CITIPOL is a mobile and web platform that allows users to see how people in their community feel about important social and political issues. It aggregates data to show the overall distribution of views on issues and outcomes, removing filter bubbles. Anyone can submit proposals on issues and people can vote on them. This creates a continuous national conversation where the public decides what issues are important. The platform aims to be like a digital public writing reflecting public sentiment that updates in real-time as votes change. It envisions creating a reverse panopticon where the public can hold governments and organizations accountable. Researchers could also use the big data generated to better understand public opinion and improve policymaking and people's lives.

1. the
writing is
on the
wall
read: imminent
danger becometh
apparent

2. CITIPOL
mobile+web
platform allowing users to have
a bird's eye view of how people
in their community feel about
important sociopolitical issues.
it projects a reflection of the
entire distribution of people's
dispositions towards actionable
outcomes regarding policy and
socio-civic issues, demolishing
"filter bubbles" that conjure a
fragmented space around an
individual's internet ecosystem.

3. CITIPOL
mobile+web
an ever present, continuous
process kind of National
Conversation with social
scientific leverages integrated
into its fabric. There is no
appointed authority presiding
over the texture of the
conversation or dictating what
matters are pertinent - the
people decide what matters are
on the agenda.

4. How it works
• Trending issues are upvoted “reddit” style,
bypassing agenda framing by media; the people
decide which matters are important
• Anyone can submit manifestos that establish
evidence and reasoning towards an actionable
outcome, tagged accordingly to the issue
• People click and vote on said manifestos
• Everyone can see LIVE what the current
distribution of votes are for respective issues

5. Imagine everyone in the country is a congressman in
a senate of millions of voting parliamentarians. Not
voting for political parties, but voting for actionable
responses to important issues affecting them.

6. You get a sense of a
digital "writing on the
wall" anonymously
curated by thousands
of people, which data
science and
communication
research tells us is an
uncanny proxy to
actual sentiment.

7. CITIPOL will be an adaptive platform that
continually informs and allows citizens to
make changes to their votes endlessly. This is
huge: think about all the social problems we
can come together to solve as we realize the
"writing is already on the wall".
Imagine everyone in the country is a congressman in
a senate of millions of voting parliamentarians. Not
voting for political parties, but voting for actionable
responses to important issues affecting them.

8. The Reverse Panopticon
The Panopticon is a type of
institutional building designed by
English philosopher and social
theorist Jeremy Bentham in the late
18th century. The concept of the
design is to allow a watchman to
observe (-opticon) all (pan-)
inmates of an institution without
them being able to tell whether or
not they are being watched..
Traditionally, it is a few-watching-many design, a la Big
Brother is watching you. But many-watching-few is a more
natural form of Panoptic design.

9. The Reverse Panopticon
PUBLICsphere
Elected Politicians
Governments
Public Organizations
Public Agencies
Charities
Press and Media
Traditionally, it is a few-watching-many design, a la Big
Brother is watching you. But many-watching-few is a more
natural form of Panoptic design.

10. CITIPOL: what it means for
citizens
• Fulfils people's social affordance in the domain of civil
and political participation in the same way Facebook did
for people in the domain of keeping their lives connected
• Writing on the wall: reflection of the entire distribution of
people's dispositions towards actionable outcomes
regarding policy within a society. This "wall of truth"
bypasses all forms of disparate and fragmented framing
of news by "filter bubbles" or agenda setting by
authoritarian-controlled press systems
• The true fifth estate: 'networked individuals' enabled by
the Internet in ways that can hold the other estates
accountable (William Dutton)
• Crowdfunding features that fund onetime campaigns, as
well as streamline and automate recurring movements

11. CITIPOL: what it means for
citizens
• Tremendous academic value and policy-
shaping potential, providing an important
big-data driven instrument for scientists to
leverage upon, which in turns better people’s
lives
• Realizing a form of research-infused, citizen-
involved system of deliberative policy
formation supported by distributed
intelligence

12. Issue: 6.9 mil
population
You can only vote for 1 position for
each issue
Campaign:
advocate 5.5
mil
Campaign:
advocate 6
mil
Campaign:
advocate 6.9
mil

13. CITIPOL’s Data
Relationships

14. • Demographics
• Dispositional psychographics
• Campaign positions
• Periodic surveys
• Social scientific constructs that can be
intercorrelated to test new theoretical models
• Sentiment analyses of user comments
• Harvesting repository of social
scientifically relevant data
• Anytime, any place way to pretest your
hypotheses before conducting your own
sampling + surveys (“testing the water”)
• Pivotable for business intelligence
• Trend predictions

15. STATIC
CORE
Repurposable
Extrapolate Trends
Malleable data
breadth

16. Researchers
CITIPOL
information
cloud
Citizens
• Platform to demand
accountability
• Social affordance for
sociopolitical
participation
Businesses
D
A
T
A
$
D
A
T
A
$
D
A
T
A
Campaigners
Public exposure
for actionable
response and
crowdfunds

17. We are not selling traditional behavioral data (e.g. web
habits, clicks)
but an entire wealth of data points that are social
scientifically relevant and salient to policy issues.
We want to scrutinize the deeper (socio)psychological
constructs and combine them at the “hive” level.
Thereafter one can even work the data to create new
knowledge (e.g. comparative studies between
countries) and derive insights regarding collective
behavior.