Context Matters! Looking Beyond Platform Structure to Understand Citizen Deliberation on Brazil'sPortal e‐Democracia

Abstract

This article analyzes the participatory design of the Portal e‐Democracia, sponsored by the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies. More specifically, it examines how citizens took part in the online discussions about the Brazilian laws on the Budget Guidelines, the 2013 Annual Budgeting, and the Political Reform debates of 2013 and 2015. We hypothesize that discussion forums with identical structures can nevertheless host debates with very diverse characteristics. The methodological approach considers a quantitative content analysis, using descriptive statistics and correspondence analysis to examine how the forums’ features were related to their structure, in terms of user identification, openness and freedom of speech, agenda, and moderation. We also examine the quality of public debate in these arenas by considering the interactions with regard behaviors of justification, reciprocity, and respect. We find that, even though the space for debating was structurally the same, every forum had some particular characteristics concerning the discussions. This leads us to consider the issue at stake and the sociopolitical context as variables that are more important for characterizing the debate than structure per se.

Citizen involvement in public policy: Does it matter how much is at stake?

“…Such statements reflect a conception of citizens as rational actors in the sense that “[t]heir political involvement increases with the potential stakes of policy decisions for their personal utility” (Hoppe, 2010, p. 201). This constitutes a potential explanation as to why similarly designed DIs produce varying rates of participation (Mitozo & Marques, 2019): those DIs might simply vary in terms of how much they allow citizens to influence outcomes they care about.…”

“…Prior research has focused mostly on the procedural design features of DIs, ranging from the type of recruitment strategy to the chosen duration of the event and, for example, the way in which decisions are reached (Fung, 2006; Neblo et al, 2010; Ryfe, 2002). Yet, studies show that even innovations that use very similar designs can display markedly different participation rates (Mitozo & Marques, 2019). In this article, I therefore examine an alternative explanation for low participation rates: it is because there is often not enough at stake for citizens.…”

Kommunikationsformen und Deliberationsdynamik

“…Die empirischen Befunde ergeben jedoch ein sehr wider sprüchliches Bild (Janssen & Kies, 2005;Papacharissi, 2004;Postmes et al, 2001). Zudem ist der Grad der Anonymität keine einfach zu manipu lierende Variable: Nicht nur das Design der Plattform, sondern auch das Verhalten der Nutzerinnen und Nutzer, welches sich nur teilweise "gestal ten" lässt, kann entscheidend sein (J. L. Jensen, 2003;Mitozo & Marques, 2019). Jensen (2003) 2013) heben die Bedeutung ver schiedener Arten von Informationen in partizipativen Prozessen hervor.…”

The success of e‐participation. Learning lessons from Decide Madrid and We asked, You said, We did in Scotland

“…Two decades of experience have shown the critical importance of linking e‐participation initiatives with formal institutional processes (i.e., the institutionalization of e‐participation), for people to see that participation has an impact (Steinbach et al, 2019), although there is limited research on how to achieve this. Most previous research refers to a single e‐participation initiative, usually at local level (e.g., Barros & Sampaio, 2016; Mitozo & Marques, 2019; Sæbø et al, 2011; Sjoberg et al, 2017; Toots, 2019), or has covered pilot experiences in the initial stages of implementation, making it difficult to analyze long‐term impacts and sustainability (Macintosh & Whyte, 2008). Some comparative e‐participation studies have focused on specific features of different platforms, their rollout, or their contribution to specific policy domains (Borge et al, 2022; Hovik et al, 2022; Randma‐Liiv, 2022, 2023; Smith & Martín, 2021; Tseng, 2022a, 2022b).…”

“…Networked individualism (Castells, 2001; Rainie & Wellman, 2012) suggests that citizens are easily involved in e‐participation initiatives, although sustaining commitment is more difficult than in offline processes (Pina et al, 2017; Yetano & Royo, 2017). Design features of the e‐participation tools can also affect citizens’ willingness to participate and their perceived usefulness (Mitozo & Marques, 2019; Tseng, 2022a). These features include possibilities for discussion, interaction with politicians and experts, information availability, the aim of participation, identity verification, anonymous participation, and accessibility (Christensen, 2021).…”