IMPACT · Integrated Method for Policy making using Argument modelling and Computer assisted Text analysis

The IMPACT project will conduct original research to develop and integrate formal, computational models of policy and arguments about policy, to facilitate deliberations about policy at a conceptual, language-independent level. These models will be used to develop and evaluate innovative prototype tools for supporting open, inclusive and transparent deliberations about public policy. To support the analysis of policy proposals in an inclusive way which respects the interests of all stakeholders, research on how to use methods from the field of computational linguistics to mine arguments from data resources distributed throughout the Internet will be conducted. Prior research on using argumentation schemes to generate focused surveys, minimizing noise and the need for manual moderation, will be extended in this project to support argumentation schemes needed for policy deliberations and generate surveys in multiple languages. Research will also be conducted on how to visualize arguments about policy, building on previous research by the participants, but extended to visualize relationships between arguments and policies, in multiple languages. An abstract Application Programmers Interface (API) for the services required by the toolbox from content management systems will be defined, using existing standards whenever feasible, and implemented on top of a number of Open Source content management systems which have been successfully developed or used in European eParticipation and other Web 2.0" or "Social Web" projects. The tools in the argumentation toolbox will be designed and implemented as advanced Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) to increase usability and help overcome the digital divide and facilitate consultations across languages and cultures."