Online Deliberation Platform

Overview

The Online Deliberation Platform is a video discussion platform for groups of 8-15 people. The platform is designed to facilitate a structured and equitable conversation with better opportunity for participants to speak up. It is developed by the Stanford Crowdsourced Democracy Team in collaboration with the Deliberative Democracy Lab.

The Online Deliberation Platform is a video discussion platform for groups of 8-15 people. The platform is designed to facilitate a structured and equitable conversation with better opportunity for participants to speak up. It is currently in limited alpha mode: there is limited capacity available to test/use the platform.

The platforms runs in Chrome or Firefox without installing any additional software on desktop platforms and Android. The convener defines a structured agenda (e.g., "Electoral Reform") with topics (e.g., "Move all primary elections to after Labor Day") and a balanced set of pro's and con's for each topic.

After a brief set of instructions, the platform invites participants to introduce themselves, and walks them through the agenda, displaying for each topic the set of arguments. Participants take turns speaking for up to 45 seconds, and join a queue when someone else is speaking. The platform manages both speaking time and queuing, allowing brief interruptions. When the group thinks all arguments have been discussed, they can propose and vote to move on to the next topic. When all topics are discussed, the group enters the optional concluding phase, where they collaboratively develop open questions, which are discussed, edited and voted on as the outcome of the conversation.

Because of its dynamics, the platform enables more equitable participation from all participants, and will nudge participants that have not spoken much. When the system detects toxic behavior, or when a participant is reported, the automated moderator asks the group to validate this and takes action accordingly. The convener can monitor the conversation live, and record the session’s audio and interactions.

The platform is under active development, and has recently been successfully deployed in Canada, Chile, Hong Kong, Japan, and at Stanford with 15 parallel groups each. We have supported deliberations with up to 1250 unique participants. We have facilitated about 800 room group sessions and created 8,000 rooms for the same. There are 10 rooms and 185 unique participants on average per session. So far, we have hosted over 11,500 hours of group discussion with close to 50,000 unique participants.

See below for our publications and media coverage.

This work is supported by the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence through a seed grant, the Stanford Research Institute and previously by the David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute for Media Innovation through a Magic Grant and the National Science Foundation.

Examples

Our platform has been used in several deliberations in various contexts.
Some examples include:

• A Tokyo city-wide deliberative poll on solar energy options in April 2020 (3 sessions, 15 parallel groups, 150+ participants)
• A Hong Kong city-wide deliberative poll on solar energy options in July 2020 (3 sessions, 15 parallel groups, 170+ participants)
• A national deliberation in Chile in collaboration with the Senate of Chile on constitutional reform in March 2021 (5 sessions, around 30 groups, 470+ participants)
• Two deliberations on Stanford's new School for Sustainability for faculty and students in January (faculty: 2 sessions, 15 parallel groups, 230+ participants) and May 2021 (students: 25 groups, 210 participants)
• America in One Room 2021, on various national issues in September 2021 (4 sessions, 132 groups, 1250 participants)
• Metaverse community forum, on creator restrictions and social media bullying in December 2022 (100+ sessions, 890 groups, ~10,000 participants)
• 2023 Nobel Prize Summit, on misinformation on social media in May 2023 (3 sessions, 55 groups, 270 participants)
• America in One Room, on Democratic Reform in June 2023 (5 sessions, 90 groups, 725 participants)

Coverage

Publications

We have published research papers that talk about the technicalities and the background of our work.
Links to the recent publications:

• Lodewijk Gelauff, Liubov Nikolenko, Sukolsak Sakshuwong, James Fishkin, Ashish Goel, Kamesh Munagala, & Alice Siu (2023). Achieving Parity with Human Moderators: A self-moderating platform for online deliberation. In The Routledge Handbook of Collective Intelligence for Democracy and Governance (pp. 202-221). doi:10.4324/9781003215929-15
• James Fishkin, Nikhil Garg, Lodewijk Gelauff, Ashish Goel, Kamesh Munagala, Sukolsak Sakshuwong, Alice Siu, & Sravya Yandamuri (2019). Deliberative Democracy with the Online Deliberation Platform.

Contact Us

If you are interested in hosting a small-group conversation on the platform or want to learn more about it, please email us at deliberationplatform@lists.stanford.edu

• Laura Castro Venegas, M.S. student in Computer Science, Stanford University
• Lovish Chopra, M.S. student in Computer Science, Stanford University
• James Fishkin, Janet M. Peck Professor of International Communication; Professor of Political Science (by courtesy); Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; Director, Deliberative Democracy Lab, Stanford University
• Lodewijk Gelauff, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Deliberative Democracy Lab, Stanford University. Project lead.
• Ashish Goel, Professor of Management Science and Engineering and (by courtesy) Computer Science, Stanford University. Project lead.
• Shoaib Mohammed, M.S. student in Computer Science, Stanford University
• Sukolsak Sakshuwong, Ph.D. alumnus in Management Science and Engineering, Stanford University. Founding lead developer.
• Alice Siu, Senior Research Scholar, Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law; Associate Director, Deliberative Democracy Lab, Stanford University