Expanding the Possibilities of Deliberation: The Use of Data Mining for Strengthening Democracy with an Application to Education Reform

Deliberation is important for strengthening democracies and enhancing the legitimacy of public policy. However, deliberation has been constrained by limits of time, space, and human capacities for listening and processing information. In this article, the authors discuss a new technology-based tool and show how it can help to partially remove these constraints. Although the Internet already provides the means to deliberate without the need to meet at the same place and time, its conjunction with data mining solves the “large numbers deliberation dilemma” that arises when large amounts of data have to be processed. The author's proposal adapts particular data-mining techniques, which simulate the learning process of a human brain with almost infinite relational capacities. The methodology was applied in a real-world case of Chilean education reform and demonstrated its potential effectiveness.

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