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Dear MIT GOV/LAB Community,

In these contentious times, GOV/LAB continues to work at the intersection of governance, trust, and dialogue. How do we promote productive dialogue about difficult issues? What barriers persist for engendering trust in government and promoting citizen participation in civil society? Our work is increasingly exploring the ways that technology—especially our collaboration with Stanford’s Digital Economy Lab on deliberation.io—can foster democratic engagement through dialogue and collective decision-making. We ask how AI-platforms might encourage public deliberation, enrich political discourse, and help to generate consensus.

Following our 2024-2025 award of the Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (SERC) Seed Grant Program, we presented the outcomes from four pilot modules run with our deliberation.io platform. Our aim was to examine how generative AI can enhance the benefits of online deliberation. At a time when citizens are seeking more ways to participate in democracy, but are stymied by information overload and the rise of uncivil discourse, this work responds to an urgent need for more pro-democracy online platforms. Preliminary results from these studies show that AI-assisted reasoning may help shift opinions toward more moderate views, visualizations of what others think may help uncover areas of agreement, AI-moderated conversation may help increase nuanced discussion and the legitimacy of the process, and the order someone sees comments may affect their views of representation and legitimacy of the process 

We also piloted a field study in Washington, D.C. in July, using deliberation.io to gather feedback during the municipality’s AI Public Listening Sessions. Our more recent work explores rigorous methods for summarizing deliberations and opportunities for field studies.

We delivered much work on trust, governance, and accountability in the last several months. We published research on public service delivery and trust in Malawi and digital public health infrastructure in Sierra Leone. In December, Research Director Lula Chen shared her insights during a webinar on trust and public health emergencies in Africa. We also produced a new Learning Case written by Research Affiliate Chris Grady on the lessons we can learn from USAID regarding accountability, impact, and evaluation for international development efforts.

This academic year GOV/LAB also welcomed new personnel. Virgile Rennard joined us in September 2025 as a postdoctoral fellow. At MIT he leads the reading group for AI and Political Science for the SERC program and teaches the class Applications of AI for Democracy. In the Fall we were supported by Undergraduate Research Assistants Yeabkal Abeje and Jenny Kim. Our current Spring Undergraduate Research Assistants, Natasha Ceol and Emma Hyman, are supporting our ongoing research projects relating to deliberation and artificial intelligence. In December, Samantha Jones joined us as our new Program Manager.

Read what we have been up to since our last digest:

• Learning Case on the next generation of international development efforts. MIT GOV/LAB Research Affiliate Chris Grady proposes an alternative model of accountability and impact measurement as he reflects on his experience as a senior advisor for USAID.
• Public Service Provision in Malawi. In this study of trust in local government in Malawi, Research Director Lula Chen, Research Affiliate Chris Grady, and co-authors show that a shock to improve desired public services (such as waste management) led citizens to pay more taxes and to increase their trust in government.
• Trust During Public Health Emergencies in Africa Webinar. MIT GOV/Lab Research Director Lula Chen participated in a webinar on trust and public health during the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2022 Ebola outbreak, hosted by the Cluster of Research Excellence (CoRE) for Preparedness and Response to Pandemics and Shocks. 
• Becoming Infrastructure in Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone’s health management information system uses an  open-source system and has undergone several different phases. We explored what insights can be garnered from a study of this digital public health infrastructure in a low-resource bureaucratic setting.
• This Week in Social Science (TWISS). Are citizens competent enough to fulfill their democratic responsibilities? MIT GOV/LAB Research Affiliate Chris Grady discusses the issue of democratic citizenship.
• Field pilot of deliberation.io. Washington, D.C. piloted GOV/LAB’s new AI tool, deliberation.io, developed in collaboration with the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, to gather feedback during its AI Public Listening Sessions in July 2025.

Photo courtesy govtech.com