Evidence-based and human-centric design of digital media platforms could reduce many of the problems of misinformation, polarization, and misaligned incentives that plague both society and individual organizations. With these sorts of design changes, it may become possible to build deliberative digital media that are useful both for discussions of contentious issues and for achieving successful collective action. In this Perspective paper, we discuss several issues in which current-day social science indicates the origin of these problems and suggests methods for improvement. Finally, we analyze a popular deliberative democracy platform to illustrate how social science might enable design of next-generation digital media suitable for democratic deliberation, and in which generative artificial intelligence might be useful.

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