The structural features and the deliberative quality of online discussions

This paper examines the quality of online political discussions from the perspective of deliberative democracy. Reason-giving and mutual respect are two important principles of deliberative democracy and, therefore, deemed indicators of the deliberative quality of online discussions. A content analysis of discussion threads about the 2004 US presidential election randomly selected from eight online spaces during the last month of the election was conducted to assess the relationships between the structural features of the spaces—diversity and moderation—and the deliberative quality of the discussions. The results showed that the relationship between moderation and the discussion quality was conditioned on the diversity of the spaces. The finding indicates that the structural features of online spaces may shape the deliberative quality of political discussions and, thus, deserve further scholarly attention.

► Online discussion quality can be assessed through reason-giving and mutual respect.
► The structural features of discussion spaces vary in diversity and moderation.
► The effect of moderation on discussion quality was conditioned on diversity.