Opposing Views

Client: Edward Ashton Frontier - <eashton@frontier.co.uk>

Many people increasingly exist in an ideological bubble, getting all their news from a handful of sources that they trust and shunning everything else. This leads to polarised, insular viewpoints, stifling debate and increasing divisiveness. Your task is to make a web browser plugin which encourages users to read about a story from multiple angles. When reading an article, it can suggest an alternative, opposing source for the same topic. It needs to be able to categorise stories so that it can recognise the same topic in different publications, categorise sources so that it can find an interesting alternative stance (ideally not just how left- or right-leaning it is, but also things like the background of the author, the size and age of the publication, the tone of the articles), and also present this to the user in a way which will circumvent their defensive instincts and encourage an open mind.