the regional vision, they get to experience in real-time the trade-offs that come with any decision or development.

As you proceed through the steps of the game, you move a slider or checkbox to indicate your opinion about a specific topic – for example, your level of support for policies that accommodate pedestrians and cyclists. If you indicate strong support, the timelines on the right will immediately show that based on your response, the completion of “Local Transit Goals” would be accomplished by the year 2046. If you had not supported the pedestrian policies, but instead supported investing in current transportation systems before creating new ones, the “Local Transit Goals” would not be accomplished until 2050. Each step of the game contains multiple options and layers of effects, all depending on one another, that demonstrate the complicated nature of a regional plan.

Distinguishing it from other popular engagement methods, the game’s focus goes beyond mere opinion-gathering. It requires players to think through the “flip sides” of each decision and to realize that every action will have impact on all other parts of the project. It puts the citizen briefly in the driver’s seat, making the decisions that planners must deal with every day. In short, “Are we there yet?” is more about HOW we get there than WHERE we are trying to go.

The next 30 years

Imagine Central Arkansas has provided “Are We There Yet?” as one of the last phases in their outreach strategy before drafting the final plan for the region. This means the choices and information in the game are more refined than during previous engagement efforts. Prior campaigns have included “Treasured Places”, where residents were encouraged to photograph, map, and digitally explore their favorite local places; and “Choose Your Future”, another digital activity that allowed people to prioritize about everything in their future, from parks to mobility to economy and beyond. In this latest outreach, residents are finally asked to try to balance their opinions with realities and challenges.

“Are we there yet?” is powered by FlipSides, an online platform that allows decision-makers to engage the public about specific trade-offs inherent to planning projects. While Imagine Central Arkansas has used the platform to focus on goals and timelines, FlipSides can be tailored to fit any project and provides planners with valuable feedback about public opinion and priorities.

As urban planners look for more relevant ways to engage their audience, many are turning to online tools, and games in particular. Arkansas has joined other cities in the experiment of playful public outreach, and the results have been positive. Perhaps the greatest benefit will be to the citizens who, in taking a moment to stop and think about the future of their community, will leave with a greater appreciation for the complexities of public planning.

Learning from NYC’s Engagement

Posted on November 21, 2013 by Roshan Bliss

In the last month, Dr. Will Friedman of Public Agenda, an NCDD organizational member, has written two great pieces sharing his reflections on public problem-solving in his native New York City that were too good not to share wanted to share.

In his first piece on civic inclusion, Will shared a number of inspiring examples of ways that New Yorkers from traditionally marginalized groups and backgrounds have engaged in addressing the issues in their communities. And his second piece on post-Hurricane Sandy engagement in NYC, he shares reflections on the need for public, collaborative problem solving as the city grapples with the changes it needs to make to become more resilient after such disasters, and it included some choice nuggets of insight, not only for New Yorkers, but for all of us working in public engagement.

On grappling with the challenges posed to communities by major climate events, he writes:

The challenges we face are unprecedented and involve not only rebuilding and renewing, but adapting and reinventing. We have options to choose from, including constructing a flood barrier, changing building codes, or limiting waterfront development.

These are only a few of our options, and none of them are easy. Choosing the fairest and most effective approach will take creativity and collaboration, and a high-functioning democratic process that builds authentic public will and support for bold action…

The task will require more than just smart designers, power brokers and public officials influencing and making calls on policy. A challenge at this level will take thousands of small efforts on the parts of individuals and communities. It will take a number of big ideas, things that people can’t do by themselves, and things that the government can’t do without the support of the citizenry. Above all, it will require real collaboration, not only among national, state and local authorities, but also among leaders and citizens.

Importantly, he notes that what will not work is if “business-as-usual” continues, but also acknowledges that we also aren’t ready to engage publics at the scale and depth that is needed:

The age of backroom powerbrokers making the big decisions for the little people is over. At the same time, the mechanisms for engaging citizens in productive consideration of, and participation in, solutions are not in place.

The solutions we need do, in fact, lie in building the “high-functioning” democratic processes that Will points to. And building such process, ones that are suited to the urgent but complex decisions facing our society, is a challenge that fields like ours must be taking on.

But how do we get there? Will has some suggestions:

We do, though, know some of the principles and practices that can make a real difference in helping leaders and citizens collaborate to overcome arguments and move toward sustainable solutions. These include:

Knowing when to include the public. The public feels more strongly about having a voice in some decisions more than others. Taking the time to understand which is which saves time and energy.

Presenting the practical choices. Residents need to understand the realistic choices the city faces in ways they can understand and relate to. In particular, they need to understand the practical pros, cons and tradeoffs of different solutions. It’s not enough to explain what these options are to citizens, they need to know what they mean for their own lives and for the life of their city. In practical terms that all residents can understand, what are the benefits, downsides, costs and unknowns?

Providing the time and space for stable judgment. People need opportunities to not only consider the choices, but to talk to people about them, to hear others talking about them, and to let them sink in and percolate with their values, concerns and interests. Well-designed community dialogues, online discussion groups and thoughtful television and radio discussions are some of the ways in which raw public opinion becomes more stable and responsible.

We can’t afford for the current fruitful conversations to bog down in wishful thinking or petty bickering. To move forward, we must face our choices, weigh their tradeoffs, and work together to shape a vision for New York’s future.

If we succeed, we’ll not only do great things for a great city, we can also become an example of working through disagreements to make progress on a tough public problem together.

He may be right that the lessons that come from New York City’s attempts to work through its public problems can be instructive for the rest of the country, and indeed, the world. Certainly, the Big Apple has its own quirks and nuances, but if residents and communities in a city as large and diverse as NYC can build effective, equitable, and creative processes that genuinely engage the public in solving shared problems, it bodes well for the rest of us and the futures of our communities.

New York has enormous challenges ahead of it. But with collaboration-minded leaders like Will and many other NCDDers hard at work, it is absolutely possible that the city’s experiments in big, new forms of deliberation and engagement will provide a model that folks in our field can build on and adapt successfully to our own local realities.

We will be pulling for them.

You can read Will’s full articles at PublicAgenda.org. Find his civic inclusion piece here, and his post-Sandy piece here.

First Youth Participatory Budgeting Process in the US

Posted on November 20, 2013 by Roshan Bliss

The Participatory Budgeting Project, an NCDD organizational member, recently shared a press release announcing an exciting new initiative they are part of in Boston. You can read the statement below, or find the original post on the PBP blog by clicking here. It also mentions that PBP is seeking a youth organizer for this project, so if you know people who can be positive allies to the young people of this initiative, please share the job announcement with them.

For me, it is crucial for our society that youth have chances to engage in real, consequential democratic processes early and often. Like Takoma Park, MD’s recent decision to decrease the voting age to 16, this initiative represents a step toward more meaningful youth engagement in our government. I’m encouraged.

Boston’s Youth to Decide How to Allocate $1 Million of City’s FY14 Budget

City Announces Partnership with The Participatory Budgeting Project, Search for Youth Organizer Underway

Mayor Thomas M. Menino today announced the City of Boston is partnering with non-profit organization The Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP) on the pilot year of the City’s youth participatory budgeting process. For the first time, the City of Boston has set aside $1 million for youth to allocate through a year-long budgeting process. Through participatory budgeting, young Bostonians will identify projects to improve their communities, vet those projects, consider trade-offs, and vote on how to spend the $1 million. The process will be a collaboration between PBP, the Mayor’s Youth Council and Boston Centers for Youth and Families.

“Our most important collection of talent lies in our young people,” Mayor Menino said. “It is so important to have our young people engaged in government, and to make sure their voices are heard when it comes to improving their neighborhoods. This process puts the power in their hands, and will show them what kind of impact they can make on our city.”

A search is underway for a youth organizer who will be responsible for engaging young Bostonians in the process and working closely with both PBP and City of Boston staff. Those interested in learning more about the Youth Organizer position should visit: www.idealist.org/view/job/DgD2ZBfCFz5P/.

Young residents, community-based organizations and youth advocates will come together in a Steering Committee to begin to discuss the design and execution of the process. The Mayor’s Youth Council has invited high school teens and youth advocates from across the city to an info session on December 10 at 5:45 p.m. in City Hall. Those who would like to RSVP for the session should email: YouthCouncil@boston.gov.

“Participatory budgeting is a real school of democracy. Young people across Boston will learn democracy by doing – and decide how to spend $1 million on concrete improvements to their communities. I’m excited to work with the City and other community partners to build this groundbreaking new model for youth engagement and empowerment,” said Josh Lerner, Executive Director of The Participatory Budgeting Project.

There is already a buzz in Boston about the “1 Million Dollar Question.” Mayor’s Youth Council representatives and allies from neighborhoods across the city have begun asking their peers how $1 million could be spent to make Boston an even better city for youth. “We are going to get a chance to identify items that are important to us, to have our voices heard, and to see projects that will benefit the city for a long time to come,” said Kayla Knight, a Roxbury Representative on the Mayor’s Youth Council.

In April, Mayor Menino presented his $2.6 billion Operating Budget for Fiscal Year 2014 and five year $1.8 billion Capital Plan, including $196 million in new FY 2014 project authorizations. The FY 2014 budget includes initiatives that keep Boston at the forefront of reinvention: changes at Boston Public Schools to increase access to quality, new housing to meet the needs of young professionals and middle-class families, and online learning for Boston’s neighborhoods. At the core of the budget is a desire to continue to build neighborhoods, provide residents an unparalleled quality of life, and support neighbors as they help one another.

Participatory budgeting originated in Brazil in 1989 and has been successful in U.S. cities including New York, Vallejo (CA), and Chicago. There are now more than 1,500 participatory budgets around the world, most at the city level. Participatory budgeting has also been used for counties, states, housing authorities, schools and school systems, universities, coalitions, and other public agencies. For more information on participatory budgeting, visit: www.participatorybudgeting.org.

More Responses to the launch of PB Boston:

“I am thrilled that the City of Boston has embraced a “PB” process for its youth. What better way to teach young people the value and importance of civic engagement than to give them real power over real money. Kudos to Boston for making PB a part of its budgetary process and putting its young people front and center in its implementation.” — Chicago Alderman Joe Moore, who launched the first participatory budgeting process in the US in 2009.

“It is great to have the City of Boston joining the Participatory Budgeting family. At its best, government is what we do together to strengthen our communities. We have seen young people in New York take this charge and embrace their citizenship through Participatory Budgeting.” — New York City Council Member Brad Lander, who worked with colleagues in Council to launch PB in NYC in 2011.

“Bringing participatory budgeting to Boston is in line with our city’s progressive history as hub for democratic innovation. It’s a new form of civic engagement that Mayor Menino has rightfully placed in the hands of our city’s young people to pilot. We look forward to working with Mayor-Elect Walsh to incorporate this effort into his broader vision for a more inclusive and engaged city.” — Aaron Tanaka, director of the Center for Economic Democracy and former executive director of the Boston Workers Alliance

“As governments everywhere devise new innovations to re-engage citizens, Boston’s Youth Participatory Budgeting initiative is an exciting innovation in participation and civic education that focuses on a set of people usually left out politics and government: young people. It will be exciting to see the proposals and projects that they develop over the coming year.” — Archon Fung, Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Citizenship at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

Announcing the new Penn State Democracy Medal

Posted on November 15, 2013 by Sandy Heierbacher

Starting this year, Penn State University’s Democracy Institute will be awarding a Democracy Medal for exceptional innovations that advance the design and practice of democracy. The medal comes with a $5,000 award and tremendous publicity for the recipient, who will accept the medal and give a speech in the Fall of 2014. The medal celebrates the best work being done to advance democracy in the United States or around the globe. This year’s competition focuses on practical innovations, such as new institutions, laws, technologies, or movements that advance democracy.

The first medal will be given in 2014 for the best innovation in the practice of democracy. Nominations will be accepted through December 10, 2013, and the awardee will be announced in the spring of 2014. The winner will give a talk at Penn State in September, 2014, when they also receive their medal and $5,000 award. Between the spring announcement of the winner and the on-campus event in the fall, the Institute will provide the recipient with editorial assistance toward completing a short (20-25 page) essay describing the innovation for a general audience. The Institute will publish the essay electronically, possibly in collaboration with an independent press, and make it available to the general public at a very low price (e.g., $1-2), along with a similarly-affordable audio version. These print and audio distillations of the innovation are designed to aid its diffusion.

We encourage NCDD members to nominate themselves or others for this award!!!

It is important to act quickly, as the nomination period last just one month this year. Nomination letters must be emailed by December 10, 2013 to democracyinst@psu.edu. Initial nomination letters are simply that, a one-to-two page letter that describes how the nominee’s work meets the criteria for this award and what distinguishes it from other work on democracy. Both self-nominations and nominations of others are welcomed. The call for nominations is described in detail at http://cdd.la.psu.edu/research/penn-state-democracy-medal.

The Pennsylvania State University Democracy Institute promotes rigorous scholarship and practical innovations to advance the democratic process in the United States and abroad. The Institute pursues this mission, in part, through supporting the work of the Center for Democratic Deliberation (CDD) and the Center for American Political Responsiveness (CAPR). The CDD studies and advances public deliberation, whereas CAPR attends to the relationship between the public’s priorities and the actions of elected bodies.

Group Decision Tip: Enforcement

Posted on November 14, 2013 by Craig Freshley

In principle, decisions without enforcement grow weak and eventually wither. When rules or policies are not enforced it causes confusion, resentment, and conflict. The word enforcement comes from a Latin word meaning strength. To enforce decisions is to strengthen them.

Practical Tip: Take preventative measures to ensure that members of your group understand the rules of your group. Honor the rules of your group. If you disagree with the rules: Follow them anyway, leave the group, or work in peaceful ways to change the rules.

When you see someone breaking group rules, try these steps:

1. Discuss with them what you saw. Don’t ignore it when you see practice out of sync with policy. Such a conversation may bring to light that they “simply didn’t know better,” or that they interpret the rule differently, or that a larger issue needs to be addressed. If that doesn’t work,

2. Point out the consequences of the violation. “When you do ___________, it affects others in the following ways: ___________.” If that doesn’t work,

3. Impose a penalty. Ideal penalties inflict just the right amount of hurt in order to tilt the scales toward compliance.

When rules are legitimately crafted through good group processes, it is okay to enforce them for the good of the group. Actually, it’s essential for the good of the group.

Webinar on Community Discussions & NIF Guides

Posted on November 12, 2013 by Roshan Bliss

Last week, the American Library Association (ALA) hosted a one-hour webinar titled Guides for Community Discussions: National Issues Forums (NIF) and Others designed to help public conveners find out more about issue books, videos, and other guides available to help them bring their communities together to talk in productive, civil, and interesting ways. The webinar focused specifically on the resources provided by our partners at the National Issues Forums Institute.

If you missed the live webinar, don’t worry! The recording is now available online, and you can find it by clicking here. You can still hear the great insights and information shared by presenters Carolyn Caywood, and Nancy Kranich, both from ALA’s Center for Civic Life, and Patty Dineen from the National Issues Forum Institute. They review and show examples of available discussion-starting materials, describe how these guides can support engaging library programs, and give examples of how librarians have used them in their communities.

This webinar was the fifth in a civic engagement series produced by Programming Librarian and is sponsored by the ALA Center for Civic Life. We encourage you to can find our more about the first four webinars at www.programminglibrarian.org/civic-engagement.html#.Ui9qXGRgZ38.

You can find out more about this webinar by checking out NIFI’s initial announcement of the webinar or its recent post about the recordings.

Moving the “Delibertainment” Conversation Forward

Posted on November 12, 2013 by Roshan Bliss

We were pleased as punch to see the Real Dialogues Project, one of the winners of the 2012 NCDD Catalyst Awards, reach an important milestone last week – they hosted their very first Google hangout discussion! We encourage you to check out their post and the short video about the conversation here.

We also wanted to share a related write up on an interesting article from the Journal for Public Deliberation on public engagement in news media. We are inspired to see growing amounts of discourse on this “deliberative television” or “delibertainment” model that Real Dialogues is pioneering. You can read the write up below, or you can find the original post by NCDD organizational member Tim Bonnemann on his Intellitics blog.

Deliberative Television

The latest edition of the Journal for Public Deliberation features an interesting article by Ashley Muddiman and Matthew R. Meier that discusses how using citizen panels might be applied to “refocus news outlets on their fundamentally democratic functions and foster a more engaged and deliberative citizenry”: Deliberative Television: Encouraging Substantive, Citizen-Driven News.

Abstract:

With Americans’ confidence in the news media dwindling, the quality of programming declining, and audiences turning elsewhere, the American news media is at a crossroads. We argue that news outlets should consider a new form of deliberation-based programming for local news coverage as a means of responding to these problems. As a basis for the programming, we build on public journalism (Rosen & Merritt, 1994) and deliberative citizen panels (Knobloch, Gastil, Reedy, & Walsh, 2013). By engaging citizens in the production of news, media outlets not only stand to gain viewers by increasing the quality of their issue coverage, but they also could secure their claim as a public institution providing a valuable public good. We urge media outlets to consider turning to citizen panels to determine which issues are salient and to engage in structured deliberations about those issues, which can be captured and built into content packages for use in news programming. In so doing, news outlets can help activate viewers by positioning them not as passive consumers but as engaged citizens prepared for public deliberation.

The authors note:

We believe that the problems facing local news can be overcome by changing the content of local news programming. In particular, we suggest news content be built on three components: emphasizing state and local issues, engaging citizens in the production process, and maintaining audiences by relying on an alternative format.

They outline the following general process:

Host a so-called priority conference, whereby randomly selected citizens decide what issues to cover
Host a “citizen jury” (using the 2010 Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review pilot project as a guide), whereby participants learn about the issues, deliberate with each other and form a range of opinions.
“Soft news” coverage of steps 1 and 2
Various options for further content implementation:

Develop content into a weekly stand-alone program with each episode focusing on a new issue
Create regularly occurring segments for broadcast in traditional news programs
Substantive web- or app-based interactivity

With regard to interactivity, I would specifically add the many opportunities digital engagement has to offer when it comes to turning viewers into participants. With the right setup, viewers could be brought into the deliberative process and that, in turn, could become part of the programming, thus creating a virtuous cycle of deliberative television!

In related news, a recent report by AmericaSpeaks also talks about new ways in which the news media might support citizen engagement and collaborative governance: Integrating News Media, Citizen Engagement, and Digital Platforms Towards Democratic Ends (PDF)

The article’s section titled “What can news media do?” (page 3) outlines four functions that news media might support to “bring greater citizen engagement and connection to decision-making and governance”. The authors suggest that “news media will need to find ways to heighten the entertainment value of the presentation” and bring up the idea of “a reality-TV show where popular participants work together to understand and react to current news events.” The authors further suggest that “second screen polling technologies can be used in conjunction with [...] the aforementioned reality-TV show” as a way to give citizens the chance to participate in decision-making in order to help them “fully understand the complexities of policy making”.

The report concludes:

Many of us in the world of deliberative democracy and citizen engagement have sought ways to institutionalize stronger links between citizens and decision makers within government. While those efforts should continue, building infrastructure and capacity for more informed, citizen-based decision-making and action within other sectors is needed. The news media and the evolution of digital platforms and engagement tools provide a powerful opportunity for this.

News media and deliberative democracy share an understanding of the importance of strengthening the connections between citizens and government to promote a healthy democracy. Though they have viewed this connection in different ways and employed very different implementation methods, both need to learn from each other, shift their approaches, and create something new together to accomplish the shared goal of engaging ever larger numbers of people, especially from the political center, in governance and strengthening our democracy.

Both the JPD article and the AmericaSpeaks report fit in perfectly with the work we’ve been doing as part of the Real Dialogues project. We’re prototyping on a shoestring budget, of course, but if things go well we should be able to validate a first few key pieces of the bigger delibertainment puzzle.

Stay tuned!

Find Tim’s original post here: www.intellitics.com/blog/2013/11/07/deliberative-television.

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