Good Deliberation Regardless of Mode? A Comparison of Automated Online, Human Online and Face-To-Face Moderations in a Deliberative Mini-Public

Does the mode of deliberation – face-to-face with human moderators, online with human moderators and online with an automated moderation – influence opinion formation and learning in a deliberative mini-public? We study a mini-public called Citizens’ parliament organized according to the Deliberative polling® model. Participants (n=671) were recruited through a stratified random sample of the Finnish population (n=30,000). They were randomly allocated into one of three treatment conditions. In Face-to-face, participants were physically present and discussed under the guidance of human moderators. In Online human, participants discussed in an online meeting (via Zoom) with human moderators. In Online automated, participants discussed in an online platform with automated moderation. All discussions took place in small groups of around ten people. The topics were based on four citizens’ initiatives, two of which were about drug use policies and two about fuel pricing and taxation. Apart from the meeting mode, the procedures were held constant. Participants received briefing materials and rules of discussion prior deliberations, and during deliberations they could pose questions to experts. Each participant completed four surveys: three before deliberations (t1-t3) and one after (t4). Surveys included items on opinions on the discussed topics, democracy preferences, political trust and efficacy, affective polarization and political knowledge. Opinion transformation and learning were observed in all conditions, and opinions changed into the same direction as well as depolarized. Our main conclusion is that while there were slight differences between the degree of change in the three conditions, overall, the mode of deliberation did not affect the outcomes of deliberations.