Netgain Challenge

The debate shaping the social contract, and the services it affords, are increasingly experienced and influenced through digital channels. But our public, civic and interpersonal digital tools, networks and spaces are still largely white, privileged, able-bodied, English-speaking, literate, cisgendered, and male.

Marginalized individuals and communities, excluded from such platforms and encountering other power imbalances, are effectively silenced in our digital debates and prevented from accessing services and social goods, entrenching and exacerbating inequalities. We must recognize and seek to address these increasingly important structural exclusions if we are to avoid perpetuating or colluding in them.

We must build visual, aural, inclusive, multiplatform and multilingual channels - in-person meetings, radio, text messaging and mobile-first design must complement high-tech to reflect our society fairly and make our public square a bold and brilliant universal marketplace of ideas.