A Semantic Deliberation Model for e-Participation

There have been very few attempts so far to develop a comprehensive and rigorous conceptualization for deliberations in e-participation. Without a rigorous and formal conceptualization of deliberation, consistent content descriptions creation, deliberation records sharing and seamless exploration is difficult. In addition, no e-participation deliberation ontology exists to support citizen-led e-participation particularly when considering contributions made on the social media platforms. This work bridges this gap by providing a rich conceptualization and corresponding formal and executable ontology for deliberation in the context of e-participation. The semantic model covers the core concepts of technology-mediated political discussion and explicitly supports the integrated citizen- and government-led model of e-Participation enabled by social media. Results from the use of the ontology in describing e-Participation deliberation information at Local Government projects are also presented.