EUROPE IS SURFING ON THE WAVE…
15. June 2009 – 00:46 by POLITECH
Forums, blogs, and wikis are extensively used in current eParticipation
sites to gather user opinions on particular issues. However, such forms
of participation generally provide no structure to the information
gathered, so opportunity for analysis of the opinions is limited.
The WAVE project (Welcoming Argument Visualisation to Europe) https://www.wave-project.eu/ is part of the eParticipation Action , co-financed by the European Commission, under the MOMENTUM’s eParticipation umbrella.
It’s platform aims is to facilitate the debate and discussion on certain topics by interested stakeholders in order to have specific impact on one of the most important and popular legislative agendas facing Europe : Environment.
Wave is encouraging eParticipation about Climate Change, for having a clearer vision of the European Union preoccupations and laws.
While Environment and Climate Change is becoming the new challenge of XXIst Century as reflected in the results of the last European Elections (2009), WAVE aims to improve the inclusiveness and transparency of EU decision making at the national and European level by using highly integrated, state-of-the-art Argument Visualisation techniques to make the impact of complex EU environmental legislation on climate change more accessible and easy to understand for citizens, special interest groups and decision makers alike.
WAVE will be deployed on 3 pilot sites: The French Senate (France), The Lithuanian Parliament (Lithuania) and UK Parliament (United Kingdom).
The technology behind WAVE will be based on the award wining DEBATEGRAPH platform, an innovative argument visualisation platform, in a multi-lingual, cross border context. A global graph of all the debates that enables us to visualise and deepen our understanding of the ways in which different debates are semantically interrelated, and ways in which these interrelated debates shape, and are shaped by, each other. https://www.debategraph.org
To have an impact, the data must be condensed into an easily processed format, so that the arguments may be consumed and deliberated by citizens and policy-makers.
“DebateGraph is a fascinating demonstration of how interactive graphics can explain, and invite participation, in the sort of issue debates that usually are carried out via articles, essays and speeches. It reveals, in ways I haven’t seen before, how ideas relate to each other in a variety of dimensions. What’s cool here: This tool lets you “see” and engage with ideas, and explore their inter-relationships, very elegantly. Ink-and-paper, or even a dead online graphic, does not invites, or even permit, this kind of thinking. The Debate Graph also invites users to add content and extend the argument.”
Craig Stoltz, Time.com Top 25 blogger and ex-editor at The Washington Post.
WAVE will feed back its results to MEPs and MPs that have affiliated with the project in order to ultimately join up with and inform at least three governments – the national governments of the three trial sites – UK, France and Lithuania. Uniquely, Debategraph will not only enable citizens and decision makers with differing points of view to more easily comprehend complex environmental debates; it will also empower them. Moreover, rather than merely visualising the results of individual debates, the WAVE project will depict the relationships between competing argument strands – a factor which is crucial to developing a full understanding of complex, inter-related issues, but which has only now become possible through the use of latest generation web technology.
WAVE will measure if these tools can have an impact on one of the most important and popular European Challenge: Climate Change
For more information:
Project Website: https://www.wave-project.eu
Join WAVE on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=105776916968
Join WAVE on Twitter: https://twitter.com/WAVE_project
Join us on Linked-In: https://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1971293
Claire Mercier
POLITECH INSTITUTE
