Tanni Haas: Question 6

Following up on that, how would this activity be similar to and different from what public journalists did in the past (convening meetings, moderating discussions, etc.) to provoke such conversations?

This activity would be very similar to what public journalists have done in the best of offline encounters, whether in the form of focus groups, roundtable discussions, or town hall meetings. In many of these offline encounters, public journalists have done precisely what I mention above: worked to include as wide a spectrum of citizens as possible, ensured that all citizens were offered an equal opportunity to participate, and encouraged citizens to state their views and reasons for espousing those views. The added challenge online is, of course, the strong measure of anonymity as well as the asynchronous nature of the discussions. As previously mentioned, we know from the vast literature on computer-mediated interaction more generally that it can be difficult to moderate online discussions in a democratic manner. A few participants often try to monopolize the discussion, couch their views in the strongest possible terms while paying little attention to those of others, and offer little, if any, evidence, in support of their views. Moreover, the asynchronous nature of online discussion could make it difficult, although by no means impossible, for journalists to maintain a strong sense of continuity. Simply put, in contrast to offline encounters, where participants are spatially and temporally co-present, offline discussions occur among participants who may be widely dispersed in space and whose contributions are offered over a long time span. This is likely to make for a somewhat disjointed discussion whose conversational “red thread” can be difficult to locate at times.