January 2025 Community Feedback Session

Published on Jan 31, 2025 by Kyle Dolezal

On January 14, 2025, Chi Hack Night held a community feedback session. During this hybrid in-person and remote event, participants collaborated to provide feedback on four topics that impact Chi Hack Night Community members. In particular, participants discussed topics of fears and hopes, media and civic literacy, social media impacts, and Chi Hack Night Community.

In this blog post, we recap the content of the discussions and reflect on major themes that emerged.

Event format

Four in-person groups and a single remote group spent ten minutes discussing each question. A volunteer from each group captured ideas on sticky notes, which were added to a whiteboard. At the end of the session, a volunteer for each group summarized notes from each whiteboard.

Each discussion topic had a specific prompt.

• The fears and hopes topic focused on “On Jan 20th, 2025, Donald Trump will begin his second term as President. What are you fearful of with this change? What are you hopeful for?”
• The media and civic literacy *prompt was “The news industry, and especially local media outfits, have continued their decline as measured by the number of newspapers, circulation, frequency of publication, employment and readership. More Americans live in news deserts now than in recent years. What might we as civic technologists do to help in countering this trend?*”
• When discussing social media impacts, the focus was “Social media platforms have responded to political shifts by removing oversight of content. What can civic technologists do to help address misinformation and hate speech in social media?”
• The Chi Hack Night Community discussion was based on the question “What is our community doing well? What could we be doing better? What should we do more of? Who should we hear presentations from?”

Results

The fears and hopes topic resulted in a wide range of fears and hopes related to Trump’s second presidential term.

Among the hopes was the possibility that the new administration would be too inept to enact changes effectively due to inertia or due to fissures within the Republican Party. Participants also hoped that “the farce” would be exposed due to Republican actions. The discussion included several points about hopes for changes to our political discourse, such as changes to the two-party system and less focus on identity. Similarly, participants expressed a hope for a reset after the presidential term.

Fears included war, environmental and economic damage, the breaking up of families, and shortsighted policies that break up families.

The media and civic literacy topic included discussions about the lack of profitability of local news and alternative funding mechanisms, increasing news literacy among consumers of the news, and increasing opportunities for young people to get involved in local journalism.

Participants also posed several questions, such as how universities can help, how we might learn from streaming platform subscription models, and how AI might help gather local news data.

When discussing* *social media impacts, **participants discussed several themes related to the removal of content moderators. Themes included the creation of a civic commons via nationalization, hyper-local social media, ethical media education, or alternative funding sources.

Media literacy came up several times in the discussion, which could result in people limiting their use of social media and having more in-person interactions.

The groups also talked about alternatives to traditional fact checkers, such as community notes, AI fact checkers, or a solution created by Chi Hack Night.

Finally, there was discussion around the **Chi Hack Night community, **both in terms of things that are going well and things that can be improved.

Participants identified Chi Hack night as a well-run volunteer organization that’s adaptable, diverse, long-lived, and local-focused.

Ideas for improvement included more local events, events in different locations, and a focus on providing resources to new breakout groups. Chi Hack Night can also cater more to non-tech folks, provide a clear membership process, and focus on mentoring of young people.

The notes from each discussion topic are available here.

Reflections

January’s community feedback session was a continuation of a multi-year tradition of feedback sessions. The sessions are a reflection of the fact that Chi Hack Night is a community-focused volunteer organization. For example, topics discussed in the sessions inform the goals the Chi Hack Night organization pursues.

For other ways to get involved, consider volunteering and becoming a member.

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