2016 was a year of reflection. Many were caught off guard by the American Presidential Election and the EU referendum in the UK. The three years since have entrenched our allegiances with our own sides, but solving polarization will not be as easy as Boris Johnson indicated on the steps of 10 Downing Street the day after last week’s landslide with his call to ‘unite and level up.’ This much is apparent from last night’s impeachment vote in the House of Representatives - almost all Democrats voted to impeach Trump and all Republicans voted against.
For those of us already campaigning and working against polarization these developments have brought an injection of interest and passion in the subject. However, they have also given rise to a wearying pattern of people certain that they have ‘the answer,’ but who don’t know that what they propose has already been tried, and has already failed.
Our combined experience equates to over a decade’s work on how to reduce polarization in developed democracies. Alison Goldsworthy is a senior political campaigner and the Executive Director at the Conflict and Polarization Lab at Stanford University. Alice Thwaite is the founder of the Echo Chamber Club and was a graduate student at the Oxford Internet Institute. She also worked at a start-up which developed a ‘Software as a Service’ solution to combat echo chambers. So we’re a natural sounding board for some of the brightest (and well funded) brains who are looking to make an impact in this space.
