Unravelling Online Public Jury and Fairness on Digital Platforms

Online Public Jury (OPJ) is an emerging approach to involve users in crowd decisionmaking on digital platforms. Distinct from conventional jury system, OPJ is supported by platform functionalities facilitating interactivity among jurors and transparency of case information, which in turn culminates in both benefits and challenges to the fairness of judgment. Based on a case study of a peer-to-peer medical insurance platform which has adopted OPJ for deciding on contested insurance claims, this study aims to explore how OPJ works and its effects on the fairness of collective judgment. Our preliminary analysis revealed four processes of OPJ (i.e., jury qualification, judgment requirement, jury deliberation, and voting decision). Additionally, eight jury principles were leveraged to analyze OPJ processes from a fairness angle. Insights from this study are expected to contribute to extant literature on the fairness of jury systems by unraveling the mechanism and fairness consequences of OPJ.