Examining Discursive Features in Crowdsourced Deliberation: Idea Generation through Elaboration

Civic technologies such as participatory budgeting and crowdsourced policymaking increasingly provide spaces for crowdsourced deliberation, an asynchronous, distributed, and self-selected form of deliberation. To understand the dynamics of crowdsourced deliberation, we examined deliberative quality, dis/agreement, and elaboration (rationale-sharing), and their association with idea generation in crowdsourced deliberation within a crowdsourced policymaking process led by a national government. The deliberative quality of the crowdsourced deliberation was high and positively associated with idea generation. Elaboration of perspectives was a key feature contributing to idea generation. We present considerations for the design of processes and platforms used in civic technologies to foster high deliberative quality, elaboration, and a balance of disagreement and agreement, which in turn can support idea generation in crowdsourced deliberation.