Blended Participation and Artificial Intelligence. A Model of Partcipatory Instruments in the Invited Space, Criteria for Evaluation and a Historical Empirical Overview

Online and offline participation of citizens in decision-making in the “invited space” is a prerequisite for targeted, highly responsive policies. On the one hand we have offline participation and on the other hand, feedback can be generated using new online and offline participation tools such as Consul or Decidim (see blended participation). The DDD projects analyses how these deliberative instruments can be be combined with direct democracy. New online and offline participation tools such as the online platform Consul or Decidim allow new online communication. These use AI functions for targeting (translation), voice recognition (speech to text), summaries, and other purposes. But also for evaluation, AI can be implemented. Here the evaluation of online platforms follows the criteria of offline participation and concentrate on phases and functions of participatory processes. Besides the question about the goal of the platform (brainstorming, planning, voting, networking etc). Here it has to be analysed: How did these instruments developed over time? Who participates? What is the quality of information (targeting, hate speech, fake news) and the quality of discourse (deliberative quality index)? What is the outcome and output? An finally How are these allowing blended participation combining online and offline instruments? The paper analyses sporadically , if AI is used, what AI function is used and what could be used for evaluation