What does digital civic infrastructure look like in the 21st century?
From New America's political reform program
Editor’s note: Civic infrastructure is all the rage right now. (See: the Trust for Civic Life.) And there’s more to civic life than the the old-school Robert Putnam/Bowling Alone/Rotary Club kind. More people engage with their communities online, especially young people. In this piece, Hollie Russon Gilman, Sarah Jacob, and Maresa Strano of New America’s political reform program make a compelling case for meeting people where they are (online), instead of trying to drag them to church or a bowling alley.
P.S. You can submit a pitch to Democracy Takes here.
With so much momentum online around the Harris-Walz campaign there is a critical question: what would it take to keep people, especially young people, engaged in civic life the day after the election.
All too often, we wave off data showing that America’s youth are politically disaffected and leery of institutions of authority. Instead of dismissing young people and particularly young men as a lost cause, government officials and civic engagement experts should explore fresh ideas for bringing them into policymaking. One promising avenue: marrying an innovative approach to public decision-making, citizens’ assemblies, with a social media platform popular among young men, Discord.
To back up, a citizens’ assembly is basically a jury, but for getting things done, using randomized selection to involve everyday people in policymaking. The process enables elected officials and government representatives to engage with the public on highly polarized issues and develop policy solutions that better reflect community priorities and needs. In Ireland, for example, citizens’ assemblies have supported a referendum on reproductive rights. Just last month, Paris had the first permanent citizens’ assembly, comprised of 100 regular people, turn a bill into a law around homelessness. They’re also on the rise in the United States, as cities across the country from Petaluma, California to Bend, Oregon learn from their success across Europe.
However, there are various constraints that make citizens’ assemblies hard to run. They are expensive and—when executed well—require time, intensive engagement, and strong moderation to address equity concerns. Technological tools can help mitigate some of these challenges and enable government officials and policymakers to meet people where they are.
As many of us think about how to build digital civic infrastructure for the 21st century, we should be doing democratic experiments on the platforms which people are already on. Enter Discord, the wildly popular social media platform originally designed for gamers, and potentially the next frontier for online assemblies.
Discord has capabilities that could streamline much of the citizens’ assembly process, such as creating polls, voice, video and text channels, and bots that can assist with automating tasks. Additionally, Discord has a stage channel in which only a certain group of people can talk to those on a server. This function could be particularly useful in the hosting of town halls or providing a moderated space for experts to speak in the citizens’ assembly process while still maintaining accessibility to a wider audience. Discord could, in theory, offer an opportunity to eliminate the “black box” feature of citizens’ assemblies, as Helene Landemore and others have written about, by enabling people who do not directly participate in an assembly to learn from the experts.
Those familiar with Discord’s emerging reputation as a “breeding ground” for extremism and misogyny may not recognize its potential for bringing people together for an exercise in civil, constructive discourse. A platform once built for gamers has evolved into a locus of political misinformation and propaganda, exacerbating already sky-high polarization. Yet this may be its greatest asset. According to Taiwan Digital Minister Audrey Tang, it’s worth meeting people—all people—where they are. With Discord’s appeal to the very users who are increasingly driving division, as well as its unique virtual community-building tools, there is potential for a thoughtfully designed citizens’ assembly to harness the platform toward bridging, rather than widening, existing divides.
Indeed, using Discord may have the added benefit of increasing youth engagement in civic life. A survey from CIRCLE, the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University, reveals that although few young people are currently involved in civic activities, many are interested in political engagement and would participate if given the opportunity. Around 70 percent of Discord users are between the ages of 16 to 34, and 20 percent of that group is 16-24 year olds. Hosting a citizens’ assemblies on a platform with a predominantly youth user base could assist in dissolving barriers of entry for youth who want to engage in civic organizing and highlights a fundamental component of civic organizing—again, meeting citizens where they actually are.
Of course, with any democratic innovation, careful consideration must be given to ensuring people not only are safe, but feel safe, and that their diverse views are heard. While certain tools and features of Discord make it an excellent platform for deliberation, organizers should consider the security of its servers and ensure high quality moderation when users engage with deliberative democracy on the platform. Bots could assist in the moderation of a server, but there remain serious questions around the role of moderation to ensure enhanced accessibility, equity, and prevent harm in these processes. But given the crisis in youth trust and constructive engagement in politics, new models must be tested.
There is no single solution for engaging disaffected young people in democracy. Instead, a multi-faceted approach that allows for experimentation, learning, and agile iteration can help introduce new ideas into the conversation. Combining citizens’ assemblies and Discord is just one example worthy of consideration and experimentation.
Related Examples and Readings, Curated by New America’s Political Reform Program:
The group RadicalxChange leveraged tools like Pol.is and plural voting in a citizens’ assembly focused on climate in Washington State. Digital tools generated a detailed snapshot of perspectives within the representative group, with all comments and evaluations fed into an automatically generated report showing different clusters of viewpoints and points of divergence or convergence. These tools both facilitate consensus building and highlight areas of division. And AI-tools like Panoramic have been created to make content coming out of citizens’ assemblies more accessible and share insights into the process with other citizens.
In Montrose, Colorado, a citizens’ assembly focused on childcare by the organizing body Unify leveraged gaming technology, interactive forums, and online sessions to engage residents. With the deliberation being almost entirely virtual, delegates were able to participate from their homes for only a couple hours a week. Unify suggested that future iterations should integrate all information into a single platform, something Discord has the capacity to implement.
The second citizens’ assembly in France, in which they deliberated on liberalizing the law on assisted suicide, launched Panoramic in partnership with make.org and the CESE. This unique platform utilizes generative AI to provide digestible summaries of the work conducted by the assembly to the larger public.
DemocracyNext and MIT’s Center for Constructive Communication (CCC) hosted a student assembly in which participants deliberated the use of generative AI in the classroom. In this format, participants engaged with tools such as Analogia, a storytelling card game designed by a graduate student at CCC, Cassie Lee. And small group conversations during the assembly were recorded using the Fora platform, operated by CCC's non-profit partner, Cortico, and summarized by AI, which were developed by graduate students Michael Wong and Shrestha Mohanty.
Dr. Hollie Russon Gilman is a senior fellow in New America's Political Reform program and a Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Ash Center. Her latest book, co-authored with Sabeel Rahman, Civic Power: Rebuilding American Democracy in an Era of Crisis, focuses on revitalizing civic power and civic voice.
Sarah Jacob is a program associate with New America's Political Reform program. Jacob's professional experience ranges from local civic engagement to emerging technology ethics. Prior to joining New America, Jacob worked at NDI for their Democracy and Technology team.
Maresa Strano is the deputy director of the Political Reform program at New America, where she works on electoral reform and state and local governance issues and contributes to program management. She has written for outlets such as Vox, Time, Washington Monthly, Democracy Journal, and NBC Think.
You can submit a pitch to Democracy Takes here.
Image: Some rights reserved by Gage Skidmore.
Thank you for this thoughtful piece. I fully endorse the central point that Discord has immense potential to contribute along these lines (despite also, as you note, having the potential to foment extremism).
In my own experimentation along these lines, I landed (for now) in a slightly different place, emphasizing large-scale deliberation that minimizes direct/unmediated contact between participants. This could also be accomplished through Discord + bots.
Smaller citizens' assemblies have the potential advantage of building trust among participants over time, and in "putting a face to" people with different views/worldviews. My version sacrifices those opportunities in exchange for (a) control over the risks of unmediated interaction, (b) opportunities to design for constructive engagement (framing, tone, anonymity, etc.), and (c) opportunities for statistical analysis, NLP, etc. that are only possible with large volumes of data.
Perhaps it is possible to design some sort of hybrid or nested approach (e.g., many smaller citizens' assemblies discussing the same issue) that achieves the best of both worlds.
In my view, both approaches face a common challenge: platforms are under pressure from some quarters to appear politically neutral, while also under pressure from various constituencies to prevent certain types of harm. This leads to an approach that can be passive or reactive in nature, but in my opinion, these conversations need proactive design to fully flourish. So while I agree that a Discord-like platform has extraordinary potential, I will be pleasantly surprised if Discord itself takes on the mantle of becoming a hub for these complex and contentious conversations.