Chrissy Scaglione CAS 138T Dr.

Freymiller Online Deliberation and Reflection Ive always be fascinated in studying the history of womens fight for equality, and societys progression toward giving women a greater say in not only politics, but also in the lives they may lead. My Civics Issue blog discusses the role women play as leaders in politics and the workforce, but for this online deliberation, I decided to spark meaningful conversation on a more personal topic for women. Recently, a New Jersey judge ruled that women have the right to keep biological fathers out of the delivery room, when going into labor. Though this was one local judges opinion, the story was recounted by major news sites across the country. I first chose to spearhead online deliberation in the comment section of an NPR article that described the judges ruling. NPR is a well-established and credible media organization, and therefore a likely site to find readers that are open to deliberative exchange. However, I found it difficult to generate such meaningful discussion on the comment section of this site, as only one person responded to my posts. I then chose to try a second site, the popular online news source ABC.com, and here I seemed to have better luck with fostering deliberation. Overall, however, my experience in attempting to stimulate online deliberative exchange proved to be unsuccessful, due most likely to the challenges of creating meaningful conversation on online forums, apathy from participants, and the particular topic I chose to discuss. I attempted to base my posts and comments in the online forum off of the types of guiding questions that moderators use to facilitate effective deliberation. I found that the key to

this was to ask thought-provoking questions, rather than solely state my opinion in comments. The purpose of this was to engage other users in the deliberative exchange I was trying to create, and increase the likelihood of a response to my post. Additionally, in order to discourage responses that simply agreed or disagreed with the judges ruling, I asked questions that forced the readers to think critically and look at the issue from a different perspective. For example, I posed the question, If the two parents were married, do you think the judges ruling [on the mothers right to keep the father out of the delivery room] would have been any different? This technique seemed to be successful, as one user insightfully suggested that whether the couple is married or not would not matter, as the issue should be more concerned with a patients rights during medical procedures, and not just a womans right during birth. After my first post on NPR proved to be unsuccessful, because it led to only one direct response and a few other comments that ignored the question I posed, I chose to apply a new strategy for encouraging deliberation on the ABC comment section on the same issue. I hypothesized that users are more likely to respond to comments that are directly in response to their own, and I found that using this strategy helped me to create deliberative internet discussion. This strategy generated a few more noteworthy responses, but I believe that a few other factors contributed to the overall less than desirable outcome of my online deliberation. The discussion I helped to generate on the online forums resembled more of a debate than a deliberation. Many of those who commented replied with only whether they agreed or disagreed with the NJ judges ruling, and a brief explanation as to why. Though people did respond to one anothers comments, it was often to point out flaws in a users way of thinking and people seemed to be divided over their complete agreement or disagreement with the ruling. There seemed to be less listening and willingness to understand an opposing viewpoint in these

online forums than in a typical deliberation. My attempts to encourage such deliberation can also be characterized as unproductive due to the fact that I only received a few responses to the questions I posed, and some of the comments were snide and often irrelevant to the issue. For example, when I questioned why a woman cant seek privacy from an estranged fiance while going into labor, one user insinuated that the woman was a hypocrite, as she would surely be filing for child support in no time. In this manner, the conversations I witnessed seemed more fit for a courtroom, in which opponents seek weaknesses in each others arguments, rather than a deliberative forum, where the goal is to understand the issue and possible solutions more effectively. The Internet has already dramatically changed how we receive and exchange information, and creates such potential for interactive and collaborative online discussions. Despite the potential for high quality deliberative decision making online, actual deliberative exchange seems to be quite scarce in this medium. The participants on the online forums for NPR and ABC that I witnessed demonstrated that people have a tendency to bring their preconceived notions about an issue to online forums, and many are certainly not afraid of coming across as judgmental or disrespectful. Critical listening skills are required for those who hope to engage in a deliberative discussion, and it is more difficult to find such critical listeners online than face-toface. While online forums open up the possibility of receiving a wide range of opinions from people of different backgrounds and experiences, deliberations may not always be effective as people are free to come and go as they please. In this respect, it is particularly challenging to make real progress on discussing an issue and all possible solutions, and the online forum can become less collaborative. However, I believe that the quality and credibility of the site of the online forum plays a key role in determining the likelihood of finding meaningful deliberation on

that site. Perhaps the comment section of a news site is not the best place to seek deliberative discussion, and more forums and sites should be created specifically for the purpose of deliberative exchange among participants, to help the internet reach its potential in this capacity. I expected more from the online forum that I participated in, given the effort I put into fostering deliberative discussion on the issue of a New Jersey judge ruling that a pregnant woman has the right to keep the father out of the delivery room. Though I asked thoughtprovoking questions and responded directly to certain users, I found that the responses I received were few and simply stated opinions, while doing little to encourage further collaboration. However, the other participants were not solely to blame, as I now realize that the topic of the discussion that I chose is not particularly conducive to deliberative exchange. The ABC and NPR articles that I commented on were recounts of a New Jersey judges decision on a controversial issue, making the comment sections more open to defending or attacking the original solution, rather than discussing other possible solutions to the issue. In the future, I would likely find more productive deliberation, where participants focus more on understanding a variety of perspectives and solutions, on comment sections for topics that are perhaps less one side or the other. For this specific online forum, more could have been done by all involved to create a space for high quality deliberative discussion.