Elena Sánchez‐Nielsen and Carolina Martín‐Vázquez
• Dimension 1: Tense. The responses to questions in the debate can be classified as past or future tense. From the theoretical viewpoint of AI, the tense used to deliver a discourse is of great importance, since the collective creation of positive images of the future is believed to be the most important aspect of an intervention.
• Dimension 2: Empowerment. Empowerment is linked to the concept of locus of control of Rooter’ s framework( Rotter 1966). This concept refers to the ability of an individual or community to reflect on decisions by themselves beyond the social environment. The posture a person has in a dialogue moves within a continuum with two poles: the internalist and externalist pole. The internalist attitude is related to proactivity, a term which involves taking the initiative in developing creative actions to generate improvements. By contrast, an externalist attitude places the focus on the decisions and responsibilities outside of oneself or the group, assigning responsibility for change and decision‐making on uncontrollable factors( luck, fate) or the power and decisions coming from others. The externalist attribution encourages passive and pessimistic language, since the person believes that they can do nothing to change a situation, thus building a dialogue focused on complaint or despair.
• Dimension 3: Type of narrative. The formulated question motivates the type of response. The responses are classified into two different categories:( 1) criticism or problem and,( 2) solutions or alternatives.
3.3 Findings on the qualitative impact of the inquiries on participation
To assess the quantitative participation through the uDebate tool, the number of views and posts were measured. Table 4 shows the frequency with the percentages resulting from the quantization of numbers of views and responses to the debate. This table shows a clear difference in participation between the questions formulated as appreciative compared with those not formulated from an appreciative viewpoint. Both the number of views and responses highlighted a difference in favor of appreciative questions. Specifically, related to the number of visits, the appreciative questions received 61.4 % of the total visits, while related to the number of posts, the appreciative questions registered 69.9 % of the total responses.
Table 4: FrequencytTable for formulated inquiries in uDebate tool
Inquiries |
Number of views |
Percentage |
Number of posts |
Percentage |
Non‐ appreciative |
4116 |
38.6 % |
98 |
30.1 % |
Appreciative |
6535 |
61.4 % |
227 |
69.9 % |
Total |
10651 |
100 % |
325 |
100 % |
3.4 Findings on the qualities of the inquires
To evaluate the findings on the quality of the inquiries, the experts’ commission in AI used the indicators described in Section 3.2.2. As a result, each comment posted was categorized into each of two categories associated with the three different dimensions( tense, empowerment, and type of narrative). Figure 1 shows the point cloud corresponding to the assignment process, in which, each point represents three answers posted to the debate. This figure illustrates how the answers to non‐appreciative questions are focused on externalist and criticism‐based discourses, while the answers to appreciative questions are predominately internalist and solution‐based deliberations, and to a lesser extent give rise to externalist discourses and criticism‐based discussions. Future‐oriented responses are predominant in both types of questions.
In order to show the responses obtained from users to appreciative and non‐appreciative questions, two examples are given below. In these examples, the assessment indicators are represented in parenthesis.
An example of a response from a user to an appreciative question is:“ We present the proposals that are being developed by a panel that will be part( focused on the future) of the report( focused on solutions). This helps us( internalize discourse) to assess contributions and understand the place they occupy in the framework of a joint construction( internalist discourse)...”
On the other hand, a response to a non‐appreciative question is:“ Nooooooooooo! The previous political party“ Partido Popular” said( focused on the past) that immigrants are going to revive the country and make it richer. After two years, we see that this has not happened( focused on the past). No jobs for people born here( focused on the problems), they have brought drugs and crime( externalist discourse and focused on problems),
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