{"id":933,"date":"2026-03-26T12:30:44","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T10:30:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.utu.fi\/demokratia\/?p=933"},"modified":"2026-03-26T12:30:46","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T10:30:46","slug":"information-produced-by-citizens-jury-was-perceived-as-reliable-in-a-polarized-environment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.utu.fi\/demokratia\/en\/information-produced-by-citizens-jury-was-perceived-as-reliable-in-a-polarized-environment\/","title":{"rendered":"Information Produced by Citizens\u2019 Jury was Perceived as Reliable in a Polarized Environment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Set\u00e4l\u00e4, M., Christensen, H. S., Leino, M., Strandberg, K., B\u00e4ck, M., & J\u00e4ske, M. (2023).\u00a0Deliberative mini-publics facilitating voter knowledge and judgement: Experience from a Finnish local referendum<\/a>.\u00a0Representation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many contemporary democracies incorporate elements of direct democracy, most commonly in the form of referendums. Referendums are, however, susceptible to strong opinion manipulation, which has prompted the development of complementary mechanisms to enable the balanced deliberation of competing alternatives. The Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR), developed in the state of Oregon, seeks to produce carefully considered and reliable information for voters by convening a randomly selected citizens’ jury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article examines whether the CIR model can function effectively in a markedly different institutional, political, and cultural context. The study focuses on an advisory referendum held in the municipality of Korsholm on the question of merging with the city of Vaasa. The merger was a deeply divisive issue among residents, creating a clear need for balanced and accurate information. Prior to the referendum, a stratified citizens’ jury was assembled through random sampling. The 21-member jury produced a written statement outlining the key facts about the municipal merger and the main arguments for and against it. The statement was distributed to all eligible voters in Korsholm before the vote. Notably, the jury was also the first CIR-type panel to be conducted bilingually, reflecting Korsholm’s linguistic composition, with approximately 70 per cent of residents being Swedish-speaking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The article examines the process from three perspectives: the deliberative quality within the jury, the public reach of the statement, and the effects of reading the statement on voters. The data comprise daily surveys completed by jury participants, a post-referendum population survey, and a field experiment in which a treatment group read the statement before completing the survey, whilst a control group responded without access to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The results indicate that the citizens\u2019 jury procedure succeeded on all three dimensions. The quality of deliberation was high: participants found the process fair and inclusive, moderators were perceived as impartial, and peer pressure remained minimal \u2013 despite the deeply polarised local context. The statement reached voters effectively: most residents were aware of the jury, a large proportion reported having read the statement, and nearly all readers considered it a trustworthy source of information. The study demonstrated that reading the statement significantly increased voters’ factual knowledge of the merger, enhanced trust in the jury, and improved their capacity to consider the perspectives of those holding opposing views.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taken together, the findings demonstrate that a model quite similar to CIR can operate effectively outside the United States, in a context where voters have no prior familiarity with the procedure and where the political climate is strongly polarised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read the article<\/a> \ud83d\udd13 (open access)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read more about the Korsholm Citizens’ Jury<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Set\u00e4l\u00e4, M., Christensen, H. S., Leino, M., Strandberg, K., B\u00e4ck, M., & J\u00e4ske, M. (2023).\u00a0Deliberative mini-publics facilitating voter knowledge and judgement: Experience from a Finnish local referendum.\u00a0Representation. Many contemporary democracies incorporate elements of direct democracy, most commonly in the form…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5054,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","wds_primary_category":42,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"lang":"en","translations":{"en":933,"fi":931},"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":21,"label":"News"}]},"featured_image_src_large":false,"author_info":{"display_name":"Aaron Kling","author_link":"https:\/\/sites.utu.fi\/demokratia\/author\/aeklinutufi\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":21,"name":"News","slug":"news","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":21,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":4,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":21,"category_count":4,"category_description":"","cat_name":"News","category_nicename":"news","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":false,"pll_sync_post":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.utu.fi\/demokratia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.utu.fi\/demokratia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.utu.fi\/demokratia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.utu.fi\/demokratia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5054"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.utu.fi\/demokratia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=933"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.utu.fi\/demokratia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":934,"href":"https:\/\/sites.utu.fi\/demokratia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933\/revisions\/934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.utu.fi\/demokratia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.utu.fi\/demokratia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.utu.fi\/demokratia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}