URL debategraph.org/default.aspx?sig=2545-2545-4-0
CASE STUDY OWNER Office of the Prime Minister
Overview
The 10 Downing Street website was established to showcase the activities of the prime minister. Initially, it featured news bulletins, podcasts and video footage; gradually interactive features (such as virtual tours) were introduced, heralding the website’s first attempts at direct engagement.
These reached their heyday with the development of the ePetitions system, which brought the Number 10 website into the public eye. ePetitions allow people to have their say on matters that affect them but do not necessarily have a policy impact; despite this, they have proven popular, in some cases leading to webchats with ministers.
This case study focuses on an initiative targeting opinion leaders who were invited to take part in a facilitated debate mapping exercise. This allowed for an approach that differed radically from the traditional back-and-forth of political debate; instead, all positions needed only to be stated once and could then be developed, rated, categorised or added to. The idea was to encourage a more nuanced approach to deliberation.
Policy purpose
Before leaving office, the former British prime minister, Tony Blair, gave eight lectures on Our Nation’s Future. The first focused on criminal justice, the second on developments in public health; the third tackled social exclusion and the fourth outlined the social implications of advancements in science. Lecture five promoted multiculturalism, while the sixth reviewed defence policy throughout British history; the seventh highlighted the relationship between work and society and the final lecture explored the relationship between the media and politics.
Journalists were invited (via Reuters) to attend the final lecture, alongside academics and public figures. Afterwards, they were asked to take part in the online debate mapping exercise. The aim was to explore whether key stakeholders could be engaged in a discussion about the mediation of politics and to evaluate new online techniques of engagement. There were no policy objectives and no anticipated outcomes.
Model
The debate mapping exercise was linked to on the 10 Downing Street site, but hosted externally.
The speech by Tony Blair was uploaded to the Debategraph site and mapped by the Debategraph team: breaking the structure of the argument presented in the speech into its constituent parts, each of which could then be challenged, rated and commented upon. The categories used in the debate map were:
- Position
- Component
- Supporting Argument
- Opposing Argument
- Part Argument
- Argument Group
- Issue
The categories contained in the map allowed users to compare the ideas being expressed in the speech to those contained in surrounding debates. Participants could contribute their own perspectives, too: and the Debategraph team also mapped arguments raised in the media response to the speech. Thus, the site doubled as a map and archive of the different positions in the debate about the mediation of public life. Participants could amend and contribute to the map of the debate: which evolved as they did so.
Feedback was collected from participants. This enabled the Debategraph team to enhance the features and usability of the tool while enabling the Number 10 site to assess new forms of engagement.
Duration
The DebateMapping exercise started on 12 June, 2007 – the day on which Tony Blair made his speech. It continued until 20 July, 2007.
Publicity
Participants (mostly journalists or academics) were invited by Reuters and the Hansard Society (rather than Downing Street) to take part in the debate mapping exercise with a view to ensuring that participants felt unrestricted in terms of their licence to be critical about the content of the prime minister’s speech. Meanwhile, relevant arguments contained within the 102 related articles carried by domestic and international press were included in the debate map.
Other methods of engagement
The Number 10 website provides a number of other interactive facilities that promote engagement with the prime minister’s office, such as webchats, virtual tours and the famous ePetitions site. These are designed to be accessible to the public and to provide people with information about and ways of linking into government consultations.
User profiles
Invitees came from outside of government (from media organisations and academic institutions, as well as public engagement bodies). No demographic data were collected, nor any attitudinal or behavioural data.
Usage Trends
There were 309 invitees, with 240 invited via Reuters and 69 invited by the Hansard Society. 22 (7 per cent) of the invitees registered, including 17 (25 per cent) of the Hansard invitees and five (2 per cent) of the Reuters invitees. Two (12 per cent) of Hansard invitees contributed to the map – via edits (two) and comments (two). None of the media invitees contributed directly to the map.
There were 362 referrals from the www.debate.pm.gov.uk URL during June, and a further 38 in July. The combined figure of 400 includes referrals during the pre-project development phase, referrals initiated by the project team and a few referrals initiated by colleagues/family/friends.
The Debategraph team estimate that the total number of independent visits to the Downing Street debate map between 12 June and 20 July was around 225.
User feedback
The deliberative design appealed to users, who were also pleased to have been invited to take part in the initiative. Few wished to comment on the ex prime minster’s speech via the medium of the site, preferring to publish their views in articles in the press and online. Partly, this was because of the site’s interface: users complained that it was not immediately accessible and that engagement did not produce clear outcomes. In addition, they wanted to reach a wider audience.
The purpose of the exercise was unclear to users. Many were unsure how to take part – specifically some mentioned finding it difficult to track arguments and locate comments: to do so, one would have to click on every category which was time-consuming. Such problems are best summed up in the words of one of the participants:
The debate mapper is a great idea to look at arguments systematically. However very often people just want to give their views overall and want them listened too (sic) and don’t approach debates logically. This coupled with complex structure may put people off.
Despite reservations about the specific format of the engagement exercise, respondents were happy to have taken part and felt it worthwhile – even if they would not necessarily recommend that it be used with the public. It was suggested that such deep deliberation should be used only with key stakeholders.
Moreover, respondents emphasised the need to ensure that the objectives of such deliberation were clear; specifically, they stressed the importance of process – if people were taking time to comment, then their views should be taken on board, it was argued. And meanwhile, one participant questioned whether it was preferable to reduce the so-called digital divide to ensure mass participation rather than engaging only with the elite.
Despite these reservations, participants noted that the asynchronous aspects of online engagements make them more accessible and less expensive than traditional forms: they also recognised that the structure of online deliberations provides a systematic and transparent framework for engagement, although some doubted that they really lead to the kinds of deep deliberation hoped for. Nonetheless, all wished to see the government using more online forms of engagement, but doubt was expressed about a cross-governmental commitment to doing so.
Follow up
The Debategraph exercise is less about representing interests to government and more about exploring new ways of providing overviews of debates and allowing participants to develop and categorise them.
The site was in Beta when used on the Downing Street site and is still under development – the shape of that partly influenced by the feedback from participants.
Since the exercise took place, the site has been developed to make it more user-friendly. In addition, the Debategraph team have started up a blog (1) to discuss the debate mapping process of deliberation, its theoretical origins and its practical applications. It has since been used in a number of different policy contexts.
The Downing Street website has not since run any debate mapping exercises: the case study is linked to in the Tony Blair archives.
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