Jane Suiter

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at Dublin City University

Chile and Ireland have held constitutional referendums in recent years. While Ireland has successfully passed several controversial constitutional amendments over the last decade, Chile has struggled with its proposed constitutional reform, with two unsuccessful national referendums in September 2022 and December 2023, leaving the constitutional de...

Meta‐analyses have demonstrated how inoculation interventions increase the detection of misinformation, but their scalability has remained elusive. To address this, Study 1 (pre‐registered; N = 1,583) tested the efficacy of three short inoculation videos (prebunks) against three common manipulation tactics used in misinformation: (1) polarization,...

This research investigates the potential of computational argumentation, specifically the application of the Abstract Argumentation Framework (AAF), to enhance the evaluation of deliberative quality in public discourse. It focuses on integrating AAF and its related semantics with the Discourse Quality Index (DQI), which is a reputable indicator of...

Climate action stands as one of the paramount challenges in contemporary society. A significant impediment lies in the prevalence of misperceptions, notably the dissemination of narratives that either endorse climate policy delay or outright climate denial, often perpetuated by vested interests. The World Economic Forum, recognising the gravity of...

Climate action stands as a paramount challenge in contemporary society, but solutions are often impeded by vested interests tied to electoral democracies. As a result, the past decade has witnessed a renewed interest in the practice of sortition—a variety of democracy that is not electoral but lottocratic—in Ireland, the United States, and in other...

Bringing together ten leading researchers in the field of deliberative democracy, this important book examines the features of a Deliberative Mini-Public (DMP) and considers the contributions that DMPs can make not only to the policy process, but also to the broader agenda of revitalising democracy in contemporary times.

As misperceptions undermine the factual basis for public debate, they pose a serious challenge to expert knowledge and the democratic legitimacy of public policy informed by expert evidence. In this paper, we theorize that in times of politicization and polarization of expertise, endorsement of expert information by a minipublic can serve to legiti...

A decade ago, it would have been impossible to imagine that a caregiver, a bus driver and a rail worker, together with 147 other ordinary citizens, could shape France's policy on climate change. Ordinary citizens have long been disparaged for their political apathy. They could not be bothered to vote or join a political party. They trust experts le...

Bringing together ten leading researchers in the field of deliberative democracy, this important book examines the features of a Deliberative Mini-Public (DMP) and considers the contributions that DMPs can make not only to the policy process, but also to the broader agenda of revitalising democracy in contemporary times.

Introduction DMPs should be consequential. Participants who experience taking part in a mini-public may find the exercise valuable in its own right, but without impact outside the process, DMPs are at risk of becoming insignificant talking shops that do little to enhance the quality of collective decision-making. This, indeed, was one of the early...

Introduction Taking part in a DMP is a unique experience. Even though these processes are gaining increasing popularity, only a handful of citizens will have the privilege of being selected to participate in a DMP. Being in a mini-public is comparable to being selected to a jury – a unique experience designed to reach a considered judgement among a...

Introduction The increasing popularity of DMPs raises expectations as to what these forums can achieve. A Financial Times editorial declared that ‘deliberative democracy is just what politics needs’, referring to the power of citizens’ assemblies to address political polarization (The Financial Times, 2019). A year later, an editorial in The Guardi...

Introduction In her latest book, Hélène Landemore (2020) writes of ‘open democracies’ in which ordinary citizens have a more significant role in our systems of democratic representation. For her, recent examples of DMPs, such as the ambitious Icelandic experiment of 2010–13 or the French Climate Assembly, represent important steps towards a renewed...

Introduction The burgeoning literature on DMPs has studied and debated the merits of this form of democratic innovation. It is striking that this field of research contains no unanimously accepted definition of DMPs. As explained in Chapter One of this book, our goal is not to determine which definition is the most appropriate. Rather, we work with...

Introduction Citizens’ lack of knowledge is often used as an argument against their participation in policymaking (for example, Schumpeter, 1943). How can we expect citizens to deliberate if they lack information, feel disinterested in politics and are unable to convey coherent policy preferences (Achen and Bartels, 2016)? Compared to politicians a...

Introduction DMPs are not simply forums for discussion; they are also designed to reach conclusions. In a few cases, as explored in Chapter Seven, these conclusions are treated as binding upon subsequent decision-makers. In most cases, they are instead intended to inform downstream decision-makers, whether elected politicians, officials or referend...

Introduction Successful recruitment is key to a meaningful mini-public deliberation. There is a need to ensure that the deliberating sample represents as many interests as possible that will be affected by the decisions at hand; otherwise, the whole endeavour risks losing legitimacy. This is because the basis for engaging lay citizens in deliberati...

The role of social media at electoral events is much speculated upon. Wide-ranging effects, and often critical evaluations, are attributed to commentary, discussions, and advertising on Facebook, Twitter, Telegram, and many other platforms. But the specific effects of these social media during campaigns, especially referendum campaigns, remain unde...

Bridging deliberative democracy and crisis management scholarship, we construct theoretical expectations about the role of deliberative minipublics in fostering public compliance with difficult political decisions. Our expectations are tested with a randomized cross-national survey experiment (United States and United Kingdom, N = 2088), in which r...

Developing effective interventions to counter misinformation is an urgent goal, but it also presents conceptual, empirical, and practical difficulties, compounded by the fact that misinformation research is in its infancy. This paper provides researchers and policymakers with an overview of which individual-level interventions are likely to have an...

The threat posed by misinformation and disinformation is one of the defining challenges of the 21st century. Provenance is designed to help combat this threat by warning users when the content they are looking at may be misinformation or disinformation. It is also designed to improve media literacy among its users and ultimately reduce susceptibili...

Traditionally, political parties engage with journalists to promote their agendas and claim issue ownership through publishing manifestos, holding public events and issuing statements, but the coverage that this interaction produces is determined by the editorial focus and decision making of each outlet. In a hybrid media age, political parties can...

What explains the disconnect between two images of the Irish state: the champion for gender human rights in matters of foreign affairs, and laggard on these rights internally? Is there a disconnect, or are these two sides of the same coin? Hailed internationally for its progressive promotion of the women, peace and security framework, policymaking...

Ireland has enjoyed continuous democratic government for almost a century, an unusual experience among countries that gained their independence in the twentieth century. But the way this works has changed dramatically over time. Ireland’s colonial past has had an enduring influence over political life, enabling stable institutions of democratic acc...

Ireland has enjoyed continuous democratic government for almost a century, an unusual experience among countries that gained their independence in the twentieth century. But the way this works has changed dramatically over time. Ireland’s colonial past has had an enduring influence over political life, enabling stable institutions of democratic acc...

This paper revisits the core concept of representation in light of democratic innovations and more specifically in the context of minipublics. We disentangle how representativeness is currently addressed within the minipublics’ literature and provide an in-depth conceptual analysis of how emerging modes of representation and participation can be re...

This paper compares the debate quality in the plenary sessions of an Irish Citizens’ Assembly and an Irish parliamentary committee to assess the epistemic effects of public deliberation on a contentious subject: abortion. The unusual occurrence of a similar process of detailed discussion on the same topic in different institutions at around the sam...

Documenting the coverage of the campaign in traditional and social media, this chapter provides a particular focus on Sinn Féin, which ran a vigorous social media campaign and provided the narrative of ‘change’ that dominated election messaging. This chapter demonstrates that Fine Gael received a disproportionate share of coverage in the traditiona...

This paper aims to integrate epistemic versions of deliberative democracy into policy studies in order to develop a policy impact tool (PIT) for e‐rulemaking initiatives. In building its argumentation, the paper assesses and engages with epistemic democracy and online deliberation design while considering policy‐related dilemmas and the specific ch...

This research investigates links between the Euro Crisis and populism and asks whether there are patterns of populism in different election campaigns, namely is there country-specific populist rhetoric or similar anti-elite criticisms? Through content analysis, we examine the mainstream media coverage of populist and non-populist actors in the coun...

Ireland’s Convention on the Constitution (2012–2014) was a world-first process in mixing randomly selected private citizens and political representatives in a deliberative mini-public that made recommendations on a wide range of constitutional issues. Acknowledging the gender gap identified in studies of deliberative forums, the Convention made spe...

This paper tests the possibility of embedding the benefits of minipublic deliberation within a wider voting public. We test whether a statement such as those derived from a Citizens’Initiative Review (CIR) can influence voters who did not participate in the pre-referendum minipublic deliberation. This experiment was implemented in advance of the 2018...

Ireland’s Citizens’ Assembly (CA) of 2016–18 was tasked with making recommendations on abortion. This paper shows that from the outset its members were in large part in favour of the liberalisation of abortion (though a fair proportion were undecided), that over the course of its deliberations the CA as a whole moved in a more liberal direction on...

The outcomes of two recent Irish referendums - on marriage equality in 2015 and abortion in 2018 - have placed contemporary Irish voters in sharp contrast with their long-standing conservative Catholic reputation. These referendums also stand out internationally because of an associated deliberative innovation. This paper aims to explain the waters...

Some worry that increased partisanship is lowering trust in the news media, as people increasingly come into contact with cross-cutting news coverage. We use multilevel analysis of online survey data from 35 countries and find that left-right partisans (1) have slightly less trust in the news media in general, (2) slightly higher levels of trust in...

This paper connects and disentangles three interrelated concepts: citizens’ participation; e-rulemaking (in a deliberative environment) and effective policymaking at the EU level. We critically evaluate public participation under the revamped 2015 ‘Better Regulation Agenda’ by focusing on the public consultations tool; examining it through the lens...

The Constitutional Convention was established by the Irish government in 2012. It was tasked with making recommendations on a number of constitutional reform proposals. As a mini-public, its membership was a mix of 66 citizens (randomly selected) and 33 politicians (self-selected). Its recommendations were debated on the floor of the Irish parliame...

We argue that integrating citizen deliberation structures into the pre-referendum phase can deliver systematic improvements in democratic outcomes such as alignment between values and vote. Using data from three Irish referendums, the research examines the potential of deliberative mini-publics to deliver more informed electorates. An emerging bran...

How can we define democracy today given the continuous changes that modern societies are undergoing? What is the role of a democratic theorist? This paper articulates a threefold argument in responding to these questions by analyzing the term of democracy in vitro, in vivo, and in actu. The first step is to secure a democratic minimum and the core...

Democratic innovations are flourishing, reflecting the combined effort and optimism of political scientists, along with a number of governments and policy makers, that these new participatory fora will increase legitimacy in decision making and reinvigorate democratic institutions and procedures. Most commonly, these innovations are in the context...

In April 2019 European Regulators Group for Audiovisual Media Services (ERGA) established a research project covering 13 member states to monitor the political advertising archives established by Facebook, Google and Twitter prior to the European elections in May 2019. This work was undertaken to support the European Commission in monitoring the im...

Democratic and deliberation democracy scholars are very much focused on motivating the public to participate in public debates by engaging in deliberative procedures that allow flow of communication between participants and the formation of reasonable and well sustained arguments. While much effort is invested in widening public participation and i...

This is the fifth annual Digital News Report examining Irish audiences engagement with and attitudes to news media.

Cet article analyse le fonctionnement de la première Convention constitutionnelle irlandaise qui s’est tenue en 2013. On avait argumenté que recourir à une approche délibérative pour réformer la Constitution serait utile afin d’impliquer les citoyens dans les décisions tout en renforçant une légitimité démocratique affaiblie et en reconfigurant pot...

This paper aspires to connect and disentangle key factors between three interrelated concepts: Responsible and qualitative civic participation, systemic e-rulemaking (in a deliberative environment) and effective policy- making at the EU level. As rulemaking remains a complicated and multi stage procedure in the EU we will examine on which grounds a...

Deliberative democracy is for many the most significant development in democratic theory in the last 50 years and it has been used in some places to solve real-world policy problems. However, measuring the impact of deliberative methods is not clearly achievable because several independent variables are manipulated simultaneously. One of the main g...

This chapter investigates the cognitive effects of different populist messages on blame attributions and stereotyping in the 15 countries participating in the study. It first gives an overview about whether respondents blamed politicians, the wealthy, immigrants, or ordinary people for the future economic decline described in the experimental stimu...

Citizens can avoid polarization and make sound decisions

The changes in how people consume news and the emergence of digital and distributed news sources call for a reexamination of the relationship between news use and trust in news. Previous research had suggested that alternative news use is correlated with lower levels of trust in news, whereas mainstream news use is correlated with higher levels of...

The 2007 financial crisis and consequent programme of austerity brought deep disruption to Irish politics and exasperated public hostility towards mainstream politics and so-called elites. As the 2016 Irish General Election marked a historic low in support for established parties, this chapter examines the extent to which Irish news media inflamed...

This paper responds to calls for greater clarity about the application of theory and method in research on mediated communication about climate-change. Specifically, it identifies conceptual and methodological challenges for researching visual representations of climate change. We suggest current research is impeded by a lack of methodological expl...

Ireland has become something of a trail-blazer in the use of deliberative methods in the process of constitutional review. It is the first case in which the process has been employed a second time: the Irish Citizens’ Assembly (2016–18) followed upon the Convention on the Constitution (2012–14). The creation of two mini-publics in quick succession...

ONLINE_APPENDIX_(1) – Supplemental material for Start Spreading the News: A Comparative Experiment on the Effects of Populist Communication on Political Engagement in Sixteen European Countries

This chapter concentrates on when voters make their voting decisions paying particular attention to the campaign period. It starts by arguing that knowing when decisions are made is a vital part of understanding how elections work. The evidence presented demonstrates that a growing proportion of voters report making their final vote choice during e...

This is the definitive study of the Irish general election of 2016 – the most dramatic election in a generation, which among other things resulted in the worst electoral outcome for Ireland’s established parties, the most fractionalized party system in the history of the state, and the emergence of new parties and groups, some of these of a ‘populi...

Although populist communication has become pervasive throughout Europe, many important questions on its political consequences remain unanswered. First, previous research has neglected the differential effects of populist communication on the Left and Right. Second, internationally comparative studies are missing. Finally, previous research mostly...

Populism, or at the very least a ‘populist zeitgeist’ has advanced across the globe with populist actors from across the ideological spectrum at the forefront of politics in Europe, North and South America and Southeast Asia. One of the major components is the media and specifically hybrid media, which can inhibit or magnify populist political tend...

This article constitutes a big data study of Twitter during the peak of the so-called refugee crisis in the period between October 2015 and May 2016. The article analyzed almost 7.5 million tweets collected through hashtags such as #refugee, #refugeecrisis, # flüchtling, and others. Theoretically, the article draws on concepts such as hybrid media,...

We know that the Dáil is dominated by the government. From 2010 to 2016 there was a clamour for change, which ultimately led to significant reforms of the Oireachtas, and specifically the Dáil. In this article we show that the basis for the weakness of the Dáil was the government's control of the legislative agenda. This article tracks the changes...

The global economic crisis presents new challenges for economic voting models. While there is a consensus that economic voting exists, even the most ardent supporters agree that it is a variable force and can only explain a portion of voting behaviour. This article investigates the impact of positive and negative economic performance on voting patt...

This article focuses on the gender of voices chosen as sources and presenters of radio news coverage in Ireland. The study examines the best and worst case studies across public and private sector broadcasters and argues that the question of gender balance in broadcasting goes beyond the simple issue of quantitatively proportionate participation to...

This chapter describes how the election outcome marks an historic low in the fortunes of the traditional parties as the system has become very fragmented as all the traditional parties have recorded support close to or at low points in a historical context. The system is becoming ‘de-institutionalised’. The chapter goes on to consider the significa...