How to Scale Up a Community on Line

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The problem is, of course, the scale of all the conversations happening on line. And so you like, well, that it's not a scaleable solution. But i'm remembering something that the huffpo did a long time ago. It was a way of taking the norms of a small group of people and sort of very quickly and transparently scaling it to a much bigger community. I think key finding from our research as consistently been, people respond well when they see people like them elevated into both messengers and people of authority. The we do know a lot about how to moderate conflict scenarios based upon wer work in any numbc, columbia and other kinds of settings

What do you think the other side thinks? Guest Dan Vallone is the Director of More in Common U.S.A., an organization that’s been asking Democrats and Republicans that critical question. Their work has uncovered countless “perception gaps” in our understanding of each other. For example, Democrats think that about 30 percent of Republicans support "reasonable gun control," but in reality, it’s about 70 percent. Both Republicans and Democrats think that about 50 percent of the other side would feel that physical violence is justified in some situations, but the actual number for each is only about five percent. “Both sides are convinced that the majority of their political opponents are extremists,” says Dan. “And yet, that's just not true.” Social media encourages the most extreme views to speak the loudest and rise to the top—and it’s hard to start a conversation and work together when we’re all arguing with mirages. But Dan’s insights and the work of More in Common provide a hopeful guide to unraveling the distortions we’ve come to accept and correcting our foggy vision.