Overview

The administration of the City of Munich is the largest city administration in Germany and employs over 33,000 people. As they noticed that public debates were becoming increasingly controversial and non-objective, they approached MUAS and requested a joint challenge to investigate how such polarization could be prevented by social informations systems in the future.

For the challenge, the DTLab worked together with the Department of Labour and Economy and the IT department of Munich. It was the pilot project of the DTLab at MUAS and had 25 participants from three different faculties (7 - Computer Science and Mathematics, 10 - Business Administration, 12 - Design).

Starting point was the controversial debate on the planning of fifth generation ("5G") mobile radio networks in Germany. For the expansion of the networks, a large number of new transmission masts will have to be erected, against which protests have started to form, There are some international examples of how decisions can be made with public participation in similarly difficult situations but without promoting polarization. For example in Finland, where a final storage site for nuclear waste was found with the participation of the citizens.

Problem

Starting with the question: "How can social information systems be used to moderate social debates before polarization occurs?", the students first researched the social and technical background of the problem in small groups and then developed digital systems that would contribute to an improvement.

Approach

The challenge was embedded in a Real Project of the Strascheg Center for Entrepreneurship and students used the innovation method "Working Backwards" to find a solution to their problem. Throughout that process they were supported by Amazon Web Services. The support included several meetings with a Solutions Architect from AWS, who gave students an introduction to cloud computing and helped them to design their prototypes.

The groups developed several interesting solutions, like a participation platform where citizens would be able to submit ideas to improve the life in the city. that, With enough people interested, those could then be discussed at local events.

Team "Keyword" started from the problem that people inform themselves only superficially and via few sources about current events.In contrast, the team developed the concept of an independent news search engine that objectively compares contributions. Users are offered articles from different sources and can thus form an objective opinion.

Team "NewPinion" has taken a similar approach: It has designed a news app that presents news with conflicting opinions. The app compares news from different sources and forwards its users to them.