Illustration by Owen Davy (@owendaveydraws)
Welcome!
Civic Signals is excited to introduce New_Public, a one-of-a-kind online public space that is intended to serve as more than a social media platform or traditional magazine. We are launching this hybrid platform to prompt and inspire community engagement and to also help build better public spaces in the digital world. As pioneers of this design movement, taking cues from urban planning and architects, we aim to make digital spaces more user-friendly.
Our approach is grounded in theories on space that now underpin building and city planning. Once architects began to consider the inhabitants of their buildings, they turned to social scientists to better understand human behavior and need. As a result, building design shifted from the institution-oriented formalistic approach that led to the development of a human-oriented social design. This meant they were working with people instead of for them. This shift also highlighted the importance of involving the public in the planning and management of their environment and the spaces they inhabited. These physical spaces often take on characteristics and, by extension, can literally tell us how to behave within their boundaries. Perhaps Winston Churchill put it best when he said, “We shape our buildings and they shape us.”
Until now, this thinking has not been applied to digital spaces. Along with the many positives, digital spaces have been plagued by a variety of unsavory, hostile, and even offensive content – or behavior, if you will. In reality, none of us is safe from doxing, harassment, or cyberbullying, and many of us avoid digital spaces that are likely to engender these behaviors. But, we also don’t want to be trapped in a bubble of sterile ideas with which we already agree. We want to be challenged, yes, but not if it endangers our well-being or physical safety.
With the development of Web 2.0 technologies, digital spaces have become more open and unbridled, and a “wild west” of sorts has emerged. To add to the chaos of the moment, the barometers of acceptable behavior are constantly shifting on these platforms. Because they are not seen as publishers in the traditional sense, traditional policies do not apply. News platforms, held to a shared journalistic standard, can suffer legal ramifications for reporting/publishing misinformation. No such standards exist within the social media info-sphere; as such, discretionary power regarding acceptable content is turned over to a few content moderators. In public physical spaces, people are given the choice to engage or simply walk away. Often times, engagement includes negative feedback and behavior.
New_Public applies a system of “soft negative social feedback,” akin to a slap on the wrist, rather than the public shaming, shunning, and “canceling” we have come to expect. We also champion a sense of shared ownership and equity, which cultivates a more respectful environment – not just respect between users, but between users and the space itself.
As we forge ahead into the unknown we anticipate that our re-imagined platform will inspire multidisciplinary conversations that are engaging, inclusive, and thought-provoking.
New_Public is thrilled to have you on board!