e-deliberation at Cesena: a very serious game

Alberto Lusoli (ECLT, UniVE, Italy)
Governments, along with private companies, have been raising their expectations about ICTs as means through which tackle one of the crises currently affecting our societies: the lack of democratic participation. According to Participedia, a network for civic engagement initiatives, there are approximately 100 civic engagement tools available today, which have been tested in over 400 projects. But is it really reasonable to suppose that ICTs will provide effective solutions to the issue of the lack of democratic participation? Will users interact with the technology according to the functionalities initially designed? Will they pursue the presumed goals, or will they misuse, not use or abuse of the technology, driven by their personal attributions? How can designers, and community facilitators, identify creative uses of ICT and promote a mutual understanding amongst participants? This paper is aimed at studying how attributions and relationships determine the functionalities of ICTs by studying the outcomes of an e-deliberation experiment performed in Cesena, Italy. During a one-month experiment, an online platform allowed citizens to contribute in writing the Mayor’s agenda for the years 2014-2019. Data gathered from on field research will show how citizens interacted with ICTs, which attributions the public administration and the involved community developed towards it, which functionalities eventually emerged. The final aim is to understand if and how a shared functionality(-es) has emerged, if this functionality(-es) was different from the one initially designed and which role facilitators played, or could have played, in managing the community participation.

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