The Role of Dialogue in Public Engagement with Emerging Technologies


Project dates (estimated):

September 2022 - March 2026


Name of the PhD student:

Iñaki Goñi


Supervisors:

Eugenia Rodrigues – School of Social and Political Science, Science, Technology and Innovation Studies
Oliver Escobar - School of Social and Political Science, Public Policy and Democratic Innovation


Project aims:

This project investigates the role of dialogue design in shaping, discourse, normative content, and outcomes of public engagement with emerging technologies. Through a systematic review and comparative case study, Iñaki will construct a typology of dialogue designs and explore the influence of design elements on dialogue interactions and results. Of particular interest are how experts are incorporated, the definition of publics, and the conceptualization of facilitation. Iñaki asserts that we should regard dialogue as a 'public technology,' which helps to shape the political role of publics and frames technologies as public issues in specific ways.


Disciplines and subfields engaged:

  • Science and Technology Studies

  • Deliberative Democracy

  • Technology Ethics

  • Design Studies


Research Themes:

  • Ethics and Politics of Data

    • Ethics or Data Ownership, Governance and Stewardship

  • Emerging Technology, Health and Flourishing

    • Emerging Tech and Democratic Flourishing

    • Emerging Tech and Community Flourishing


Related outputs:

Grants and Awards:

  • In January 2024, Iñaki was selected to lead the evaluation of the Scottish Parliament's recent efforts to institutionalise deliberative democracy through Citizen's Panels.

  • From July 2023 to October 2023, Iñaki was selected to analyse citizen dialogues during the Chilean Constitutional Council to help draft a new constitutional proposal for the Country.

Publications and Presentations:

  • Goñi, J. Raveau, M., & Fuentes, C. (2024). ‘Analytical categories to describe imaginations about the collective futures: From theory to linguistics to computational analysis.’ Futures. 🔗

  • Raveau, M., Goñi, J., Rodriguez, J., Paiva-Mack, I., Barriga, F., Hermosilla, M., Fuentes-Bravo, C. & Eyheramendy, S. (2023). ‘Natural language processing analysis of the psychosocial stressors of mental health disorders during the pandemic.’ Npj Mental Health Research. 🔗

  • Cortázar, C., Goñi, J., Ortiz, A. & Nussbaum, M. (In Press) ‘Are professional skills learnable? Beliefs and expectations among computer engineers.’ ACM Transactions on Computing Education.

  • Goñi, J. ‘What is "dialogue" in public engagement with science and technology? Bridging STS and Deliberative Democracy.‘​ (Under review).

  • Zerilli, J., Goñi, J. & Masetti Placci, M. (In Press). ‘Automation Bias and Procedural Fairness: A Short Guide for the UK Civil Service.’ Edinburgh: BRAID. 

  • Goñi, J. (In Press). ‘Breaking the deficit-dialogue binary with hybrids: Opening-up science-society models from the South.’ In Diversifying Theory in STS: Latin American Perspectives.