Fighting polarisation at scale
Building tools to facilitate difficult conversations for the future
In March I went to the mountains again. This time disillusioned with the state of politics in Norway. We too had seemingly gone off track — diving into the rabid rabit-hole of anti-migrant rethorics, individualist populism and outright propaganda. There was no space for dialogue anymore.
In the mountains I spent a lot of time thinking — and writing. Based on my previous work against violent extremism and my work with media I laid plans for the future, for how to deal with some of the larger societal shifts we have seen over the last few years, the breakdown of the political discourse around the world.
A lot has happened in the last decades. Our communities no longer feel the same. The offline-world is increasingly moving online. Too many have read too much into Samuel Huntington. We’ve had US presidents declaring that you’re either with us or against us, declaring wars fuelled by fear. We’re being fed ever more information and misinformation. Amidst the noise it’s becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction.
Our communities are torn apart at the seams. My reality becomes irreconcilable with yours. There is no middle ground–we have become polarised.
So how do we push back against this seemingly unavoidable polarisation?
Thankfully there are solutions. For the last seven years I have been working in the intersection of policy, technology, design and media to try to tackle this issue — to establish spaces for having a dialogue between people of radically different worldviews about the direction our world is taking. My end-game for this has largely been to prevent people from radicalizing and retreating into the trenches of violent extremists — but we could all benefit from our communities at large becoming a little bit less entrenched.
There’s many paths towards this goal, from working with schools, youth and communities across the world to lobbying politicians, influencers and lawmakers to pushing entrepreneurs and investor cummunities to work with a more globalised perspective, with more long-term visions for the world in mind.
My approach over the years has largely been rooted in a conceptual understanding of Story as a fundamental factor in how we, as individuals and communities act and interact. This naturally stems from my background in film and theatre, and is something I’ve brought with me into my work in traditional and social media, policy and peace-work.
Stories are the software that runs humanity.We are defined by the stories we believe to be true about ourselves, and about others. Stories, what we believe to be true, shapes or communities, the way in which we see the world, and thus the way we act and interact. This gives stories an immense power; we can shape our world through the stories we tell each other about it
In our new, global consciousness — in the interconnected community the world is becoming stories has become more important than ever. We all have platforms to share our worldview now, and we’re all constantly bombarded by stories told by others. Sometimes by people with malicious intent. People who do not have the best of humanity in mind — as proven evident among others in the various reports of interferrence in elections and refferendums and the manifacturing and distribution of stories in attempts to get a populus to vote a certain way.
In this world of constant noise, we often fail to see each other — especially those we radically disagree with — this leads to polarisation, and it leads some into radicalisation. But often the simple experience of being heard — of having your worldview seen — is the most important factor in deradicalisation.
I’ve been focusing a lot of my efforts and work for the past seven years on putting an end to violent extremism. If you look at the numbers however violent extremism, despite the impression you might get from politicians and the media, is a fairly small issue in western Europe.
Take, for example, the series of terrorist attacks in France in 2015 and 2016. A total of 245 people were killed. That is 245 too many, but to put things in perspective, with 66 million people in France, this put the risk of getting killed in an attack at 0.0002%. Even during this period it was 27 times more likely that you’d die in a car accident than in a terrorist attack…
Yet when attacks do happen, it hits us where it hurts, and we react emotionally. We let our fear drive policy, increasing government surveillance and military presence. We close our borders. It decreases our trust in our fellow citizens, in our neighbours. It starts wars… and it makes some of us fearful — hateful and violent…
This is an illustration of how stories shape perceptions, which leads to action and in turn shape our reality. And so the measures we take against extremism makes acts of extremism a self-fulfilling prophecy…
This is further complicated in the post truth/alt-fact reality we live in. Conspiracy theorists, governments, main-stream-media and alternaltive media all claim ownership of some sort of objective truth — in their eagerness to monopolise fact they turn their backs on complexity, diversity, and ultimately democracy, and in the outmost consequence sensor those they disagree with. The fake-news narrative thus becomes one of the greatest threats to freedom of expression, and to democracy at large.
This is obviously a problem we somehow need to solve. Complex problems, however, require complex solutions.
The opposite of a climate that cultivates violent extremism is a healthy community — one in which I’m so comfortable with who I am that I don’t see diversity as a threat, I rather see it as a strength. This gives us the ability to appreciate the world in more complex ways, to grow, to learn, and to evolve.
My overarching goal is to create healthier, happier, thriving and productive communities. In a healthy community, we celebrate pluralism, we don’t fear it.
My goal is in many ways to scale the work I started in 2011 — to fight back against the nature of echo chambers, fake news and propaganda — to build a world in which people don’t become hate-fuelled violent extremists. A world where there’s room for doubt and plurality. A world in which people appreciate complexity in new ways, so we can build further — reach further and instead of fearing each other, learn from each other and grow.
I’ve been doing this by working in schools, community centers, with policy makers, with politicians and leaders from across the world. The question however remains:
How do we do this at scale?
The simple answer is; by harnessing the power of conversation, media and communities to create tools to allow us to hear each other above the noise and foster deeper, more meaningful dialogue between people with radically different worldviews, instead of retreating into echo chambers where it’s easy to see anybody who disagrees with us as simply the “other”.
My team and I are therefore focusing our attention on building a philosophy and a suite of tools, to fight back against the narrowing down of our consciousness and celebrate the fact that our worldviews will be constantly challenged in this new era of global consciousness. We are fighting to expand our horizons, to make us embrace knowledge, diverse and complex viewpoints — to deepen our understanding of different cultures and societies — so we can evolve.
To do this, we’re building tools using the latest in artificial intelligence, natural language processing, machine learning, data visualisation and database technology to map out and illustrate the complex nature of news in a multi-dimensional graph. Users will thus be able to access an easy-to-navigate overview of current events and the discussion surrounding them via a comprehensive graph that visually maps out every opinion piece, piece of journalism and how they interconnect. On our platform we map not only how stories are interlinked, we also map the links between journalists and news-outlets, sources, background information used and a range of other factors -creating a comprehensive visualisation of a news-story. To as great an extent as possible we wil further work to make information verifiable and tracable back to original sources using tools building on blockchain technology.
By doing this, we’re not dictating truth — as so many in the post-fact/fake-news reality seem so eager to do. — Instead, we’re giving people access to information, and through our tools increasing their ability to form an informed and nuanced point of view from which to discuss the shape this world is taking.
Discourse is at the core of what we’re working on — not only mapping it out, but also enabling it, both through information, and through tools that reward responsible behavior. For example, throughout our platform comments from those who cite good sources, or who show they have read the story, will be more visible than comments from obvious trolls.
Complexity can be daunting, so it’s key that we build tools that are easy to access and use. One such tool, building on our data, is a browser plugin that pops up when you read a news-story.
Say you’re reading a story on Breitbart. The plugin then pops up, automatically, drawing your attention to the fact that New York Times also is covering this topic — and they might have a different take on it. We are hoping to release this to the public by the end of the year.
This work builds on a rich data-set allowing us not only to see and illustrate diversity in thinking by helping us better interpret what’s happening in the world, it also allows us to measure the impact we’re making. We can actually see if we are increasing dialogue and complex thinking — and ultemately our success in decreasing tensions, hate speech and hostility.
Seven years will on the 22nd of July 2018 have passed since a terrorist aimed his gun at my head and fired — he did what he did because he was afraid. Afraid that he, and those he saw as his people were at the verge of externalisation. Afraid of people who were different from him, who thought differently than him, who believed in a different world than him.
By building tools that makes people see and realise each others worldviews we hope to breed understanding and healthy spaces for disagreement. By showing that diversity, disagreement and pluralism is a strenght, an opportunity to appreciate the world in more complex ways, to grow, to learn, and to evolve we hope to combat the dystopic vision and fear of difference held by extremists and many others in our ever more globalised world.
This is the culmination of years of work in the intersection between policy, media, design, philosophy and technology.
This July, this anniversary, I’m spending revigorating my efforts to lead the path towards a world without extremism. I just got off stage at L’Eccape Volee in Paris where I launched this renewed effort — over the days, weeks and months to come more will be revealed. The research, work and ideas behind our philosophy and suite of tools has been coming for a long, long time. This is the culmination of years of work in the intersection between policy, media, design, philosophy and technology. We hope to realise much of this by the end of the year. Much hard work lies ahead of us, and support and friends of the project will always be appreciated.
For further questions, partnerships, collaboration, information, knowledge or investment opportunities please do not hesitate to get in touch.
In the meantime I’ll go to the after-party at l’ecappee volee and enjoy some good conversations about the wide variety of ways in which people are working to make a positive impact on this world, and perhaps a glass of wine.
