Step 2:
Map polarizing issues in your society
To have people participate in your dialogues you need to choose topics that matter to larger groups in your society.
As informed citizens we usually have an overview of the main themes driving the public debate - but that view is prone to bias. Your dialogues should appeal beyond your ideological bubble, the big cities and elite or well-educated groups in your country. Ask the social scientist on your team to provide you with a research-backed overview of your society. You can plan a workshop where you will go over the main indicators together or share a comprehensive study in your team, read it individually and discuss the main findings. The purpose is not to produce another research paper but to pin down three different things:
The issues: what are the most-discussed, recurring themes of public debate in your country? Those should be single words: ex. immigration, sovereignty, abortion.
The cleavages: what are the key lines of division within your society? These should be formulated with vs: ex. liberals vs. conservatives, church-goers vs. atheists.
The questions: within the issues identified, given the cleavages mapped, what questions are on peoples’ minds in your country? ex. Abortion: should it be banned after the 12. week of pregnancy?
The questions are the topics of your dialogues – formulating these correctly will make the conversations relevant to participants. If you spend time on mapping issues and cleavages, the questions you will ask might be different from how the same topic is phrased in the media or by politicians. They should be to the point and make people think: “yes, this is the real question beneath all the noise. That’s what I want to talk about”.
What to avoid
There are a few common pitfalls when phrasing your topics:
Topic is too general – this happens when we confuse the actual topic with the larger issue. It is tempting to set up a dialogue on immigration in general” but you will not be able to guide the conversation.
Topic is no longer relevant – we sometimes plan a dialogue based on a debate that is currently happening but by the time our meeting comes about the topic seems overdue.
Phrasing is too correct or too polarizing – it’s not easy to strike a balance between the two. On the one hand, we are looking to embrace all possible positions on the topic, but on the other we need to demonstrate the line of division which will make the dialogue relevant.
Examples of topics that have worked well in Poland:
