The Noisy Idiot Dilemma is the name of my thesis at ITP, that I am working on this semester, as part of Katherine Dillon’s class.  I began researching this issue in Clay Shirky’s Social Facts class at ITP in Spring 2009.

There is a lot of work to be done if we’re to succeed at building a participatory democracy.  In online forums, sometimes “noisy idiot behavior” often dominates the discussion and ruins the enterprise for all.  In this thesis, I will analyze the problem and propose ideas to enable productive participatory online discussion.

Follow the discussion via the ‘Noisy Idiots’ tag on this blog.

I am publishing chapters of the thesis on this blog.  So far…

Chapters 1 and 2:  Introduction and Background

Press and Presentations:

• Video of presentation at ITP 2010 Thesis Week (May 2010)
• Video of presentation at Ignite NYC: Internet Week Edition (June 2010)
• Interview with Jerry Brito of GMU’s Mercatus Center (June 2010)