Opinion Space

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Developed at UC Berkeley, "Opinion Space" (also known as The Collective Discovery Engine) is a social media technology designed to help communities generate and exchange ideas about important issues and policies. [1] Version 1.0 was launched on April 4, 2009 at UC Berkeley, and explored the question "Do you think legalizing marijuana is a good idea?" It has since undergone 4 different iterations, and been used in partnership with various organizations including The Occupy movement (Version 4.0, 5/24/2013 [2] ) and the African Robots Network (Version 4.0, 5/25/2013 [3] ). Opinion Space has also been used in collaboration with the United States State Department and the University of California's Berkeley Center for New Media (Version 2.0, 12/1/2009 [4] and Version 3.0, 2/25/2012 [5] ) to gain public perspective on foreign policy issues. Then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton explained, "Opinion Space will harness the power of connection technologies to provide a unique forum for international dialogue. This is...an opportunity to extend our engagement beyond the halls of government directly to the people of the world" (2010).

Contents

The website uses data visualization and statistical analysis to present and develop public opinion and ideas. Opinion Space is a self-organizing system that uses an intuitive graphical "map" that displays patterns, trends, and insights as they emerge and employs the wisdom of crowds to identify and highlight the most insightful ideas. The system uses a game model that incorporates techniques from deliberative polling, collaborative filtering, and multidimensional visualization.

See also

Scholarly work

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References

  1. "Opinion Space". Berkeley Center for New Media. Archived from the original on 2010-06-29. Retrieved 2010-11-21.
  2. "Unknown". Archived from the original on 2013-09-14. Retrieved 2013-07-27.[ permanent dead link ]
  3. "Unknown". Archived from the original on 2013-05-09. Retrieved 2013-07-27.[ permanent dead link ]
  4. "Welcome to Opinion Space 2.0". Archived from the original on 2013-05-09. Retrieved 2013-07-27.
  5. "Department of State Launches New Tool to Foster Online Open Dialogue March 15, 2010". Archived from the original on November 20, 2010. Retrieved November 21, 2010.