A UNITED STATE: Moderation. Diversity. Reciprocity. Equality. Designing mobile technology to support productive online political discourse.

Abstract

I have endeavored upon this thesis work in an attempt to find design solutions to the pressing societal problems of ever-increasing political polarization coupled with widespread dissatisfaction with social media’s effect on our political discourse. As an outcome of my efforts, I have designed an interactive prototype proof of concept for a mobile application whose goal is to increase productivity in online political discourse by moderating human behavior to guarantee equal speaking time for all participants, matching real and diverse members together based on differences of belief rather than similarities. The application would use the mobile device camera and microphone to facilitate face-to-face, eye-to-eye conversations between people in the United States while protecting member identification and privacy, safeguarding against abuse.