Hey HN! I’m Shaun, and I started the Narratives Project (https://www.narrativesproject.com/), a non-profit that presents divisive news events as contrasting narratives to show why people disagree. Our goal is to lower people’s distress about the news and animosity towards those they disagree with.

Our current news media system incites instead of informs. On-the-ground reporting has been replaced by armchair journalism, most people are locked in viewpoint silos that are occasionally penetrated by the worst of the other side, and the entire system is in an escalating panic about Those Bad People Over There.

People of different political persuasions look at the same event and immediately come to different conclusions, and often become agitated with those on the other side. When asked why others disagree, they usually give one of four answers: they're stupid, ignorant, brainwashed, or evil. Or all of the above!

It's probably not helpful to think that half the country is stupid, and it's a recipe for catastrophe to think that half the country is evil. So we're trying to work on the better answer, which is that people come to different conclusions because they have different priors and experiences. That may be obvious, but it’s difficult to remember in the moment, when we're confronted with someone on the other side of an intense topic.

We produce short, substantive analyses that present the perspectives on either side of an issue, and illustrate the underlying reasons for how people come to those conclusions. We identify what either side is focusing on, how they're interpreting new information, and how they're reasoning.

When we summarize the narratives, we describe them as though we believe them. In this way, we center diversity of perspectives as default. Presenting conflicts this way nudges the reader away from mind-reading bad intentions into their political opponents.

We like to imagine a person on their lunch break, who only has a few minutes to investigate a news event that everyone is talking about. They scroll through Twitter, read the opinions of people they agree with, and then open up our content to get a quick overview of the whole discourse. Most likely they go back to work still entrenched in their opinion, but hopefully also with an understanding of why people disagree with them (and it's not that they're evil).

Or imagine a mainstream conservative aunt who watches Fox News, and her progressive niece who watches left-leaning Twitch streamers. They have difficulty discussing news, not just because they disagree, but because they don't have any way of talking between their worldviews. They just end up sending each other links to partisan articles, which is not a great way to have a conversation. Instead of this, the niece sends her aunt our content about the topic, which helps them both feel acknowledged and talk productively about the disagreement (values, experiences, priors, etc.). They still disagree, but they don't think each other are crazy or stupid, and they’re no longer on a track that was pointing toward hating each other.

We believe that when news consumers can at least minimally understand those they disagree with, it helps to alleviate distress, understand their own position and feel acknowledged, and is a key step towards the humanization of their apparent enemy.

Here's two examples of recent posts:

https://www.narrativesproject.com/news/why-cant-we-agree-on-the-nonexistence-of-biolabs-in-ukraine/

https://www.narrativesproject.com/news/perspectives-on-ketanji-brown-jacksons-supreme-court-confirmation-hearings-days-2-4/

And here's a recent Instagram version:

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cbh6kxhArKa/

There are other organizations and products out there that share our concern, such as AllSides, The Flip Side, Braver Angels, Ground News, etc. We’re different in two ways.

First, news aggregators offer people n...