INST 301
Introduction to Information Science
Spring 2016
Assignment P4 - Policy Choices

As will all project assignments, this assignment is not separately graded.

The focus of Assignment P2 was to articulate and explicate the technology issues that have potential consequences for social issues. In Assignment P3, you then focused on the policy issues themselves, clearly articulating those that have a technical nexus of some sort. That's the background we need to begin the process of making choices.

The first step in this process is to articulate the choices that could be made. For example if we wanted to protect people's privacy from intrusion by commercial interests, we might pass a law that established specific privacy rights, or we might write a regulation that proscribed certain activities and allowed others, or we might let the marketplace force companies to establish privacy policies and then prosecute deviations from those self-imposed obligations as "unfair trade practices" (it might surprise you to learn which one of those we do in the United States). Step one is not to figure out which options are good or bad -- step one is to figure out which ones are possible, practical, and POSSIBLY reasonable. This actually cuts things down a lot. One way of ensuring Internet privacy is to ban the use of the Internet. That's possible, but not practical, and surely not reasonable. So we don't need to spend too much time thinking about that option. But creating a "wall of shame" to which we post the stories of privacy violations by companies would be possible, practical, and you may or may not think it reasonable. So you might keep that one in your list of options.

You can't come up with every possible option for every possible social issue, so limit yourself to two social issues. Don't pick two obscure issues -- go for big ones. So if your issue is whether we should control what people post online, choosing hate speech as a focus might be more consequential than choosing cat videos. Don't get that specific, though, if you can avoid it -- if the question is censorship of Twitter posts, pose it broadly, not as censorship of hate speech Twitter posts. Why two? Well, there are two of you on a team, and one way to do this is to have each person work out one issue and then have the other person react to what their teammate has written.

Okay, so now you have an issue and some options (we can prevent hate speech on Twitter by building automatic filters, or by permanently banishing people who write hateful Twitter posts, for example). Since by assumption every option you picked was at least possibly reasonable, then each deserves serious consideration. It would be nice to have 3-4 options at this point -- if only two really exist you can proceed with those two, but be forewarned that such cases are rare and if I can think of other reasonable options then perhaps you will not have done a good enough job of generating options if you have only two for one of your issues. Start out by articulating each option clearly (e.g., how would you ban someone, how would you make sure they don't just get a new Twitter name, ...). Then make the arguments in favor of your option, then the arguments against it. Note that these are not someone else's arguments - these are YOUR argument. For example, if you ban too many people form Twitter, perhaps Twitter will have their business harmed. Perhaps if you block hate speech using a filter it will also filter love speech sometimes by mistake. That could reduce the number of marriages (okay, a silly example, but you get the idea). This sort of thing is usually done by making a list of pros (arguments in favor) and cons (arguments against) for each policy option.

Once you have your pros and cons, then you are ready to make a decision. First, consider the issues in whatever way you think best (how serious are the consequences you are concerned about? How likely are the consequences you are concerned about). Then make the decision you think best and write down why you think it is best.

If it ends there, that would be easy. But things are never that easy, so there are two more steps. The next step is to imagine someone who honestly believes that your chosen option is the wrong choice. Maybe you made a choice that (in my Twitter hate speech example) gave primacy to freedom of speech over political correctness. Okay, now imagine that you are the parent of a teenager who committed suicide in part because of hate speech. There is never a policy issue where everyone will agree, and the people who disagree with you are not (necessarily) evil, they are actually helping you because thinking of them will help you to sharpen your argument. So the next thing to do is to make THEIR argument -- the best argument some specific opponent (describe them) could make to counter your chosen policy option.

Now for the hard part. Refute their argument. You will likely be surprised how hard it is to do this entire process with intellectual rigor -- it is darn hard to argue someone else's position as forcefully as your own. But if you can't do that, then your refutation of their (imagined) argument won't be very useful to you when you actually have to make your argument in some policy debate. And just in case you think that's rare, think of how many policy decisions Jyothi and I have had to make as we designed this class. This is not an issue unique to big social issues -- it is a daily part of the working life of every professional. So this is a skill worth mastering.

You should be able to take the argument all the way through -- name the issue, name the alternatives, articulate the pros and cons, make a decision, identify (a generic) someone who would disagree with you on a principled basis, make their argument, and then refute their argument -- in two pages or so for each issue. Now you know why you are doing two of these -- because each of you needs experience trying to do this, and each of you will benefit from critiquing the other's technique.

If you have three people on your team (as one team does), do the same thing, but for three issues.

Either member of your team should submit both of your issue analyses together, as one document, before class on the date indicated on the schedule. Don't identify which of you did which one -- you will both get the same project grade regardless of who did which.