Participedia as a Ground for Dialogue

Abstract

Participedia (participedia.net) is a wiki-based library of some 1,000 cases of democratic innovations in their historical and cultural contexts. Public-involvement (PI) practitioners can learn about changes in their field of practice. The relative strength of the five dialogic qualities available in Participedia is important because of the values of communicative understanding inherent in the domain of democratic innovations. The question addressed in the study is, How does a community of practice (COP) augment Participedia's capacity to provide a ground for dialogue about PI? A quasi-experiment was carried out among 13 PI practitioners. COP members met face-to-face over a period of four weeks to learn about, apply, and deliberate upon Participedia's online resources. A focus group was then carried out in which the PI practitioners reflected on the qualities of dialogue available in the COP-Participedia experience. Themes from the focus group support the argument that COP-Participedia can augment the dialogic qualities of mutuality, propinquity, and empathy.