Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey described the company’s health initiative in his testimony to Congress earlier this month. The project was understandably overshadowed by security and safety issues in the coverage of testimony by Dorsey and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.
But it’s worth taking a closer look at the health initiative because it is nothing less than an attempt to affect something very consequential and not easily changed—large group psychology and behavior.
People in large groups tend to display regressive behavior and simplistic, superficial, stereotyped thinking. Aggression is let loose and ranks are closed to keep out the imagined threat posed by “outsiders,” leading to the further narrowing of thinking. These are the psychological forces that a Twitter community health initiative is fighting.
Dorsey defined his vision of Twitter’s mission at the beginning of his remarks to Congress: “Twitter’s purpose is to serve the public conversation. We are an American company that serves our global audience by focusing on the people who use our service, and we put them first in every step we take. Twitter is used as a global town square, where people from around the world come together in an open and free exchange of ideas. We must be a trusted and healthy place that supports free and open discussion.”
Twitter announced its health initiative on March 1 and Dorsey’s personal tweet about it is still pinned to the top of his Twitter feed, some indication of the importance he gives to the mission. Dorsey tweeted, “We’re committing Twitter to help increase the collective health, openness, and civility of public conversation, and to hold ourselves publicly accountable towards progress.”
We’re committing Twitter to help increase the collective health, openness, and civility of public conversation, and to hold ourselves publicly accountable towards progress.
— jack (@jack) March 1, 2018
Twitter identified its first task as developing a way to measure the health of a public conversation, and after a public search for proposals, began partnering with Cortico, a non-profit that describes its methodology as an “AI-fueled media analytics technology”.
Dorsey, in his Congressional testimony, and Cortico, in their blog post on the project, list four attributes of “a healthy public sphere”
- Shared Attention: Is there overlap in what we are talking about?
- Shared Reality: Are we using the same facts?
- Variety: Are we exposed to different opinions grounded in shared reality?
- Receptivity: Are we open, civil, and listening to different opinions?
Having the opportunity for far-ranging public conversation in the virtual public square and developing the ability to measure the health of those conversations both seem like very good, pro-social ideas.
But they raise more questions.
Once we can measure the health of the conversation in the public sphere (let’s say within the confines of Twitter, as one good example) what can we do to improve it? Measurement alone obviously won’t automatically lead to a healthier environment, though in many areas of behavioral science (like dieting for example) ongoing exposure to behavioral records and measures does lead to behavioral improvement. To put it simply, if you do nothing but write down all the calories you put in your mouth, you are likely to lose a little weight. The informational feedback leads to some inhibition of unhealthy behavior.
What else can be done to achieve a healthier conversation? Social scientists have looked at ways to encourage pro-social behavior. There doesn’t seem to be a consensus on whether public shaming is effective as a deterrent in law enforcement or social policy. It has become popular among some quarters on social media, with the phenomena of “doxing” and outing emerging. Humiliation and shame are at best weak and at worst destructive strategies for improving behavior, whether in parenting or policing social media.
However, repetition and enforcement of social standards can work. It’s notable that conversations on LinkedIn seem far less likely to devolve into a shouting match than on other platforms. Some years ago, A psychoanalyst named Wilford Bion wrote about the psychology of groups, pointing out how they function at their best as “work groups”—a collection of people who come together with a common aim. But Bion described how effective work groups deteriorate rapidly into dysfunctional groups that can’t achieve a common purpose because they are busy fighting, or imagining someone will miraculously save them, or otherwise distorting reality. Perhaps this theory helps explain the difference in tone between LinkedIn versus Twitter or Facebook. Participants in LinkedIn discussions are focused on real-life goals. Finding a job or an employee, networking, building a business. Emotional forces are reined in by the shared focus on a purpose.
Could we create and promote a shared pro-social purpose on other platforms that would decrease the tendency for the group discussion to descend into uninhibited, reality-escaping, aggressive and sadistic “conversations”? People use Twitter and Facebook as an outlet for expressing feelings of rage, humiliation and frustration. In our culture, and on social media, the expression of feelings has been overhyped and overvalued. It is definitely a good idea to be acquainted with your feelings and know how they affect your decision making and your interactions with others. It is only a good idea to tell something else about them—or tell the Twitter universe—if there is something positive to be gained. The immediate gain is often temporarily feeling better because you find a group of people who feel the same way you do. But too often this creates a mob mentality and a destructive environment that does no one any good.
