Using Argumentation to Structure E-Participation in Policy Making

Tools for e-participation are becoming increasingly important. In this paper we argue that existing tools exhibit a number of limitations, and that these can be addressed by basing tools on developments in the field of computational argumentation. After discussing the limitations, we present an argumentation scheme which can be used to justify policy proposals, and a way of modelling the domain so that arguments using this scheme and attacks upon them can be automatically generated. We then present two prototype tools: one to present justifications and receive criticism, and the other to elicit justifications of user-proposed policies and critique them. We use a running example of a genuine policy debate to illustrate the various aspects.