Post in Building consensus online/definitions?

Feb 08 00:12 UTC

The advantage of email lists - and I know Steven Clift believes strongly in
this - is that they are a 'push' technology (someone else in the original
thread used the term 'forcing' the discussion). They can contribute to the
democratic process precisely because each member of the list is 'forced' to
expose herself a broad range of ideas, opinions, issues, etc (as broad as
the subject-matter of the list anyway).

Whereas other tools are designed to allow filtering and personalisation of
the information you receive, an email list makes you wade through (or more
realistically skim-read) a whole lot of stuff you probably aren't very
interested in. That's viewed as important for citizens in a (deliberative)
democracy, who need to be aware of what's currently being discussed in the
public sphere because they are then more likely to act in a public-spirited
manner and display more understanding for otherness. That would in itself
generate at least a weak form of consensus.

On the other hand email lists are perhaps better employed in the 'getting
issues on the table' phase than the 'arriving at (strong) consensus' phase
of a political process, where a generally acceptable decision is taken
between alternatives: how many threads arrive at anything that could be
described as a conclusion to the debate?

There's also the problem of scale, as Christoforus points out. But that can
often be solved by breaking the discussion up into small groups, which is of
course a common technique in face-to-face participative planning exercises.