Post in Read any useful research lately, unanswered research questions

Jul 18 12:26 UTC

> 1. For those "practitioners" amongst us, what research have you
> found useful in
> your work over the last year? Share a link if you can.
I'm not sure if anyone else feels this, but I have not been attracted
to formal research in the area of e-democracy.  I guess the reason
being that this field is still very young, and any research is bound
to reflect 'what is' and not 'what could be'.  I regard some of the e-
democracy projects themselves to be the best tools of research.  For
example, the services that mysociety.org (TheyWorkForYou, PledgeBank,
WriteToThem) provide is likely to have an effect on voting patterns,
on constituent's letters to MPs and on general political activity.  I
couldn't begin to think how these qualitative improvements could be
measured.  However, by simply visiting these websites you can begin to
understand the effects that "e-democracy" is having on individuals and
small groups, through qualitative means.

> 2. For everyone, what are some of the most important research
> questions that
> need to be explored in the e-democracy/e-participation/e-campaigning/
> e-advocacy
> fields? What would actually help us do a better job in our work or
> justify our
> efforts (or tell us we are e-waste ;-)).

I would say that the most valuable research comes out of directly
testing ideas, and see how the public react to them.  Think about the
impact of Wikipedia on many of our assumptions.  Before Wikipedia, we
placed a great deal of trust in experts and elites to maintain the
pathways of knowledge.  Wikipedia has challenged this status quo, by
replacing several experts with hundreds of amateurs in the field of
knowledge (perhaps not with thinking), and changed our assumptions on
where reliable information comes from.

I believe that the best research questions start with a hypothesis.
Then, through some creative experimentation, you can test that
hypothesis, and arrive at conclusions.  A good approach might be one
that psychologists take.  Perhaps this is what practitioners already
do, albeit in an informal way.  The problem with such an approach is
the participants need to be able to see some benefit for their troubles.

To me, the hypotheses I would like tested are:
"there is an unsatisfied appetite for democratic participation on the
internet"
"mass collaboration in our political system is possible and desirable"
but I am already on the case with these points!

Tom Kaneko