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.
It’s not surprising that over the past few months I’ve frequently been asked for my take on Elon Musk’s proposed acquisition of Twitter. After all, for the past decade I’ve had a close connection to Twitter: Bluefin, the company I co-founded in 2008, was acquired by Twitter; I went on to serve as Twitter’s Chief Media Scientist from 2013-2018; and my subsequent research at MIT has relied heavily on the analysis of Twitter data. So what do I think about Musk’s advocacy of increased “free speech”? I think it’s problematic on several levels. First, I believe that relaxing content moderation policies will lead to predictable consequences for the safety of users, brand safety for advertisers...
A revolutionary new piece of civic infrastructure for more inclusive public input.
A new type of social platform for young people that is explicitly designed to promote healthier outcomes.
Probing neural language models of media consumption to predict public opinion
"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 the “grea...
We spend so much of our time online without knowing where we are—or how fragmented we've become. Locating ourselves can help us leave our bubble. ...
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 thrive. ...