[esocialaction] FW: GlobalArgument.net: Analysing the Iraq Study Group Report

[Dearden, Andrew M]

This might be of interest to some.

Andy 

-----Original Message-----
From: ACM SIGCHI General Interest Announcements (Mailing List) [mailto:CHI-ANNOUNCEMENTS at LISTSERV.ACM.ORG] On Behalf Of Simon Buckingham Shum
Sent: 15 December 2006 10:23
To: CHI-ANNOUNCEMENTS at LISTSERV.ACM.ORG
Subject: GlobalArgument.net: Analysing the Iraq Study Group Report

Dear Colleagues

May I invite you to consider whether this experiment intersects with your own projects to participate. Relevant fields include information design, e-democracy, critical thinking and argument/information visualization...

Regards,

Dr Simon J. Buckingham Shum
Senior Lecturer in Knowledge Media
Knowledge Media Institute & Centre for Research in Computing The Open University, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK http://kmi.open.ac.uk/sbs

www.GlobalArgument.net

Experiment 2: Iraq Study Group Report, and subsequent debate

www.GlobalArgument.net/experiments/2

Introduction

On 12 Dec 2006, the Iraq Study Group, convened at the request of the US administration, published the findings of its assessment of the current and prospective situation on the ground in Iraq, its impact on the surrounding region, and consequences for U.S. interests.  
According to one of the assisting institutes, the US Institute of Peace, the group's make-up and activities are summarised as follows:

Ten public servants-five Democrats, five Republicans-make up the ISG.
Four organizations facilitated the ISG: The United States Institute of Peace, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the Center for the Study of the Presidency (CSP), and the James A.  
Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University.
44 people served in four Expert Working Groups to advise the ISG.
The Iraq Study Group spent 4 days in Iraq in August/September.
There were 9 plenary meetings of the ISG.
The Iraq Study Group consulted with 136 people in and out of government before September 19, and 171 people total as it prepared its report.
Members of the Iraq Study Group are not being paid in any way for their work.
Following the report's publication, there is now wide-ranging debate on the different options rejected and recommended in the report.

Experiment 2 asks:

How can computational tools assist in understanding, communicating, searching and tracking the debate?
While we are of course concerned with Computer-Supported Argumentation tools, given the quality of resources on the Web, we welcome Players working with other kinds of tools for summarising or analysing internet discourse (e.g. blogs, feeds, social tagging, public forums, video, citation analysis). In internet debate, it is likely that such tools will play an increasingly important role in Computer-Supported Argumentation, and this experiment provides a testbed for Players to share demonstrations.

If you are running a project working on the challenge of raising the quality of critical thinking, whether in private or public deliberation, we encourage you to consider participating in this experiment.





    ---------------------------------------------------------------
                To unsubscribe, send an empty email to
     mailto:chi-announcements-unsubscribe-request at listserv.acm.org
    For further details of CHI lists see http://sigchi.org/listserv
    ---------------------------------------------------------------