An Experiment in E-Rulemaking with Natural Language Processing and Democratic Deliberation

Abstract

Public comment processes in federal and state agency rulemakings are among the most substantial potential arenas for public input into government. Unfortunately, these processes have not been much used for thoughtful public input. This research sought to shed light on whether online democratic deliberation, without facilitation, and natural language processing tools could empower participants to provide more informed input into an agency rulemaking. It also sought to determine whether such an approach had other positive effects such as enhancing citizenship and increasing confidence in the pertinent agency. Findings indicate improvements in participant knowledge of the network neutrality rulemaking topic, systematic attitude change, improvements to citizenship measures, and increased confidence in the Federal Communications Commission. Results suggest that public deliberation under conditions needed to involve substantial numbers of people—namely, online deliberation without facilitators—can improve public comments into federal and state agency rulemakings while strengthening the citizenship qualities of participants. They also indicate that many of the desired effects of face-to-face deliberation with trained facilitators can also be obtained online without facilitators.