Discourse Architecture

1
Sociotechnical Mapping of Online Public
Discourse ENSMP/September 2003
Warren Sack Film Digital Media
Department University of California, Santa Cruz
2
Talk Outline

• Demo Conversation Map
• A map of the Usenet newsgroup alt.politics.electio
  n one week before the November 2000 presidential
  election
• A map of the same one week after the election
• When do political questions become technical
  questions?
• When do technical questions become political?
• A look at the Caltech-MIT Voting Technologies
  Project
• Is this politics or engineering?

3
Conversation Map before the 2000 election
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Conversation Map after the 2000 election
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Questions from political to technical to political
when do political questions become
technical? when do technical questions become
political?
6
Caltech-MIT voting technology project
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Caltech-MIT voting technology project
voting as a technical problem http//www.vote.ca
ltech.edu/Reports/july01/fast_facts.pdf