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International Journal of Decision Support System Technology, 1(1), 69-92, January-March 2009ITJ
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This paper appears in the publication, International Journal of Decision Support System Technology, Volume 1, Issue 1
edited by Guisseppi Forgionne © 2009, IGI Global
Enabling On-Line Deliberation
and Collective Decision-Making
through Large-Scale
Argumentation:
A New Approach to the Design of an
Internet-Based Mass Collaboration Platform
Luca Iandoli, University of Naples Federico II, Italy
Mark Klein, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
Giuseppe Zollo, University of Naples Federico II, Italy
Abstract
The successful emergence of on-line communities, such as open source software and Wikipedia, seems due to an effective combination of intelligent collective behavior and internet capabilities However, current internet technologies,
such as forum, wikis and blogs appear to be less supportive for knowledge organization and consensus formation.
In particular very few attempts have been done to support large, diverse, and geographically dispersed groups to
systematically explore and come to decisions concerning complex and controversial systemic challenges. In order
to overcome the limitations of current collaborative technologies, in this article, we present a new large-scale collaborative platform based on argumentation mapping. To date argumentation mapping has been effectively used
for small-scale, co-located groups. The main research questions this work faces are: can argumentation scale?
Will large-scale argumentation outperform current collaborative technologies in collective problem solving and
deliberation? We present some preliminary results obtained from a first field test of an argumentation platform with
a moderate-sized (few hundreds) users community.
Keywords:
collaborative technologies; large scale argumentation; on-line deliberation
The Challenge: towards
internet-enabled
collective intelligence
The spectacular emergence of the Internet has
enabled unprecedented opportunities for large
scale interactions, via email, instant messaging,
news groups, chat rooms, forums, blogs, wikis,
podcasts, and the like. Using such technologies,
it is now feasible to draw together knowledgeable and interested individuals and huge information sources on a scale that was impossible a
Copyright © 2009, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global
is prohibited.
70 International Journal of Decision Support System Technology, 1(1), 69-92, January-March 2009
few short years ago. We believe that it is possible
to harness these new potentialities to enable
“collective intelligence”, i.e. the synergistic
and cumulative channeling of the vast human
and technical resources now available over the
internet (Klein, Cioffi and Malone, 2007) – to
address what we call “systemic” problems, i.e.
highly complex and widely impactful problems
such as climate change, where the nature of the
solution depends on the problem setting and
the level of analysis (Rosenhead and Mingers,
2001). Reframing the issue in computational
terms, we can say that such problems have a
very large, unexplored and partially unknown
solution space. Through the contributions
of large numbers (up to many thousands) of
knowledgeable users, a virtual community can
enable unprecedented breadth of exploration of
the solution space and, if adequately motivated
and supported, convergence on high-quality and
widely-supported solutions through collective
deliberation.
The successful emergence of on-line peer
production communities, e.g. for Linux and
Wikipedia, seems due to an effective combination of intelligent collective behavior and
Internet capabilities (Surowiecki, 2004). In a
nutshell, openness, large scale, self-organization
and the support offered by adequate, low-cost
technologies have allowed large groups of users
to achieve outstanding results in knowledge creation, sharing and accumulation, to the point that
such virtual communities have become a source
of inspiration for both organizational scholars
and companies (Gloor, 2006; Raymond, 2001;
Tapscott and Williams, 2006; von Hippel, 2001;
von Krogh and von Hippel, 2006).
However, current technologies, such as forums, wikis and blogs, while enabling effective
information sharing and accumulation, appear to
be less supportive of knowledge organization,
use and consensus formation. In particular, little
progress has been made to date in providing
virtual communities with suitable tools and
mechanisms for collective decision-making
around complex and controversial problems.
In this article we argue that a new kind of
web‑mediated platform is needed in order to
overcome the limitations of current technologies in this regard and to properly exploit the
potential of collective intelligence on the Internet. We present the design for such a platform,
which we call the Deliberatorium, which applies
a knowledge organization and visualization
approach based on argument mapping to help
large, diverse, and geographically‑dispersed
groups systematically explore, evaluate, and
come to decisions concerning systemic challenges. We will argue that the argumentation
approach, by providing a logical rather than
a time-based debate representation, and by
encouraging evidence-based reasoning and
critical thinking, should significantly reduce
the prevalence of some critical pitfalls (such as
low signal to noise ratios, digression, hidden
assumptions, low information disclosure, and
so on) often faced by traditional technologies
such as forum and wikis, and avoid many of
the pitfalls that lead to deliberation failures in
small scale groups as well.
The article is structured as follows. In the
next section we outline the factors that have a
major influence on group deliberation failures
and discuss the limits faced by current technologies from the perspective of supporting collective deliberation around complex systemic
problems. In the second part of the article we
outline the design of a large-scale deliberation
platform that we believe can transcend these
limitations. In the third part we report some
preliminary results obtained from a first field
test of the Deliberatorium with a community
of more than 200 users.
In the conclusions we introduce and discuss
several research hypotheses we intend to test
for in next experiments about how on-line large
scale argumentation may improve collective
deliberation compared to other technologies,
like wikies and forums.
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