Building Bridges between Democracy and Technology for a Better Society

This experiential course prepares technical, business-minded, and policy-oriented students to build and plan the implementation of a product, startup, or policy innovation from scratch. Students work in an interdisciplinary team to develop novel products and solutions to address existing problems in the realm of democracy and technology. For example, engineering students may leverage technical skills to help translate ideas into products, while political science students may leverage their policy knowledge and social science skills to identify problem areas and generate plausible solutions. Students from any discipline may bring unique perspectives, domain expertise, and comparative advantages to their team. This cross-listed course utilizes the Challenge Lab entrepreneurial course foundation, offered by the College of Engineering Sutardja Center of Entrepreneurship and Technology, in partnership with the Political Science department to “Building Bridges between Democracy and Technology for a Better Society”.

People and organizations have been grappling with unceasing advancements in digital technologies and their implications for society, both good and bad, real or perceived. On the one hand, technology and data can bolster democratic functions and the empowerment of communities within a society. (As one example, dashboards and products that make political data more easily accessible and interpretable to the general public.) On the other hand, there also exist risks of technological misuse. (As one example, the proliferation of disinformation.) In this Challenge Lab, students will explore the design of policies, businesses, and/or products that can help provide such benefits and/or mitigate such risks.

Each student will join a team based on their own interests and knowledge. Each team will choose an area to develop and test possible solutions, build prototypes, and develop a new business, product, or policy innovation. The following are proposals for areas that teams may choose to work on:

• Misinformation (e.g. ability to distinguish between factual and non-factual political content)
• Democratic discourse (e.g. ability of citizens to engage in productive exchange with each other and their political representatives)
• Civic/political participation and empowerment (e.g. ability and motivation of members from different communities to participate in core political processes)
• Political knowledge and citizen awareness (e.g. accessibility and interpretability political data)
• Democratic representation and accountability (e.g. maintaining and revealing the accountability of political representatives)
• Transparency and trust in institutions (e.g. the conditions for the public to have faith in systems of governance)
• Data-driven policy (e.g. the use of data and AI to aid decision-making in policy processes)
• Collection and control/freedom of information (e.g. questions regarding who has access to and can use different types of digital information)

This class is open to anyone who wants to examine how technology could be leveraged to democratic processes. Students from all majors, both undergraduate and graduate, are welcome. Preference will be given to masters-level students, seniors, and juniors with experience or demonstrated interest in public management, policy-making, technology businesses, and startups.