Opinion aggregation by argumentation

People often express their opinions by arguing, putting forward justifications for the conclusions they draw as well as pros and cons of factors influencing these conclusions. When several people's opinions are put together, it is crucial that they are aggregated so as to iron out any conflicts. Several mechanisms for opinion aggregation have been proposed in the literature on social choice. This project will look at bringing the two fields of argumentation in artificial intelligence and opinion aggregation in social choice to provide useful methods and tools to support a range of applications, such as e-democracy and e-polling. It aims at answering the following research questions, using methods from Artificial Intelligence: Which aggregation mechanisms guarantee desirable properties of the result of aggregating argumentative opinions, of various forms? Which aggregation mechanisms and properties will be more suitable to support applications, such as e-democracy and e-polling

The project falls within the Artificial Intelligence Technologies EPSRC research area