Deliberative Publicity by Chris Karpowitz and Chad Raphael, was published on the Deliberative Democracy Consortium blog in April 2015. The article talks about the evolving role of publicity around deliberative forums, and how deliberative publicity has the power to amplify the public’s voice and create meaningful connections to the larger political structure. Karpowitz and Raphael analyzed a wide variety of deliberative forum practices, and found that many had opportunities for improvement when publicizing a forum around transparency and accurately sharing participant’s viewpoints. They recognized the growing […] (continue)

The “Democracy Communications Network” was a 2007-2009 project centered around an informal group of leaders (listed below) who agreed to periodically write letters to the editor, blog posts, and other media pieces as part of larger, collaborative campaigns that raise awareness of the importance of quality public engagement.  Use the “Democracy Communications Network” tag to see all the great articles that were written in association with this project. Also see the General Tips for Writing Op-Ed Articles. AmericaSpeaks, the Deliberative Democracy Consortium, Everyday Democracy, the […] (continue)

In 2004 and 2005, NCDD contracted with AmericaSpeaks to have them conduct a scoping study to determine whether a 'National Dialogue Bureau' was a feasible idea. The Dialogue Bureau, if developed, would supply journalists with a 'one stop' destination for the collection of views held by ordinary Americans who engage in informed dialogue about current affairs. The Dialogue Bureau would create a network of leaders of dialogue and deliberation groups who are willing to speak with the media about the key findings and concerns of their group. Here is the home of the final reports resulting from interviews with journalists and leaders in D&D. (continue)

On October 15th, 2007 David Mathews (president of the Kettering Foundation) sent the following message to Directors and Alumni of the National Issues Forums Institute. NCDD’s Sandy Heierbacher was serving on the NIFI Board of Directors, so she received this message.  We shared this message as part of the 2007-2009 Democracy Communications Network project, which encouraged leaders in public engagement to write op-eds and letters to the editor on a coordinated basis to increase our collective impact. (continue)