Collective Intelligence

The chapter provides an introduction to the social science of ‘collective intelligence’, the aggregation of individual judgments for purposes of collective decision making. It starts from the basic logic of the Condorcet jury theorem and summarises the main determinants of the accuracy of collective cognition. The recent research has focused on developing and refining formal aggregation methods beyond majority voting. The chapter presents the main findings on the two general approaches, surveying and prediction markets. It then contrasts these techniques with informal deliberation as a basic and prevalent aggregation mechanism. One conclusion is that while deliberation is prone to herding and can distort collective judgment, it is also more versatile and robust than formal mechanisms.

McDonald’s: Kroc’s Grinding it Out

Kroc established an iconic global fast-food empire even though he did not found his firm, McDonald’s, until in his fifties. An innovative franchising system was crucial to McDonald’s success, together with a two-dimensional marketing strategy which was quality and family oriented and stressed the formula QSC&V (Quality, Service, Cleanliness, and Value). While his emphasis was on innovative adaptation, strategic (marketing) calculation, and diverse deliberation, Kroc used all six of the rational methods. For example, he and his ‘numbers man’ Sonneborn created the leasing financial base for McDonald’s nation-wide expansion. Kroc’s emphasis on diverse deliberation included allowing his managers to argue with him as well as sell him policy proposals—often through informal deliberation. The final section describes his pioneering international joint-venture system that helped McDonald’s spread around the globe and be adapted to different cultures and markets worldwide.

Deliberation

“Deliberative democracy” refers to democratic processes based on thorough consideration and discussion of issues from a variety of perspectives. Although voting and other ways of tallying opinions are often part of deliberation, it seeks to go beyond the mere aggregation of preferences through processes of collective discussion. Scholarly interest in deliberative democracy is highly interdisciplinary, with major strands of work found in political theory and philosophy, as well as in social scientific disciplines such as political science, social psychology, and sociology. With its focus on discussion and the exchange of reasoned arguments, however, it should be no surprise that deliberation has drawn significant attention from communication scholars, particularly those focused on political communication. These scholars regularly find insight in work on deliberation that originates in other fields and make their own contributions in return. Following broader scholarly interest in the topic, communication researchers have explored deliberation in a number of formats. These “modes” of deliberation include Deliberative Polls, deliberation among candidates and voters during campaigns, and deliberation in small groups, public forums, and town hall meetings, as well as informal deliberation that takes place in mass media, online, and in everyday political discussions among citizens. Within and across these modes, research on deliberative democracy typically addresses substantive questions surrounding the potential effects of deliberation on the quality of opinions held by its participants, and their likelihood of future political and civic engagement.