Measuring The Health of Our Public Conversations — Cortico

This experience led us to the idea that perhaps we could measure aspects of the health of the public sphere—in terms of communication exchanges between groups or tribes—grounded in data from public social media and other public media sources. As a starting point, we are developing a set of health indicators for the U.S. (with the potential to expand to other nations) aligned with four principles 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?