DEBATE 2.0
How can industry earn trust in its innovations in a radically changing media landscape? How can laymen identify the quality and trustworthiness of information about science and technology? And how can journalists and publishing houses stay “in business” despite of the horizontalisation of information? A possible answer to all three questions lies in online deliberation technologies and new concepts for a responsible, evidence-based science and innovation journalism.
Imagine a mother trying to make up her mind as to how dangerous the concentration of “Bisphenol-A” in children’s dummies is. As scientists we actually have to honestly answer: “We don’t know for sure.” However, the reference to uncertainty should be no excuse for simply ignoring existing knowledge. Not knowing something often means that readily available information is not being used because it is simply too widely dispersed. Even experts often have trouble maintaining an overview. This is doubly true of the general public.
In order to make the discourse about complex sci-tech topics more manageable and accessible, we launched the project “DEBATE 2.0” in 2010, which is now in a propotype state ready for deployment: a new format for moderated and visualized online debates which do not reduce the complexity of a subject but only the perceived complexity. The user navigates through a “universe of knowledge”. Researchers and political pressure groups are invited to contribute within a journalistically moderated framework which ensures that facts are checked and that fringe opinions are represented according to their real relevance, i.e. not “hyped” in an inappropriate, yellow-press way. Alongside the official experts basically everyone has the opportunity to put forward arguments and evidence.
Our project has so far been following a three-step approach:
- DEBATE 2.0 works with new technologies of online-deliberation (see here for an experimental case at The Independent). The common goal of this technology, which is being developed by international project partners, is to eliminate well-known and empirically documented forms of discourse malpractice in online discussions. Therefore the first step was a systematic analysis of the the technical differences between available software tools with regard to their suitability for different use cases.
- For public discourse about science, technology, and innovation new methods and editorial formats are being developed and tested. Established methods of cooperation management and group moderation are being carried over to the area of online-deliberation. These new types of discourse will need skilled moderators with journalistic experience and qualification which is why we are convinced that online deliberation will open up a new journalistic line of action, i.e. secure new business models for knowledge creation for publishers and journalists.
- As a third step, we are now looking for partners to implement the new methods in a public demo.
Project Presentation at the Baltics Science Communications Conference (October 2010, Tallinn):
Project Presentation at the EU Conference "Media for Science" (May 2010):
The vision of this project, on which we have worked together with a number of research partners, was recently and very accurately described by Mark Klein (Principal Research Scientist at the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence) as: "Today, governmental policy-making is complex, cumbersome, and slow. Experts can talk past each other, while experts and policy-makers have unproductive conversations. News media summaries are necessarily incomplete […] Imagine […] a new kind of on-line forum […], used around the world, by […] experts, policy analysts, legislators, and concerned citizens." At the EU conference "Media for Science" the first project results were presented to the public. The capabilities of the tools described were demonstrated experimentally. Amongst others a discussion card was offered with the question “Communication failure or information deficit: Is there really such a thing like this?”. Parts of the conference (e.g. Web 2.0 and new trends in science communications”) were reconstructed using dialogue cards. The official document of conclusions for the EU Conference was also presented as a dialogue card.
For German speakers the internet platform debattenprofis.de was launched in 2012 – an editorially monitored online platform for visualized debates.
The project is currently supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) Max-Planck-Gesellschaft Leibniz-Gemeinschaft Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (AG Gentech) Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft Wissenschafts-Pressekonferenz (wpk) Verband der Wissenschafts- und Technikjournalisten (TELI) The project also receives scientific consultation from Prof. Dr. Gary Schaal (Helmut-Schmidt-Universität Hamburg) und Prof. Dr. Dieter Rucht (Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung) Should you wish to take part in this project, then please do not hesitate to contact us on debate-20 [at] innocomm . eu
Project Leader: Dr. Ralf Grötker
Editorial Support: Sascha Karberg
