Alternative to Polling

My final paper in my public opinion class is to discuss an alternative means of finding public opinion. The author of the book we are focusing on for this unit, James Fishkin, makes the argument that people's responses to polling questions are different when they all meet and discuss the issue. This allows all respondents to be informed and make decisions based on that knowledge. While this would not allow a scientific sample, it is interesting and affirms that respondents will answer polling questions when they don't know about an issue. Fishkin also argues that public opinion should not be all that important to politics when the results of the polls are based on answers by uninformed people. He discusses something called deliberative polling, which allows respondents to discuss the issue and then answer questions regarding their opinions.
My paper will center on this method. My idea is to recruit respondents who can gain internet access and allow them to discuss the issue in an online discussion or chat room. This allows respondents the opportunity to voice their opinions in privacy. I know that everyone does not have Internet access, however; my idea is to recruit respondents through the mail and allow them time to find access to a computer with Internet. For example, people may have friends who have the Internet, the library has the Internet, and some people have Internet at work. If respondents can gain this access, the issue of not having the Internet decreases. With the Internet being available worldwide, this allows a substantially large amount of people to participate. Many people are on the Internet or their computers throughout the day which can encourage participation. In order to access the chat room or discussion, there would be questions they have to answer first in order to see where they stand on the issue prior to discussing it. At the end, they would re-answer the questions to show how much public opinion changed due to their deliberations. This is just the beginning of my brainstorming and I will post more as I write this paper.