Core Activities
Collection and analysis of data on past and current deliberative processes and development of new instruments
Covering the understanding of the potential – as well as the shortcomings – of current deliberative Practices, this activity examined whether and how deliberative and participatory approaches could fulfill the promise of greater participation and inclusion and offered a critical appraisal of the difficulties deliberative and participatory approaches may have faced.
Designing the M4D2 Participatory Spaces
By setting up the ICT component of the Participatory Spaces, this activity developed and tested innovative designs and technologies to improve deliberation in practice, therefore expanding and combining the democratic potential of Participatory Spaces with the use of digital communication technologies in order to enlarge the scale and enhance the quality of deliberative participatory processes of the overall design, with a focus on strengthening moderation and overcoming linguistic barriers.
Make it Happen
This activity set up a series of deliberative events at local, national, and European level that integrated the innovative design and technologies developed in the design phase and assessed their potential to strengthen democratic practices on the key dimensions addressed by the project.
Inclusion
To help address limitations to people’s involvement, this activity investigated and untapped the potential of deliberative processes, as to come up with scenarios for developing new deliberative protocols to address inclusion.
Polarisation
This activity examined further how public deliberation could be used to depolarise societies and politics, by expanding the investigation into automated moderators by exploiting the tools to be developed within the EuComMeet project, designing and undertaking a series of controlled experiments on polarisation in likeminded groups with the aim to increase the external validity of the potential of deliberative norms and moderation in hindering group polarization.
Strengthen European identity
With the final aim of proposing scenarios for developing new deliberative protocols fostering shared European identities, this activity evaluated the way in which deliberative democracy could contribute to bring out a common identity liable to create a plural and inclusive European people.
Making people more reflective
This activity captured the deliberative processes underlying reflective thinking, by designing deliberative experiments carried out in the deliberative events of the “Make it happen” phase under different conditions. This has been done by collecting reflective judgements with a number of proxies at different points in time, contributing to a greater understanding of the condition under which deliberation can help making societies more reflective, while countering distrust against official or expert information.
Effective contribution to the policy outcome
Understanding (through a series of tailored survey fieldworks) and facilitating the effective contribution of policy proposals coming out of EuComMeet deliberative processes, this activity focused on: a) which general and specific motivations of policy makers regarding proposals coming from laypeople exist and which factors make them change; b) how policy impact affects citizens’ attitudes and behaviours regarding these participatory processes and their outputs.
Consortium
The Core Activities of the EuComMeet project were developed by a close-knit Partnership