@article{975b17b2e50d49abb21dfee90a3ced9b,
title = "Mapping deliberative systems with big data: The case of the Scottish independence referendum",
abstract = "Deliberative systems theorists have for some time emphasised the distributed nature of deliberative values; they therefore do not focus exclusively on 'deliberation' but on all sorts of communication that advance deliberative democratic values, including everyday political talk in informal settings. However, such talk has been impossible to capture inductively at scale. This article discusses an electronic approach, Structural Topic Modelling, and applies it to a recent case: the Scottish independence debate of 2012-2014. The case provides the first empirical test of the claim that a deliberative system can capture the full 'pool of perspectives' on an issue, and shows that citizens can hold each other to deliberative standards even in mass, online discussion. It also shows that, in deliberative terms, the major cleavage in the 'indyref' debate was not so much between Yes and No, but between formal and informal venues.",
keywords = "Scotland, big data, deliberative systems, independence, topic modelling",
author = "John Parkinson and {de Laile}, Sebastian and Nuria Franco-Guillen",
note = "Funding Information: The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research for this project was funded by the Australian Research Council (Discovery Project DP160102598), supported and housed at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, University of Canberra. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} The Author(s) 2020. Funding Information: The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research for this project was funded by the Australian Research Council (Discovery Project DP160102598), supported and housed at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, University of Canberra. Funding Information: Too many colleagues to name individually have contributed in various ways, but we acknowledge collectively the members of the Democratic Innovations group of the European Consortium for Political Research and the Political Studies Association{\textquoteright}s Participatory and Deliberative Democracy group for their ongoing engagement, and the numerous activists, politicians, journalists and others who spoke to us and connected us with friends and colleagues right across Scotland. Individual thanks go to our hosts in Edinburgh: Doreen Grove, Scottish Government; Amy Todman, National Library of Scotland; Richard Freeman and Oliver Escobar of the Academy of Government, University of Edinburgh. Thanks also go to our undergraduate research assistant Ashley Reynolds who produced an annotated bibliography of work on the Scottish case; Mike Jensen, University of Canberra, for guiding us into topic modelling; and Haidee Kotze of Utrecht University, Chris Reed of the University of Dundee, Theodore Scaltsas and the late Jon Oberlander of Edinburgh University, for essential conversations on computational linguistics and natural language processing. The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research for this project was funded by the Australian Research Council (Discovery Project DP160102598), supported and housed at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, University of Canberra. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} The Author(s) 2020.",
year = "2020",
month = dec,
day = "3",
doi = "10.1177/0032321720976266",
language = "English",
volume = "70",
pages = "543--565",
journal = "Political Studies",
issn = "0032-3217",
publisher = "SAGE Publications Ltd",
number = "3",
}