Friday, June 22, 2007

Moving on the debate

Blair's speech of 12th June where he launched an attack on the now famous 'Feral Beasts of the Media' was the launch pad a for a consultation process. The debate mapper is described by the creators as a part of the government's e-democracy project designed "to develop a web-based means for people to collaboratively identify and display all of the arguments pertinent to any political debate clearly and fairly, so that all of the participants in the debate have the chance to see the debate as a whole and to understand how the positions they hold exist within that debate": hence the debate map (pictured). The debate on the content of the 12th June speech is to close in five days and is for a panel of invited experts. It is unclear if this initiative is the start of a consultation process to match that of the Conservatives which George Osborne argued will be founded on open access to information, social networking [via MySpace etc], and an open-source bottom-up deliberative approach. Is this a passing fad where enthusiasm is being thrown at all things 'e', or the start of a revolution in the way politics and political communication is done?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Darren - I'm not sure that I fully understand this, but it looks fascinating.

Could similar technology be used in education to help students understand theories, supporters, counter-perspectives etc?

Darren G. Lilleker said...

I must admit it is not the clearest thing I have ever seen but I guess it is similar to a wiki where you can plot the histroy of comments, tie comments to specific parts of a text and so it could have L&T applications. Unfortunately I am not up on the technical wizardry behind it but I can see potential in your idea. We should pass it on to Jon Wardle!

I do wonder if this will be rolled out to policies. I can see that something like health reform could offer a range of different areas for reform and request contributions from experts to one area, patients elsewhere, etc.