Modelling Integrated Socio-Technical Feedback Systems: E-Democracy and Other Applications

Computer-mediated communication technologies have tended to evolve independently from the social environment of the virtual communities they serve. This book analyses some resulting limitations of current implementations of computer-mediated communication technology and discusses their inhibiting effects on possible developments of virtual communities. A Socio-Technical Indicator Model is introduced that utilizes integrated feedback to resolve some of these limitations by describing, simulating and operationalising increasing representativeness within a variety of structurally and parametrically diverse systems. An illustrative application is described that parameterises virtual communities to function as self-transforming social-technical systems which are sensitive to emergent and shifting community values as products of on-going communications within the collective, of which e-democracy is an important sub-class. A simulation is presented of the model's application to representative moderation in virtual communities. The simulation demonstrates system conditions for convergence and for status stability of Special Interest Groups that promote differing community values.