Mediated meta-deliberation: Making sense of the Australian Citizens’ Parliament

Most of the chapters in this volume look inside the Australian Citizens' Parliament (ACP) to study the practical and political challenges of deliberating together in an assembly of ordinary citizens. However, the ACP also created the possibility for a kind of deliberation that can occur only through mass communication.1The news coverage of the ACP had the potential to spark a mediated deliberation-a process whereby newspapers, online news outlets, and other media help the wider public understand and think through issues in at least a quasi-deliberative way. In our view, projects like the ACP succeed or fail not only based on their internal quality but also depending on how they engage the larger media and, ultimately, the broader public. This essay presents a particular aspect of this larger public engagement, which we call "mediated meta-deliberation." In simple terms, a meta-deliberation involves deliberation about deliberation, or how we talk about how this special kind of talk. In the context of this chapter, we focus specifically on how the media do this, hence the term mediated meta-deliberation. In the sections that follow, we explain why organizers of deliberative initiatives should care about the mediated meta-deliberation that occurs regarding their activities. We then apply this concept to the ACP and present a comprehensive analysis of the quantity and character of news coverage generated by the ACP in Australian print media.