T-39: Thesis, Restated

With my thesis, I want to fight political apathy. Framing political apathy as learned helplessness, my thesis seeks to amplify the influence of politically-aware citizens by informing and empowering them. I want to demonstrate that change is possible, and necessary.

How might we do this? I believe we need to build a network that aggregates the attention, opinions and ideas of citizens across the internet. Further, we need to make the scale of the people’s will vividly visible to their representatives in congress, and to each other as citizens.

This is a big undertaking, but I think I’ve found a way to start small. The first prototype I want to build is an embeddable widget that serves two purposes:

  1. to visualize a salient aspect of a particular bill (i.e. inform)
  2. to present citizens with a way to immediately respond by voting “support”, “oppose” or “don’t care” (i.e. empower)

That’s not a lot of information or empowerment, and that is intentional. The format of an embeddable widget optimizes for reach and immediacy. It can reach more people by being embedded in multiple websites, and it can be where citizens are already getting their content. When a citizen comes across content about a particular bill, the embedded widget gives them:

  • a way to respond immediately
  • a quick route to more context and related content

A low barrier to entry helps citizens take the first step down the path of political activity. The embedded widget, in combination with a website, a database and access to the user’s social graph, offers more complex possibilities. For example:

  • The embedded widget offers analytics to the content author about the opinions of their audience
  • The aggregated analytics is a publicly visible barometer of public opinion on a bill
  • The widget becomes a portal where additional levels of engagement can be embedded, e.g. sharing with friends, or writing congress
  • The widget leads citizens to a website that show a more comprehensive overview of a bill
  • With data about a citizen’s issue preferences, activists can identify and engage supporters

To move the thesis forward, I need to build and test prototypes of the widget. I also need to run experiments to find strategies for getting the widget out on the web.

Got ideas? Want to help? Get in touch. I’m @tonyhschu.