An Exploration on Deliberation

Cameron Kellock

Moderating Philosophy Statement In order to be an effective moderator you must be nothing short of an expert at managing people and remaining unbiased, while being fluent on the topic of deliberation. Moderators are responsible for creating an atmosphere where discussion can strive most constructively and thus must uphold the characteristics of an exemplary citizen. However, a moderators job reaches far beyond showing respect for group members opinions and taking into consideration everyones perspective. I have found that to be most effective, a moderator must keep a balance between leading a focused conversation without intervening too much in hopes of fulfilling his or her own expectations about the deliberation. In this way, a moderators job is to help the participants of the deliberation get the most out of their discussion that they possibly can. It may be intuitive to sit down at a round table or join in on an Internet forum and take on the role of the moderator by asking many great, thought-provoking questions. While it certainly is the moderators duty to encourage members of a deliberation to express their beliefs on a variety of topics within the subject, I find that this style of moderating can become unconstructive. It is in these situations where I have looked back on the discussion and asked myself, wait, so what did we just talk about? Without keeping a focus, I have found that a deliberation can be unfulfilling and inconclusive from a members perspective. For this reason, I make it one of my main objectives to take a step back before changing gears to ask for clarification about what was just discussed and what was finally agreed or disagreed upon. When intervening in the conversation, it can be easy for moderators to change the course of discussion in order to fulfill his or her prior expectations about what direction they wanted it to explore. However, it is important for them to allow the members to explore the

subject from their own perspective, on their own path. For example, on the online deliberation I was apart of, the first member to comment took the conversation in a totally different direction, which had nothing to do with violent videogames. While it was not what I was anticipating, I followed up and embraced his unique position. Like in this case, the moderator may feel that they are more fluent on the subject matter but it is important for them to realize that their opinion is not the end all be all. By putting aside his or her own opinions and presumptions, a moderator may find his or her role just as eye opening as someone who is an active contributor. I have found that in the discussions I have been a contributor in, more flexible and engaged moderators guided without dictating which empowered me and other members of our group to draw our own unique conclusions. In terms of my two main principles, I would define myself as a moderator that is hands-off but not disengaged. By staying aware of the presence of each of the group members, I strive to come to clarifications that will incorporate all the positions that were presented. Aware of all perspectives, I find that my engrossed standpoint allows me to consider all viewpoints deeply. My goal of being an open-minded deliberator is thus upheld by not constantly intervening but staying engaged. However, in spoken deliberation, I find that staying on top of the stances of all can become overwhelming. Recording as a moderator can straighten ideas out, however, and can aid in remembering the information. Another component that I found could add to my skills as a moderator would be working to compare and contrast certain arguments in the hopes of coming to the most conclusive decision possible. Overall, I believe moderating is a practice that requires a number of skills and a wealth of knowledge. Moderators must uphold all the qualities associated with good citizenship but also must know how to keep a discussion focused without letting their bias trap members into feeling that they are constricted to the moderators preconceived plan.

While the role of a moderator can sometimes become frustrating because one is viewing the discussion from the outside, unable to share his or her own views, it is a powerful position in which one has the ability to create a constructive and meaningful discussion about the issue at hand.

Deliberation Evaluation Over a two-week span, our class discussed the three sustainability options presented by The University of Iowas National Issues Forum in hopes of creating an effective deliberation. By designating one day to each of the options, we considered the possibilities of them one by one in order to come to our final conclusions about how our country should go about sustaining itself for the future. Speaking for my group, I felt as if we were able to thoroughly analyze our own perspectives and opinions, yet we lacked in depth understanding on each one of the options and any accurate conclusive discussion because of our limited perspective. At the same time, I felt as if our combined effort successfully gave us an idea about what the social process of deliberation is like. In his book Political Communication and Deliberation, John Gastil defines deliberation analytically, through the second principle on his list, as a process where members are responsible for creating a strong understanding of the values that each of the group members holds with regards to the topic. I feel as if this principle is the very basis for any type of discussion and an aspect that our group executed thoroughly. By the end of the deliberation there was little misunderstanding about the perspectives held by each individual, as I felt everyone participated to the best of their ability. Specifically, the time at the beginning of the discussion set aside to cover personal stakes allowed us to get the ball rolling on sharing our personal opinions with the group. I think our group was able to execute Gastils second principle most easily out of the five analytic principles. I think it may be easy to say, considering all group members effectively shared each of their own perspectives on the issue, that we came up with a wide variety of solutions with which to analyze. However, I dont think we were able to create a wide range of fixes because we, as college freshman at Penn State, cannot possibly represent a wide range of American perspectives on the topic. This became clear to me on the first day when we

discussed how we could make America more sustainable by setting in place laws and taxes that would work toward protecting our critical resources. Many of the members in my group echoed each other through most of the deliberation, supporting the idea that a rise in the gas tax would be an extremely effective strategy. Many members pulled articles prior to the discussion about how European countries have already put higher gas taxes in place and about the innovation that has resulted because of them. However, at the end of the discussion, when considering the perspectives unaccounted for in our discussion, we were able to come up with many minorities and majorities that would suffer from such a tax in America if it were put in place. We failed to consider that a lot of the food consumed by the people living in the center of our country geographically is trucked in on the fuel that we supported raising taxes on. We realized that many of these same Americans have a hard enough time affording such necessities. With such considerations, we realized that raising the gas tax is not such an obvious fix. I think the failure to uphold Gastils third principle goes hand-in-hand with the acknowledgement that our group was not able to create a large enough fact base, which is critical to any deliberation according to Gastils first principle. While we pulled many articles, read our issue guides, and did some research prior to discussion, even our best efforts were limited by time and resources. As in the example shared above, our group was not made up of experts in the fields of energy engineering and economics but were limited to college freshman from middle and middle upper class families most of which live in Pennsylvania. Most were willing to admit that they drive more than they need to and that their families would probably not be paralyzed if they had to pay a little more at the pump. None of us were fluent on what the possible repercussions for Middle America if this gas tax were put in place, not to mention the possible repercussions that would be felt by any one of the major industries in America who depend on fuel to produce and transport their products.

Overall, with all of the options, including the first one, it was hard to feel confident about our final conclusions because we were not fluent enough on the topic. In this way, we were able to weigh the pros, cons, and trade-offs as Gastil stressed through his forth principle, but only with our own limited perspectives. Although I doubted that all implications of our ideas were thought out and accounted for and that all options were presented, I felt as if our group made the best of our limited perspective. It was with strong initiative and curiosity that our group was able to carry out the social process thoroughly. With regards to Gastils principles about the social process of deliberation, introduced on page 20 of his book, I felt as if all the members of our group successfully shared their ideas and opinions as well as did their best to understand the ideas and opinions of others in a respectful way. At times I felt as if it was easy to just agree or disagree with the statements made by other group members instead of providing positive critique that could have led to adaptions. However, as the days progressed, I think our group as a whole became more productive in the way of building on each others ideas, which showed mutual understanding and the synthesis of a number of ideas. Deliberating on the three options for sustaining ourselves presented by The National Issues Forum was a way in which our class was able to explore the art of deliberation while thinking about how we can go about supporting our country in the future. Overall, I thought as if our group was able to throw around many of our own ideas effectively by carrying out the social process of deliberation defined by Gastil but it was hard for us to confidently come to strong analytic conclusions because many groups of people and their ideas were not represented. By deliberating in class in groups, I was able to build an understanding that being knowledgeable as a group member is a vital responsibility to get the most out of the deliberation and to help your group come to the best possible conclusion.

Online Deliberation and Reflection

The online deliberation that I moderated took place on a site called Social Number where a few of us discussed how violent videogames and television programs could be a reason for increased violence America. I was excited to give this website a try after featuring it in one of my passion blogs a few weeks ago. An anonymous forum where people from all over the world discuss a wide variety of topics, Social Number seemed like a great place to hear from a variety of different perspectives outside of college kids at Penn State. I was excited to hear about their views of the violence problem in America, a topic that I have been covering over many weeks in my civic issues blog. To ensure that the deliberation would be well informed, I researched the topic thoroughly before posting. I pulled from things I have been learning about through research for my Civic Issues blog and material from my Psychology 101 class. In hopes of enacting smart deliberative exchange, I set the ball rolling with reference to a specific experiment and followed it up with a question. Throughout the discussion I tried my best to cite outside examples to add merit to the conversation. This included when I brought up the nurture verses nature debate. In this way, I think I effectively encouraged people to make informed responses. With the intention of encouraging others to keep the discussion going, I recapped what I thought they were talking about in their posts to ensure mutual understanding and then asked a follow up question or two. However, the series of posts unfortunately became a bunch of disconnected monologues with the exception of one member who checked back on the discussion once to follow up. However, even though the conversation was choppy, I was happy to see the perspectives of very different people accounted for. The first comment I received, for example, was written entirely in Spanish. With some background in Spanish, I

was able to translate and find out that the poster lives in Guatemala and finds that many in his country are negatively affected by television. He said that he thinks that it keeps families from interacting as many sit in silence in front of the television during dinner. In addition, another member was able to speak from the perspective as a video gamer. This member presented another argument that was not heard early on. In accord to Gastils fifth point about deliberation, I found that the discussion was very productive for me as I was able to walk away from the discussion feeling like I successfully updated my my own opinion in light of others contributions. However, since only one other member returned to the discussion to follow up with their comment, I feel as if others might have found the conversation less productive than I did. On the same note, I felt that the hardest part about holding an online deliberation was keeping people interested enough so that they would be likely to come back and follow up with their posts. In the classroom setting people really had no choice but to stay involved in the conversation because not only were they assigned to carry it out, but also they had little other alternative. In the future, to insure that people are more likely to stay engaged, I would hold this conversation on a different site. Although I found Social Number worthwhile to try out, I also found that the contributors probably felt no accountability to returning to the discussion because they were posting anonymously. It seemed like many who started discussions on the Facebook group were successful because names and faces of fellow classmates were attached to the comments and, as a result, people felt greater accountability for the things they said and were interested in others feedback.