How can we work together to strengthen our democracy? By finding new ways to engage in constructive dialog around critical and sometimes controversial public policy topics.

The Civil Debate Wall—popularly known as ‘The Wall’—is an innovative digital media tool created by Local Projects for The Bob Graham Center for Public Service at the University of Florida and funded by a grant from the Knight Foundation. The Wall creates constructive dialogue by providing a physical social media tool that connects large touch screens, a texting system, a website and a mobile site. These four synchronized components create a single, seamless interactive experience for individuals to actively engage and discuss local, national and international issues.

The Wall is more than a sounding board like Twitter or Facebook. The technology sifts through the key words of postings, tabulating them in dynamic data visualization to show where agreement lies. Collected information will be used by Knight Foundation scholars as well as users to locate common ground on divisive topics.

This project is open source and available for replication and modification.