About a year ago, Peter Kisselev and two of his peers recognized what they described as a disturbing trend: Few people could seemingly have calm conversations about controversial topics, and those discussions often escalated into yelling.
As a result, Kisselev, Sam Stankiewicz and Abhi Tiwari, students at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County, Virginia, launched “Normal Debate.” The website, the three said, provides users with the opportunity to create posts about politics and other topics.
Their hope is the posts end with informed chats.
“A lot of the political discourse that we see today is fueled by an inability to connect with people that we disagree with,” Stankiewicz said.
“I think finding new and innovative ways to connect with people and to talk with people that don’t share the same viewpoints as us is one of the most critical things that I think we do as a society.”
The site, which is free to use, aims to get people to understand contrasting points of view. The site is politically unaffiliated, and users can post about whatever topics they want.
“At the very core, it’s bringing reason to discussion,” Kisselev said.
To accomplish that, the site includes a feature to allow users to include citations in their posts. Posts can be as short as one or two lines or as long as several paragraphs.
“It’s not like we’re looking for a specific line,” Tiwari said.
Thousands of people have been viewing the site, and Stankiewicz said, “Seeing people interact with and discuss with each other in a way that’s constructive and productive has been really incredible for us.”
As of Tuesday night, posts on the site are about universal health care, university funding and artificial intelligence. It’s different from traditional social media outlets because “the structure is innately focused on the ability to respond and to cite sources and reply to specific aspects,” Kisselev said.
“People really want to think about the things that matter to society,” Stankiewicz said. “They want to hear what’s true, and they want to think about things that matter to all of us.”
