The Washington Climate Assembly: note-taking modalities as deliberative guidance in an online citizens’ assembly

ABSTRACT

In this essay, we use applied rhetorical criticism to analyze how facilitators navigate online deliberation in the Washington Climate Assembly, a public deliberation process held virtually in January and February 2021. We draw on interviews with organizers and facilitators and from observational notes taken by the research team during Assembly deliberations. This analysis focuses on the Assembly's online note-taking practices. Previous research has recognized note-taking as an important element to the design of democratic processes, and we argue that note-taking modalities constitute a form of deliberative guidance. We examine the Assembly’s use of note-taking modalities for deliberative guidance across spatial and temporal dimensions, thus expanding the concept of deliberative guidance into other forms of communication. Additionally, results revealing shortcomings in note-taking suggest employing augmented note-taking practices during online public deliberation processes, with implications for scoping, staffing, and budgeting of such processes, as well as the potential application of artificial intelligence.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate assemblies
• note-taking
• online deliberation
• deliberative guidance
• citizens’ assemblies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects, University of Houston-Downtown, CPHS #48-21R; Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects, University of Arkansas, CPHS#48-21.

2 Some figures had to be recreated to increase the image quality and ensure readability. The authors created them to look as similar as possible to the original. No content was altered. Access to the figures was provided by the Coordinating Team, Cascadia Consulting Group.