• Home
  • Opinion
  • Quizzes
  • Redistricting
  • Sections
  • About Us
  • Voting
  • Events
  • Civic Ed
  • Campaign Finance
  • Directory
  • Election Dissection
  • Fact Check
  • Glossary
  • Independent Voter News
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. social media>

Could social media turn civil?

Eliza Newlin Carney
https://twitter.com/ElizaRules?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
February 28, 2022
Civility in social media
We Are/Getty Images

Carney is a journalist and founder of The Civic Circle, which uses the arts to empower young students to understand and participate in democracy.

If the social media universe no longer revolves around Facebook, which is losing users, credibility and market share, what will take its place?

Donald Trump’s much-hyped Truth Social platform has drawn notice lately, but a glitchy rollout, plus the built-in limits on the far-right echo chamber, bode poorly for the former president’s social media experiment.

The more exciting future for social media may lie in exactly the opposite direction — in small, civil sites that vigorously moderate users and messages, cultivate community, and test out a new civic model for online interaction. Picture a platform with no trolls, no bots, no doxxing or name calling, and where users not only exchange civil posts but learn about and explore civic groups and activities.


Sound too good to be true? Not to Matthew Cremins, co-founder of CivilTalk, a self-described “do good network” that aims to bring users together across partisan divides, cultivate community, and stimulate both civic discussion and engagement. The identities of all users are verified, exchanges are moderated, and the site functions as both a civic social media and a networking platform.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

“A lot of people just don’t know how to participate in our democracy,” says Cremins, a Chicago-based entrepreneur who launched CivilTalk with California philanthropist Keith Fox. “They see the partisan divide. They see the problems on social media. And their reaction is one of frustration or, even worse, apathy.”

CivilTalk now offers a feature that allows nonprofits and charitable groups to get the word out about their activities, and gives users an easy way to volunteer and donate. The site sells no personal data or ads, and trumpets itself as an alternative to hostility- and misinformation-riddled mainstream social media sites.

Says the site’s chief marketing officer, Andrea Stalf: “It’s not this giant revenue-generating engine. It’s a minimalist way of finding your way in the civic space.”

Of course, that presents a business challenge for a social media platform whose users still number in the hundreds, not the millions, and that charges $19.99 a year for membership. Cremins says the site, which went live late last year, is not out to compete with Facebook, which despite all its troubles still had 1.93 billion users in the last three months of 2021. If CivilTalk could net 7,000 users, its executives say, it could cover its costs and market itself more broadly.

But civic-minded social media startups face a predictable Catch-22, says Ethan Zuckerman, who directs the Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure at the University of Massachusetts. “They tend to start empty,” observes Zuckerman. “And until you get a lot of people in them, they don’t feel very exciting.”

Nevertheless, Zuckerman sees considerable social value in purpose-driven networks that operate on what he calls “civic logic.” Historically, these have included such sites as Parlio, a pro-civility Egyptian social media alternative launched in the wake of the Arab Spring; Decidem, a Barcelona site designed to facilitate citizen participation in government, and vTaiwan, a Taiwanese site also built around direct democracy and a commitment to constructive conversation.

In the U.S., Zuckerman himself runs AmherstTalks, a small social network for the town of Amherst, Mass., designed to complement town meetings by inviting citizens to engage in local issues online. A Vermont platform called the Front Porch Forum, which launched in Burlington and has now expanded statewide and into parts of New York, aims to connect neighbors in a community-building network that, like CivilTalk, bans anonymity and carefully moderates content.

To Zuckerman, such networks reflect a growing consensus that “Facebook and networks like it may be pretty bad for us.” He adds: “I think we should be imaging networks that are good for us as citizens.” The really exciting thing, Zuckerman has argued, would be if “civic-logic” networks became regarded as a public good, like libraries and public parks, supported by community giving or taxpayer dollars.

In the meantime, CivilTalk and other nascent civil sites will have plenty of competition, not only from mainstream platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, but from the increasingly crowded marketplace of pro-Trump platforms like Gettr, Parler and Rumble. If civic social media survives and thrives, it will likely be on a smaller scale, potentially with a hyperlocal or even neighborhood focus.

At the same time, CivilTalk joins a growing universe of civic leaders and groups working to restore civility and civic engagement, and unite Americans across the ideological divide. More than 100 such groups are working collectively under the umbrella of the Bridge Alliance, whose Education Fund runs The Fulcrum and also CitizenConnect. Like CivilTalk, CitizenConnect offers civic- and democracy-minded individuals and groups a means to discover and network with one another.

“We need to create a stronger infrastructure for the pro-democracy movement that makes it easier for Americans to find us, understand us and engage with us,” says CitizenConnect co-founder Morris Effron.

The work of creating civic spaces on the web is generating more energy and interest than profits these days. But the creators of community-minded social media sites like CivilTalk and the Front Porch Forum say the whole point is to replace the industry’s culture of exploitation with one built on accountability.

As CivilTalk’s Stalf puts it: “We want fewer, really happy-engaged users and organizations that are working toward a common purpose, not hundreds of thousands of people who are coming on to be titillated or throw off sarcastic one-liners.”

From Your Site Articles
  • Political fundraising app wants to make donations a social ... ›
  • Facebook docs offer blueprint for making social media safer - The ... ›
  • App offers civil setting for political debate among Gen Z - The Fulcrum ›
  • Report: Anti-conservative bias in social media is unfounded - The ... ›
  • News Literacy Project unveils app aimed at adults, students - The ... ›
  • How search engines shape what we know - The Fulcrum ›
Related Articles Around the Web
  • All the Social Media Apps You Should Know in 2021 ›
  • The 15 Biggest Social Media Sites and Apps [2022] - Dreamgrow ›
  • 15 Most Popular Social Media Sites of the Last 10 Years ›
social media

Join an Upcoming Event

Oregon STAR Voting Monthly Meeting

Equal Vote
Feb 07, 2023 at 6:00 pm PDT
Read More

The State of Faith: Faith’s Role in the Future of Ameri

Mormon Women for Ethical Government
Feb 08, 2023 at 10:00 am CST
Read More

STAR Voting Oregon Chapter Meeting

Equal Vote
Feb 08, 2023 at 6:00 pm CDT
Read More

The Village Square presents Daryl Davis

The Village Square
Feb 09, 2023 at 7:00 pm EST
Read More

Russia-Ukraine War: Will it EVER End?

Crossing Party Lines
Feb 12, 2023 at 7:00 pm CST
Read More

Monthly Stakeholder Meeting

TRUST Network
Feb 14, 2023 at 1:00 pm CST
Read More
View All Events

Want to write
for The Fulcrum?

If you have something to say about ways to protect or repair our American democracy, we want to hear from you.

Submit
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Follow
Contributors

Reform in 2023: Leadership worth celebrating

Layla Zaidane

Two technology balancing acts

Dave Anderson

Reform in 2023: It’s time for the civil rights community to embrace independent voters

Jeremy Gruber

Congress’ fix to presidential votes lights the way for broader election reform

Kevin Johnson

Democrats and Republicans want the status quo, but we need to move Forward

Christine Todd Whitman

Reform in 2023: Building a beacon of hope in Boston

Henry Santana
Jerren Chang
latest News

Becoming the (healthy) fungus among us

Debilyn Molineaux
9h

Podcast: God squad: Let friendship redeem the republic

Our Staff
9h

Facebookopoly

Seth David Radwell
10h

Does partisanship impact happiness?

Lynn Schmidt
07 February

Return copyright to its roots: Compensate human creators

Samantha Close
07 February

It’s the institutional design, stupid! With a parliamentary system, America could avoid gridlock and instability

Milind Thakar
06 February
Videos

Video: America's civic education gap: What can business do?

Our Staff

Video: What does it mean to be Black?

Our Staff

Video: The dignity index

Our Staff

Video: The Supreme Court and originalism

Our Staff

Video: How the baby boom changed American politics

Our Staff

Video: What the speakership election tells us about the 118th Congress webinar

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: God squad: Let friendship redeem the republic

Our Staff
9h

Podcast: Why Democrats fail with rural voters

Our Staff
06 February

Podcast: Anti-racism: The pro-human approach

Our Staff
03 February

Podcast: 2024 Senate: Democrats have a lot of defending to do

Our Staff
02 February
Recommended
Becoming the (healthy) fungus among us

Becoming the (healthy) fungus among us

Big Picture
Podcast: God squad: Let friendship redeem the republic

Podcast: God squad: Let friendship redeem the republic

Podcasts
Facebookopoly

Facebookopoly

Big Picture
Does partisanship impact happiness?

Does partisanship impact happiness?

Big Picture
Return copyright to its roots: Compensate human creators

Return copyright to its roots: Compensate human creators

Business & Democracy
Video: America's civic education gap: What can business do?

Video: America's civic education gap: What can business do?