https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVJE6GXqzsw Polis
- Explained from the management’s point of view.
This pol.is conversation is run by the Mobility Lab and seeks to understand a new way of looking at public transportation in a post-pandemic world. There are instructions here on what to do, but since you are a normal person, you will not read at all and will go right on trying to understand how it works and what is going on. Hopefully you will understand this.
Voting Page Overview At the top you will see a statement, but do not click on it yourselves. Usually you will start out agreeing, disagreeing, or passing if you think it is a bad question, manipulative, or you don’t understand it. Click Agree, Disagree, and then more statements will appear. There are 100 in total. Just give that gut reaction whether you think it is true, think it is not true, or think you cannot have an opinion for whatever reason. As you do that, you will see that the blue dots at the bottom start to move around, and you will see that they fall into different groups. And you will realize, “Oh, this blue dot is me.” Then you will enter a certain blob. You might be interested and click on that blob. And you will see a lot of statements that you agree with and you will think, “This is my blob, this is my group.
Group C - Public Transportation Supporters There are 62 people in this Group C. As they click around, there are lots of references to biking, urban growth, walking, and 10-minute neighborhoods. They strongly agree and you can see the story that they are supporters of public transit. There are many aspects of equity, social justice, and integration, and they are interested in walking, biking, and buses. These are people who live in cities and support public transportation. You can make up a few stories about them. For the other groups, I will let Divya summarize them.
Group A - Urban vs. Low Density Residential Group A was Divya’s group. Now that we have an overview of Group C, there are a few things that Group A is very interested in as well. We will look at things like increasing supply to reduce density, and clicking that cars are no longer the top priority. Then we will look at shifting funding priorities from the city center to other areas, and making cars no longer a priority. Not only in urban centers, but also in lower density areas. Plus, fewer flights, etc. The next one we will look at will either improve connections to the local community or conversely, people will find that their connections to the local community will worsen. This could be a group of people who live in low-density areas rather than urban centers and feel that public transportation and connections are primarily concentrated in urban centers. They are supportive of transit, but would like to see its investment be more equitable among different neighborhoods.
This way we can understand what the group wants. And by looking at b, we can see what these groups differ on. We can also see that by looking at the majority opinion, it is important that the pol.is ultimately draw a line of agreement. That is the purpose of the group’s statement, but the majority opinion shows that there is potential to move forward from these conversations.
To that end, I will pass the baton to Ben. Group B - The Dissenters We are looking at Group B. Group B is larger in shape, meaning that opinions are a bit more spread out. It is also a group of dissenters. If you click on the top five statements here, you will see that four of the five have a red strikeout, not a green check mark. This means that a majority or majorities of the people in Group B actually disagree with the statement. That is what unites Group B: they disagree together more than they support it together.
One statement they support is 35, they feel public transportation is scary and they intend to continue to have private cars and that is their response to the coronavirus. This group represents skeptics as well as detractors. It is not the largest group in terms of numbers, but it is spread out in terms of diversity of opinion.
Group B is therefore an important group to consider when building consensus. We checked to see if their top statements agree with the majority opinion. On the majority opinion tab, you will see the top 5 statements that the majority agrees with. In fact, none of them overlap with Group C’s top five, but a more detailed report would show a longer extension of statements from these groups and which ones best align with Group C’s agreement.
Doing so is helpful for policy makers and those trying to understand this information. A more detailed analysis based on the data here is possible, but this is useful at a glance. You can see that there are clusters, that three groups naturally form, and how those groups are represented.
How to use Pol.is As Divya said, with Statement 52 where opinions and Group C may overlap, a face-to-face conversation may take place to see where it goes, further analysis, or Pol.is to set the agenda for these conversations. This statement may be a good starting point. Passionate participants can engage in these conversations, which can progress over weeks or months and evolve over time. They may actually engage in this in an attempt to understand other groups.
Perhaps I should have mentioned this at the beginning, but once all is said and done, there is a way you can submit a new statement yourself. Not only does the moderator decide what the opinion is and everyone goes along with it, but you can actually submit anything that you feel is important to this conversation or that you feel is not well framed.
If you have that motivation, you can work on finding a more nuanced majority opinion by submitting new statements in an attempt to understand people not in other groups. Once you find the majority opinion, everyone can move forward together, especially if policymakers are also involved in these processes.
It is also worth mentioning the report generated from Pol.is. This is a report that not only provides a visualization, but also a detailed look at what the agreement and disagreement are with respect to each statement. In the video that follows, I can explain the transition of analysis from visualization to report, how they relate, and more.
Thank you, everyone. And don’t forget to hit the register button!
This page is auto-translated from [/nishio/Exploring Polis](https://scrapbox.io/nishio/Exploring Polis) using DeepL. If you looks something interesting but the auto-translated English is not good enough to understand it, feel free to let me know at @nishio_en. I’m very happy to spread my thought to non-Japanese readers.