Counteracting polarization in Dutch Society

Abstract

Polarization is one of the prominent issues of current western societies. This project takes on the challenge to design an intervention that deals with polarization in Dutch society, based on an extensive analysis of the context of the phenomenon, in order to achieve positive impact for society. It was found that even though the Netherlands is not as divided as it seems when for instance watching the news, the emphasis on extremes in the public debate is a problem. People want to belong to a group, which results into a pressure to choose for one of the extreme opinions on an issue. People with a moderate opinion either tend to go along with the extremes, or to turn their back on the public debate because they feel unrepresented. This in turn creates polarization. In order to relieve the pressure to go along with the extremes, the desired implication of the to-be-intervention is defined as to augment the presence of moderate opinions in the public debate, by making people with a moderate opinion express themselves in the public debate. The created intervention is the Pine Grenade (Dutch: Granaatappel), an emblem symbolizing outspoken reasonableness and thereby a counterpart to the ‘like’ known from social media. It is meant to serve as an appealing and recognizable representation of reasonableness in the public debate, inspiring people to express themselves in a reasonable way and relieving the pressure to choose for one of the extremes. In order to make the symbol publicly known, public figures representative to the message are approached to become ambassadors of the Pine Grenade.