research-article

A Conversational Agent for Argument-driven E-participation

Authors:

Andrés Segura-Tinoco,

Andrés Holgado-Sánchez,

Iván Cantador,

María E. Cortés-Cediel,

Manuel Pedro Rodríguez BolívarAuthors Info & Claims

dg.o '22: Proceedings of the 23rd Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research

Pages 191 - 205

https://doi.org/10.1145/3543434.3543447

Published: 14 September 2022 Publication History

Abstract

The majority of current e-participation tools are based on online web forums where citizens make proposals and provide comments and opinions, forming large conversation threads. Motivated by the huge popularity of instant messaging applications and the impressive, recent advances in natural language processing and artificial intelligence, in this paper we propose and investigate the use of conversational agents or chatbots as a new form of citizen-to-government communication. Specifically, we present and evaluate a novel chatbot that assists a user on the overwhelming task of exploring the citizen-generated content of Decide Madrid, a forum-based e-participatory budgeting platform. Among other things, the proposed chatbot is capable of automatically extracting, categorizing and summarizing the arguments underlying the citizen proposals and debates in the platform. Through a user study, we show promising results about the potential benefits of the chatbot in terms of several citizen participation, decision making and public value criteria.

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Cited By

SAHAB SHAQBEEN JITO T(2024)Conversational AI as a Facilitator Improves Participant Engagement and Problem-Solving in Online Discussion: Sharing Evidence from Five Cities in AfghanistanIEICE Transactions on Information and Systems10.1587/transinf.2023IHP0014E107.D:4(434-442)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.1587/transinf.2023IHP0014
Glenc P(2024)Digitalization of public consultations in rural municipalities of the Wielkopolskie VoivodshipCyfryzacja konsultacji społecznych w gminach wiejskich województwa wielkopolskiegoRozwój Regionalny i Polityka Regionalna10.14746/rrpr.2024.72.06(93-110)Online publication date: 16-Dec-2024
https://doi.org/10.14746/rrpr.2024.72.06
Olszowski ROlszowski R(2024)Online Public Debate. How Can We Make It More Intelligent?Collective Intelligence in Open Policymaking10.1007/978-3-031-58191-5_4(225-299)Online publication date: 30-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-58191-5_4
Show More Cited By

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A Conversational Agent for Argument-driven E-participation

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cover image ACM Other conferences

dg.o '22: Proceedings of the 23rd Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research

June 2022

499 pages

ISBN:9781450397490

DOI:10.1145/3543434

Copyright © 2022 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 14 September 2022

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Research-article
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Refereed limited

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Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades
Gobierno Regional de Andalucía
Centro de Estudios Andaluces

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dg.o 2022

dg.o 2022: The 23st Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research

June 15 - 17, 2022

Virtual Event, Republic of Korea

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Overall Acceptance Rate 150 of 271 submissions, 55%

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Cited By

SAHAB SHAQBEEN JITO T(2024)Conversational AI as a Facilitator Improves Participant Engagement and Problem-Solving in Online Discussion: Sharing Evidence from Five Cities in AfghanistanIEICE Transactions on Information and Systems10.1587/transinf.2023IHP0014E107.D:4(434-442)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.1587/transinf.2023IHP0014
Glenc P(2024)Digitalization of public consultations in rural municipalities of the Wielkopolskie VoivodshipCyfryzacja konsultacji społecznych w gminach wiejskich województwa wielkopolskiegoRozwój Regionalny i Polityka Regionalna10.14746/rrpr.2024.72.06(93-110)Online publication date: 16-Dec-2024
https://doi.org/10.14746/rrpr.2024.72.06
Olszowski ROlszowski R(2024)Online Public Debate. How Can We Make It More Intelligent?Collective Intelligence in Open Policymaking10.1007/978-3-031-58191-5_4(225-299)Online publication date: 30-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-58191-5_4
Jiang YPang PWong DKan H(2023)Natural Language Processing Adoption in Governments and Future Research Directions: A Systematic ReviewApplied Sciences10.3390/app13221234613:22(12346)Online publication date: 15-Nov-2023
https://doi.org/10.3390/app132212346
Følstad ALarsen ABjerkreim-Hanssen N(2023)The Human Likeness of Government Chatbots – An Empirical Study from Norwegian MunicipalitiesElectronic Government10.1007/978-3-031-41138-0_8(111-127)Online publication date: 5-Sep-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-031-41138-0_8

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