We met Deb Roy through a mutual friend. He has an impressive resume, to say the least. This from MIT:
Mr. Roy is Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT where he directs the MIT Center for Constructive Communication. He leads research in applied machine learning and human-machine system design with applications in understanding large scale social media ecosystems and designing communication tools and social networks. Deb is also co-founder and CEO of Cortico, a nonprofit social technology organization that develops and operates a conversation platform designed to surface “under-heard” voices and enable deep systematic listening.
Previously, Roy was a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School from 2021-22. He served as Executive Director of the MIT Media Lab from 2019-2021. Roy co-founded and was CEO of Bluefin Labs, a media analytics company that analyzed the interactions between television and social media at scale. Bluefin was acquired by Twitter in 2013, Twitter’s largest acquisition to date. From 2013-2017 Roy served as Twitter’s Chief Media Scientist.
Whenever we meet people like Deb, we ask them if they would like to write a piece for News Items and/or Political News Items about their work or their view of what’s happening, in their world or in the world. Rebecca Patterson wrote about currencies. Philip Howard wrote about making government work again. Danny Hillis wrote about cybersecurity.
It’s mind-bending that we have reached a point where we have to figure out a way to have normal conversations about important issues. But that’s where we are and that’s what we must do. That’s what Deb writes about in the essay below.
Imagine a world where authentic conversation about society's most important issues is not just possible, but normal.
Unfortunately, our public sphere is broken. Social media rewards and amplifies the loudest voices. Much of civic discourse devolves into a spectacle of viral confrontations and one-sided diatribes, leaving no room for nuance and authenticity. These communication patterns themselves have gone viral, spreading from online to in-person settings. Town halls, college campuses, and workplaces now struggle with community-wide conversations often overwhelmed by the most extreme opinions.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
I have spent a large part of my academic career studying large-scale social media patterns using artificial intelligence. I also served as Twitter’s Chief Media Scientist for five years. Now I head the MIT Center for Constructive Communication where in 2016 we began experimenting with an idea: could we use AI and other digital technologies to foster human connection and trust? In 2017, I co-founded Cortico, a non-profit closely affiliated with MIT, to translate our MIT research into scalable deployment.
Over the last seven years we’ve developed, iterated, and deployed a conversation platform that enables partners – community organizations, local governments, community organizations, universities, and companies – to hold, record, analyze and connect small-group conversations at scale. Combining ancient wisdoms (from facilitated dialogue, deep listening, and organizing) with advanced AI, the platform has now been deployed with 160+ organizations to understand the life experiences of people in their communities and organizations with unprecedented depth and breadth.
Here’s how and why the conversation platform works:
Capturing Experiences: Participating organizations facilitate small group conversations (in person or on video, and recorded) among people who already share some bond or experience. In these small “circles of trust,” participants are more likely to open up and share with vulnerability. The conversations are guided by local facilitators who encourage sharing personal experiences over opinions, which research shows increases empathy, respect, and trust.
Active Listening: Post-conversation, Cortico’s tech platform helps transform individual small group discussions into a scalable communication network. Participants can share out, with consent, key audio and text highlights of the recorded conversation, fostering deeper connections and insights within and across communities. Facilitators can also replay these highlights from one conversation in another as prompts, cross-pollinating conversations and helping to bridge different groups and perspectives.
AI-Supported Sensemaking: Building on this foundation, human-led, AI-supported qualitative analysis enables community members to find themes across conversations, surfacing commonalities between people and their experiences that might otherwise go unnoticed.
Sharing and Acting: The platform enables the creation of interactive voice portals that encourage broader engagement with the conversation data through listening, summaries, and visualizations. In addition to strengthening bonds, portals can serve as dynamic reports, informing decision-makers about the life experiences of a community. We're now enhancing the platform to translate community concerns and perspectives into actionable advice for leaders – helping them earn trust and legitimacy by showing they listen and respond to diverse community perspectives.
Cities are adopting our approach to engage residents more effectively than through traditional public meetings. For instance, New York City used it to understand COVID's impact on various communities and to inform public health decisions. Madison, Wisconsin applied it for gathering insights during the hiring process for their police chief, and Durham, North Carolina has used it as an ongoing tool for more equitable community engagement. Officials have noted its success in engaging people who are typically reluctant to speak at town halls or other large public events, preferring the intimate and trusted environment of small group discussions.
We've also found this approach effective in amplifying the voices of young people. For example, at Freeport High School in Maine, a student-led initiative overcame a major communication breakdown between students and administrators, reopening productive discussions on contentious school policies. In Newark's Opportunity Youth Network, young leaders are bringing to light the reasons their peers drop out of school by beginning to illuminate real stories and reasons behind the national trend of chronic absenteeism.
At MIT, my own university, we're expanding a program focused on dialogue, listening, and deliberation to make MIT a model of a “listening campus.” Upper-year undergraduate students are being trained to facilitate conversations and active listening skills with all incoming first-year students, with plans to add programs for graduate students, staff, and faculty. At a moment when colleges and universities around the country are experiencing profound challenges in supporting dialogue across divides, what is most exciting is the possibility of a common set of tools and methods that can be deployed across campuses, schools, and workplaces.
But does it scale? We believe it can, by combining the development of powerful technology with a commitment to supporting broad participation, which in turn depends on people building "civic muscle" – skills in dialogue, conversation analysis, and deliberation. To ensure these skills are effectively developed, we're introducing a learning-by-doing pedagogy, along with training and certification programs – all supported by and integrated with our tech platform.
So if (like us) you’re frustrated by the pressure to choose sides in every debate and worried about the backlash of speaking your mind in today's polarized public spaces, we invite you to collaborate with the MIT Center for Constructive Communication and nonprofit Cortico to bring a new approach to your own community, campus, or workplace. Together, we have forged a groundbreaking research-to-action pathway that, with the right collaborators and support, can significantly scale up our contemporary reimagining of civic infrastructure. Our goal? To grow a network of people and organizations so that together we can stop and reverse toxic polarization and heal social fragmentation. With your help, we can make constructive communication the new normal.