For a given deliberation scenario, when is it better to meet online and when is it better to meet in person?
Advantages of meeting online
- Anecdotally, it seems that online, one sees more people asking others, "Why do you think that? Explain yourself"
- Online, people say that they can represent their true opinion
Rebuttals to supposed disadvantages of meeting online
Some participants of the '03 "Developing and Using Online Tools for Deliberative Democracy" seminar at CMU have found, in recent experiments:
- Less inter-group polarization from discussions in online communities (because they aren't so homogenous after all)
- Not neccessarily more flaming in online discussions than offline
See also TelepresenceVsMeetInPerson, SynchronousVsAsynchronousDiscussions.
CategoryDiscussion