Integrating on-demand fact-checking with public dialogue
Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing
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Trust in our democracy has been eroding, undercutting our ability to confront difficult problems. Meanwhile, our public discourse is fragmented and polarized. In this dissertation, I argue that these issues are inextricable and that one promising approach for transcending them is to create communication technologies that help publics find common ground upon which they can organize and take action. To inquire further, I have created two new interactive technologies, ConsiderIt and Reflect, that help facilitate large public discussions on the web by encouraging people to consider tradeoffs and listen to each other. ConsiderIt guides people to reflect on the tradeoffs of an issue through the creation of a personal pro/con list, with the twist that they can adopt points others have already contributed. ConsiderIt then surfaces the most salient pros and cons overall, while also enabling users to drill down into the key points for those who support, oppose or are undecided. Reflect, on the other hand, modifies online comment boards by creating a space next to every comment where people can succinctly summarize and restate points they hear the commenter making. Commenters thus know whether they are being heard and understood, and readers can demonstrate understanding. Analyses of multiple field deployments of ConsiderIt and Reflect illustrate that participants in the deployments used these technologies in normatively desirable ways, suggesting that the design direction may have wide traction amongst the public. I also contribute a tiered theoretical framework for designing effective public deliberation that puts these contributions into context. Whether these and similar technologies can be combined to create more effective organizational structures that build trust and counter fragmentation over the long term remains to be seen.