We mapped the history of the intersection between technology and social cohesion.

 

Here’s recent work undertaken by Council partners:

 

Public Policy

Ravi Iyer of USC’s Neely Center published A Concise Social Media Design Election Advocacy Guide. Outreach is underway with a variety of stakeholders and allies.

Jonathan Stray, Ravi Iyer and Helena Puig Larrauri published ‘The Algorithmic Management of Polarization and Violence on Social Media,’ exploring how social media platforms can do more to monitor their impact and discourage violence.

Helena Puig Larrauri of Build Up offers an innovative approach to combating online polarization in her piece, Societal divides as a taxable negative externality of digital platforms.

Council Co-Chairs Lisa Schirch, Ravi Iyer and Lena Slachmuijlder published ‘Toward Prosocial Tech Design Governance‘ in Tech Policy Press, advocating for a design governance focus to incentivize tech to mitigate harms and build cohesion. A French version of the article can be found here.

 

Metrics

Learn how the Neely Indices are designing ad codifying ‘pro-social’ metrics to measure the impact of tech on polarizations and social cohesion, specifically social media and artificial intelligence.

The Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence (CHAI) is leading a prosocial ranking algorithm challenge, in which winning algorithm will be tested for four months using a browser extension that can re-order, add, or remove content on Facebook, X, and Reddit, and evaluated in a pre-registered, controlled experiment with consenting participants.

Ravi Iyer of USC’s Neely Center led the efforts of creating a list of specific steps we can take to design social media systems to better serve society. They are soliciting signatures from supporting individuals and organizations.

More examples of prosocial design patterns can be found at the Prosocial Design Network Library, housing a robust collection of evidence-based design solutions to bring out the best in human nature online.

 

Scientific Evolution

The Integrity Institute published a guide on Elections Integrity Best Practices, and a Part Two, offering platforms best practices from across the industry to help better support healthy elections. This is part of their larger Elections Integrity Program.

New Public released a Directory of more than 200 spaces and products with the most interesting spaces and pieces of infrastructure which build a healthy and cohesive internet.  Anyone can search, sort, or filter by a variety of categories, including business model, entity type, stage of maturity, interaction format, and Civic Signals that apply. This is a valuable complement to other excellent resources including the Civic Tech Field Guide, Hugo Amsellem’s Loneliness Economy startups database, the Prosocial Design Networks’ interventions library, and An Illustrated Field Guide to Social Media.

Jonathan Stray and Gillian Hadfield wrote A Unique Experiment That Could Make Social Media Better explaining how  multiple universities, nonprofit and advocacy organizations, together with  Meta, are experimenting and learning about changes to Facebook’s feed ranking.

Paul Gowder of the Integrity Institute has a new book out: The Networked Leviathan: For Democratic Platforms. As platforms fail to self-regulate and govern their users, Paul argues that countries should adapt the institutional tools developed in political science for platform governance to democratize major platforms. Order yours today!

The recent Global PeaceTech Conference convened experts to discuss case studies and policy recommendations. This resulted in a paper that offers insights and practical proposals to guide innovation and governance across various levels, co-authored by Michele Giovanardi of Global PeaceTech Hub.

Julia Kamin of Civic Health Project wrote The Personal Norms Signal in which she explains what it may look like for platforms to give individual users the tools to be their own norm-signalers (and enforcers).

 

Implementation

Search for Common Ground convenes the Bamako Forum, a multi-stakeholder fora to generate recommendations for a safer and healthier online space in conflict-affected contexts, with a focus on Mali.

Search for Common Ground has codified a curriculum to help digital community stewards build trust and cohesion in online groups. This course is now available in a self-guided online version, which can be accessed here.

New_Public runs a Community Stewards Guild, where online stewards can learn and connect with each other, as well as contributing their perspectives towards design patterns that can enable healthy digital spaces.

The Integrity Institute released a valuable resource to help startups and early-stage companies integrate integrity into their platform design and mitigate harmful behavior from the beginning: “Build in Integrity: Best Practices for Start Ups and Early Stage Companies,” offers actionable steps to establish a strong integrity system, complete with case studies and best practices at each stage.