  Online deliberation offers a way for citizens to collectively discuss an
issue and provide input for policy makers. The overall experience of online
deliberation can be affected by multiple factors. We decided to investigate the
effects of moderation and opinion heterogeneity on the perceived deliberation
experience, by running the first online deliberation experiment in Singapore.
Our study took place in three months with three phases. In phase 1, our 2,006
participants answered a survey, that we used to create groups of different
opinion heterogeneity. During the second phase, 510 participants discussed
about the population issue on the online platform we developed. We gathered
data on their online deliberation experience during phase 3. We found out that
higher levels of moderation negatively impact the experience of deliberation on
perceived procedural fairness, validity claim and policy legitimacy; and that
high opinion heterogeneity is important in order to get a fair assessment of
the deliberation experience.
