Bridging the US Political Divide Online: What we learned from using big data, bots and volunteers to challenge polarization

Current political events in the USA reveal social cohesion is fragmented and increasingly polarized. This limits the opportunity and desire for people to engage across political lines. Well-established models of conflict escalation signal that these constitute warning flags for future violent confrontations.

Social media is both a vehicle for perpetuating political polarization and also, for challenging it. Over the last six months, Build Up ran a pilot to address polarization on social media. The Commons identifies polarising filter bubbles on Facebook and Twitter, then uses social media bots to engage with relevant people, and finally organises a network of trained volunteers to move identified users towards constructive engagement with each other and with the phenomenon of polarisation.

At this event, we will share the results of a pilot project that explored social media interventions to address polarization. We will also have a conversation about political polarization and its embodiment online. This project is explicitly non-partisan -- as is this event.

Monday, March 5
5:00 - 7:00p
Location: 9-255

Hosted by MIT Radius and Build Up.
https://radius.mit.edu / http://howtobuildup.org