GRASS: Arena for Societal Discourse


	GRASS reports:
	Greenhouse Effect
	De journalistiek: boodschapper of veroorzaker van het integratieprobleem?
	Een Analyse van het PRISMA
	Pragmatic Support for Collaborative Inquiry
	A igualdade entre os povos do mundo

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The Problem: Building an Arena for Credible Societal Discourse.

Societal problems such as those related to sustainable development involve many complex issues and stakeholders. Sometimes, serious conflicts occur, requiring conflict resolution processes in which all parties are represented if a satisfactory solution is to be found.

In some of these cases, governments have launched initiatives, such as expert panels and regional consultation processes to achieve consensus on what should be done. However, these efforts are often expensive, slow, and reach only a small audience. Such mediators of societal discourse as the traditional printed press and other mass media, have the advantage that they are fast and reach a wide audience, but are often very selective and biased in their reporting. A serious drawback of both types of societal discourse mediation is that they are neither neutral nor transparent.

The Internet offers considerable potential to actively and intensively involve widely dispersed stakeholders in prolonged discussion processes. However, current tools such as mailing lists and newsgroups do not provide enough structure and social context to allow for focused discussion that leads to concrete and credible results. The purpose of the GRASS (Group Report Authoring Support System) project is to develop an arena for credible societal discourse. GRASS is to be a complete socio-technical system, consisting of people, tools, and procedures. It will be used to produce concise group reports that give their readers an up to date and credible overview of the positions of various stakeholders on a particular issue. As such, these reports can play an important role in catalyzing societal conflict resolution. History of the Project In 1993, the Global Research Network on Sustainable Development (GRNSD) was formed. One of its goals, as laid down in its Charter is `to develop new and creative approaches to increase the quality of research and communication processes' related to sustainable development. Although the network failed to obtain the necessary funding to accomplish its objectives, it spawned a number of groups that are still active.

One of these groups is the B.C. Forests and Forestry Group (BCFOR). In this group, Canadian and international members, representing the total spectrum from timber consultants to environmentalists, discuss issues related to forests and forestry in the Pacific Canadian province of British Columbia. Initially, only a mailing list discussion was conducted. However, after some time, it was decided that the group should produce some more tangible outputs: group reports. However, after some relatively unsuccessful attempts it turned out that mailing list functionality was not sufficient, and that, besides technical aspects, complex social factors also played a very important role. To deal with these issues, the GRASS project was conceived. The GRASS Approach In the first BCFOR group report project (`The Effects of B.C. Forest Practices on Biodiversity'), a topic was selected by the group as a whole, after which the authoring process was to start:

 
   GROUP:              GROUP:
SELECT TOPIC  --->  WRITE REPORT

One of the reasons for the writing process to fail might have been that it was unclear exactly what role the group report is to play in overall societal discourse. Furthermore, there was no direct beneficiary able to create the incentives for stakeholders and others to participate.

An alternative, potentially more successful model, is the following. A `proponent' is interested in having a question answered and proposes that a report is written to examine it. The proponent defines the issue and provides the basic material for the report. The group of report authors criticizes and extends the material in line with the network neutrality/transparency guidelines. Only after the group has approved the final version of the report can it be disseminated and used externally:

PROPONENT:      PROPONENT/GROUP:    GROUP:
DEFINE ISSUE--->WRITE REPORT    --->APPROVE REPORT
   +                                  |
SUPPLY BASIC                           |
MATERIAL                               v
                                    PROPONENT/OTHERS:
                                    DISSEMINATE + USE
                                    REPORT

This is the basic authoring model adopted in GRASS. More details on the what and how of this model can be found in the Frequently Asked Questions on Group Reports

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