Reflexive Technology for Collaborative Environments

Abstract

In the field of e-democracy, what is mostly emphasized is the ability to create a neutral place for deliberative discussions and voting, where the view is that technology can enable a stronger democracy. Most important, focus is on the nation state, not on democracy on a global level. In a democracy initiative on a global scale one cannot only deal with the questions of what should be discussed and in what way. First of all the question about representation has to be answered: who the participants are that are part of democracy. In order to create technologies that support democracy initiatives at a global level, it is not enough to create methods to set the agenda and framework for discussion, but it is also important to have a well thought out idea about how those who participate will be selected and on what grounds. In a micro-global perspective, in the collaborative network, this is about creating incentives that support a democratic culture, an awareness of how to go about involving everyone in the conversation. With this in mind we have developed a discussion platform that uses a radical democracy as a benchmark. Based on democratic meeting techniques and social media and grounded in a participatory design process, basic principles for a groupware are formulated containing typical democratic features such as voting and discussion, but taking user activities and reactions into account and clarifying the individuals activities in relation to the group. The result of the design process is a Wiki-like prototype where the participants reputations are measured and transformed through a dynamic voting process. This can clarify the representativeness of the discussion at stake, showing whose positions and interests are put forward, providing a method for measuring the quality of online discussion.