Martín Carcasson's Avatar

Martín Carcasson

@mcarcasson.bsky.social

Professor of Communication Studies at Colorado State University. I direct the CSU Center for Public Deliberation (www.cpd.colostate.edu), which is a nonpartisan organization focused on improving the quality of public discussion and local problem-solving.

722 Followers  |  259 Following  |  66 Posts  |  Joined: 11.10.2023  |  1.7502

Latest posts by mcarcasson.bsky.social on Bluesky

carcasson - global gridlock.pdf

Way back in grad school, I used this tool to analyze how US presidents from 1988 to 2000 talked about climate change, and how we could potentially reframe things. (though I've adjusted things a bit on spheres) drive.google.com/file/d/1ADtO...

16.07.2025 16:04 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

The public sphere combines them all, and it is always an interesting point of analysis of which one(s) dominate(s). Biofuels seems like a clear example of the political frame (& economic for a small group) somehow dominating science & common sense. But the more we learn about it, that can change.

16.07.2025 15:48 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

So in argumentation there is a tool we use that talks about how argument works in different technical spheres (the primary ones are politics, science, law, economics, and morality). What counts as a good argument is different in each sphere. Conflict often when people focus on different spheres....

16.07.2025 15:44 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

I agree, but I would also argue that sometimes "virtue signaling" was seeing an issue through too simplistic of a frame. Most issues involve many underlying values, & you can proclaim you are virtuous by simplifying it to one, thus implying people that disagree must be against that value/are evil.

12.07.2025 18:13 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Would be nice...

25.06.2025 16:53 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Collaborative Problem Solving with Martín Carcasson - The Great Battlefield Podcast Martín Carcasson joins The Great Battlefield podcast to talk about his career in academia and his role as Director at the Colorado State University Center for Public Deliberation, where he trains stud...

Enjoyed my conversation with Nathanial Pearlman for his Great Battlefield podcast, talking about the work of the CPD and bringing people together to address their shared problems. Check it out (and his earlier conversations with lots of interesting guests).
greatbattlefield.com/episode/coll...

23.06.2025 19:27 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

local journalism matters.

12.06.2025 22:17 — 👍 3    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Listening to Cornell West and Robert George start off the UCCS Conference on Civic Discourse in Colorado Springs.

05.06.2025 16:54 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Somehow haven't heard "No news is bad news." I'll have to remember that.

04.06.2025 14:51 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Did it cite studies that don't exist?

04.06.2025 03:14 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Been reading more lately about how new tech platforms & apps are developed to flip the script from the typical "outrage industrial complex" workings of most social media & actually work to bring people together and incentivize quality engagement. This essay provides a nice summary of those efforts.

30.05.2025 18:27 — 👍 2    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0
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Thwarting conflict profiteers to save the republic Over several decades, fringe ideas have grown in popularity to reach the crescendo of noise we have today. Truth and facts are routinely dismissed by half the country (progressive and conservative!) a...

Article that I am pulling the term from is here, from @debilyn.bsky.social thefulcrum.us/money-politi...

28.05.2025 23:11 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0
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Here is how I see our current challenge (your point fits with information disorder, which combines overwhelming information overload with a crippled ability to process it and make important distinctions btw spectacle and substance).

28.05.2025 15:49 — 👍 5    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0
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Briand's Practical Politics provided an early blueprint for the CPD.

28.05.2025 14:38 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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I keep on playing with the word choices, and added a new bullet this morning, but getting pretty close to locking these in for my book.

24.05.2025 13:32 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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One of the most important books during grad school for me was Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s The New Rhetoric. It taught me how to think more deeply about values and their role in individual & community decision making (early seeds that led to all my work on wicked problems & polarity management)

23.05.2025 14:36 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

As I work on my book, I wrote up a bit of my intellectual history, thinking about the academic disciplines and practitioner specialties I've bounced around for the last 20 years. Part of this was also thinking about the most influential books during that journey.

23.05.2025 14:34 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 2    📌 0

Seems like he could have just had AI write the books really quickly to cover up the mistake.

20.05.2025 15:41 — 👍 2    🔁 2    💬 1    📌 0

You may need to round up the Newies for another fight.

17.05.2025 22:07 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Why The Qataris Are Happy To Dump Their 747 On Trump The president may be thirsting for a new four-engine jumbo jet, but many governments and royal families are unloading their fuel-guzzling palaces in the sky.

Reminds me of the Paul Harvey and his “and now for the rest of the story” bits.

www.forbes.com/sites/jeremy...

15.05.2025 17:04 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 1

Pretty sure my favorite warning in pharmaceutical commericials is "do not take if allergic."

10.05.2025 02:47 — 👍 6    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 created the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. I reread it today; nothing in the law allows a president to defund PBS and NPR. In fact, Congress specifically sought to insulate public media from political pressure.

03.05.2025 01:42 — 👍 20927    🔁 7348    💬 400    📌 371

Seems like it’s trolling to see the “libs” freak out (and often a red herring to distract from other things). Freaking out on it helps it serve its purpose (just like his rally). Horrible that trolling is a governing model, but that is where we are.

29.04.2025 23:47 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Citizens’ assemblies have earned a significant new seal of approval.

The UK's top political podcast „The Rest is Politics“ stands out as a running indictment of electoral representation as a system of government, implicitly at least.

www.linkedin.com/pulse/citize...

#CitizensAssembly

29.04.2025 08:42 — 👍 4    🔁 4    💬 0    📌 0
Civic Assemblies in Action: Lessons on Civic Engagement from Fort Collins
YouTube video by New America Civic Assemblies in Action: Lessons on Civic Engagement from Fort Collins

Great webinar about the civic assembly the CPD is assisting with here in Fort Collins. I'm not very involved -- I'm on sabbatical -- but my colleagues Katie Knobloch & Sabrina Slagowski-Tipton have been killing it working w American Public Trust & Healthy Democracy www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxc3...

25.04.2025 02:23 — 👍 4    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 1

Fellow authors, I love you, and I know it feels like we don’t have a choice, but B&N and Am*zon both scheduled sales this week to preempt Independent Bookstore Day, a hugely vital source of income for indie bookstores. Please don’t promote their sales; please promote your local indie this week.

23.04.2025 23:52 — 👍 5249    🔁 2237    💬 61    📌 127

So when efforts at managing misinformation involvedcensorship (deleting/not allowing certain opinions), I can see problems there. But seems like most efforts (like what Facebook was doing) was providing counterspeech, which should be strongly supported. Free speech cannot be free from criticism.

24.04.2025 00:19 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

I see it primarily as the conflating of censorship and criticism. Censorship (not allowing certain ideas to be expressed) is very often bad, but criticism (pushing back on ideas) is important, particularly to deal with the bad information that gets through because of free speech.

24.04.2025 00:11 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0
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Conversation around this vinn diagram.

10.04.2025 19:10 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Listening and Asking Good Questions - When We Disagree Martin Carcasson, the director of the Center for Public Deliberation at Colorado State University, shares a debate about the value of, well, debate.  While debate at its best sharpens ideas and e...

Really enjoyed my conversation with Michael on his podcast.
The conversation focused on something I've been developing for awhile, important both to college campuses and our communities: making some distinctions between the terms debate, dialogue, and deliberation www.buzzsprout.com/2311101/epis...

10.04.2025 19:09 — 👍 3    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 0

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