Project

Back to overview

Understanding the Process of Deliberation: The Role of Facilitators, Content Themes, and Discursive Networks

Applicant Baccaro Lucio
Number 143210
Funding scheme Project funding (Div. I-III)
Research institution Département de Sociologie Faculté des Sciences de la Société Université de Genève
Institution of higher education University of Geneva - GE
Main discipline Sociology
Start/End 01.11.2012 - 31.10.2014
Approved amount 172'874.00
Show all

All Disciplines (2)

Discipline
Sociology
Political science

Keywords (4)

Deliberation; Foreigners; Voting Rights; Experimental Studies

Lay Summary (English)

Lead
Lay summary
This project is a continuation of SNF project no. 100017_131941, “Deliberation, Discourse Quality and Attitude Change: A Proposal for a Field Experiment," which seeks  to understand whether deliberation affects citizens' preference concerning the extension of political rights to foreigners.  We will test experimentally the effects of different kinds of facilitation on deliberation outcomes. To this end, we will compare a format in which the facilitator invites participants to take a stance and justify it, with a format in which the facilitator invites participants to reflect on the issue before taking a stance, and with a format in which the facilitator does not encourage taking a stance but does not invite reflection either. We hypothesize that deliberation impacts preferences by favouring reflection on the issue at stake and that premature position-taking tends to freeze initial preferences.  If these hypotheses are corroborated empirically, we should see significant differences among the three experimental conditions.  In addition, we will investigate the dynamics of group deliberation by using the tools of content analysis and network analysis. We will code the textual corpus of debate transcripts at our disposal thematically and conduct a content analysis to quantify the relative prevalence of different themes in different groups and the correlation between theme prevalence and group and individual outcomes. In addition, we will systematically map the way participants interact with one another in debate through network analysis, to investigate both the determinants of participants' centrality in discourse networks and whether it is associated with particular individual and group preferences. We are persuaded that the proposed extensions to the ongoing research project will make important contributions to understanding the mechanisms by which deliberation affects individual and group outcomes.
Direct link to Lay Summary Last update: 21.02.2013

Responsible applicant and co-applicants

Employees

Publications

Publication
Small Differences that Matter: The Impact of Discussion Modalities on Deliberative Outcomes
Baccaro Lucio, Bächtiger André, DEVILLE MARION (2014), Small Differences that Matter: The Impact of Discussion Modalities on Deliberative Outcomes, in British Journal of Political Science, 16.

Scientific events

Active participation

Title Type of contribution Title of article or contribution Date Place Persons involved
Séminaire de recherche Statistiques en sciences sociales et démographie, Université de Genève Individual talk "Statut relatif dans un groupe de débat expérimental et comportement d'inclusion-exclusion relatif à l'extension des droits politiques des étrangers : construction des variables et modèles de régression multiple" 25.09.2014 Geneve, Switzerland Deville Marion;
3e Rencontres R Talk given at a conference 'A spatial network approach for measuring the differentiation between content and relational dynamics in the political debate.' 26.06.2014 Monpellier, France Deville Marion;
4th Annual General Conference of the European Political Science Association Talk given at a conference 'A spatial network approach for measuring the differentiation between content and relational dynamics in the political debate.' 20.06.2014 Edinburgh, Scotland, Great Britain and Northern Ireland Deville Marion;
Arbeitskreis "Handlungs- und Entscheidungstheorie" Individual talk Small Differences that Matter 07.06.2014 Munich, Germany Bächtiger André;
VII Annual Political Networks Conference, McGill University, Quebec, Canada Talk given at a conference 'A spatial network approach for measuring the differentiation between content and relational dynamics in the political debate.' 30.05.2014 Montreal, Canada Deville Marion;
Political science seminar Individual talk Deliberating the Boundaries of the Demos: Three Experiments on the Extension of Political Rights in Geneva 07.05.2014 St Gallen, Switzerland Bächtiger André;
Le Déjeuner Sociologique Individual talk "Mesurer le débat politique ? Assemblée constituante de Genève et délibérations citoyennes" 16.04.2014 Geneve, Switzerland Deville Marion;
University of British Columbia lecture Individual talk “Deliberating the Boundaries of the Demos: A Theoretical and Experimental Investigation” 17.03.2014 Vancouver, Canada Bächtiger André;
Bocconi University - Department of Public Management and Policy Analysis Individual talk Small differences that matter 11.03.2014 Milan, Italy Baccaro Lucio;
Seminar Politics and Society, Collegio Carlo Alberto, University of Turn Individual talk Small differences that matter 04.03.2014 University of Turin, Italy Baccaro Lucio;
Séminaire de recherche Statistique en sciences sociales et démographie Individual talk Mesurer le débat politique ? Proposition d'une différenciation quantitative entre dimensions du contenu de l'argumentation et de la dynamique relationnelle entre les personnes en débat. 14.11.2013 Universite de Geneve, Switzerland Deville Marion;


Associated projects

Number Title Start Funding scheme
131941 Deliberation, Discourse Quality and Attitude Change: A Proposal for a Field Experiment 01.10.2010 Project funding (Div. I-III)

Abstract

This proposal is for a continuation of SNF project no. 100017_131941, “Deliberation, Discourse Quality and Attitude Change,” which investigates experimentally the effects of deliberation on citizens’ attitudes regarding the extension of political rights to foreigners. The request for extension is motivated by some interesting and unexpected findings issuing from the ongoing project. We propose to test experimentally the effects of different kinds of facilitation on deliberative outcomes. In particular, we propose to compare a format in which the facilitator invites participants to take a stance and justify it (which is the type of facilitation we used in the previous experiments), with a format in which the facilitator invites participants to reflect on the issue before taking a stance, and with a format in which the facilitator does not encourage taking a stance but does not invite reflection either. If, as we hypothesize, deliberation impacts preferences by favoring reflection on the issue at stake, and if premature position-taking tends to freeze initial preferences, we should see significant differences among these three conditions. In addition, in this follow-up project we propose to investigate the dynamics of group deliberation by using the tools of content analysis and network analysis. We will code the textual corpus of debate transcripts at our disposal thematically through content analysis to quantify the relative prevalence of different discussion themes in different groups (e.g. integration, democracy, naturalization conditions, etc.) and the correlation between themes and group and individual outcomes. In addition, we propose to systematically map how participants interact with one another in debate through network analysis, to assess participants’ centrality, and to investigate both the determinants of network centrality and whether it is associated with particular individual and group preferences. The proposed extensions promise to make important contributions to clarifying the mechanisms by which deliberation affects individual and group outcomes.
-