Everyday Online Political Talk: Design, Deliberation and “Third Space”

• In Event: Recent Perspectives on Online Deliberation

Abstract

Everyday online political talk is crucial to the healthy functioning of democracy, citizenship and the public sphere. Political talk can do this because it encourages shared perspective building or complementary agency: intersubjective processes whereby people link their personal ideas, issues, and actions with one another, cultivating political agency, solidarity and community. While everyday political talk and participation is normatively desirable for many, achieving it in practice is difficult and a number of important criticisms of online political debate have been identified:

•Polarization: political debate online polarizes leading to echo chambers of likeminded individuals. This is problematic because deliberation requires interaction among citizens who hold divergent viewpoints and perspectives regarding politics.

•Discursive Inequality: studies of online deliberation typically identify a small minority of people that ‘dominate’ debates. Deliberation requires an equal opportunity to participate.

•Incivility: studies of political debate online often find limited evidence of deliberation, with debate descending into aggressive “flame wars”, trolling, and people talking at each other rather than listening to one another.

This paper argues that while these problems continue to afflict online debate, they are much more likely to afflict politically focused online spaces such as political discussion forums or hashtags than everyday spaces. Talking politics online is not exclusive to spaces dedicated to (formal) politics; rather it often emerges during the course of everyday conversations in the plethora of online spaces dedicated to popular culture, sports, hobbies and other lifestyle issues/needs. This study builds on a new agenda for online deliberation: the study of everyday political talk in non-political online, ‘third spaces’. First, we outline the concept and key characteristics of third spaces. Second, we outline arguments as to why third spaces might mitigate some of the problems associated with political debate online. Finally, we make a series of recommendations for how to design website interfaces and moderation policies for third spaces that facilitate deliberative political talk, including issues such as the role of anonymity; how to set and shape the tone of debate; and how to facilitate a positive role for ‘the regulars’.

Authors

• Scott Wright, University of Melbourne

• Todd Graham, U of Groningen