When the midterm election day dawned in the United States on November 6 two years ago, their government was in a pretty chaotic situation. However, whatever happened that induced this, the policies and the democracy, obviously, is always in its place in effect. David Lazer, a professor at Northeastern University, emphasises on the importance of how people need to be politically alert, voters and elected officials alike, in order to put a more efficient constituent together.
The ways and methods implemented for now are not working, for example, no one exactly shows up to those town hall meetings where the candidates are available to answer people’s questions and solve their problems. A more effective way is, according to Lazer, online Q&A forums. He has, along with his colleagues, devised such a platform, which resembles those traditional townhouses and the meetings taking place there. The group urged many constituents of Washington DC to take part in the forums, just like volunteers of this little experiment of theirs.
The forum focused on detainees as well as immigration policy, with basic information on both the topics given to the volunteers beforehand. What surprised the group was how they had to check and analyse around 2000 anonymous questions and views. Three factors were studied to understand the reason behind such a great response. Lazer observed how there, “were actually more representative of potential voters than actual voters are”. Usually, people who had extreme ideas on the continuum showed up in the traditional hall meetings. However, here people from all points of the continuum participated in this experiment.
The big difference that was seen in the two settings was how people were much more civil online. While a virtual atmosphere is susceptible to provocative scenarios, the level of civility exhibited in this experiment was surprising, but not rare, as people online tend to be much liberal, treating the platform as a group discussion and not a fight inducing situation. The last factor being the online one; online meetings and forums are gaining much more attention as the world has become more techno-savvy than before. This has helped the politics to pave its way to the online platforms, which has, in turn, boosted its development.
“It’s one of those things that not so many years ago would’ve seemed like science fiction,” said Lazer, “but this is indeed how we can do democracy today.”
Pranjali Wakde
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