Political Engagement Through Tools for Argumentation

1. Political Engagement Through Tools for Argumentation Dan Cartwright and Katie Atkinson Department of Computer Science, University of Liverpool, UK Presentation to COMMA 2008

2. Overview • Background of e-Democracy and current trends • Overview of Parmenides • Tools to support and extend Parmenides • Discussion of future work and concluding remarks

3. e-Democracy • Focuses on the use of computing technologies in enhancing democratic processes • Driven by: • Availability of computers & internet access • Mobilisation of electorate • Exploitation of technology

4. Current Trends • e-Consultation systems (Macintosh et al., 2006) • Support and encourage political participation of young people in Scotland • Highland Youth Voice • Online policy-debating forum • Online voting system • Ur’say • Single-themed discussion forum • Debate is analysed and report produced

5. Current Trends • e-Petitions allow users to create and “sign” petitions over the internet • UK government introduced an e-Petitions website in 2004 • Example below based on The Fox Hunting Debate

6. Current Trends • e-Petitions suffer from similar problems to paper-based counterparts • We do not know which part(s) of the petition the signatory agrees or disagrees with • Signatories have to agree with “all or nothing”

7. Current Trends • Structured tools • Tools for argument visualisation • Example: Araucaria (Reed & Rowe, 2003) • Visualise textual arguments • Tools for decision support • Example: Zeno (Gordon & Karacapilidis, 1997) • Issues with ease of use by laypersons

8. Parmenides – Overview • An online discussion forum (K. Atkinson et al., 2004) • Intended as an e-Democracy application • Government presents policy proposals to public together with a justification • Users submit their critique of the proposal • Aims to provide structure to debate whilst remaining easy to use • Based on an argument schemefor reasoning about action selection and associated set of critical questions

9. Parmenides – Argument Scheme • Argument schemes represent stereotypical patterns of reasoning • Parmenides is based on an argument scheme for persuasive argument about action selection • AS1 argument scheme: “ In the current circumstances R, we should perform action A, which will result in new circumstances S, which will realise goal G, which will promote some value V ”

10. Parmenides – Critical Questions • Challenge the presumptions in instantiations of the argument scheme • Examples: • Are the circumstances as described? • Does the goal promote the value? • Used to determine which parts of the initial position the user disagrees with

11. Parmenides – Latest Developments • Parmenides was first implemented to model the Iraq War Debate • Since extended to model further debates, such as the Fox Hunting Debate • Tools to analyse debate data • Tools for demographic profiling • Tools for dynamic debate creation

12. Parmenides – Critique • The Critique section of the website allows the user to critique each element of the initial position • Achieved by systematically considering Critical Questions • User is not aware that they are using critical questions or being lead through a particular path: they can respond with “yes/no” answers • Underlying structure hidden from user to prevent confusion

13. Parmenides – Critique (2) • The above is an instantiation of a Critical Question associated with the argument scheme • This CQ asks whether the user believes that the Circumstances stated in the initial position are true

14. Parmenides – Alternative Position • Users can submit an alternative position to the debate • User does this by instantiating an instance of the AS1 argument scheme • Example alternative position from the fox hunting debate: Circumstances: The ban is not enforced correctly Action: Improve policing of the ban Goals: Prevent public contravention of the ban Values: Animal welfare, Law enforcement

15. Parmenides – Alternative Position (2) • The user must choose elements of their position from a drop-down menu • Allows easy analysis of results and prevents abuse • However, it does restrict users’ expressiveness • To overcome this: some free text input

16. Parmenides Java Application (1) • Consists of 2 tools • Critique statistics tool • Analyses user critiques of the argument’s initial position • Displays the results in the form of an Argument Framework, showing arguments and attacks between them • Alternative position analysis tool • Analyses alternative positions submitted by users • Displays results as a Value-based Argument Framework

17. Parmenides Java Application (2) • Critique statistics tool

18. Critique Statistics Analysis • Each statement is broken down into its constituent elements • Each branch consists of a statement and a counterstatement • The numbers above each node represent the number of users who agree with the element

19. Critique Statistics Analysis • Textual summary is also available • Agreement shown as percentages

20. Parmenides Java Application (3) • Second tool: Alternative position analysis tool • Displays a Value-based Argumentation Framework (Bench-Capon, 2003) • VAFs are an extension to Dung’s AFs, in which we represent the social values promoted by each argument • Determine which attacks succeed by applying a preference ordering over the values • From this, we can determine justifiable arguments

21. Parmenides Java Application (4) • Alternative position analysis tool

22. Parmenides Debate Creator • Easy to add new debates • Consistent appearance • Little technical knowledge required • System tested with a small number of new debates • e.g. Speed Camera Debate, Fox Hunting Debate

23. Parmenides Profiler • Allows demographic profiling of users • Users optionally log into profiler before participating in debate • Users can submit information about themselves Debate Profiler Debate

24. Issues • Analysis of demographic profile data • Enhance free-text input and analysis • Security • Manipulation of results

25. Conclusion and Future Work • We have described Parmenides and a number of tools to enhance the original system • Parmenides aims to provide a balance between structure and ease of use • Future work is planned • Implement other Argument Schemes in Parmenides • Example: Argument from Expert Opinion • Investigate how these schemes interact • Field trials

26. Thankyou for your attention • The Parmenides system can be used at http://cgi.csc.liv.ac.uk/~parmenides • For further information on the topics discussed: • http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~dan • dan@csc.liv.ac.uk • Questions?