Over the last decade, digital platforms have become important instruments for the joint development of ideas and places for the exchange of political opinions. However, considerable human resources are needed to moderate and evaluate the many contributions.
Therefore, the aim of the KOSMO project is to develop and test an AI-supported assistance system that supports moderators and organizers in ensuring the quality of discussions and the synthesis of online discussions. This should make the discussions more attractive for participants as well as cheaper and easier to evaluate for providers. Thus, KOSMO enables the implementation of online discussions and online participation processes on a broad scale. Using the latest machine learning technologies and gamification approaches, KOSMO is a prototype for a system that proactively supports moderators in the execution of their tasks and thus enables administrations, political institutions, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), foundations and online media in particular to conduct cost-effective but high-quality online discussions and participation processes.
From a scientific perspective KOSMO pursues three goals:
- The optimization of algorithms for the automated detection of low and high quality Contributions to discussions in the German language.
- The integration of the algorithms in a prototype of an assistance system that proactively supports moderators* in their tasks.
- The research will provide in-depth answers to the research questions of how online discussions can be improved by assistance systems for semi-automated moderation and synthesis, how these systems are perceived and evaluated by providers and participants of online discussions, and how participation processes can contribute to strengthening democracy by using the systems.
The project is conducted in cooperation with Liquid Democracy e.V. (LIQD), the Institute for Participatory Design / Hörster & Rohr GbR (IPG) and the Research Group Deliberative Discussions in the Social Web (DEDIS) of the Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf.
The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research for 3 years with about 370.000 €.
Ansprechpartner
Jun.-Prof. Dr. Marc Ziegele
01. Board, Communication Studies
Since February 2018, Marc Ziegele is an assistant professor of Communication and Media Studies with a focus on political online communication at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. He is also head of the junior research group “Deliberative Discussions in the Social Web” funded by the Ministry of Culture and Science of North Rhine-Westphalia. Before coming to Düsseldorf, he worked as a research associate at the Department of Communication at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, where he also graduated in Media Economy.
His research interests include participation and discussions of citizens on the internet. The DIID-based junior research group investigates how the quality and effects of public user discussions about political topics can be improved. Moreover, Ziegele analyzes the sources and consequences of people’s trust in the mass media and different aspects of citizens’ use of the social web at the interface of Communication Studies and Psychology.
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Dr. Anna Soßdorf
Communication Studies, DIID-Team
Dr. Anna Soßdorf is currently a research assistant at the DIID and responsible for the coordination of the institute. She studied Social Sciences, including Communication Sciences, political science and Sociology, at Heinrich Heine University Duesseldorf and Media science at Eberhard Karls University Tuebingen. In 2015 she successfully defended her doctoral thesis which revolves around political participation of adolescents and the role of the internet.
Her research focuses in political education and participation of adolescents, digitisation and digital literacy, digital ethics and artificial intelligence.
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Dr. Katharina Gerl
01. Board, DIID-Team, Political Science
Katharina Gerl is a postdoctoral researcher at the Düsseldorf Institute for Internet and Democracy (DIID). In her PhD thesis she analyzed the effects of digitalization and mediatization on party organizations in Germany.
Her research focuses on the implications of digital techno-
logies for political institutions, political communication and participation. She conducted several studies evaluating the usage of onlinebased tools by political organizations. At the DIID she is also in charge of the unit that focusses on the evaluation of online public partici-
pation and the development of evaluation criteria to measure and compare the input, output, outcome and impact of digital tools for public participation.
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Anke Stoll
Communication Studies
Since July 2018, Anke Stoll is a research associate in the junior research group “Deliberative Discussions in the Social Web” at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. She studied Communication and Media Research at the University of Münster, the University of Zürich and the University of Leipzig.
In her master thesis Anke Stoll worked on the computer-aided classification of text data using machine-learning methods. Her research interests are quantitative methods of social science and applied statistics. She is particularly interested in the automated capture and analysis of text content. As a member of the DIID she deals with the computer-aided analysis of online deliberation processes and discussions.
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Lena Wilms
Communication Studies
Lena Wilms is a research assistant in the junior research group “Deliberative Discussions on the Social Web” at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. She studied political science, sociology and communication science in Düsseldorf and Budapest.
As part of her work in the “KOSMO” project, she develops and evaluates measures to improve online participation processes using AI-assisted moderation. She is particularly interested in the design of inclusive democratic online environments in the context of deliberation and participation on the internet. Her research interests also include media sociology as well as quantitative methods in the social sciences and applied statistics.