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
Democracy and the Informed Public
An informed public is essential to a healthy democracy.
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
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
Program Director
Lilian Wainaina
Program Coordinator for the Democracy and the Informed Public Program
Tova Wang
Director of Research Projects in Democratic Practice
Farwa Akbari
Research Assistant, Democracy and the Informed Public
Hable Fitsum
Research Assistant, Democracy and the Informed Public
Lezlie Hilario
Research Assistant, Democracy and the Informed Public
Joe Horner
Research Assistant, Democracy and the Informed Public
Claire Simon
Research Assistant, Democracy and the Informed Public
Sada Spence
Research Assistant, Democracy and the Informed Public
Revati Vaidya
Research Assistant, Democracy and the Informed Public
Marissa Young
Research Assistant, Democracy and the Informed Public
Related Resources
Commentary
What Boston’s World Cup Summer Showed Us About Sports and Civic Life
Thanks to the World Cup, Boston had an unforgettable summer. In this commentary, the Ash Center’s Tova Wang and former New England Patriots executive Scott Pioli break down how the city can harness that energy to build stronger communities and transform local sports culture year-round.
Feature
Democracy and the Informed Public 2026 Summer Reading List
Archon Fung, co-director of the Program on Democracy and the Informed Public, shares his top book recommendations for the summer.
Paper
Building Capacity to Use Social Media: How Election Officials Can Leverage Content Creation to Provide Accurate Voter Information
As traditional news declines, content creators play a growing role as information sources. This paper proposes frameworks for effective collaboration between creators and election officials and offers recommendations for officials to develop their own social media content.
Policy Brief
Paradise Revisited
Technology has enriched the lives of Americans with novel communication choices. It has also made it more difficult to reach everyone in emergencies. In a new policy brief, Mary W. Graham, senior fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, explores this new paradox of the digital transition.
Article
New Forms of Targeted Transparency
A summary of the March 30, 2026 event that welcomed Gerrit von Zedlitz to present on new and less-studied forms of targeted transparency—how they work, when they emerge, and whether they actually make a difference.
Feature
Ash Center Launches New Program on Democracy and the Informed Public
The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard Kennedy School, has announced the launch of a new Program on Democracy and the Informed Public, a major initiative designed to strengthen democratic governance by improving how people access, understand, and use essential information.
Commentary
Information Inequality Can Be a Matter of Life or Death
In this paper, Mary W. Graham, Ash Center Senior Fellow and longtime co-director of the Center’s former Transparency Policy Project, explores the unintended information inequities that weaken the nation’s vital health and safety alerts. By examining three policies — wildfire alerts, drinking water reports, and auto safety recalls — she suggests common sources of inequality problems and steps policy makers are taking to remedy them.
Article
Exploring Democratic Deliberation in Public Health: Bridging Division and Enhancing Community Engagement
Trust between citizens and the institutions that govern them is essential for effective policy, especially in public health. However, against a backdrop of escalating political polarization and rising levels of misinformation, there has been a stark decline in public confidence in government and health institutions.
Article
Can Transparency and Technology Make Us Healthier?
Archon Fung and Elena Fogotto describe a new Commonwealth Fund–supported project examining whether smartphones, apps, and wearables can create a better model of transparency: one where patients not only access information but generate and share their own health data through platforms like Smart Patients and patient-powered research networks. The project will study these platforms’ features, how they empower patients, and whether their benefits reach all users or mainly the tech-savvy.
Article
Want To Know If A Job Is Safe? The Government Should Let You Find Out
Wouldn’t it make sense to find out—before applying for a job in a dangerous industry—which firms have a safe track record and which don’t? The Obama administration thought so and proposed an online system for accessing workplace safety data. The Trump administration disagreed, delaying it indefinitely—a decision that raises injury risk for thousands of workers.
David Michaels and David Weil argue that OSHA-driven transparency can push dangerous employers to improve: making injury data public would likely “nudge” them into better protecting their workers.
Article
Our Desperate Need to Save U.S. Democracy From Ourselves
Archon Fung argues that American democracy is eroding because everyone—campaigns, politicians, journalists, social media platforms, and citizens—pursues narrow self-interest instead of protecting it. He points to attack ads, gerrymandering, policy that favors the wealthy, “fake news,” and low voter turnout as evidence.
Article
How To Improve Workplace Safety
A new OSHA rule, taking effect in 2017, will require large employers and those in high-risk industries to electronically report injury and illness data. Elena Fagotto argues the added transparency will help employers benchmark safety performance and let OSHA target its limited inspection resources more effectively.
Article
Do Nutritional Labels Work?
The FDA’s new nutrition labels will more clearly show added sugar, calorie counts, and realistic serving sizes, and are being praised by health advocates as key to fighting obesity. However, Elena Fagotto argues these improved labels may not actually help the people who need them most.
Article
A Government Both More Secretive and More Open
The U.S. Government has been hiding secrets — and handing us the files to catch it. Mary Graham discusses two rival books, one wild truth: the same Cold War decades that built America’s secrecy machine also sparked the fight for FOIA, honest food labels, and the public’s “right to know.” Turns out secrecy and sunlight grow side by side.
Article
Too Much Information
Transparency isn’t magic: menu calorie counts and credit card disclosures actually change behavior, but sex offender registries and privacy policies often backfire or go ignored — the difference is whether people have real choices and the information is presented simply, argue Elena Fagotto and Archon Fung.