bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Everyday Epistemologies: What People Say About Knowledge and What It Means for Public Deliberation
Authors: Lind Colene J.
Published: May 2020

Public knowledge presents a persistent problem for democratic deliberation. While especially salient for public participation in technical decision-making, scholars agree that all deliberations are best informed by quality, shared information. But what kind of knowledge is required in deliberation? Can deliberative practices foster requisite learning? Through rhetorical analysis of 20 small-group, public conversations about water policy in Kansas, USA, I sought to describe cultural understandings of public knowledge to inform future research and deliberative practice. Discussants voiced three epistemologies, which I label cognitivist, sociocultural, and behaviorist, each with distinct implications for democracy. I argue that researchers and practitioners should further consider how and when to foreground epistemological assumptions in deliberation. I also question whether facts are the most critical information for community self-determination, and instead argue that deliberators be pushed to openly discuss their values.
How to Arrive at Peace in Deeply Divided Societies? Using Deliberation to Refine Consociational TheoryHow to Arrive at Peace in Deeply Divided Societies? Using Deliberation to Refine Consociational Theory
Authors: Steiner Jürg , Jaramillo Maria Clara
Published: May 2020

In the 1960s, consociational theory was developed to explain how deeply divided societies can arrive at peace. The theory had, on the one hand, an institutional component with an emphasis on power-sharing institutions and, on the other, a cultural component stressing the importance of a spirit of accommodation. Initially, the theory was based on case studies of countries like Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland, which allowed dealing with both institutional and cultural aspects. Later on, when the theory was tested with a large sample of countries, the cultural aspect was increasingly neglected, because it was difficult to empirically operationalize. The key argument of the article is that the concept of deliberation helps emphasize the cultural aspect of consociational theory, in the hopes of refining, not replacing, consociational theory.
Deliberation and Consociation: Joint Pathways to Peace in Divided Societies
Authors: Lijphart Arend
Published: May 2020

In this short commentary, Arend Lijphart continues the conversation on the role of deliberation in promoting the “spirit of accommodation” in deeply divided societies. Jürg Steiner and Maria Clara Jaramillo started this discussion in their article “How to Arrive at Peace in Deeply Divided Societies? Using Deliberation to Refine Consociational Theory” published in this same issue.
Review of After Gun Violence: Deliberation and Memory in the Age of Political Gridlock by Craig Rood (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019)
Authors: Pasierb Amanda
Published: May 2020

Review of After Gun Violence: Deliberation and Memory in the Age of Political Gridlock by Craig Rood (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019)
Response to ‘Lessons from the Virtual Agora Project’
Authors: Briand Michael K.
Published: May 2020

In a recent study, Peter Muhlberger and Lori Weber found strong evidence that participants in public deliberation acquired substantial new knowledge of the issues they had prepared to discuss. However, participants in their “control” group—a group that did not discuss the issue—learned just as much as those who did discuss it. The authors concluded that, by itself, discussion did not significantly increase overall decision knowledge. Nor did discussing the issue add substantially to the change in policy views they observed. Just reading and thinking about the information they were given produced the gain in knowledge and changes in attitudes that the post-event surveys revealed.To their credit, Muhlberger and Weber note that their study focuses narrowly on the acquisition of factual “decision knowledge.” They caution that their findings do not address whether discussion promoted the acquisition of knowledge other than factual knowledge.The authors also anticipate a criticism when they concede that they did not first “establish that participants ‘really’ deliberated.” They argue that their “approach to insuring deliberation…is typical for many studies, including those that purportedly show the learning effects of deliberation….” Though understandable, this acceptance of the prevailing research conception of deliberation takes for granted precisely what needs to be the focus of critical investigation. Whether deliberation occurred is a question whose answer observers too often assume is “yes.” In fact, there has been very little discussion as to what the essential characteristics of deliberation are. Hence it is difficult to say we know when deliberation has occurred. Nor has there been much discussion concerning how to determine the quality or the effectiveness of deliberation.Until discussion of such fundamental questions produces answers that are accepted widely and to general satisfaction, even exemplary empirical studies such as Muhlberger and Weber’s will be less illuminating and less useful for practice than they might be.The authors do suggest a number of useful lessons for practice.
How Balanced Discussion Shapes Knowledge, Public Perceptions, and Attitudes: A Case Study of Deliberation on the Los Alamos National Laboratory
Authors: Gastil John
Published: May 2020

Prior research has demonstrated the potential impact of carefully orchestrated public forums, such as National Issues Forums and deliberative polls. Many public discussions, however, lack the careful design and focused purposes of such events, and it remains unclear to what extent informal conversations and public meetings can produce the same knowledge gains and attitude changes. If public meetings and conversations are to have similar impacts, they may require important features of deliberation, such as the balanced presentation of alternative viewpoints. To explore the associations of perceived discussion balance with issue knowledge, attitude integration, and the misperception of public attitudes, this study used cross-sectional survey data regarding how New Mexicans view Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The findings confirm the significance of perceived discussion balance for many—but not all—of the positive cognitive impacts of public discussions and conversations. Moreover, these findings show that deliberation is more scarce for some sub-publics than others, and the deliberative experience may be least common for those who need it most.
A Snapshot of Civic Participation in a Small New England Town
Authors: Ossoff Elizabeth P. , Kuehne Dale S.
Published: May 2020

Concern about the topic of civic engagement has centered on the increasing reduction of voter turnout and the apparent alienation and “disconnect” of the general population with the process of government. This study, undertaken at the request of the leaders of a small town in southern New Hampshire is a two-step research plan (one quantitative, one qualitative). Results of both the survey portion of the research and the focus groups reveal an electorate (both adult and youth) which is concerned and informed, but mildly alienated and which register mild levels of efficacy. Suggestions made to try and build unity and an overall spirit of cooperation not just on the adult level but for the youth population as well, include the use of study circles increasing town wide involvement and opening a dialog among those who most acutely feel this disconnect.
Toward a Sociology of Deliberation
Authors: Ryfe David M.
Published: May 2020

This essay draws insights from Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory for the development of a sociological theory of deliberation. Most work on deliberative practice is strongly shaped by the concerns of deliberative democratic theory, and that theory tends to approach deliberation as a procedural mechanism for decision-making. Thus, there has been very little effort to theorize the sociological dimensions of deliberative practice. Bourdieu’s theory highlights a crucial dilemma in that practice. Efforts to infuse community politics with deliberation represent a politics of the most fundamental kind: a struggle to redefine the preferred categories, rules, roles, values, and behaviors that structure public life. But deliberation itself does not constitute a cohesive field of social activity. There is no common sense definition of what deliberation is, or how to tell a good deliberator from a bad one; moreover, as yet one can achieve no social distinction or status from embracing deliberation. Thus, members of a community engage in a fundamental political struggle without a shared sense of what they are doing or why they are doing it, and without the rewards of status or distinction that come with participation in an ongoing social field. Illustrated with examples from two years of ethnographic fieldwork into the practice of deliberation, this theory shows deliberation to be a fluid, sociologically complex and politically charged exercise.
Deliberative Democracy and the Problem of Power
Authors: Kadlec Alison , Friedman Will
Published: May 2020

Among the most interesting contributions to contemporary deliberative democratic theory are a number of arguments against deliberation leveled by radical democratic theorists such as Iris Marion Young and Lynn Sanders. These theorists question the meaning and efficacy of deliberation based on deep and vital insights about the impact of structural inequalities and entrenched relations of power. We consider these insights to be critical cautions that deliberative democrats must confront, and offer a response that draws on both theory and practical experience. In particular, we suggest that careful attention to three fundamental challenges of deliberative practice, those of control, design, and democratic change, can go a long way towards ensuring that meaningful and effective deliberation is possible in the face of deep structural inequalities and complex power relations.
Measuring Deliberation’s Content: A Coding Scheme
Authors: Stromer-Galley Jennifer
Published: May 2020

This paper details a content analysis scheme to measure the quality of political deliberation in face-to-face and online groups. Much of deliberation research studies the outcomes of deliberation, but there has been a lack of analysis of what groups actually do when tasked with deliberating. The coding scheme was developed out of the theoretical literature on deliberation and further enhanced by the empirical literature on small groups, deliberation, online political talk, and conversation analysis. Strict standards for creating coding schemes were followed to ensure a valid and reliable coding process. Results of the coding of deliberations on the topic of public schools suggest that participants produced a fairly high level of reasoned opinion expression, but not necessarily on the topic which they were asked to deliberate. It is hoped that the code scheme can be utilized by practitioners and researchers of political and social deliberations.
Public Deliberation as the Organizing Principle of Political Communication Research
Authors: Gastil John , Black Laura W.
Published: May 2020

During the past fifteen years, public deliberation has become an important focus of research, theory, and public practice. This has sometimes led to a variety of narrow conceptualizations that limit deliberation to particular forms of interaction, such as small group discussion, or to divergent conceptualizations deployed in different contexts, such as for media systems versus face-to-face discussions. To address this problem, we advance a flexible yet precise definition of deliberation that has the power to organize not only deliberation theory and research but also much of the larger body of work in political communication. As defined herein, deliberation includes both analytic and social processes and provides a unifying conceptual and critical framework for studying nearly the full range of political communication topics, including informal conversation, media and public opinion, elections, government institutional behavior, jury decision making, public meetings, and civic and community life. Using our flexible conceptualization, each of these research contexts amounts to a kind of deliberative critique and empirical analysis of public life.
Just Talk: Public Deliberation After 9/11
Authors: Polletta Francesca
Published: May 2020

Critics of public deliberation as conventionally practiced have charged that it is “just talk” in the sense both that it substitutes sociable conversation for practical deliberation and that it substitutes political talk for political action. I argue that both criticisms rest on unnecessarily restrictive models of talk and politics. Drawing on participant observation and interviews with eighty participants in two forums convened to deliberate about the future of the former World Trade Center, I tease out the variety of models on which people styled their discussions, models that included education, negotiation, and advocacy. In ways not often recognized by deliberative theorists, these models helped participants to hone their own opinions and reach agreement across difference. Participants also perceived less of a conflict between deliberation and advocacy than deliberative theorists have tended to do. Insofar as participants’ understandings of what made for good deliberation and appropriate modes of political influence differed from those of forum organizers, they point both to practical challenges in organizing deliberation and to possibilities for organizing it more effectively.
The Civic Benefits of Imperfect Deliberation
Authors: Grimes Marcia F.
Published: May 2020

Normative theories of deliberative democracy stake claims that deliberation, if done correctly, can enhance citizens’ trust in authorities, foster a greater understanding of political issues and the element of compromise in politics, and increase the legitimacy of the political system overall. Skeptics point out that public deliberations seldom fully satisfy the communicative criteria stipulated in normative theory, raising the question: to what extent may we expect imperfect deliberations to generate the promised civic goods? This article proposes a framework for answering this question and also offers a few preliminary answers. The empirical analyses build on an opinion survey conducted in the wake of a series of public meetings that varied in the extent to which they lived up to normative standards of deliberative democracy. The meetings centered around whether to continue construction on a railway tunnel near the town of Båstad in southwestern Sweden. The findings suggest that even imperfect deliberation may have the potential to generate civic goods, though the analyses also raise doubts regarding the durability of the positive effects as well as the extent to which they will develop uniformly among participants.
Identifying Deliberation in Social Movement Assemblies: Challenges of Comparative Participant Observation
Authors: Haug Christoph , Teune Simon
Published: May 2020

Contemporary social movements can serve as a critical case for the empirical study of deliberation. In countless face-to-face meetings activists often discuss long hours before a decision is reached. In this context, we try to analyse the conditions under which deliberation is successfully employed as a method of discursive conflict resolution. As we develop participant observation in a comparative approach we encounter three methodological challenges which this paper addresses. First, we look at some characteristics of the global justice movements, briefly addressing the different settings in which controversial discussions occur. Second, we give a rationale for applying a semi-standardised multi-level participant observation in order to allow the collection of comparable data by various researchers in several countries. Focusing on participant observation on the level of controversial discussions we thirdly conceptualise competitiveness, power, and asymmetry as three theoretical dimensions to identify eight different practices of discourse, one of them being deliberation. We are currently implementing this model for regular observations of group meetings on a local, national and European level. First results should be available in the near future.
Creating Democratic Surplus through Citizens’ Assemblies
Authors: Carson Lyn
Published: May 2020

This paper, originally a presentation to the Sydney Democracy Forum, discusses how the current democratic deficit could be converted to a democratic surplus. In particular, attention is focused on an ambitious project which has recently commenced in Australia which will culminate in a grassroots citizens’ assembly. One hundred and fifty Australians will be randomly selected from each electorate and will participate in a range of deliberative environments (online and face-to-face), culminating in a four-day citizens’ parliament in Sydney. The project is jointly funded by an Australian Research Council-Linkage grant and a not-for-profit organisation, newDemocracy. During the entire process, typical Australians will consider ways in which Australia’s political system could be strengthened to better represent the will of the people.
A Three-Stage Evaluation of a Deliberative Event on Climate Change and Transforming Energy
Authors: Edwards Peter B. , Hindmarsh Richard , Mercer Holly , Bond Meghan , Rowland Angela
Published: May 2020

Formulating deliberative evaluation tools indicates an important new field for the practitioner of deliberative design due to the increasing adoption of deliberative policy mechanisms by governmental and non-governmental organisations. Evaluation tools aid the design, effectiveness and deliberative integrity and legitimacy of these mechanisms. Relatively few studies though have reflected on how to conduct evaluation. Here, we report on our formulation of a three-stage approach to deliberative evaluation, which we applied in an independent evaluation of a Courageous Conversation on Climate Change and Transforming Energy (March 2007), designed by the Ethos Foundation, Queensland, Australia. Overall, we found our schema successful in identifying both the positives and negatives of the design, of what could be applauded and what needed revision. More broadly, we advance that it offers a useful approach for practitioners to develop further, especially in getting the balance right on evaluating process and outputs, to which we have added inputs in reflection of deliberative design advances.
Can Deliberative Democracy Work in Hierarchical Organizations?
Authors: Pierce Jason L. , Neeley Grant , Budziak Jeffrey
Published: May 2020

Some measure of equality is necessary for deliberative democracy to work well, yet empirical scholarship consistently points to the deleterious effect that hierarchy and inequalities of epistemological authority have on deliberation. This article tests whether real-world deliberative forums can overcome these challenges. Contrary to skeptics, it concludes that the act of deliberation itself and the presence of trained moderators ameliorate inequalities of epistemological authority, thus rendering deliberative democracy possible, even within hierarchical organizations.
Crackpot or Genius? Canada Steps onto the World Stage as a Democratic Innovator
Authors: Snider J. H.
Published: May 2020

Concluding remarks by J.H. Snider, a Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government and President of iSolon.org, delivered to Harvard University Canada Program’s Conference on Comparing the Democratic Deficit in Canada and the United States: Defining, Measuring, and Fixing, Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 10, 2008. The remarks divide the substance of the conference into three categories: Democratic Deficits, Reforms to Fix the Democratic Deficits, and Reforms to Reform the Process of Fixing the Democratic Deficits. Canada's great democratic innovation, the creation of citizens assemblies on electoral reform, fits in this third category, Reforms to Reform the Process of Fixing the Democratic Deficits.
On Dewey, Habermas and Deliberative Democracy
Authors: Caspary William R.
Published: May 2020

Alison Kadlec brings Deweyan Pragmatist principles to bear on the challenge of overcoming power asymmetries in public deliberation. This enables the design of settings and processes in which citizens of every social class, educational level, and cultural background can participate effectively. These ideas, on the design of democratic deliberative forums, appear as the concluding chapter of a larger work devoted to elaborating a “critical pragmatism.” Kadlec addresses the frequent criticism that Dewey is insufficiently critical – that he lacks a theory of social structures of power, and of the distortions of communication that result from the exercise of that power. She does a great service in bringing out the politically critical dimension in Dewey’s thought, and systematically refuting the mistaken reading of Dewey as insensitive to power relations. This exploration of Dewey’s critical pragmatism generates a lively comparison and contrast with Habermasian critical theory.
Listening to the City: Difference, Identity, and Storytelling in Online Deliberative Groups
Authors: Black Laura W.
Published: May 2020

This study examines how members of deliberative groups tell and respond to personal stories during their disagreements. The study provides an in-depth qualitative analysis of some online discussions hosted by AmericaSpeaks in which New Yorkers discussed how to redevelop the site of the former World Trade Center after its destruction on September 11, 2001. Participants’ stories fell into four distinct types: adversarial argument, unitary argument, introduction, and transformation. These stories helped group members build arguments, maintain or challenge their group’s collective identity, display community values, and manage their conflicts. The findings of this study indicate that deliberative theory ought to more explicitly recognize storytelling as a legitimate form of deliberative discourse. Moreover, the study of storytelling during deliberative discussion can hold implications for group facilitators and others who wish to further deliberative ideals.
Mad scientists bend the frame of biobank governance in British Columbia
Authors: Walmsley Heather L.
Published: May 2020

The tools and rhetoric of deliberative democracy are increasingly popular with governments, organizations, and researchers working to enhance ‘public engagement with science’. Deliberative fora such as citizen juries have also been heavily critiqued by social and political scientists – for positively and narrowly framing contentious new technologies to secure public support, and for privileging consensus over ‘difference’. This paper takes such critiques seriously. Drawing from ethnographic participant-observation and analysis of a deliberative public consultation on biobanking in British Columbia (BC), Canada, it argues for careful attention to deliberative event design. A multi-disciplinary approach, multiple media, and imagination-focused tasks were used in BC to produce inclusive deliberations in which members of the public were able to directly challenge expert assumptions. Ethnographic attention to narrative during analysis of the deliberation reveals the extent to which participants insistently questioned the framing of the event. Drawing from personal experiences, analogies, news stories and fictional events, the deliberants developed and embellished the figure of a ‘mad scientist’ to challenge certainties promised by scientific, legal, and ethical expertise. This paper argues that such questioning enhanced the accountability of the deliberation and participant trust in the event. It also argues that ethnographic attention to storytelling is a valuable and under-utilized pursuit in the field of deliberative democracy – a pursuit that can enable deliberative events to ‘listen’.
Public Health Genomics (PHG) and Public Participation: Points to Consider
Authors: Avard Denise , Bucci Lucie M. , Burgess Michael M. , Kaye Jane , Heeney Catherine , Farmer Yanick , Cambon-Thomsen Anne
Published: May 2020

Large-scale population biobanks, which aim to collect biological tissues, personal health information, and genomic data, are being introduced worldwide with the promise of increasing knowledge on chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease. Experts recognize the need for public participation to address the many social, legal and ethical complexities raised by the introduction of biobanks for public health research. However many researchers and decision makers struggle with how to promote public participation. This paper presents six issues that public participation must address. These issues are then applied to three large scale genetic biobank projects: CARTaGENE, Generation Scotland, and the United Kingdom Biobank. Finally, the efforts of these biobanks will be compared to the British Columbia Biobank deliberation project, which implemented a deliberative public participation experiment on biobanking.
Deliberative Planning for Disaster Recovery: Remembering New Orleans
Authors: Wilson Patricia A.
Published: May 2020

A strong turnout of a broad cross-section of the New Orleans population lent legitimacy to a unique public conversation about post-Katrina recovery priorities. Designed and conducted by AmericaSpeaks, Community Congress II brought together over 2500 New Orleanians, linked electronically across five different cities plus smaller satellite sites in 15 diaspora communities across the country. Table observations of 48 deliberative rounds, along with exit interviews, post-event focus groups with participants, and stakeholder interviews are used to address three central questions about the social processes of deliberation: What are the patterns of interaction at the tables across race and gender; how do the participants interpret the meaning of the event for themselves; and what were the outcomes in terms of legitimacy, influence, and social trust? The article contextualizes the event in the unfolding story of the recovery process and culls out the lessons learned for deliberative democracy. Community Congress II demonstrates that inclusive public deliberation does more than provide reasoned public input into difficult policy decisions. It does more than legitimate new public initiatives. It can foster social trust and social healing across the divides of race, culture, and wealth. But the benefits will be sustained only if they are reinforced by an institutional infrastructure of civic engagement.
The Use of Deliberative Discussion to Enhance the Critical Thinking Abilities of Nursing Students
Authors: Janiszewski Goodin Heather , Stein David
Published: May 2020

Deliberative discussion is a teaching method that invites nursing students to engage in a shared inquiry regarding public issues. The purpose of this pretest-posttest control group experimental study was to investigate the effects of using the deliberative discussion method to enhance the critical thinking abilities of first year nursing students. Forty four students were randomly assigned to attend three deliberative discussion sessions over a 13 week period or to the control group. Using the California Critical Thinking Skills Test, no statistically significant differences were found in critical thinking scores between the two groups. The level and depth of students’ critical thinking abilities during the discussions did not increase from session one to session three. The authors of this study suggest that participation in deliberative discussions may not produce an immediate effect on critical thinking and possible long term benefits are not known. Further considerations include having more exposures to the deliberative method and having opportunities to critically reflect after the discussions.
Pyramidal Democracy
Authors: Pivato Marcus J.
Published: May 2020

I propose a decentralized, multilayered representative democracy, where citizens participate in deliberative policy formation after self-organizing into a pyramidal hierarchy of small groups. Each group elects a delegate, who expresses the deliberative consensus of that group at the next tier of the pyramid. The pyramid thus acts as a communications network which efficiently aggregates useful information and policy ideas. It is also a powerful meritocratic device, which channels legislative responsibility towards the most committed and competent citizens. This yields a practical implementation of deliberative democracy in a large polity.
The Practice of Public Meetings: Introduction to the Special Issue
Authors: Leighter Jay , Black Laura W. , Cockett Lynn S. , Jarmon Leslie
Published: May 2020

This special issue of IJP2 attempts to build linkages between public participation scholarship and communication research that emphasizes close attention to naturally-occurring interaction. The essays all investigate different aspects of the communication that occurs during one public meeting: a public forum that focused on issues of economic development in Omaha, Nebraska. Through their investigation of this common case, the essays in this issue provide detailed description of some communication processes common to public meetings such as nonverbal communication, question and answer behavior, storytelling, the use of the term “community,” and the terms people use to talk about their own communication. These studies highlight how such interactive practices function in important ways to build or challenge notions of community, frame the purpose and outcome of the meeting, display power differences among participants, and clarify key community values. This collection of essays highlights how close attention to what happens during public meetings can have important implications for both the theory and practice of public participation. A full video of the meeting is available online.
Grouping Processes in a Public Meeting from an Ethnography of Communication and Cultural Discourse Analysis Perspective
Authors: Witteborn Saskia , Sprain Leah M. H.
Published: May 2020

This article explicates grouping processes during a public meeting. By applying an Ethnography of Communication and Cultural Discourse Analysis approach, the analysis focuses on ways of place-making and relating as well as enactments of social and racial identities to make empirically grounded claims about grouping processes during the public meeting in question. For most audience members, living in the neighborhood and local knowledge of crime, desperate youth, poverty, and racial discrimination were defining characteristics of being a community member who shared a collective memory of distrust against the local Chamber of Commerce. Some audience members maintained that only neighborhood residents had the right to talk about the neighborhood at the meeting. Chamber of Commerce and affiliated speakers neither shared the premise of residency and right to talk about the neighborhood, nor did they adequately address the distrust. Instead, they promoted community through economic development and collaboration. The tensions during the meeting can be described as differences in notions about what constitutes community, differences which are indicative and constitutive of the divergent approaches to managing problems in the neighborhood. In addition to illustrating that groups don’t exist a priori but are enacted through communicative practices, the article makes recommendations for how to improve public meetings.
Stories of North Omaha: Conveying Identities, Values, and Actions through Storytelling in a Public Meeting
Authors: Black Laura W.
Published: May 2020

This study uses discourse analysis from a Language and Social Interaction (LSI) perspective to analyze the personal stories that were told during the North Omaha Development Project (NODP) public meeting. Personal stories may not intuitively seem to be important in public meetings because they center on individual, personal experience, rather than discussing issues in public terms. However, stories help people to create and negotiate their identities, demonstrate their values, and indicate what actions ought to be taken to enact those values in meaningful ways. In the NODP public meeting, presenters and audience members told stories that demonstrated the important distinction between community members and outsiders, and offered competing notions of the community values and appropriate actions that should be taken to address neighborhood poverty. This analysis offers insights into how public participation scholars can view stories told in public meetings as well as practical implications for officials convening public meetings.
What are We Going to “Talk About” in this Public Meeting?: An Examination of Talk about Communication in the North Omaha Development Project
Authors: Leighter Jay , Castor Theresa
Published: May 2020

The goal of this essay is to illustrate how the investigation of one communicative phenomenon, metacommunication or talk about communication, can be a resource for understanding and evaluating public meetings and public participation. Such talk about communication is ubiquitous in public discourse (Craig, 2005). Participants in public meetings sometimes talk at great length about what can be said, how it can be said and by whom. In the analysis of the North Omaha Development Project (NODP) public meeting, we chose to focus on two categories of metacommunication: linguistic action verbs or LAVs (Dirven, et al., 1982) and terms for talk (Carbaugh, 1989). In examining LAVs, we focus specifically on participant uses of the verbs “talk,” “tell,” and “say.” The term for talk we examine is participant uses of the term “meeting”. We believe that the examination of these two categories of metacommunication prove to be insightful about this particular public meeting and, taken together, provide a rich (if incomplete) picture of the ways in which the participants themselves framed, textured and judged the NODP public meeting.
Territory, Identity, and Conflict in a Public Meeting: A Natural History Approach
Authors: Cockett Lynn S.
Published: May 2020

This paper examines the natural history of a public meeting, recognizing the importance of the unfolding of events as key to understanding the relationships and issues germane to human relating. As a method, the natural history approach is employed through reducing permanent records of interaction to a statistical record in order to examine the relative involvement of participants in a public meeting. The statistical presentation of data points to a particular moment of interaction that stands out in the meeting structure as unique. This moment is analyzed and an approach to understanding a conflict based on identities of place is developed.
Displays of Trust/Mistrust in Public Meetings: “I don’t believe you are going to jack us around!”
Authors: Jarmon Leslie
Published: May 2020

For public meetings in general, and for the North Omaha Development Project Meeting in particular, a Conversation Analysis (CA) approach asks how participants in public meetings involved in decision-making communicate and display their trust and mistrust of one another. From a CA perspective, while it is important to examine ways to cultivate greater trust in the public arena, research is also warranted that looks closely at people’s observable talk and behavior to better understand how the qualities of trust and mistrust are enacted by participants and how others orient to those displays. Power differences are critical, and whether the organizers are controlling the agenda or whether the attendees are attempting to influence the meeting’s procedural mechanisms, these are behaviors that must in the end be performed as the proceedings unfold. Displays of observable behavior are subject to empirical analysis and are the focus of what a CA approach can contribute to the study of public meetings.
Meetings that Evolve Interactively: Viewing a Town Hall Discussion with an LSI Perspective
Authors: Plummer Evelyn
Published: May 2020

This paper applies conversation analysis methods to a large public meeting. Examination of various pivotal speech acts and actions as performed by the presenters as well as the attendees suggested the enactment and sequencing of these different modes of interaction did not evolve randomly. As in any system, all elements within a group are interdependent and reciprocally influential; therefore, in this meeting, as the communication modes, communication goals, topic initiation, and agenda management roles shifted, individual parties and the group as a whole subtly coordinated to accommodate those shifts. One particular participant performed several implicit and explicit functions in the ongoing communication system of this meeting. Comparing his apparently spontaneous behaviors to the planned procedures of the program presenters revealed possible insights into how better to serve the diverse goals of presenters who want an orderly intake of information and attitudes and attendees who want a sense of involvement and empowerment.
Communicating Trust, Community, and Process in Public Meetings: A Reflection on How Close Attention to Communication Can Contribute to the Future of Public Participation
Authors: Black Laura W. , Leighter Jay , Gastil John
Published: May 2020

This concluding essay reflects on how the essays included in this special issue can help address some prevailing issues in public participation scholarship. We see three themes running through the contributions to this special issue that are particularly important for public participation scholars and practitioners to consider. These issues are: citizens’ distrust of public officials, concerns about who counts as a legitimate member of the community, and challenges related to the framing the process and goals of the meeting. In this concluding essay we summarize and reflect on the insights provided by the special issue contributions. We also look ahead to assess how these contributions can inform future public participation research and practice by illuminating the importance of communication practices and public meeting formats.
An Innovation for JPD and a Transition: The Profession and a Confession of an Editor
Authors: Becker Ted
Published: May 2020

The following article is a short description of a new direction taken by this Volume VI, that is, a Symposium on Teaching Deliberative Democracy in many different fields of Academe. It is also an explanation of the past, present and future of JPD, all of which are bright.
The Determinants of Social Anxiety in Lower Secondary Education Student Athletes: A Case of Competitive Swimming Environment
Authors: Coşkun Özyol Funda
Published: May 2020

Social anxiety disorder is a common psychological problem that may negatively impact the cognitive and social development of children. Its severity may, however, be reduced through regular participation in sports or other physical activity. This study aimed to determine the relationship between competitive student-athlete swimmers' social anxiety levels and anthropometric measurements (height, weight, and BMI), body composition (body fat and lean body mass), and body type (ectomorph, endomorph, or mesomorph). The participants were pre-adolescent female (n = 160) and male (n = 146) lower secondary education student-athlete swimmers. The Social Anxiety Scale was used to evaluate their social anxiety levels, while the anthropometric parameters included height and weight, from which BMI was calculated. Body composition involved determining the percentage of body fat and lean body mass; ectomorphic, endomorphic, and mesomorphic values were then calculated. We found that the social anxiety levels of both female and male student-athlete swimmers were low. There was no statistically significant relationship between the social anxiety levels of the male and female student-athlete swimmers with BMI (rs = -.002), lean body mass (rs = -.017), or ectomorphy (rs = -.006) (p > .05 for all). For the female swimmers, social anxiety levels were not associated with body fat (rs = .116), endomorphy (rs = .067), or mesomorphy (rs = .032), nor were those of the male student-athlete swimmers (rs = .005, rs= .065, and rs= -.001, respectively) (p > .05 for all). These findings suggest that participation in competitive swimming during adolescence is effective in controlling social anxiety. Furthermore, this study revealed that social anxiety is not associated with lower secondary education student-athlete swimmers’ anthropometric measurements, body composition, or body type.
Gender Differences in Academic Motivation: A Meta-Analysis
Authors: Sölpük Turhan Nihan
Published: May 2020

The purpose of this study is to carry out a meta-analysis study on the results of the studies on the effect of gender on academic motivation in Turkey between 2004 and 2019. For this purpose, this study aims to present a comprehensive study in which the results of the studies on this matter were combined and extended by using meta-analysis method. The study contains the gender comparison by the size value of its effect on academic motivation and the sub-group analyses. In addition, meta-analysis study was made on the effect of gender on sub-dimensions of the academic motivation in the studies that were made by using the scale “Academic Motivation Scale” developed by (Bozanoğlu, 2004). First of all, relevant studies were pooled in the meta-analysis study; then, 22 studies that comply with the research criteria were included in the analysis based on the total of academic motivation scale. The analysis based on the total point of academic motivation scale in the study contains 8010 students. 8 studies on the effect of gender on the sub-dimensions of academic motivation were included in the analysis. The analysis based on the sub-dimensions of academic motivation contains 3017 students. According to study findings, random effects model demonstrates that the effect of gender on the sub-dimensions of academic motivation is at low significance level (Cohen d value -0.07). In this study, analog ANOVA was employed for sub-group analysis by publication type and sample group of the research subject. Therefore, the sample group of the research subject differed by variance (Qb = 5.96, df= 2, p
Itinerario formativo e investigativo en sistematización de experiencias (IFISE)
Authors: Barragán-Giraldo Diego Fernando , Ibarra-Mogollón Maria Luz Ceci , Pérez-Pérez Tito Hernando
Published: May 2020

Este artículo presenta los desarrollos investigativos de dos tutores de investigación de una maestría en educación que, al orientar los procesos de formación desde la sistematización de experiencias, pudieron reconstruir su propia ruta formativa y proponer una estrategia para orientar este tipo de trabajos de nivel posgradual. En la introducción, se muestra el contexto general de política pública que permitió a los estudiantes su formación como magísteres. Luego, se establecen algunos enunciados sobre los conceptos de práctica, experiencia y sistematización de experiencias. Posteriormente, se establece la ruta metodológica desarrollada en el proceso investigativo: aprender con los otros, visitar la teoría, visitar los contextos, visitar la metodología, ajustar lo formal, socializar y generar teoría; la cual llevó a los autores a proponer el Itinerario formativo e investigativo en sistematización de experiencias (Ifise), que como estrategia formativa posibilitó desarrollar capacidades investigativas en los maestrantes. Al finalizar el texto se presentan los resultados, de los cuales,se destaca que en el proceso de formación se incentivó la apropiación del rolde investigador, por medio de la ruta metodológica planteada, de manera tal que se aportó a la configuración de las metodologías de sistematización de experiencias y permitió consolidar comunidades de práctica.
Représentation linguistique des mots civilisation, culture et interculturel. Quelles constructions identitaires véhiculées par les enseignants colombiens de français ?
Authors: Delgadillo Esguerra Iris Viviana
Published: May 2020

Cette étude concerne non seulement à la Sémantique des Possibles Argumentatifs, mais aussi à la didactique des langues étrangères, puisqu’il met en place un protocole expérimental qui intègre une approche sémantique de l’analyse du rapport au savoir. Ce dernier cherche à comprendre les pratiques enseignantes des professeurs colombiens de fle et la forte tendance à limiter l’enseignement de la culture à la présentation des caractéristiques folklorisantes et des images stéréotypées des autres. Pour y parvenir, nous avons jugé pertinent de comprendre, tout d’abord, la représentation linguistique que les enseignants ont de chacun des concepts clés dans ce domaine, à savoir civilisation, culture et interculturel, ainsi que la construction identitaire qu’ils véhiculent dans la salle de classe. Le protocole expérimental permet aussi l’analyse de la singularité de la pratique enseignante. Cette approche s’avère plus compréhensive des actes pédagogiques, mais souligne également les obstacles provoqués par le manque de formation en méthodologie et didactique des langues étrangères.
Universidad y discapacidad: “La estrategia básica es la perseverancia”
Authors: Oviedo-Cáceres María Del Pilar , Hernández-Quirama Andrea
Published: May 2020

El acceso de estudiantes con discapacidad a las instituciones de educación superior en Colombia se constituye como un elemento importante que contribuye al desarrollo humano y al mejoramiento de las condiciones de vida de las personas con esta condición. En este sentido el objetivo de este artículo de investigación fue comprender las condiciones de acceso y permanencia de estudiantes con discapacidad en dos universidades de Bucaramanga, considerando las políticas institucionales, el proceso formativo y experiencias de estudiantes. Para esto se realizó una investigación cualitativa de tipo exploratorio, siguiendo el proceso de descubrimiento, codificación y relativización de los datos. Se realizaron 33 entrevistas a la comunidad académica de las dos instituciones. Se evidencia la ausencia de política institucional de admisiones para las personas con discapacidad, lo que a su vez genera una invisibilidad de la diversidad. Esta situación hace que las personas con discapacidad se enfrenten a retos diarios para su desplazamiento y en general para la vivencia al interior de las instituciones. Los resultados permiten identificar que hay un camino largo por recorrer para considerar estas instituciones como inclusivas, pues son muchos los factores que requieren fortalecimiento, entre estos las políticas educativas, la supresión de barreras arquitectónicas, las adaptaciones curriculares, las barreras actitudinales, entre otros.