==Why do we need a Framework for Deliberation==
The theory of deliberation has so far defied a strong connection with empirical research. There are two main reasons for this: the lack of conceptual clarity specifying which types of discussions classify as the deliberative type, and the confusion between
the causes and the consequences of deliberation<ref>Thompson, D.F. (2008). Deliberative Democratic Theory and Empirical PoliticalScience, Annual Review of Political Science 11: 497–520.</ref>.
Much The Public Deliberation research field is not an eay field for research. It includes the fields of social interactions, individual psychology, interpersonal communication, the literature on deliberation derives from disagreements over the necessary processing of knowledge and sufficient conditions that much more. In each of it's subfields there are required for many areas of intradisciplnary and interdisciplinary questions, each making the field more complex. This makes the research of deliberation highly complex. In order to take placemake deliberation empirical, falsifiable theories of deliberation must be produced. Such theories which describes measurable elements and interactions of between elemnts,were produced in the last decade by several groups: steenberger et al 2003<ref>ThompsonSteenbergen, DM. R.F, Bächtiger, A., Spörndli, M., & Steiner, J. (20082003). Deliberative Democratic Theory and Empirical PoliticalScienceMeasuring political deliberation: a discourse quality index. Comparative European Politics, 1(1), Annual Review of Political Science 11: 497–52021–48.</ref>, stormer-Galley 2005<ref>Stromer-Galley, J. Without these conditions, deliberation is a moving target: it is difficult to match with any particular instance of public discussion& Martinson, A. (2005). Conceptualizing and it can always be argued that somecrucial element is missing that disqualifies the entire empirical approachmeasuring coherence in online chat. The problem with this lack of conceptual clarity is not only that it goes against the basic principle In Annual Meeting of scientific refutability, hampering the development of the theoryInternational Communication Association.</ref>, but also that it blurs the boundaries between the definition of deliberation and its evaluationbachtiger et al 2009<ref>MutzBachtiger, DA.C, Shikano, S., Pedrini, S., & Ryser, M. (20082009). Is Deliberative Democracy a Falsifiable Theory? Annual Review of Political Science 11Measuring deliberation 2.0: 521–538standards, discourse types, and sequenzialization. In ECPR General Conference, Potsdam (pp. 5–12).</ref>. Empirical approaches to political deliberation can help develop the theory by, first, turning the normative assumptions into testable hypotheses and, second, progressively identifying a set of necessary conditions required todistinguish deliberation from other types of discussionsblack and Gastil 2008<ref>Taken from Gonzalez-BailonGastil, SJ., KaltenbrunnerBlack, AL., & BanchsMoscovitz, R. EK. (20102008). The structure of political discussion networks: a model for the analysis of online Ideology, attitude change, and deliberationin small face-to-face groups. Journal of Information TechnologyPolitical Communication, 25(21), 230–24323–46.</ref>, yet these theories only answers partly to the phenomena we find in real world deliberation. Many aspects like the inadequaty of rationality, communication styles, storytelling, social interaction, communication methods, type of medium used and much more are not described by these theoris. The current framework does not try to give a single description of deliberation, but rather aims at describing the building blocks of deliberation, and the ways to measure these building blocks. We will examine four areas that to our understanding construct the major elements of deliberation: knowledge, psychology, sociology and the structures as procedures which produce public decision making by deliberation. We then ask about the quality and democratic values of the decisions which were made by their end product. It then examines several methods of deliberation used by practioners, and tries to describe the elements and their interaction. Based on these understanding, we hope to make measurements of deliberation more clear and to improve old practices and construct new advanced deliberation settings.
==Goals of this Framework==