{"id":18232,"date":"2017-03-24T12:47:14","date_gmt":"2017-03-24T16:47:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=18232"},"modified":"2017-03-24T12:47:14","modified_gmt":"2017-03-24T16:47:14","slug":"what-makes-conversation-go-well-a-network-model","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=18232","title":{"rendered":"what makes conversation go well (a network model)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m looking forward to presenting later today at\u00a0NULab’s first annual conference<\/a>, on the theme: \u201cKeeping the Public Sphere Open.\u201d<\/p>\n

I think of the \u201cpublic sphere\u201d as all the venues where people come together to share experiences, emotions, and reasons in order to form public opinion. In turn, public opinion should then influence institutions; that makes the society democratic.<\/p>\n

An open<\/em> public sphere, as in the title of the\u00a0conference, is one that permits and appropriately responds to every person\u2019s ideas; no idea or person is blocked. The state can threaten the openness of the public sphere by censoring ideas or blocking individuals from participating. The marketplace can threaten the openness of the public sphere when, for instance, ISPs charge more money for some content, or when private donors flood the airwaves with campaign commercials. Thus, to preserve an open public sphere, we need policies like a strong First Amendment, net neutrality, and campaign finance reform.<\/p>\n

But openness is not enough. The conversations within any public sphere can go well or badly. Along with several colleagues, I have been thinking about deliberation in the following way:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. People hold ideas prior to a conversation that we can think of as networks. Each idea may\u00a0be connected to each other idea by reasons. The person’s network has content (what the ideas say) and also a form. For instance, someone\u00a0might arrange all of her ideas around one central node, or might hold a set of disconnected principles.<\/li>\n
  2. When we talk, we share portions of our existing networks, one node or one reason at a time.<\/li>\n
  3. Interaction with other people may cause us to change our network. We can\u00a0adopt ideas that other people disclose, see new connections or doubt that connections really hold, think of new ideas on our own, or even adopt contrary ideas. In any case, our personal networks are subject to change.<\/li>\n
  4. The discussion itself can be modeled as one network to which the various participants have contributed nodes and links.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    If we could develop a valid and reliable way of modeling an individual\u2019s private network with respect to a given topic before a conversation, and then we put individuals in dialogue and modeled their interactions, I would predict that: 1) the formal properties of their networks before the discussion would influence the quality of the discussion, 2) the quality of the discussion would be related to changes in their personal networks, 3) an individual\u2019s networks would tend to look formally similar even when the topic changed (e.g., some people would be prone to thinking about\u00a0most topics in a centralized or in a scattered way), and 4) a given issue would tend to produce formally similar networks for diverse individuals (e.g., the abortion debate and a budget discussion would generate different-looking networks regardless of the participants).<\/p>\n

    There then follow a whole set of questions about what a good conversation looks like and how people should structure and change their thoughts.<\/p>\n

    See also:\u00a0it\u2019s not just what you think, but how your thoughts are organized<\/a>;\u00a0tracking change in a group that discusses issues<\/a>;\u00a0network dynamics in conversation<\/a>; and\u00a0assessing a discussion<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I’m looking forward to presenting later today at\u00a0NULab’s first annual conference, on the theme: \u201cKeeping the Public Sphere Open.\u201d I think of the \u201cpublic sphere\u201d as all the venues where people come together to share experiences, emotions, and reasons in order to form public opinion. In turn, public opinion should then influence institutions; that makes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-deliberation","category-moral-network-mapping"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18232"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18235,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18232\/revisions\/18235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}