As an attempted antidote to sociopolitical polarization in its country - particularly all the hateful logjams that play out online - the German national news site Zeit Online has developed a seemingly simple mechanism of matching up people who live near each other but have different views on policy, and encouraging them to meet offline to hash out their disagreements. In its inaugural edition, about 12,000 people completed Zeit Online's short survey of yes-or-no questions around politically divisive issues. "We wanted a way to make sure we could bring together people who think differently about things that happen in politics and in society, so that they would still be able to talk to each other, and not just turn their backs on each other or scream at each other on Twitter," Maria Exner, a deputy editor-in-chief of Zeit Online who was part of the earliest ideas stage for My Country Talks, told me. There's a chance My Country Talks could end up with too many people who answer similarly. The matching "Algorithm," as it's called, is really a math problem with two basic parameters: It will only pair people who answered several questions differently on the screening questionnaire and who live within 20 kilometers of each other. Morgenbladet, which Jenssen said has a readership in Norway similar to Die Zeit's in Germany, will be running a pilot version of My Country Talks later in the fall in partnership with a sibling business newspaper and the country's public broadcaster NRK. NRK worked with an outside institute to survey people across Norway to get a sense of what the most divisive topics in the country seemed to be, and organizers are still deciding which questions to ask for the pilot event. People working in government in different countries have also reached out to the My Country Talks team for advice on the approach. Read more