It’s Your America: Orange County 2022 Report
Overview
On Saturday, April 30, 2022, citizens from Orange County, California teamed up for an experiment in better government. They were participants in It’s Your America, a deliberative democracy initiative that brings together people from across the political spectrum to learn about, discuss, and tackle critical national issues together. This event was part of an ongoing series of citizen policy deliberations on digital disinformation and free speech that Civic Genius is hosting in communities across the country.
Participants came from a wide variety of backgrounds, with significant diversity of ideology, race, income, and national origin. Civic Genius deployed a community organizing model to educate people about the event and invite them to participate. Our team worked with dozens of community leaders and national partners to spread the word about this initiative.
For the first time, Civic Genius partnered with award-winning producer Riaz Patel to augment It’s Your America with ConnectEffect, a unique experience in interpersonal connection. Before moving into their issue deliberations, participants began the day with a multimedia exploration of media, division, and identity, emphasizing the ways in which our digital lives influence our relationship to the rest of the world.
Special thanks to NAACP of Orange County, Country First, Orange County Young Republicans, In This Together, Braver Angels, and LULAC, which promoted the event to their communities.
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To scale the impact of citizen deliberation, Civic Genius is working with several key organizational partners.
One innovative partnership brings together citizens, experts, leaders, faith-based voices, and policymakers to develop policy recommendations that incorporate an exciting range of knowledge, perspectives, and values. The effort is led jointly by Civic Genius, Convergence Center for Policy Resolution, More in Common, and Interfaith America, four nonpartisan, nonprofit organizations that work to move past political polarization. Leveraging each organization’s unique expertise in bringing diverse stakeholders to the table, Civic Genius, Convergence, and Interfaith America are leading participants in deliberative processes designed to identify and build common ground on this complex issue, and then mobilize them to take action. Civic Genius is engaging diverse grassroots audiences in select communities across the country; Convergence is convening experts and stakeholders at the national level; and Interfaith America is bringing to both the perspective of interfaith voices. While each of these deliberations would be potent on its own, the partnership is creating a unique opportunity for grassroots and grasstops organizations to share perspectives, knowledge, learnings – and creating a powerful feedback loop that furthers understanding on all sides.
A second critical partnership is with YOUnify, a nonprofit organization working to reduce polarization and cultural divisions of all kinds, in service of accelerating progress on solutions to the key challenges of our time. Following a local policy deliberation, YOUnify brings its expertise in training and mobilization to equip community members for long-term engagement, both on the deliberation topic and in other areas.
It was encouraging to see so many people with differing viewpoints and political leanings have an enjoyable civic discussion.
Citizen Deliberations
Participants spent four hours in small groups of 6-7 people, going through a process designed to help them create solutions on the topic of digital disinformation and free speech. Over the course of the day, the groups:
- Made commitments to work together in good faith.
- Got to know each other by discussing nuances in their own ideological views and experiences.
- Discovered shared values.
- Learned about the issue and the tensions of managing digital disinformation while protecting free speech.
- Brainstormed solutions and discussed the pros and cons of each.
- Crafted and pressure-tested common ground solutions.
- Found consensus on solutions.
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Working in their small groups, participants began by listing values that would guide their deliberations for the day. The room’s top values were:
- Respect (19 nominations)
- Transparency (13 nominations)
- Diversity of Perspective (12 nominations)
- Individual Responsibility (9 nominations)
- Honesty & Integrity (8 nominations)
- Critical Thinking (8 nominations)
Others included:
- Freedom (4 nominations)
- Community Responsibility (3 nominations)
- Family (1 nomination)
- Fun (1 nomination)
- Hope (1 nomination)
- Parental Rights (1 nomination)
- Specialization (1 nomination)
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As participants learned more about the topic and the various angles from which they could approach solutions, they brainstormed thoughts and ideas that built on their top values. Brainstorming largely centered on a few areas:
Responsibility & Accountability – Tech Companies
- “Tech companies should remove hateful content by having and enforcing policies”
- “Tech platforms should remove [user] anonymity”
- “Redesign algorithms”
- “Tech companies should amplify true information about voting, science, and vital matters”
- “Forbid publication of demonstrably false information”
- “Review social media algorithms and publish results on ethics, balance, fairness”
- “Tech companies become bot-free through verification”
- “Create star system for trusted posters, determined by stiff competition with diverse judging committee”
- “Trust scores for sources”
- “Set guidelines of acceptability [of content] and violation through subject experts”
- “Attach misinformation labels, linking viewers to accurate sites”
- “Limit number of posts per user per day”
- “Delay time for shares to reduce virality”
- “Slow down information spread”
- “Stopping anger amplification”
- “Algorithms should not amplify things that aren’t verifiable”
- “Open platforms to moderate hate speech”
Responsibility & Accountability – Individuals
- “Individuals should look to break social bubbles”
- “Share fact checks”
- “Encouraging sharing information to make more informed decisions”
- “Amplify community-based ads”
- “Citizen review committee with subpoena power”
- “Citizen juries for social platforms could lead to distrust in that committee because of bias”
- “Track the money”
Transparency & Consumer Choice
- “Tech companies should explain their algorithms”
- “Transparency for algorithm”
- “Open the black box (algorithm transparency)”
- “Transparency in algorithms”
- “Public algorithms”
- “Ability to opt out of algorithms”
- “Create options in the algorithms to promote or demote content”
- “Platforms should offer the opportunity to customize your algorithm”
- “Individual action to pick platforms”
- “Take choice to platforms that reflect an individual’s values”
- “Public can opt out in [sic] mass”
Education & Media Literacy
- “Local government should implement curriculums that have data driven anti-polarization structures”
- “Schools should implement SIFT into curriculum”
- “Media literacy through schools”
- “Create podcasts/content around misinformation”
- “Educational institutions create required courses on how to analyze digital media for accuracy”
- “Create content around news sources to educate communities”
User Privacy
- “Allow consumers to opt out of all info sharing as a default option”
- “Require parent consent for minor accounts”
- “Limit data sharing”
- “Regulate data collection”
Local Journalism & Institutions
- “Cause: Death of local/state journalism”
- “Support local journalism”
- “Funding local journalism”
- “Encouraging systems that provide true information”
Prioritizing or Deprioritizing Free Speech
- “No politics/no religion online”
- “Enforce First Amendment limitation of unprotected speech”
- “Censor content and words”
Federal Government Intervention
- “Feds should pass a bill to hold social media companies accountable when they do not stop personal harassment”
- “Government should not interfere, already over-regulates”
- “Explore more vigorous anti-monopoly policies”
- “Break up monopolies”
- “Create standards for which sources news and which are entertainment”
- “Create privacy laws to reduce data selling”
- “Federal mandate to limit data sharing”
- “Create a content standards board”
- “Create a watchdog group on a rotation”
- “Reform Section 230”
- “Reinforce Civil Rights Acts”
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Finally, with advice and guidance from the Civic Genius team, participants refined their ideas and crafted them into actionable solutions. Here are solutions around which groups built consensus, and who they thought should implement that solution (note that in our one-day setting, we did not have time to work toward full room consensus)
Recommendations for Tech/Social Media Companies
- Tech companies should inform consumers about the algorithms they use and the user data they store. Tech companies must present the consumer with multiple algorithms to choose from and allow users to decide what the data the company is allowed to store.
- Social media companies should link primary sources to content and employ fact-checkers to confirm or debunk content.
- Social media companies should create an independent body of experts and users that fact check posts and make transparent original sources. Members should rotate to bring in new perspectives.
- Social media companies should establish neutrality and transparency for their algorithms. If one company open sources their code, allowing real transparency, it would create a chain reaction.
Recommendations for Government
- The federal government should require that platforms provide an opt-out option for users to prevent tech companies from automatically capturing and monetizing user data.
- State and local governments should increase and improve civic education, including for adults, with an emphasis on media literacy.
- The federal government should provide funding for consumer rights and media watchdog groups, enabling them to become more prominent and reliable.
- The federal government should pass anti-monopoly legislation to increase consumer choice.
Recommendations for Individuals
- Moms should organize to ask every brand to commit to shifting away from ad algorithms that harness fear and hate to those that promote hope, inspiration, and love. They should recruit institutional investors to reinforce the changes and work to create financial incentives that drive hope, not hate.
- American mothers should establish their influence over internet media companies by insisting on positive and inspiring websites, thereby creating a bottom-up consumer-driven movement. Actions should include a boycott of media sites that allow hate speech and a drive for new algorithms that prioritize factual and educational content.
Recommendations for Institutions
- Universities should create a hub for media literacy and critical thinking courses, including free courses. Federal government should offer tax credits to students of any age to participate.
- K-12 schools should use Agents of Influence, a spy-themed media literacy video game that teaches students to assess the accuracy of information they’re consuming and recognize its influence on their worldview and decision-making.
This event made me more more comfortable talking about politics and sensitive topics.
Citizen Deliberation in Color
Next Steps
Deliberating and crafting smart, nuanced, common ground policy is only the first step; next, It’s Your America participants in Orange County are organizing to take action. YOUnify and Civic Genius began hosting online meetings shortly after the event, where participants learned about effective local organizing and identified skills and resources they need, such as an advocacy training or an op-ed writing workshop.
Before leaving the event, participants wrote postcards to their future selves, to be delivered a few weeks later. Here are some examples:
