Title: Designing for Constructive Civic Communication: A Framework for Human-AI Collaboration in Community Engagement Processes Show Chinese title

Title: 面向建设性公民沟通的设计：社区参与过程中人机协作的框架

Abstract: Community engagement processes form a critical foundation of democratic governance, yet frequently struggle with resource constraints, sensemaking challenges, and barriers to inclusive participation. These processes rely on constructive communication between public leaders and community organizations characterized by understanding, trust, respect, legitimacy, and agency. As artificial intelligence (AI) technologies become increasingly integrated into civic contexts, they offer promising capabilities to streamline resource-intensive workflows, reveal new insights in community feedback, translate complex information into accessible formats, and facilitate reflection across social divides. However, these same systems risk undermining democratic processes through accuracy issues, transparency gaps, bias amplification, and threats to human agency. In this paper, we examine how human-AI collaboration might address these risks and transform civic communication dynamics by identifying key communication pathways and proposing design considerations that maintain a high level of control over decision-making for both public leaders and communities while leveraging computer automation. By thoughtfully integrating AI to amplify human connection and understanding while safeguarding agency, community engagement processes can utilize AI to promote more constructive communication in democratic governance. Show Chinese abstract

Abstract: 社区参与过程构成了民主治理的关键基础，但经常面临资源限制、意义构建挑战以及包容性参与的障碍。 这些过程依赖于公共领导人与社区组织之间富有建设性的沟通，这种沟通以理解、信任、尊重、合法性和主动性为特征。 随着人工智能（AI）技术越来越多地融入公民社会背景中，它们提供了有希望的能力来简化资源密集型工作流程，揭示社区反馈中的新见解，将复杂信息转化为易懂的格式，并促进跨越社会鸿沟的反思。 然而，这些系统也有可能通过准确性问题、透明度缺口、偏见放大和对人类主动性的威胁来破坏民主进程。 在本文中，我们研究了人机协作如何通过识别关键沟通路径并提出设计考虑因素来应对这些风险，并通过在保持公共领导人和社区对决策高度控制的同时利用计算机自动化来转变公民沟通动态。 通过深思熟虑地整合AI以增强人类联系和理解，同时保护主动性，社区参与过程可以利用AI来推动民主治理中更具建设性的沟通。