Paper 1

Using Argumentation to Structure E-Participation in Policy Makin

Authors: Trevor Bench-Capon, Katie Atkinson, and Adam Wyner

Volume 18 (2015)

Abstract

Tools for e-participation are becoming increasingly important. In this paper we argue that existing tools exhibit a number of limitations, and that these can be addressed by basing tools on developments in the eld of computational argumentation. After discussing the limitations, we present an argumentation scheme which can be used to justify policy proposals, and a way of modelling the domain so that arguments using this scheme and attacks upon them can be automatically generated. We then present two prototype tools: one to present justications and receive criticism, and the other to elicit justications of user-proposed policies and critique them. We use a running example of a genuine policy debate to illustrate the various aspects.