This is the archive of the closed section of the Networking Democracy online discussion group, initiated by OurKingdom, which ran between February and March of 2008.

The group had the following sections:

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Opening Statements

The rationale - an email exchange between Michael Wills MP (Ministry of Justice) and Anthony Barnett (openDemocracy), setting out the aims of the discussion group.

We asked four people to provide short statements opening the debate on the basis of this rationale:

• The "National Conversation" Conversation - Tony Curzon Price
• Values and Virtual Debates - Bill Thompson
• Online Engagement in a National Debate - Steve Clift
• Building Online Participation into a National Citizens Summit - Suw Charman

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Discussion threads

The discussion was then divided into the following threads:

• Networking Democracy (43 responses)
• Ensuring Security (5 responses)
  
• Asking Difficult Questions (3 responses)
• How do online and offline interact? (3 responses)
  
• Building Participation (7 responses)
  
• Final thoughts (7 responses)

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• Bill Thompson, BBC freelancer
• David Newman, Queens University Belfast
• Michele Smyth, Queens University Belfast 
• David Wilcox, designingforcivilsociety.org
• Ella Taylor-Smith, ITC, Napier
• Georgina Henry, CIF, the Guardian
• Helen Margetts, Oxford Internet Institute
• Alice Casey, involve, http://cased.wordpress.com/
  
• Ross Ferguson, Dog Digital
• Solana Larsen, Global  Voices
• Steve Clift, E-Democracy.org
• Tom Steinberg, mysociety
• Andrew Williamson, Hansard Society
• Paul Hilder, Avaaz 
• Tony Curzon Price, openDemocracy
• Jonathan Zittrain , Oxford Internet Institute (observer)
• Suw Charman, ORG
• Anthony Barnett, openDemocracy
• Jon Bright, openDemocracy (moderator)
• Elspeth Rainbow, Justice
• Michael Wills, Justice