To talk or to communicate? : a study on the prerequisites for communication in public consultation meetings

Abstract: The aim with this study was to investigate the communication that takes place in publicconsultation meetings. My intention was to study and analyze both attitudes about thecommunication, as well as the factual behavior at the meetings, in order to found possiblepotential for improvement.In order to fulfill my aim I interviewed six people that were working with public consultationmeetings in one way or another. I also observed three public consultation meetings. Theinformation provided to me by the interviewees corresponded quite well with my ownobservations. The overall conclusion I have reached is that there are many potential changesfrom which the communication in public consultation meetings would gain.In many aspects the meetings I observed were not conducted in a democratic way and themeetings had more in common with meetings of information rather than meetings of dialogue.However both participants and process leaders would like to see more influence given to theparticipants and in this study I suggest that by doing so, several communication problemscould be avoided at the same time as it would deepen democracy and give greater legitimacyto decisions that is being taken in relation to the meetings. Suggestively, this increasedinfluence could be gained by letting the participants take part in deciding about the agenda forthe meetings. The them-and-us feeling, which according to my findings also leads tocommunicational difficulties, could also be reduced with the participants’ greater influence.The meetings I observed and the interviews I conducted were all related to very differentconsultation situation. The study and its conclusion therefore become quite general. The needfor some kind of change in all of the meetings however indicates that it would be interestingto look even further into each case and I believe that the meetings would gain from compilingmy specific findings with the process leaders understanding of the meetings. I suggest that allpeople in the position of leading public consultation meetings should think and reflect uponthe democratic aspects as well as the purpose of such meetings in order to improve theirexecution.