Polarization and toxic division are on the rise in the US and globally. Concurrently, we are witnessing a loneliness epidemic, in which growing numbers feel isolated from others in their communities. Online platforms have been implicated for their role in these trends, increasing intergroup distrust and in breeding feelings of isolation. But while digital platforms have the ability to divide and distance, they also present a tremendous opportunity to foster connection and social cohesion.

A growing number of tech professionals and online stewards recognize that opportunity (for a variety of principled, financial and regulatory reasons) and are investing in building, rebuilding and governing online spaces that connect rather than divide. But to do so successfully, it is essential to know what designs (features, interventions, etc.) are effective in producing those prosocial outcomes. Platform developers can have the best intentions in designing online spaces, but without knowledge of what designs work, those intentions may not lead to the outcomes they desire and could even backfire.

Prosocial Design Network has played a role in bridging research to practice for five years by building a curated library of evidence-based design solutions that aggregates and distills public research, creating a resource for prosocial-minded technologists that removes the need for them to "research the research.".

Yet we have discovered in those five years that an equal - or greater - challenge to adopting evidence-based design is how little public research there is and, among that research, how much is ill-tuned to technologists' needs, processes and constraints, rendering it inactionable.

This project will catalyze actionable, practice-informed research to guide platforms how to design for connection and social cohesion. It will do so centered around two researcher-practitioner events ("convenings") that will directly result in practice-informed research projects, in part funded by this grant, and that will serve as launching pads to model and promote yet more practice-informed research.

Each convening will bring together fifteen practitioners and fifteen researchers, centered around an area of practice - for example, building Mastodon sites or moderating online communities on Reddit - for a full day of working sessions that build toward a practice-informed research agenda. In order spark cross-sector insights and collaborations and catalyze actionable research that can be immediately put into practice, participants will be eligible to apply for research grants, from a total pool of $50,000, that contribute evidence of the effectiveness of design solutions co-generated during the convening.

As a direct outcome of the convenings, we anticipate that researchers will conduct roughly 10 practice-informed research studies that build evidence of the effectiveness of prosocial design solutions that foster social cohesion in online spaces, and that several of those tested design solutions will be adopted by builders and stewards of online spaces. We also anticipate that the 30 practitioners who attend the convenings will adopt other research insights into their designs and that, likewise, the 30 researchers will use practitioner insights from the gatherings to inform their research agendas.

Our intention, however, is not to merely influence the work of the 60 participants and to support research projects that are immediately generated from the convenings. Our broader goal is to have an impact on the research, technology and philanthropy communities by amplifying the potential of practice-informed research and shifting research culture toward building practice-informed research agendas that help technologists build healthier platforms. We will do so by amplifying the convenings and their research outputs to socialize the need for practice-informed research and raise the profile of successful research projects. Activities to that end will include:
-Publishing three reports, two that summarize the research results and successful impact of each convening and one that offers a blueprint for cultivating practice-informed research;
-Hosting two online Expos that present and elevate the research funded by the convenings; and
-A communications campaign - including blogs, newsletters, micro-messaging - that socializes how practice-informed research is needed and attainable.

If this project is successful, in addition to the direct outcomes described above, we should see greater investment of time and resources across research and philanthropy toward producing practice-informed research that answers the most pressing questions of how to build online spaces that connect rather than divide - and that put those solutions into practice.