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Cited by 490

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 43 of the 43 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Democracy, deliberation and design: the case of online discussion forums

Wright, Scott, Street, John·2007·New Media & Society

Abstract

Within democratic theory, the deliberative variant has assumed pre-eminence. It represents for many the ideal of democracy, and in pursuit of this ideal, online discussion forums have been proposed as solutions to the practical limits to mass deliberation. Critics have pointed to evidence which suggests that online discussion has tended to undermine deliberation. This article argues that this claim, which generates a stand-off between the two camps, misses a key issue: the role played by design in facilitating or thwarting deliberation. It argues that political choices are made both about the format and operation of the online discussion, and that this affects the possibility of deliberation. Evidence for the impact of design (and the choices behind it) is drawn from analysis of European Union and UK discussion forums. This evidence suggests that we should view deliberation as dependent on design and choice, rather than a predetermined product of the technology.

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Metadata

Authors
Wright, S., & Street, J.
Venue
New Media & Society
Published
2007-10
Volume
9
Issue
5
Pages
849-869
ISSN
  • 1461-4448 (ISSN-L)
  • 1461-7315
OpenAlex
W2151224211
Cited by
490
References
43
FWCI
72.55
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Democracy, deliberation and design: the case of online discussion forums. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1177/1461444807081230
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Wright, S., & Street, J. (2007). Democracy, deliberation and design: the case of online discussion forums. New Media & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444807081230

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.