The Library as a Community Center (Connections 2016)

Posted on March 30, 2018 by Keiva Hummel

The seven-page article, “The Library as a Community Center” by Svetlana Gorokhova was published in Kettering Foundation‘s 2016 edition of their annual newsletter, Connections – Kettering’s Multinational Research. In this fifth article of the newsletter, Gorokhova discusses the shift that has been happening in Russia for the last twenty years of utilizing the library system as hubs for deliberative engagement and the way this has affected the Russian people. Below is an excerpt from the article and Connections 2016 is available for free PDF download on Kettering’s site here.

From the article…

My first experience with deliberating was in 1996 at the Kettering Foundation, and it felt like magic. I, like many Russian people, was skeptical about all forms of civic engagement because in the Soviet state you knew that public forums or meetings were always “pro forma” events. I was disillusioned and doubtful about whether people’s opinions would be taken seriously and be heard. When I got to the forum, I thought it would only be talk, talk, talk and not about doing. I did not think about talking as if it was something that is valuable.

I came to this forum about the environment, and thought, “How does this relate to my life? I’m living through a very difficult time in my country and am worried about what to eat and how to earn some money to maintain my family. Why should I think about environmental problems?” Then I realized that the issue is not something abstract. People were listening to me and trying to understand my point of view, and I was trying to understand their points of view. After that forum, my perspective changed. It wasn’t a drastic change, but I had a new perspective about the problem and saw the value of talking together. I had a feeling of elation and hope for the future. The magic came with the realization that you can do something and that you are being heard.

Deliberating takes effort. You are working on yourself with other people, and they’re working on themselves. There is a problem that gives us something in common. So my definition of deliberation is hard work that results in a joyful union of different points of view—a shared commitment to solving the problem for everybody. It sounds altruistic because in life, typically, you rarely find emotional support from others, but to be in a forum and to work out a decision—to go through a deliberative process—there is something very valuable for everyone. It was a great surprise for me. Wow! It’s difficult to explain the effect because a deliberative forum is something that must be experienced—and more than once. I invite people in Russia to come to forums so they can feel this magic of change in themselves and in their perception of the problem.

My work in deliberative democracy has taught me that when a seed is planted, you begin to think differently. I began to think that people need deliberative practices as much as food, entertainment, love, education. It’s a basic right. We had been deprived of this kind of activity in the past, and now we need to build it up. When I explain the purpose of the Library as a Community Center project in my country, I say, “People need to exercise their right to be heard, to deliver their opinion, and to participate in decision making concerning their life. People need to come together, they need to see that they are being heard, and they need to have numerous experiences like this. It needs to be a normal way of living, just as when you are hungry, you eat. If you’re a person, you need to be responsible for collective life. You need to be involved.” I wasn’t aware of how important this is before I experienced it. Now I know it is important for your inner freedom as well as your outer freedom.

The library is a perfect site for this kind of work. By definition, libraries are a public place. Historically libraries have been the place to go for information, for addressing difficult situations, for finding a job. Libraries are neutral public places with no affiliation with one religion or with one ethnic group—they are for everybody. In the 21st century, libraries are looking for new ways of playing a more active role in communities. Libraries are looking for ways to respond to people’s needs. People need to be heard. People need to be reassured that they can have their own say in what is happening in the country. Not only through voting, but also through talking about the problems they have and trying to understand what lies behind these problems. I can’t even name another place, another site in the local community, that would be more appropriate for this kind of activity than the library. Where else would you go? There is nowhere else in Russia that offers this kind of public space suitable for the intellectually hard work of deliberation.

This is just an excerpt, you can read the rest of the article by clicking here.

About Kettering Foundation and Connections
The Kettering Foundation is a nonprofit operating foundation rooted in the American tradition of cooperative research. Kettering’s primary research question is, what does it take to make democracy work as it should? Kettering’s research is distinctive because it is conducted from the perspective of citizens and focuses on what people can do collectively to address problems affecting their lives, their communities, and their nation.

Each issue of this annual newsletter focuses on a particular area of Kettering’s research. The 2016 issue of Connections, edited by KF program officer and senior writer/editor Melinda Gilmore; KF senior associate Philip Stewart; and KF vice president, secretary, and general counsel Maxine Thomas, focuses on our year-long review of our multinational research.

Follow on Twitter: @KetteringFdn

Resource Link: www.kettering.org/sites/default/files/periodical-article/Gorokhova-Connections-2016.pdf

The Mediated Town Halls of the Eastern Cape (Connections 2016)

Posted on March 28, 2018 by Keiva Hummel

The eight-page article, “The Mediated Town Halls of the Eastern Cape” by Rod Amner was published in Kettering Foundation‘s 2016 edition of their annual newsletter, Connections – Kettering’s Multinational Research. In the fourth article of the newsletter, Amner discusses the ways in which public engagement has been transforming in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, focusing on the ways in which journalism outlets have facilitated engagement spaces with the community to better amplify the voices of the people. Below is an excerpt from the article and Connections 2016 is available for free PDF download on Kettering’s site here.

From the article…

The town hall meeting is a simple, old-fashioned idea: an informal public space in which community members come together to discuss issues, to voice opinions, or to engage with public figures.

But, despite 22 years of democracy, it is a relative rarity in South Africa.

So, it is significant that in recent years, a number of “legacy” and “emerging” community news organizations in the Eastern Cape province of the country have hosted scores of town hall meetings in a range of formats, all ostensibly aimed at re-engineering in some way relationships with and between the people they formerly knew as their audiences.

It is also surprising because the Eastern Cape does not immediately suggest itself as a promising incubator of journalistic, civic, or any other kind of innovation. It is South Africa’s poorest province—beset with stagnating industries in the urban areas and the frustrating persistence of sub-subsistence agriculture in most of the countryside. Just 26 percent of its citizens have jobs, and its schools produce the worst educational outcomes in the country— and by most benchmarks, the entire world.

On the other hand, despite its apparent marginality, this province has always been an important fulcrum of South African politics. It is a traditional stronghold of the African National Congress (ANC), producing the bulk of its struggle icons (Mandela, Tambo, Biko, and Hani) and nurturing decades of peaceful, mass-based protest.

So, when the hitherto unassailable ANC lost political control of Nelson Mandela Bay (formerly Port Elizabeth) to the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) in the August 3, 2016, local government elections, the resulting shock waves convulsed the region’s post-apartheid political landscape.

But, many of the region’s journalists were not shocked. Mainstream media houses like Nelson Mandela Bay’s Eastern Province Herald and Buffalo City’s Daily Dispatch, along with community outlets like Grahamstown’s Grocott’s Mail, Skawara News in the rural hamlet of Cofimvaba, and radio stations like ZQKM, had for years been convening public platforms for engaging citizens in political discourse. Many of their journalists had therefore been in unusually close and deep dialogue with local citizens and communities and had seen the writing on the wall. The Kettering Foundation has a longstanding interest in how journalists go about the work of reporting in a way that encourages greater citizen engagement in the democratic politics of a given community. The examples in this article reveal how journalism practice and community agency can be transformed by a citizen-centered approach to reporting.

This is just an excerpt, you can read the rest of the article by clicking here.

Follow on Twitter: @KetteringFdn

Resource Link: www.kettering.org/sites/default/files/periodical-article/Amner-Connections-2016.pdf

From Skepticism to Engagement: Building Deliberative Faith among Israeli College Students (Connections 2016)

Posted on March 26, 2018 by Keiva Hummel

The seven-page article, “From Skepticism to Engagement: Building Deliberative Faith among Israeli College Students” by Idit Manosevitch was published in Kettering Foundation‘s 2016 edition of their annual newsletter, Connections – Kettering’s Multinational Research. In the third article of the newsletter, Manosevitch shares the story of when he initiated the first student-led deliberation conference in Israel and the profound effect it had on the students, staff, and school community. Below is an excerpt from the article and Connections 2016 is available for free PDF download on Kettering’s site here.

From the article…

One of the spaces that seems appropriate for educating people for citizenship is academia. As an educational arena with a public mission and young citizens as key players, it may—and some would argue ought—to be a hub of civic education for deliberative public skills and values. This captures the essence of deliberative pedagogy, an area of ongoing research at the Kettering Foundation.

In what follows, I tell the story of what inspired me to get involved in deliberative pedagogy and share some insights from experimentation with Israeli students in recent years.

On January 16, 2013, six days prior to the Israeli general elections, I initiated the first student-led deliberative issue conference at the School of Communication in Netanya Academic College in Israel. The event was tagged “Students say NO to the horse race: Elections Conference 2013.”

The conference was a peak event in an intensive three-month process with my undergraduate seminar students, which combined theory and practice. Theoretical readings and discussions served as a baseline for understanding the essence of deliberative theory and the role of public deliberation in democratic societies. The hands-on process of preparing for and facilitating a deliberative, student-led issue conference complemented the theory and helped students internalize the idea of public deliberation, the norms and values associated with it, and the challenges of pursuing such ideals in practice.

Faculty had cautioned me not to expect more than 50 participants because students—as I should well know—are uninterested, unengaged, and unwilling to make extra efforts beyond the mandatory degree requirements. My students were also wary, and rightly so. A week prior to our deliberative election conference, a political panel took place in the same conference hall, with representatives from 12 different parties running for office. The event was stopped in the middle due to a political dispute, in which the audience began shouting and booing one of the representatives. It was a very disappointing and embarrassing experience for the college community. My students were concerned about moderating group discussions—What if participants don’t talk? What if they get violent and we cannot control them? Some suggested we hire security guards.

But the concerns turned out to be unwarranted. The conference outcomes exceeded everyone’s expectations—students and faculty alike. We had an unexpected turnout of 127 student participants, which surpassed my goal of 100 students. After the opening plenary, students broke up into 10 groups that engaged in lively discussions of the selected election issues. Faculty members were startled to see students actively participating in civilized discussions led by their fellow classmates. So were the student-moderators. I cannot help smiling when I recall that beautiful moment when I stood humbled in the middle of the conference hall immediately after the end of the discussions, and numerous students approached me, excited to share their reflections. Group moderators were thrilled about their experience, and first-year students were anxious to find out how they could sign up to serve as moderators next year. Before I knew it, a new tradition was born.

This is just an excerpt, you can read the rest of the article by clicking here.

Follow on Twitter: @KetteringFdn

Resource Link: www.kettering.org/sites/default/files/periodical-article/Manosevitch-Connections-2016.pdf

Deliberation: Touching Lives across National Boundaries (Connections 2016)

Posted on March 23, 2018 by Keiva Hummel

The six-page article, “Deliberation: Touching Lives across National Boundaries” by Maura Casey was published in Kettering Foundation‘s 2016 edition of their annual newsletter, Connections – Kettering’s Multinational Research. In the second article of the newsletter, Casey discusses the 2016 convening of the Multinational Symposium, held by Kettering, in which participants shared the various approaches occurring in their countries to better engage youth in democratic processes. Below is an excerpt from the article and Connections 2016 is available for free PDF download on Kettering’s site here.

From the article…

In March, people from around the world gathered at the Kettering Foundation to explore the approaches that groups from Tajikistan, Germany, India, Brazil, Russia, and the United States are taking to civic education and learning—approaches that range from rap music to deliberative forums. The Multinational Symposium is an annual series of meetings organized by Kettering. Each year, the symposium has a different focus. In 2016, the symposium explored, how do young people learn to engage in the practices of citizenship in a democracy? What can be learned from experiments in using deliberative practices in the civic education of young people?

The approaches are all different. Germany is using music and meetings with public officials to engage youth; in Russia, libraries are the neutral ground for young people to flock to forums; in Brazil, the Steve Biko Institute helps people raise their voices and take pride in their racial backgrounds. But the goals are the same: to develop young people into citizens.

Citizens all have at least one thing in common: no matter what nation they come from, sooner or later they gather to ask one another, “What should we do?” The Kettering Foundation has long researched what comes after that question: how people overcome differences to deliberate together and make good decisions.

Inevitably, sometimes are more turbulent and challenging than others. That’s the situation those from Brazil say they face.

Widespread protests over economic and political upheaval pose a special challenge to teachers in Brazil. “Democracy seems shaken due to recent events,” said Telma Gimenez, who also stated that even wearing certain colors of clothing can be interpreted as a political act, revealing allegiances for or against the government. “People are fighting. The question is, how can schools go against the current atmosphere to reach students? We help teachers take advantage of the educational moment.

For Gimenez, that means convening deliberative forums using issue guides on topics like bullying not only to explore the nuances of the issue, but also to allow students to relate their own personal experiences. “We use [the forums and guides] to show the complexities and get away from the confrontational aspects of an issue.”

“Brazil became a democracy in the mid-1980s after a dictatorship lasting decades,” said Andreia Lisboa De Sousa, who works with youth at the Steve Biko Institute. “We forget that; the political culture is not very new.” The Biko Institute has worked for 22 years to teach the skills needed for citizenship to black and native students. Approximately 6,000 students have attended the Citizenship and Black Consciousness course at the institute. Others have undergone leadership training there. “Brazil is seen as a model of racial democracy, but when you see the material conditions of these people, we don’t have equality,” she said.

Stefanie Olbrys, a social studies teacher in the Windsor Central School District outside of Binghamton, New York, said that when she was a student, she did not view her voice as an instrument for change. Now that she is an educator, she is determined to give her students a different experience. “Every day, I began to say to my students, ‘What do you think?’” In her classes, the students began to deliberate every day and became so engaged in learning that their marks improved and they began to hand in assignments more consistently. Other teachers and administrators also noticed the changes. Now, many more teachers in her school district are using deliberation in their classrooms. “Our state education department sees this as valuable and wants teachers to do this all over the state,” Olbrys said. “It will help students become life-long learners.” One state education department official visited her classroom and asked one of her students, “What are you learning?” The student replied, “I’m learning how to be a leader.”

This is just an excerpt, you can read the rest of the article by clicking here.

Follow on Twitter: @KetteringFdn

Resource Link: www.kettering.org/sites/default/files/periodical-article/Casey-Connections-2016.pdf

Citizens in a Global Society (Connections 2016)

Posted on March 21, 2018 by Keiva Hummel

The eight-page article, “Citizens in a Global Society” by David Mathews was published in Kettering Foundation‘s 2016 edition of their annual newsletter, Connections – Kettering’s Multinational Research. This is the initial article in the newsletter that introduces the theme for the whole publication which centers around Kettering’s multi-national work. Below is an excerpt from the article and Connections 2016 is available for free PDF download on Kettering’s site here.

From the article…

The foundation’s multinational research falls into two broad categories or groups. In the first category, the foundation collaborates with nongovernmental organizations outside the United States that are interested in what Kettering is studying about how people do or don’t become engaged as citizens who exercise sound judgment, the work citizens do in communities to solve problems and educate the young, and productive ways that people can engage large institutions, both governmental and nongovernmental, as those institutions try to engage them. This research is the way the foundation organizes its study of democracy.

At the heart of the word democracy is the demos, or “citizenry,” and Kettering refers to the ways citizens go about their work as “democratic practices.” (Kratos, or “power,” is the other root of democracy.) The democratic practices that Kettering studies require self-responsibility, which can’t be exported or imported. So the focus of our research is on the United States, not other countries. Yet our studies have been greatly enriched by what the foundation has learned from nongovernmental organizations in some 100 other countries spread across the globe.

Organizations in other countries interested in this research come to summer learning exchanges called the Deliberative Democracy Institutes (DDIs) to share their experiences with one another and the foundation. Some of the participants come back to enter Kettering’s multinational residency program, which now has a large alumni group. These alumni often return as faculty for the institutes. Kettering’s second category of multinational research is on citizen diplomacy, and it centers on three countries—Russia, China, and Cuba. The governments in these countries have or have had serious differences with the government in the United States; communications have broken down or been problematic.

The premise of the studies, as the late Hal Saunders, Kettering’s longtime director of international affairs, explained to the New York Times, is that we live in a time when governments face a growing number of problems they cannot deal with alone, so citizens outside government have to fill that void. Citizen diplomacy is not intended to replace or compete with government diplomacy but to supplement it. And from Kettering’s perspective, this research gives the foundation a way to study dangerous conflicts, which are, unfortunately, an inescapable part of politics.

This is just an excerpt, you can read the rest of the article by clicking here.

Follow on Twitter: @KetteringFdn

Resource Link: www.kettering.org/sites/default/files/periodical-article/Mathews-2016.pdf

Canadian School of Peacebuilding

Posted on March 16, 2018 by NCDD Community

The Canadian School of Peacebuilding (CSOP), an institute of Canadian Mennonite University, offers a selection of five-day courses each June. Courses can be taken for professional or personal development or for academic credit.

The CSOP is designed for anyone between the ages of 20 and 90 who is interested in peace work, including not-for-profit staff and interns, activists and peace educators, community leaders, religious leaders, teachers and professors, students (undergraduate or graduate), and government officials. All participants need to be fluent in English. The school is designed to be an environment characterized by educating for peace and justice, learning through thinking and doing, generous hospitality and radical dialogue, and the modeling of invitational community. The CSOP is for peacebuilders from all faiths, countries and identity groups.

Information about registration, costs, meals, and lodging is available on their website, as well as course descriptions, instructor bios, videos, pictures and stories from past years of CSOP, and peace resources. You can follow them on Twitter, and find them on Facebook and Instagram. Inquiries about the school, especially regarding registration can be sent to their main email address: csop@cmu.ca.

Resource Link: http://csop.cmu.ca/

This resource was submitted by Megan Klassen-Wiebe, Partnership and Public Engagement Coordinator of Canadian School of Peacebuilding via the Add-a-Resource form.

Free NIFI Issue Guides and Save the Date for APV 2018

Posted on March 5, 2018 by Keiva Hummel

The National Issues Forums Institute, an NCDD member org, recently sent out an announcement via their newsletter offering free copies of their Coming to America issue guide on immigration, if requested by April 2nd. These guides are to be used for deliberation and then the results are given back to NIFI for analysis, so that they can share at the upcoming event, A Public Voice 2018 (#APV2018) on May 8th. APV is an opportunity for NIFI to talk with policymakers and their staffers about early feedback from the deliberative forums on immigration and the role of deliberation in democracy. You can learn more about this offer below and sign up to receive updates from the NIFI newsletter here.

FREE Materials Offer!

It’s not too late to request your free issue materials

Coming to America: Who Should We Welcome, What Should We Do?

Please join us and help your community be heard.

In partnership with the Kettering Foundation, the National Issues Forums Institute (NIFI) is making the digital version of the new issue guide about immigration, Coming to America, FREE to download.

Also, for a limited time, FREE printed copies are available to forum conveners who sign up – REQUEST YOURS NOW.

All you have to do is plan to hold a forum on or before April 2, 2018 and agree to make sure participant questionnaires (also provided) get back to us for analysis and reporting.

About the issue guide
The immigration issue affects virtually every American, directly or indirectly, often in deeply personal ways. This guide is designed to help people deliberate together about how we should approach the issue. The three options presented in the issue guide reflect different ways of understanding what is at stake and force us to think about what matters most to us when we face difficult problems that involve all of us and that do not have perfect solutions.

How Information from Forums Will Be Used
Scheduled for May 9, 2018, this year’s A Public Voice event in Washington, DC, will present early insights from National Issues Forums (NIF) immigration forums around the country, giving policymakers the chance to learn more about citizen deliberation and its role in our democracy.

In early 2019, the Kettering Foundation and National Issues Forums Institute will publish a final report on the 2018 NIF immigration forums, followed by briefings for individual elected officials, Capitol Hill staffers, and other policymakers.

We hope you’ll join us in this important work by signing up for your free Coming to America issue guides by clicking here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/2018APV

You can find the original announcement of this on NIFI’s newsletter, which you can sign up for here.

Review of Deliberation across Deeply Divided Societies: Transformative Moments

Posted on February 14, 2018 by Keiva Hummel

The 5-page review written by Nancy A. Vamvakas of Deliberation across Deeply Divided Societies: Transformative Moments (2017), by Jürg Steiner, Maria Clara Jaramillo, Rousiley C. M. Maia, and Simona Mameli, was published in the Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 13: Iss. 1. In the book, the authors analyze group discussions from three distinct conflicts in Colombia, Bosnia/Herzegovina, and Brazil; and discuss the various approaches to deliberation in each area. Read an excerpt of the review below and find the PDF available for download on the Journal of Public Deliberation site here.

From the review…

Indeed, this book is the result of a very ambitious undertaking; Jürg Steiner et. al. have compiled and analyzed group discussions among ex-guerrillas and exparamilitaries in Colombia, among Serbs and Bosniaks in Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and among poor community residents and police officers in Brazilian favelas.

The discussions were facilitated by passive moderators who posed a general question about peace, but did not intervene; facilitators did not ask further questions and did not ask participants to speak up. In the case of Colombia, the groups were asked: what are your recommendations so that Colombia can have a future of peace, where people from the political left and the political right, guerrillas and paramilitaries, can live peacefully together? (p. 24). The Bosnian groups were asked to formulate recommendations for a better future in BosniaHerzegovina (p. 31). Finally, in Brazil, discussants were given the following question: How is it possible to create a culture of peace between poor community residents and the local police? (p. 36).

Steiner et. al. advance the on-going debate between those deliberative theorists who stress a purely rational approach and those who adopt a softer focus which incorporates finer threads of emotions. The authors argue that “deliberation means that all participants can freely express their views; that arguments are well justified, which can also be done with well-chosen personal stories or humor; that the meaning of the common good is debated; that arguments of others are respected; and that the force of the better argument prevails, although deliberation does not necessarily have to lead to consensus” (p. 2). They are in agreement with deliberative theorists such as Laura Black who see the great potential in storytelling and the limitations of the rationalist approach. Personal stories, as presented here are examples of “non-rational elements” (86) that have added to the deliberation model. Steiner et. al. argue that Jürgen Habermas set “very high standards of how rational justification of arguments should look” (p. 106). The book proposes a less demanding test for rationality; less stringent criteria; the bar is lowered. Context matters, who the actors are matters, and “standards of rationality should not be universal” (p. 106). The authors argue that given the “low level of formal schooling,” the discussions were “hard tests” (p. 86) for rational arguments.

The authors argue that there is a complexity to deliberation, hence, analysis must take into account deliberation over the course of a discussion. They code deliberation to see how it evolves and whether it fluctuates; for these ups and downs of group dynamics they coin the very innovative concept of Deliberative Transformative Moments (DTM). The units of analysis are the individual speech acts. Speech acts were coded using four categories: the speech act stays at a high level of deliberation; the speech act transforms the level of deliberation from high to low (flow of discussion is disrupted); the speech act stays at a low level of deliberation; the speech act transforms the level of deliberation from low to high (participants add new aspects to a topic or formulate a new topic). The reader has the luxury of being able to follow these discussions on the book’s website (www.ipw.unibe.ch/content/research/deliberation) and is able to see first hand the speech acts; and can also see the justifications given for the authors’ coding as to whether deliberation was high, low, shifted up or down. Hence, the authors are able to argue that their research process is “fully transparent and therefore open for replications” (p. 6).

Download the full review from the Journal of Public Deliberation here.

About the Journal of Public Deliberation
Spearheaded by the Deliberative Democracy Consortium in collaboration with the International Association of Public Participation, the principal objective of Journal of Public Deliberation (JPD) is to synthesize the research, opinion, projects, experiments and experiences of academics and practitioners in the emerging multi-disciplinary field and political movement called by some “deliberative democracy.” By doing this, we hope to help improve future research endeavors in this field and aid in the transformation of modern representative democracy into a more citizen friendly form.

Follow the Deliberative Democracy Consortium on Twitter: @delibdem

Follow the International Association of Public Participation [US] on Twitter: @IAP2USA

Resource Link: www.publicdeliberation.net/jpd/vol13/iss1/art9

The prism of the public sphere: The COP15 coverage by the Brazilian media system

Posted on February 12, 2018 by Keiva Hummel

The 30-page article, The prism of the public sphere: The COP15 coverage by the Brazilian media system (2017), was written by Diógenes Lycarião and Antal Wozniak, and published in the Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 13: Iss. 1. In the article, the authors provide an analysis of the contributions media provides for the public to understand and engage with deliberative and governmental processes, as exemplified in the Brazilian coverage of the 15th UN’s Climate Change Conference (COP15). Read an excerpt of the article below and find the PDF available for download on the Journal of Public Deliberation site here.

From the introduction…

In studies of political communication, news media are often regarded as a locus for what Page (1996) calls “mediated deliberation” (for an up-to-date overview, see Rinke, 2016), i.e. the sphere in which “communication professionals convey information, values, and diverse points of view to the mass public, which then deliberates vicariously through the give-and-take and to-and-fro of these various professionals” (Gastil, 2008, p. 50). Based on this paradigm, increasingly sophisticated methods and analyses have been developed to assess the “deliberativeness” of media content (cf. Wessler & Rinke, 2014; van der Wurff, Verhoeven, & Gadellaa, 2013).

This strand of literature offers valuable contributions to comprehending in a more nuanced way the different conditions under which the quality of deliberation in the media system might improve or decrease. But in our understanding of the news media’s role in the division of labor in modern societies’ “deliberative systems” (cf. Mansbridge, 1999; Parkinson & Mansbridge, 2012) a number of questions remain unanswered, especially when it comes to problems posed by increasing social complexity (cf. Bohman, 2007). This is because while most studies concerned with mediated deliberation have been focusing on deliberativeness of media content, its mediation dimension (or systemic function) has received less scholarly attention.

This seems to be problematic since mediation between different discursive arenas and perspectives is crucial for making the concept of a deliberative system — and its core principle of deliberative division of labor — empirically plausible. This becomes clear when one takes into account one of the main obstructions that increasing social complexity brings to the normative idea of public deliberation. Such an increasing complexity poses a formidable challenge to holding specialized discourses and institutions accountable to the public sphere (cf. Bohman, 2000, 2007; Christiano, 2012; Fischer, 2009) which is one of the crucial normative ideals of public deliberation.

This paper aims to contribute to closing this research gap by conducting an empirical case study in which we operationalize a systemic view of mediated deliberation. Our emphasis is on the mass media’s functional dimension of mediation in the deliberative division of labor within a deliberative system. We investigate how distinct contributions to the deliberative systems – namely the provision of publicity and intelligibility – are articulated via outputs from different media types. In doing so, this study aims to shed light on how the media system contributes to an articulation and exchange of ideas between civil society and administrative powers in contexts of highly complex governance processes.

In order to explore this articulation, we propose the idea of mediation as an epistemic operator (i.e., a truth-tracker between different discursive arenas) of the deliberative system. By using this operator in terms of its communicative power, it becomes possible to interpret modern democracies and their decision-making processes in a way that identifies a consistent and systematic bridging of the increasing gap between the administrative power and the public sphere.

The main theoretical purpose of this work is to explore how journalistic practices might build this kind of bridge, specifically in situations characterized by high regulatory complexity, such as those triggered by international or transnational governance regimes. These regimes are paradigmatic in this regard since political debate and negotiations in these situations adopt a language far removed from the language of everyday life. Thus, they are disconnected from the lifeworlds of most citizens. In this context, we argue that the media system is able – to some extent – to facilitate the communicative exchange between international governance regimes and a national citizenry. This bridge consists of a preliminary mediation that journalistic practices produce of the social complexity involved in these decision-making processes.

In order to assess this preliminary mediation and, therefore, a relevant dimension of the mass media’s role in the deliberative system, we conducted a case study about the Brazilian coverage of the 15th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15), which took place in December 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark. For this, all fact-based articles (n=86) about the COP15 published or broadcast in two central media outlets of the Brazilian media system were selected. One is the nightly TV newscast Jornal Nacional (JN) and the other the quality daily newspaper Folha de São Paulo (FSP). We selected these two central instances of the Brazilian media system in order to test the reasoning that each one of these media outlets would fulfill normative criteria (or principles) of a deliberative system to varying degrees. Despite both being central elements of the Brazilian media system, they are also rather distinct in terms of modality, presentation style, and target audience, to name but a few.

We selected these different media types because of their distinct features, assuming they would fulfill different deliberative functions. So it’s not a case of trying to find differences in similar cases, but to uncover how different modalities, presentation styles, target audiences, etc. lead to distinct contributions within a deliberative system. With the purpose of controlling the difference regarding the relevance of opinion-oriented articles (which is much more pronounced in quality newspapers), we analyzed only fact-based articles and developed a multimodal content analysis suitable both for newspaper articles and for TV newscasts.

In the following chapter, we explicate the idea of mediation as an epistemic operator of the deliberative system. We then present our case study and explain the reasons why the COP15 and the selected media outlets are adequate for assessing the mass media’s role in the deliberative system in view of the problem posed by increasing social and regulatory complexity. The third section explains the operationalization of the normative principles of publicity and intelligibility for a content analysis of the selected news material. After presenting and discussing our research results, we indicate how conceiving the media system both as a prism of the public sphere and as a gateway to the informative system improves our understanding of the mass media’s role in the deliberative system. We also reflect about the systemic adequacy of our empirical observation by highlighting media systems’ role in actually involving citizens with different levels of political knowledge in an active engagement of comprehension and interpretation of complex governance processes. In order to improve this engagement, we also devote a section to point out implications for media professionals and public officials. Finally, we outline how future research may improve our understanding about how journalistic mediation works differently depending on the media outlet and the distinct normative principles of deliberative democracy in question.

Download the full article from the Journal of Public Deliberation here.

Follow the Deliberative Democracy Consortium on Twitter: @delibdem

Follow the International Association of Public Participation [US] on Twitter: @IAP2USA

Resource Link: www.publicdeliberation.net/jpd/vol13/iss1/art8/

Reason, Deliberation, and Democracy in Divided Societies: Perspectives from the Jafari School of Thought

Posted on February 7, 2018 by Keiva Hummel

The 25-page article, Reason, Deliberation, and Democracy in Divided Societies: Perspectives from the Jafari School of Thought (2017), was written by Nicolas Pirsoul, and published in the Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 13: Iss. 1. In the article, Pirsoul talks about how the Jafari school of thought promotes deliberative democracy and provides an opportunity to promote peace in a deeply divided society. Read an excerpt of the article below and find the PDF available for download on the Journal of Public Deliberation site here.

From the introduction…

Jensen Sass and John Dryzek suggest that practices of deliberative democracy are universal political practices and happen in unlikely socio-cultural settings such as the one marked by the “Islamic Revival” in Egypt. They argue that “culture meets deliberation where publicly accessible meanings, symbols, and norms shape the way political actors engage one another in discourse” (Sass & Dryzek, 2014, p. 21). Here, I take their argument one step further and focus on these symbols and norms. Instead of focusing my attention on the deliberative process arising from civil society’s interpretations and disagreements over the theological and social significance of Islamic texts in a contemporary environment, I turn my attention towards the motivational basis for deliberative practices as they appear from within Islamic sources themselves, namely the Koran and Ahadith (sing. Hadith).

More specifically, I will focus my attention on Shia narrations embedded within the Jafari school of thought, also known as the Twelver Shias. There are three main reasons for narrowing down my investigation to that particular group. First, Twelver Shias represent a minority in the West (as migrants) and in the Islamic World (they represent 10 to 15 percent of the total Muslim population) (Nasr, 2007, p. 34). Second, they have suffered and still suffer from harsh persecutions at the hands of Sunni rulers ever since the Ummah split shortly after Muhammad’s death. These first two reasons are relevant if one wants to explore the significance of deliberative democracy in deeply divided societies. Indeed, as I will show, a deliberative system allows previously marginalized minorities to participate in the political decisionmaking process as equal members and to guarantee the survival of their identities (Wheatley, 2003). I will also argue that because of its emphasis on reasonable exchanges of ideas, deliberative democracy fosters feelings of mutual respect between groups while other models, such as consociational democracy, tend to erect walls between communities and reinforce the problem it is supposed to solve. Third, ever since the “occultation” of the Twelfth Imam (section I), Jafaris have experienced a crisis of political legitimacy as no infallible leader, and therefore no legitimate authority, is available to lead the Islamic community. This third factor is, I argue, conducive to political creativity (section II) and is the cornerstone of this article. By political creativity I mean the capacity to develop an indigenous political model based on Islamic principles relevant to a modern pluralist life.

This article therefore represents an attempt to assert the possibility of developing democratic indigenous political models rooted within Shia theology and history which depart radically from the political model developed by Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran. This attempt is therefore in line with the political theories developed by clerics, such as Mohsen Kadivar (2011), who argue from a theological point of view that Islam, democracy and pluralism are not antithetical.

More specifically, I want to show that Shia Islam does not need to be liberalized or democratized from the outside, but instead that Shia theology itself offers a strong basis for deliberative practices. I therefore highlight certain aspects of deliberative democracy and Shia theology to show affinities between the two sets of ideas without trying to force one particular model onto the other since part of the deliberative process is to let the political actors decide for themselves what political arrangements they want to adopt. This article therefore aims to create a dialogue between two sets of traditions.

Download the full article from the Journal of Public Deliberation here.

Follow the Deliberative Democracy Consortium on Twitter: @delibdem

Follow the International Association of Public Participation [US] on Twitter: @IAP2USA

Resource Link: www.publicdeliberation.net/jpd/vol13/iss1/art6/

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Reason, Deliberation, and Democracy in Divided Societies: Perspectives from the Jafari School of Thought