Young Academy of Scotland- "Responsible Public Debate" workshop

Democracies pride themselves in allowing space for free political discussion as a way of peacefully working out compromises for how to live together in the context of opportunities for mutually beneficial cooperation and competition over scarce resources. Because of this, we need ways of disagreeing with each other and yet achieving common ground. Politics has always been a place of disagreement and debate, but recent politics – especially in the age of social media – seems to be increasingly polarised. So the question we want to address is whether there are there better and worse ways to disagree with one another? Can responsible public debate renew democracy?

To do so, we propose to have a 1-day event with politicians, media personalities, campaigners, activists and academics to share experience and propose possible principles for a draft charter for responsible public debate in Scotland. This will be stage 1 of the project (to which this funding application pertains), with further stages including a social media campaign, public events, schools outreach, and eventual publication of the charter.