Bring Something to the Potluck: A System for Inclusive and Reciprocal Online Discussion

We present Potluck, a structured online commenting system that aims to promote the inclusion and reflection of differing views. It features a discussion flow that (1) elicits independent viewpoints through shielded discussion (2) collates and displays divergent viewpoints using automatic summarisation-aggregation and (3) encourages reflection through recursive question-and-answer. This paper describes work in progress, outlining the design motivations, features and user flow of a working prototype. A preliminary user study has shown encouraging results on the usability of the proposed system.

Content

Author and article information

Contributors

Emma Lieu

Jennifer Cole

Chris Watkins

Conference

Publication date: July 2022

Publication date (Print): July 2022

Pages: 1-6

Affiliations

[0001]Royal Holloway, University of London

Egham Hill, Egham

Surrey, TW20 0EX UK

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/HCI2022.4

SO-VID: f730f23d-a62c-44aa-98c6-269127f5eb47

License:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: 35th International BCS Human-Computer Interaction Conference

Conference acronym: HCI2022

Conference number: 35

Conference location: Keele, Staffordshire

Conference date: July 11th to 13th, 2022

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: Towards a Human-Centred Digital Society

History

Product

1477-9358 BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/HCI2022.4

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

REFERENCES

Chen, G. M. (2017), Online Incivility and Public Debate: Nasty Talk, Springer International Publishing AG, Cham, SWITZERLAND.
Dave, K., Wattenberg, M. and Muller, M. (2004), Flash forums and forumReader: Navigating a new kind of large-scale online discussion, in ‘Proceedings of the 2004 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work’, CSCW ’04, Association for Computing Machinery, Chicago, Illinois, USA, pp. 232–241.
Faridani, S., Bitton, E., Ryokai, K. and Goldberg, K. (2010), Opinion space: A scalable tool for browsing online comments, in ‘Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems’, CHI ’10, Association for Computing Machinery, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, pp. 1175–1184.
Gowdy, T. (2020), Doesn’t Hurt to Ask: Using the Power of Questions to Communicate, Connect, and Persuade, Bantam Dell Publishing Group, Div of Random House, Inc.
Graf, J., Erba, J. and Harn, R.-W. (2017), ‘The Role of Civility and Anonymity on Perceptions of Online Comments’, Mass Communication and Society 20(4), 526–549.
Hoque, E. and Carenini, G. (2016), MultiConVis: A Visual Text Analytics System for Exploring a Collection of Online Conversations, in ‘Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces’, ACM, Sonoma California USA, pp. 96–107.
Jones, Q., Ravid, G. and Rafaeli, S. (2004), ‘Information Overload and the Message Dynamics of Online Interaction Spaces: A Theoretical Model and Empirical Exploration’, Information Systems Research 15(2), 194–210.
Kim, H., Kim, H., Jo, K. J. and Kim, J. (2021), ‘Starry-Thoughts: Facilitating Diverse Opinion Exploration on Social Issues’, Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 5(CSCW1), 1–29.
Klein, M. (2007), ‘How to Harvest Collective Wisdom for Complex Problems: An Introduction to the MIT Deliberatorium’, Center for Collective Intelligence Working Paper.
Moore, A., Fredheim, R., Wyss, D. and Beste, S. (2021), ‘Deliberation and Identity Rules: The Effect of Anonymity, Pseudonyms and Real-Name Requirements on the Cognitive Complexity of Online News Comments’, Political Studies 69(1), 45–65.
Murphy, K. (2020), You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters, Random House.
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Reimers, N. and Gurevych, I. (2019), ‘Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks’, arXiv:1908.10084 [cs].
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Shirky, C. (2008), Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations, Allen Lane, London.
Springer, N., Engelmann, I. and Pfaffinger, C. (2015), ‘User comments: Motives and inhibitors to write and read’, Information, Communication & Society 18(7), 798–815.
Walther, J. B. and Jang, J.-w. (2012), ‘Communication Processes in Participatory Websites’, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 18(1), 2–15.
Wright, S. and Street, J. (2007), ‘Democracy, deliberation and design: The case of online discussion forums’, New Media & Society 9(5), 849–869.

Comments

Comment on this article

[1] Chen, G. M. (2017), Online Incivility and Public Debate: Nasty Talk, Springer International Publishing AG, Cham, SWITZERLAND.

[2] Dave, K., Wattenberg, M. and Muller, M. (2004), Flash forums and forumReader: Navigating a new kind of large-scale online discussion, in ‘Proceedings of the 2004 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work’, CSCW ’04, Association for Computing Machinery, Chicago, Illinois, USA, pp. 232–241.

[3] Faridani, S., Bitton, E., Ryokai, K. and Goldberg, K. (2010), Opinion space: A scalable tool for browsing online comments, in ‘Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems’, CHI ’10, Association for Computing Machinery, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, pp. 1175–1184.

[4] Gowdy, T. (2020), Doesn’t Hurt to Ask: Using the Power of Questions to Communicate, Connect, and Persuade, Bantam Dell Publishing Group, Div of Random House, Inc.

[5] Graf, J., Erba, J. and Harn, R.-W. (2017), ‘The Role of Civility and Anonymity on Perceptions of Online Comments’, Mass Communication and Society 20(4), 526–549.

[6] Hoque, E. and Carenini, G. (2016), MultiConVis: A Visual Text Analytics System for Exploring a Collection of Online Conversations, in ‘Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces’, ACM, Sonoma California USA, pp. 96–107.

[7] Jones, Q., Ravid, G. and Rafaeli, S. (2004), ‘Information Overload and the Message Dynamics of Online Interaction Spaces: A Theoretical Model and Empirical Exploration’, Information Systems Research 15(2), 194–210.

[8] Kim, H., Kim, H., Jo, K. J. and Kim, J. (2021), ‘Starry-Thoughts: Facilitating Diverse Opinion Exploration on Social Issues’, Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 5(CSCW1), 1–29.

[9] Klein, M. (2007), ‘How to Harvest Collective Wisdom for Complex Problems: An Introduction to the MIT Deliberatorium’, Center for Collective Intelligence Working Paper.

[10] Moore, A., Fredheim, R., Wyss, D. and Beste, S. (2021), ‘Deliberation and Identity Rules: The Effect of Anonymity, Pseudonyms and Real-Name Requirements on the Cognitive Complexity of Online News Comments’, Political Studies 69(1), 45–65.

[11] Murphy, K. (2020), You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters, Random House.

[12] Perspective API (n.d.), https://perspectiveapi.com/.

[13] Reimers, N. and Gurevych, I. (2019), ‘Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks’, arXiv:1908.10084 [cs].

[14] Rowe, I. (2015), ‘Civility 2.0: A comparative analysis of incivility in online political discussion’, Information, Communication & Society 18(2), 121–138.

[15] Shirky, C. (2008), Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations, Allen Lane, London.

[16] Springer, N., Engelmann, I. and Pfaffinger, C. (2015), ‘User comments: Motives and inhibitors to write and read’, Information, Communication & Society 18(7), 798–815.

[17] Walther, J. B. and Jang, J.-w. (2012), ‘Communication Processes in Participatory Websites’, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 18(1), 2–15.

[18] Wright, S. and Street, J. (2007), ‘Democracy, deliberation and design: The case of online discussion forums’, New Media & Society 9(5), 849–869.

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