Designing argumentative metrics for online consultation portals in Brazil

Web 2.0 technologies allow a massive number of people to talk to government and governments increasingly want to hear from public. However, the available technology and automated tools enabling policy makers to make sense of large-scale data shared online are limited. This paper presents a research project called Supporting Collaborative Deliberation: Designing Consultation Portals for Deliberative Practices in Brazil (SCD-Brazil). The project aims at investigating how governments can make sense of large scale number of policy inputs received from citizens with the aid of online consultations forums. Based on the analysis of four government-run online consultation forums from Brazil, this research explores the use of technology in visualizing large-scale argumentation data for policy purposes, suggesting challenges and opportunities in promoting Internet-based policy forums to mediate how government and citizens make sense of democracy.