Policy Briefs on Social Media, Technology and Peacebuilding

This policy brief poses the question: which human capacities does digital polarisation erode, and why does their erosion matter for democratic life? It references a comprehensive governance architecture developed by Toda Peace Institute, Lisa Schirch’s 'Blueprint for Prosocial Tech Design Governance and Social Media Impacts on Conflict and Democracy', which addresses the dynamics of digital polarisation threatening democratic governance and establishes policy frameworks, regulatory mechanisms, and design interventions for constraining platform harms. Drawing on Simone Weil’s analysis of attention, affliction, and uprootedness, the brief offers a theory of democratic capacity that clarifies what platform governance must protect and concludes with four policy actions that ground platform accountability in the democratic capacities it must preserve

Deliberative technologies are software tools that help create large-scale dialogue among participants. This article outlines the experience of testing four of these tools—Crowdsmart, Pol.is, Talk to the City, and Deliberation.io—with a group of student volunteers to understand their function and effectiveness, and to identify digital facilitation strategies. The paper concludes with recommendations to make deliberative tools more accessible in the future to enable collective decision-making. Common Good AI, a US-based nonprofit organization, created this programme to support its mission to foster inclusive civic engagement and social cohesion. The organization aims to transform how communities find common ground and solve problems together.

This paper explores the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly Large Language Models (LLMs), as an emerging tool to address the proliferation of online toxic speech. The research focuses on two key applications of LLMs: hate speech classification and detection, and response generation, specifically the use of LLMs for creating counterspeech. While LLMs show significant advances in detecting hate speech through various models, including supervised, unsupervised, and GenAI-based approaches, the paper notes crucial limitations. These include the difficulty in processing the nuance and context of online communication, understanding implicit hate speech, and the significant issue of models learning and amplifying human biases present in training data. The paper reviews efforts to develop AI-powered counterspeech tools, including challenges in generating human-like, constructive responses that adequately engage with specific hateful content. The paper suggests that LLMs show promise in developing counterspeech tools, and closes with a set of recommendations for technology developers and governments to guide the ethical development and deployment of LLMs in addressing online harms.

This policy brief argues that democratic governance must evolve as artificial intelligence becomes embedded in public life, often without transparency or public consent, and as the erosion of democratic processes directly threatens sustainable peace. Drawing on lessons from the 2025 UNDP Human Development Report and the 2024 UN Pact for the Future, this brief offers a framework for democratic digital governance that supports peacebuilding. It proposes five actions: establishing independent oversight bodies with enforcement powers; embedding civic participation in policymaking; expanding critical digital literacy; enforcing the Global Digital Compact; and protecting online civic space. With such measures, AI can enhance human agency, strengthen democratic institutions, and foster sustainable peace.

This report examines the diverse set of incentives across countries in the Global South which influence the integration of upstream product and design considerations in digital regulation. As well as highlighting these variations, the report details the state of regulation, and identifies both opportunities and barriers to advancing accountability in digital platforms through design-focused interventions.