Designing tools, methods and systems that connect rather than divide us to create a healthier society.

We develop methods for understanding current social and mass media ecosystems and design new communications tools and spaces for bridging societal divides.

Political, media, and technological forces have driven us into isolated, like-minded camps hostile toward outside views and ripe for the spread of misinformation, mischaracterization of others, “cancellation,” hateful discourse, and even violence. The loudest, most extreme voices now dominate the public sphere, stifling communication that might bridge ever-widening and increasingly dangerous divides.

The MIT Center for Constructive Communication brings together researchers in AI, computational social science, digital interactive design, and learning technologies with software engineers, journalists, political scientists, designers, and community organizers to explore and address the effects of deepening social fragmentation in the United States.

ANALYSIS OF MILLIONS OF POLITICAL TWEETS FROM THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN. VISUALIZATION revealed a social network deeply fragmented along political lines, including the personal networks of journalists that reported on the election. (Learn more)

What's New

MIT’s Center for Constructive Communication takes aim at the destructive nature of social media

The MIT Center for Constructive Communication (CCC) and the closely affiliated nonprofit Cortico today announced the launch of a broad-based effort that draws on expertise in face-to-face human dialogue, digital networks, and machine learning to develop safe and trusted spaces for meaningful, nonpolarizing human connection and civic impact. This effort has attracted commitments of $21 million from philanthropic individuals and organizations, including a foundational gift from the international nonprofit Project Liberty. Of the total commitments, $8.5 million is directed to research conducted by CCC in collaboration with MIT’s Sociotechnical Systems Research Center, and the remainder to Cortico.

05.10.2023 | MIT News

Recent Media

Obama praises CCC’s “great work” in “making online conversations more civil and productive”

“We need to figure out how to give [ourselves] a chance to build up civic muscles,” said Barack Obama in his April 2022 speech on disinformation, mentioning th...

Self-Published | 04.21.2022

GBH’s Raney Aronson-Rath Joins MIT Center for Constructive Communication as Journalist-in-Residence

Raney Aronson-Rath, editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE, the award-winning PBS investigative documentary series housed at GBH in Boston, has been named...

Self-Published | 02.27.2023

Some Bostonians feel largely unheard. With MIT’s ‘Real Talk’ portal now public, here’s a chance to really listen

In a community dialogue in East Boston this summer, a man named Alejandro inquired about whether the city’s high schools would receive the funding they need to thriv...

Boston Globe | 10.25.2021

Recent Projects

Real Talk for Change

A revolutionary new piece of civic infrastructure for more inclusive public input.

Prototype Workshop

Clover

A new type of social platform for young people that is explicitly designed to promote healthier outcomes.

Prototype Workshop

Pollster

Probing neural language models of media consumption to predict public opinion

Research Lab