Hearing the humanity in others through trustworthy communication channels is necessary for democracies, communities, and institutions to function.
Informed by years of social media and media analytics, CCC’s work combines the ancient wisdoms of human conversation with emerging digital technologies to promote shared understanding and trust rather than reinforcing the “side-taking” and binary thinking that too often divides us. Based at the MIT Media Lab and working closely with the non-profit Cortico, CCC brings together researchers in AI, computational social science, digital interactive design, and learning technologies with software engineers, journalists, political scientists, designers, and community organizations.
What’s New
CCC and FRONTLINE launched a listening experiment to build a social dialogue network with youth
Over 40 young people participated in a social listening experiment exploring how personal experiences build bridges to better understanding current events and creating more impactful journalism for the next generation.
In collaboration with FRONTLINE, the PBS documentary series produced at GBH in Boston, the MIT Center for Constructive Communication (CCC) has been exploring how small group facilitated conversations with youth (16-24) can lead to informative documentary journalism that the next generation of news consumers actively seeks out. We were curious to know: How do short-form documentary videos
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CCC launched realtalk@MIT for incoming students to connect, learn, and share their experiences
In August, CCC trained over 70 students to effectively facilitate small-group conversations, also recording and highlighting many of these conversations on the newly deve…
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CCC gathered local community-based organizations to explore: How might we transform Boston into Listening City?
The MIT Center for Constructive Communication, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is growing a network of local key stakeholders that will invite membe…
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Translational research
Second annual CCC in-person event: Trust and Human Connection in the Age of Social Networks and AI
On May 7, 2024 more than 150 attendees, including many from CCC’s closely affiliated non-profit, Cortico, spent a full day at MIT engaging in conversation and explorati…
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Deb Roy’s Atlantic article proposes healthy social networks
In The Atlantic, CCC Director Deb Roy writes about the very real threat today’s social media platforms pose to our democracy, and presents a far less toxic alternative:…
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MIT CCC graduate students and research staff present at the 10th International Conference for Computational Social Science (IC2S2)
CCC graduate students Belén Saldías, Hope Schroeder, Elinor Poole-Dayan, Will Brannon, Hang Jiang, and CCC research engineer Doug Beeferman, presented at the 10th Inter…
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Research
How to Tackle Truth Decay | The Atlantic | Deb Roy
The next stage of truth decay is that those who no longer trust the scientists and technocrats search for alternative sources of information, “truth” from outside the…
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CCC and DemocracyNext hosted the First-Ever Tech-Enhanced Student Assembly
The MIT Center for Constructive Communication (CCC) and the non-profit DemocracyNext came together to design and implement the first tech-enhanced and student-focused ver…
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CCC and DemocracyNext Announce Tech-Enhanced Pop-Up Lab to Advance Citizens’ Assemblies
In an era of technological transformation in which social media and generative AI are disrupting our processes of communication and democracy, the MIT Center for Construc…
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CCC’s RealTalk@MIT Part of Campus-Wide Efforts to Encourage Civil Discourse
MIT Chancellor Melissa Nobel notes CCC’s RealTalk@MIT efforts as part of the Institute’s response to addressing antisemitism and Islamophobia through MIT’s new “Standing…
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2023 CCC Annual Offsite
Every year, MIT CCC students, staff, and collaborators head to Cape Cod, MA for three days to delve into research discussions and learn, imagine, and share with one anoth…
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Big Tech’s Effect on Democracy | Democracy360
The relationship between technology and democracy has become increasingly complex from the proliferation of social media to recent advances in AI. Kara Swisher moderates…
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Who Owns the Truth?
When the Ars Electronica festival (September 6 – 10) took a deep dive into examining what “truth” means in today’s world, organizers invited broad participation…
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CCC Courses
Spring 2024 Course: MIT MAS.S61 Constructive Communication Systems: From Ancient Wisdoms to Social Dialogue Networks
Hearing the humanity in others is necessary for our democracy to function. Drawing inspiration from ancient wisdoms, such as facilitated dialogue, deep listening, and com…
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IAP 2024: Unlock the Power of Negotiation
Join the MIT CCC Mini-Course led by former U.S. Federal Mediator Joshua Flax to master negotiation skills in a two-day immersive experience.
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IAP 2024: How Might We Redefine Learning in the Age of AI?
Are you interested in deliberating on how generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and DALL-E are changing the way we learn? Are you fascinated by the opportunity to explore…
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IAP 2024: Decentralized Society, Cooperation, and Plurality
In this IAP activity, we will read works from computer science, sociology, political theory, and sci-fi to explore the mechanisms of large scale cooperative behavior. The…
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Recent Projects
Affective polarization
Characterizing affective polarization on Twitter and Reddit – how it has evolved over time and which topics incite more polarized responses.
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Conversation Flowers
Exploring conversation health and dynamics using natural language processing and data visualization
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Tolerance Lab
Exploring the ways in which we respond differently to statements of opinion and statements of experience.
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Bridging Dictionary
Exploring LLM capabilities to explain concepts/definitions to various audiences
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Data Provenance for AI
A massive audit of 1800+ AI text datasets, tracing their provenance and composition from origin to creation.
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Analogia
A story-telling card game generated from community data which helps make speaking personally and emotionally easy and fun
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CCC at MIT-Chile
In January 2023, CCC PhD Candidates Belén Saldías and Maggie Hughes hosted several workshops on Human-Centered Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Data Visua…
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