Democracy and the Informed Public

An informed public is essential to a healthy democracy.

Contact Info

Jessica Creighton
jessica_creighton@hks.harvard.edu

The Program on Democracy and the Informed Public advances research and policy solutions to help understand how individuals can access reliable, actionable information—empowering them to protect themselves from risks, vindicate their rights, and fulfill their responsibilities as citizens, workers, and consumers.

We study how information is generated, disseminated, and used, examining both the conditions that produce reliable information and those that lead to unreliable information. By identifying what strengthens or undermines information systems, we aim to improve policies and practices that promote accountability in government and the private sector.

Through research and public engagement, the program will share its findings with students, scholars, policymakers, and the broader public to strengthen democratic institutions and advance the public interest.

Learn more about the program

Vision Statement

Public policies and social practices should enable individuals to easily obtain reliable and actionable information to protect themselves from a wide range of risks, vindicate their rights, advance their interests, and fulfill their responsibilities as citizens, workers, and consumers.

Because an informed public remains the cornerstone of democracy, we believe that promoting such access will help make governments and private organizations more accountable and advance the public interest in many other ways.

Mission Statement

The Program on Democracy and the Informed Public conducts research to understand the dynamics through which information is generated, disseminated, obtained, and utilized by the public as citizens, workers and consumers.

We seek to understand “successful” information dynamics that produce reliable information as well as dynamics in which information is hidden, unreliable, deceptive, or used in ways that are individually or socially harmful.
The Program seeks to contribute to the development of policies and practices that improve these dynamics and so empower individuals with reliable information.
The Program shares knowledge arising from the project broadly with students, scholars, policy makers, and the general public.

Program Aims

The Program on Democracy and the Informed Public aims to:

Understand the dynamics of Americans’ access to information about risks in everyday life, rights guaranteed by law, essential services, and civic responsibilities.
Explore both persistent barriers in information pathways as well as new paths and opportunities to create a better-informed public.
Examine the information needs, preferences, problems, and perspectives of workers, consumers, citizens and others in the community whose welfare is at stake.
Analyze the capacity of individuals and collective groups to act on information in ways that affect private and public institutions in ways consistent with the public interest.
Examine the causes and dynamics of information inequality to understand why some people receive information they can understand as well as inequalities in their capacity to act on or receive responses to their actions.
Seek common learning across a wide variety of policy areas and to develop a common lens of information and the action cycles that arise from them across many domains of public policy in order to create a platform for both broad research and the dissemination of knowledge arising from the project.

Meet the Team

Archon Fung

Director, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation;
Co-Director of the Program on Democracy and the Informed Public;
Winthrop Laflin McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government

David Weil

Visiting Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School;
Co-Director of the Program on Democracy and the Informed Public;
Samuel F. and Rose B. Gingold Chair in Human Development and Professor of Economics,
School of Social Sciences and Social Policy, Brandeis University

Jessica Creighton

Jessica Creighton

Program Director

Lilian Wainaina

Program Coordinator for the Democracy and the Informed Public Program

Tova Wang