Lisa Schirch is Professor of the Practice of Peacebuilding and Technology at the University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs. With 30 years in peace-building research, policy advocacy, practice and teaching, her current research focuses on positive roles for technology in ‘peacetech’ and ‘digital peacebuilding’.
In a recent article I wrote that the road to hell is not paved in gold, it is paved with code. Code is not neutral. The design of platforms determines their impact on society. It is shaping our human behaviour, showing us some content and not others, and making decisions that steer humanity in one direction or the other.
In my research, there are three narratives of what to do about harmful content online. The first, the user-centred narrative, is voiced by tech platforms who say that their platforms are neutral mirrors, simply reflecting user-generated content and developing algorithms based on your search history. The companies say they can’t generate pro social content.
The second narrative calls for the regulation of tech design. People who used to work in Facebook, Meta and Google are part of a new generation of people arguing that the design of digital spaces needs to be regulated to remove the focus on the few people who are fighting and promoting hate online.
The third narrative is Social Cohesion by Design where technology platforms are designed to really serve humanity and be pro-social. Such platforms already exist, and we can amplify public support for them. The Council on Technology and Social Cohesion which I helped set up is bringing together people from tech companies, peace-building professions, conflict resolution, mediation, government, and business to explore how support for pro-social technology can be incentivized.
Today, there are many technology platforms being designed for deliberation aimed at decreasing polarization and producing social cohesion. One such platform is Remesh which has been used by the United Nations to help publics in Yemen, Tunisia, and Libya talk with each other and deliberate the policy options in their country: what is possible and how they might move into the future? Remesh uses artificial intelligence to make what thousands of people are saying digestible so that large groups can be listened to at scale. This gives individuals a sense of agency that they can participate in the decisions that affect their lives, and it also helps policy makers decide which policies are sustainable and have public support.
Another platform, Polis, is used by governments to bring together polarized groups of people and use AI algorithms to find the common ground. Polis helps people see not only what everybody is saying, but where everybody agrees. Finding out where there is agreement is the key to peace building and successful peace processes.
Video at: https://bit.ly/3v2UB3q
