When French citizens took to the streets during the recent Bloquons Tout ("Block Everything") protests, they were united in opposition to the proposed national budget. But beyond that shared frustration, what did they actually want? This is the question plaguing modern protest movements. We know what people oppose, but the mechanisms to understand what they support, and to find consensus amid that complexity, remain frustratingly elusive. 

In this episode, Executive Director Jess Scully sits down with Yuting Jiang, CEO and co-founder of Agora Citizen Network. Unlike mainstream anti-social media that pulls us into tribal camps, Agora is prosocial, using machine learning to identify shared beliefs and bridge statements that unite rather than divide. Inspired by Polis, Agora is a space where citizens can move beyond broadcasting grievances to actually deliberating solutions together. 

Yuting walks us through a consultation during the French protests with over 200 participants, in which Agora revealed a nuanced opinion landscape showing some key points of consensus, while exposing meaningful disagreements about how radical their calls for reform should be. 

As RadicalxChange launches our own consultation on Agora, this conversation explores how we might build the prosocial media infrastructure that democracy actually needs. 

Participate in our community conversation on Agora: https://agoracitizen.network/feed/conversation/4OcpxQ

Host: Jess Scully 

Guest: Yuting Jiang 

Producer: Jack Henderson

Feedback or ideas for future episodes? Email us at [email protected].

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