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Citations

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Grant support

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PID2019-108965GB-I00), the Regional Government of Andalusia (P20_00314 and B-SEJ-556-UGR20), and the Centre of Andalusian Studies (PR137/19). The authors thank to all people who participated in the reported study.

Analysis of institutional authors

Segura-Tinoco, AndresCorresponding AuthorCantador, IvanAuthor

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March 7, 2025
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Proceedings Paper
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A Conversational Agent for Argument-driven E-participation

Publicated to:PROCEEDINGS OF THE 23RD ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON DIGITAL GOVERNMENT RESEARCH, DGO 2022: Intelligent Technologies, Governments and Citizens. 191-205 - 2022-01-01 (), DOI: 10.1145/3543434.3543447

Authors: Segura-Tinoco, Andres; Holgado-Sanchez, Andres; Cantador, Ivan; Cortes-Cediel, Maria E; Rodriguez-Bolivar, Manuel Pedro

Affiliations

Univ Autonoma Madrid, Escuela Politecn Super, Madrid, Spain - Author
Univ Complutense Madrid, Fac Ciencias Polit & Sociol, Madrid, Spain - Author
Univ Granada, Fac Ciencias Econ & Empresari, Granada, Spain - Author

Abstract

The majority of current e-participation tools are based on online web forums where citizens make proposals and provide comments and opinions, forming large conversation threads. Motivated by the huge popularity of instant messaging applications and the impressive, recent advances in natural language processing and artificial intelligence, in this paper we propose and investigate the use of conversational agents or chatbots as a new form of citizen-to-government communication. Specifically, we present and evaluate a novel chatbot that assists a user on the overwhelming task of exploring the citizen-generated content of Decide Madrid, a forum-based e-participatory budgeting platform. Among other things, the proposed chatbot is capable of automatically extracting, categorizing and summarizing the arguments underlying the citizen proposals and debates in the platform. Through a user study, we show promising results about the potential benefits of the chatbot in terms of several citizen participation, decision making and public value criteria.

Keywords

Quality index

Bibliometric impact. Analysis of the contribution and dissemination channel

From a relative perspective, and based on the normalized impact indicator calculated from the Field Citation Ratio (FCR) of the Dimensions source, it yields a value of: 4.03, which indicates that, compared to works in the same discipline and in the same year of publication, it ranks as a work cited above average. (source consulted: Dimensions Jul 2025)

Specifically, and according to different indexing agencies, this work has accumulated citations as of 2025-07-16, the following number of citations:

  • WoS: 7
  • Scopus: 9

Impact and social visibility

From the perspective of influence or social adoption, and based on metrics associated with mentions and interactions provided by agencies specializing in calculating the so-called "Alternative or Social Metrics," we can highlight as of 2025-07-16:

  • The use, from an academic perspective evidenced by the Altmetric agency indicator referring to aggregations made by the personal bibliographic manager Mendeley, gives us a total of: 85.
  • The use of this contribution in bookmarks, code forks, additions to favorite lists for recurrent reading, as well as general views, indicates that someone is using the publication as a basis for their current work. This may be a notable indicator of future more formal and academic citations. This claim is supported by the result of the "Capture" indicator, which yields a total of: 84 (PlumX).

With a more dissemination-oriented intent and targeting more general audiences, we can observe other more global scores such as:

  • The Total Score from Altmetric: 2.
  • The number of mentions on the social network X (formerly Twitter): 2 (Altmetric).

It is essential to present evidence supporting full alignment with institutional principles and guidelines on Open Science and the Conservation and Dissemination of Intellectual Heritage. A clear example of this is:

  • The work has been submitted to a journal whose editorial policy allows open Open Access publication.
  • Assignment of a Handle/URN as an identifier within the deposit in the Institutional Repository: https://repositorio.uam.es/handle/10486/711294

Leadership analysis of institutional authors

There is a significant leadership presence as some of the institution’s authors appear as the first or last signer, detailed as follows: First Author (SEGURA TINOCO, GERMAN ANDRES) .

the author responsible for correspondence tasks has been SEGURA TINOCO, GERMAN ANDRES.