This text has been adapted from remarks prepared by Ben Mason for his July 25 presentation at Civic Hall. The arrival of over one million refugees in Germany in 2015-16 sparked an intense wave of civic engagement in the country. Scores of innovative digital projects were created to coordinate this...
For the past five years, the little co-op I co-founded has been working on a tool called Loomio. Workplaces, government departments, co-ops, and political parties around the world use Loomio to involve members and citizens in bottom-up decision-making. We focus on small groups, usually less than 500 people. At that...
In early 2016, Operation Libero, an anti-populist movement co-founded by history student Flavia Kleiner, 26, successfully defeated an anti-immigrant Swiss ballot initiative. The “enforcement” initiative, sponsored by the nationalist Swiss People’s Party (SVP), would have ordered the deportation of immigrants in Switzerland for any criminal offense, no matter how minor....
By collecting real-time pollution data, an environmental group discovered Taiwan's largest petrochemical plant exceeded the emissions quota for pollution over 25,000 times. The plant didn't pay a cent for it.
Safety Check—the crisis response tool that allows users to check in as 'safe' on Facebook—has some of its critics still wanting more.
With more people on the move today than ever in our recorded history, the global refugee crisis is posing one of the greatest humanitarian challenges of our time. According to the UNHCR, there are currently an estimated 65.3 million displaced persons around the world—this represents 1 in 113 people in...
The way we watch and interact with political debates is shifting, from the U.S. to the Philippines; plus: how many millions can a presidential debate be worth?
In a historic first, the candidates running to be the next secretary general of the United Nations debated publicly at an event co-hosted by New America and the Guardian at Civic Hall yesterday. The current secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, will step down at the end of the year, and in...
What do some U.S. and European debates have in common? Moderators are letting go of the mic. Plus, a call from “President-elect Donald Trump” during the leaders' debate in Scotland.
The latest from the Philippines, Scotland and Guyana, plus Lincoln-Douglas zingers, behind-the-scenes stories from U.S. debates, and the rising role of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.