A knowledge structuring framework to support the design of social media for online deliberation

Although online social media hae acheived great success in several notable instances, the design of such systems remains a art. In some specialized areas, such as online deliberation systems for participatory democracy, experiences from many projects have been reported in the research literature. Designers can benefit from knowledge accumulated from these experiences. However, the knowledge is dispersed and not organized for ready access by practicing professionals. This thesis proposes a framework for structuring and codifying design knowledge from published studies to help designers make design choices that will attain design objectives.