A New Architecture of the Public Sphere: Online Deliberation at the Liberal Party of Canada’s 2011 Extraordinary Convention

This thesis examines the quality and effectiveness of online political deliberation, within the framework of Jurgen Habermas’ public sphere and discourse theories. The thesis analyzes a deliberative process that took place online, in June 2011, as part of the Liberal Party of Canada’s Extraordinary Convention, specifically through content and discourse analysis of data from online discussion platforms. The analysis sought to ascertain whether the objectives of the convention were met, measured the quality of discourse and identified insights to support the creation of more effective spaces for political deliberation online. Analysis of the results revealed a difference in the discourse quality for each platform, attributed to the synchronicity or asynchronicity of the platform. The thesis concludes with suggestions for a design that makes use of both the synchronous and asynchronous features of the online discussion platforms in order to more specifically target the objectives of the political process.MAS