The Designing Tech for Social Cohesion conference brought together over a hundred tech community staff with over a hundred practitioners and experts in social cohesion, bridge building, and peacebuilding from February 23-25, 2023.


Please check back here for future updates, including a report on the conference.


The videos from the conference can be found at Search for Common Ground's YouTube page.

 

 

 

WHEN and WHERE?

San Francisco Fisherman’s Wharf
February 23, 2023 @ Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture from 5:00-7:00 Event followed by Reception from 7:00-9:00 pm Event
February 24 & 25, 2023 @ Hotel Argonaut from 8:00-6:30 pm

WHO and WHY?

This conference provides a unique space for tech innovators, Trust & Safety staff, and practitioners with community bridge-building and global peacebuilding experience to gather. 

This conference explores a new generation of tech products that offer design features and algorithms optimized for prosocial content. Professional development opportunities include the following:

  • Learn from social cohesion practitioners with decades of experiences working to depolarize groups
  • Be inspired by a new generation of tech platforms designed with algorithms and affordances to help groups find common ground and build empathy
  • Learn metrics for measuring polarization and social cohesion
  • Network with tech innovation teams and experienced community bridge-builders and peace builders from around the world

A growing tide of polarizing digital content, the heated public debate on free speech and content moderation, and the recent tech layoffs in and cuts to Trust & Safety programs create new challenges. The time is ripe to meet these challenges with bold solutions.

 

Agenda

Keynote Event February 23 @ 5:00pm

Designing Tech for Social Cohesion:

How Polis and Remesh Enable Groups to Find Common Ground and Develop Policy Solutions

Thursday, February 23, 2023 | 5:00 pm Event, followed by a reception (see ticket options)
Fort Mason Center Cowell Theatre on the San Francisco Bay Wharf

Setting the Stage for Designing Tech for Social Cohesion

A Message from Audrey Tang: How Taiwan Uses Tech for Social Cohesion

  • Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s Digital Minister (recorded, virtual).

Polis for Computational Deliberation and Democracy

  • Colin Megill, Founder, Polis, explains how Polis helps polarized groups find consensus, boost citizen engagement, and develop successful public policy. Colin discusses the Polis inspiration for Twitter’s Birdwatch, which Wired Magazine calls “the most exciting content moderation innovations ever to come out of not just Twitter, but any major platform.”

Remesh for “Listening at Scale” and AI to find Common Ground

  • Andrew Konya, Founder, Remesh, (recorded, virtual) describes how Remesh enables multi-user dialogue and listening at scale with AI to help find the common ground between people living in divided societies.

UN Peacetech Innovations Tech-Assisted Peace Processes

DAY 2: Full Conference Day

Friday, February 24 from 8:00 – 6:30 pm

Argonaut Hotel on San Francisco Fisherman’s Wharf

Breakfast of juice, pastries, fruit, coffee and tea

Opening Framing the Discussion

Phoenix: Digital Conflict Analysis on Polarization

  • Helena Puig Laurrari, Build Up,  will describe how this tool works, starting with CrowdTangle, local processes that produce coding schemas for sentiment analysis on polarization trends, and then moving toward social cohesion interventions.

5-7 minute transition dialogue with neighbors seated next to you; Big insights? Questions? Digital space for recording; enabling speakers to respond and remote audience to participate

Using Tech for Intergroup Dialogue

Moderator: Lena Schlachmuijlder, VP at Search for Common Ground

5-7 minute transition dialogue with neighbors seated next to you; Big insights? Questions? Digital space for recording; enabling speakers to respond and remote audience to participate

10:30 am – 15-minute Break

How can Bridge-Building & Peacebuilding Experts Inform Tech Designs?

Moderator: Emma Baumhofer, swisspeace Digital Peacebuilding Expert.

5-7 minute transition dialogue with neighbors seated next to you; Big insights? Questions? Digital space for recording; enabling speakers to respond and remote audience to participate

Lightning Talks: Tech Supporting Social Cohesion

5-minute transition dialogue with neighbors seated next to you; Big insights? Questions? Digital space for recording; enabling speakers to respond and remote audiences to participate

Lunch 12:00-12:50 pm

Lunch tables labeled by theme, enabling small groups to explore the “Roadmap for Collaboration” that came out of the Landscape Analysis on Technology and Social Cohesion report.

Metrics for Polarization and Social Cohesion:

Identifying the 3 kinds of indicators and metrics useful for digital spaces.

  • Moderator: Jonathan Stray, Center for Human Compatible AI.
  • Ravi Iyer, Managing Director of Psychology of Technology Institute at USC Marshall’s Neely Center.  How platforms have publicly addressed social cohesion and measured the results of those efforts.  What can we learn to inform building platforms that measurably improve social cohesion?
  • Julia Kamin, Civic Health Project Social Cohesion Impact Measures; Using pre-post surveys to assess the impact of online bridging interventions on participants.
  • Emily Saltz,  Jigsaw, Designing prosocial comment experiences: Challenges and Opportunities.
  • Adrienne Brooks, Mercy Corps, Measuring Social Cohesion Offline and Online.
  • Aviv Ovadya, Berkman Klein; Designing Tech Algorithms & Recommendations bridging-based ranking.

10-minute transition dialogue with neighbors seated next to you; Big insights? Questions? Digital space for recording; enabling speakers to respond and remote audience to participate

Lessons on Tech-Civil Society Partnerships:  (40 min) 2:10-2:50 pm

A panel of tech companies and civil society groups will share their lessons learned

Moderator: Christian Cirhigiri, Search for Common Ground, Digital Peacebuilding Policy Officer

5-minute transition dialogue with neighbors seated next to you; Big insights? Questions? Digital space for recording; enabling speakers to respond and remote audience to participate

Break (15 minutes with dialogue transition)

Incubating and Funding PeaceTech

Moderator: Mike Jobbins, VP Global Affairs and Partnerships, Search for Common Ground.

15-minute transition dialogue with neighbors seated next to you; Big insights? Questions? Digital space for recording; enabling speakers to respond and remote audience to participate

Insights, Inspirations, Ideas 

Leaders in the field of Trust and Safety, Integrity, Humane Tech and Peacebuilding discuss their insights, inspirations, and ideas from the day’s panels.

Moderator: Shamil Idriss, CEO Search for Common Ground.

Reception with drinks and appetizers 5:00-6:30 pm at Hotel Argonaut

 

DAY 3: Strategic Planning Roundtable

Saturday, February 25 from 9-12:00 am

Argonaut Hotel

A smaller, invite-only roundtable discussion will take place on Saturday morning to help create a 5-year plan for the Council on Tech & Social Cohesion.

Tickets

Your ticket gives you access to:

  • The keynote event at Fort Mason’s Cowell Theatre and an all-day conference with panels, workshops, and breakouts on Friday February 24
  • Networking opportunities including receptions on both February 23 and 24.
  • A Reception on Thursday February 23, and Breakfast, Lunch, and Reception on Friday February 24
Full events Thursday events Thursday event (no reception)
Academic institutions and for-profit companies $200 $50 $20
Non-profit organizations $100 $20 $5

Call for Posters

The poster session offers a chance to present early research ideas, late-breaking results, and novel perspectives. We welcome submissions from academia, industry, NGOs, and labs to submit posters on topics of interest similar to those of the main conference tracks:

  • Examples of or research on pro-social tech designs
  • Examples of initiatives to support tech roles in social cohesion
  • Research on pro-social responses to harmful content, particularly hate speech and disinformation
  • Research on how community bridge building and peacebuilding organizations are using technology
  • Research on metrics for measuring polarization and social cohesion
  • Research on tech-civil society partnerships
  • Research on tech incubation and financing peacetech

This event has been sponsored by the Toda Peace Institute, University of Notre Dame, KBF Canada, the Belgium Directorate-General for Development, the Psychology of Technology Institute, and the Civic Health Project.

 

For sponsorship information, media inquiries or other questions related to ticketing or the conference, please email Amanda Feldman (afeldman@sfcg.org).