Socratrees: Make Discussions Great Again
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Terms like `misinformation', `fake news', and `echo chambers' permeate current discussions on the state of the Internet. We believe a lack of technological support to evaluate, contest, and reason about information online lies at the root of these problems. Although several argument technologies address these challenges, they remain a niche outside of research. Current systems overemphasize argument analysis, standing in stark contrast with the informal dialectical nature of everyday argumentation. In this paper, we introduce Socratrees, a website for collaborative argumentative discussion (inspired by informal logic) reducing arguments to hierarchies of supporting and opposing statements. Based on a six-week-long exploratory study, we conclude that our design holds promise, but more work is needed to improve user engagement, and to guide users in the use of statement relevance and writing statements that are free of context.
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