Parlia
Parlia was an experiment exploring how news media can create new ways for people to engage with societal and political issues and better understand perspectives different from their own. The project was rooted in previous IN/LAB insights indicating that young people see a role for news media beyond informing, including acting as a bridge between different perspectives and contributing to greater understanding between people.
Together with the founders of the self-discovery engine Parlia, Turi Munthe and J. Paul , IN/LAB developed a Swedish version of the platform to test how young people experienced a format centred around engaging with different perspectives. Users could respond to statements on topics such as Swedish politics, relationships and the future, and then explore how people from different demographic groups had responded.
Through the xperiment, we wanted to explore whether making different perspectives more visible could encourageuriosity, reflection, and greater understanding of viewpoints different from one’s own.
PROJECT ELEMENTS IN SHORT
Concept and experiment design: Defined the purpose, research questions and overall approach for exploring Parlia.
Platform and content development: Worked with Turi Munthe and J. Paul to adapt and develop a Swedish version of the Parlia platform, which included statements and commentary relevant to the Swedish context.
Response collection and recruitment: Explored different approaches to populate the platform with responses, including recruitment through an Omni ad, personal networks, and a visit to a local church senior gathering.
Test & user research: Conducted a small-scale test of the Swedish platform with 10 young people during summer 2026. Through interviews, we gathered qualitative feedback on how participants experienced responding to statements, seeing how different groups had answered, and encountering perspectives different from their own.
Analysis: Analysed the test material to identify learnings about how participants experienced the format and its potential to encourage engagement with and understanding of different perspectives.
FINDINGS FROM USER TESTING
Parlia breaks the passive loop of algorithmic agreement
Participants described mainstream social feeds as highly personalised environments that repeatedly confirm what they already believe. This creates comfort, but also uncertainty: when the same position appears again and again, it becomes difficult to tell whether it reflects broad public opinion or simply the logic of the feed.
Parlia changes that sequence. Participants first take a position themselves and only then see how views are distributed across the public and across demographic groups. That active step makes the encounter feel less like being served an opinion and more like testing one. It opens up a broader, less binary picture of disagreement without requiring participants to enter a hostile debate.
Supporting participant quotes
Women 22: “On social media, I have a strong algorithm: about 98% of the time it gives me what I already think.”
Man, 18: “If you form an opinion online, it will give you more and more of the same. You can end up in a circle where lots of people only agree with you.”
Man, 21: “Sometimes I question the algorithms and feeds we get nowadays, and how specialised they are for everyone. I can scroll through Instagram and see five reels that agree with me, and then wonder whether that really means I am part of the majority.”
Woman, 22: “Partly because I answered neutral myself, but also because there are different opinions and no one is choosing which opinions are relevant or important.” Interviewer: “So there was no algorithm?”“Exactly.”
Woman, 26: “It is really easy to think you are right when all your friends think the same way. You kind of forget to think outside the box.”
Man, 23: “You might get to see more sides of the coin. An algorithm chooses which part of the coin you see; here you can see what everyone thinks and how different demographics respond.”
Structured reasoning makes political disagreement easier to engage with
Participants contrasted Parlia with the comment sections they encounter on TikTok and Instagram. Those spaces were often described as fast, reactive and emotionally charged: a place where people perform certainty, attack one another or reduce an issue to a short slogan. The result is not only poor discussion, but a reason to disengage from it altogether.
In Parlia, the format and length of the comments made disagreement feel more deliberate. Participants noticed arguments that explained their reasoning, included facts, and sometimes acknowledged limitations in their own position. This did not remove disagreement; it changed its tone. The value was a calmer space in which different views could be read as arguments to understand, rather than as attacks to defeat.
Supporting participant quotes
Woman, 22: “So much online has to be quick and make you react; it becomes an opposing side. This felt calmer and more sensible - better for discussion.”
Woman, 26: “It was very different from Instagram comments, which are often short and hateful. These were well-written paragraphs that addressed different points of view.”
Man, 19: “People were not just shouting their opinions like in an Instagram or TikTok comment. They set out their arguments, and also wrote about the downsides of them.”
Man, 18: “The comments in Parlia feel much longer and more detailed than comments on TikTok. It feels more like the people speaking here know what they are talking about.”
Man, 20: “You hear an upset person arguing against a political profile, and there are lots of emotions. This was more fact-based. There were two shorter comments, one for and one against.”
Anonymity reduces the social cost of being honest
For several participants, public social media carries a clear social risk. Likes, reposts and comments are visible to friends, classmates and acquaintances, which can make an unpopular or sensitive view feel costly to express. Some described holding back not because they had nothing to say, but because public participation can feel exposing, performative or socially unsafe.
Parlia’s anonymity was therefore more than a privacy feature. It gave participants room to answer sensitive questions without having to manage an audience or defend a public identity. That lowers the pressure to conform and makes it easier to explore a view before deciding how strongly to hold it. The safety comes from being able to engage without being personally singled out.
Supporting participant quotes
Woman, 24: “I do not actively take part on social media. It is largely about social norms, because everything you do there is public. Sometimes it feels uncool to stand out that much.”
Woman, 21: “You cannot really be anonymous in the same way there. If I like a post from the Left Party, everyone can see it. But if I say, ‘I think the state should run all schools,’ nobody can see that. The opinion is anonymous.”
Man, 23: “Partly because it is anonymous. This is a forum where I feel you can be open and honest without negatively affecting anyone else, and answer how you want without needing lots of prior knowledge.”
Woman, 26: “I think this opened such a safe space for dialogue because I did not feel that people were attacking or racist. It made me think that I should always try to understand the other side.”
Man, 21: “What people think and what they say in front of the camera are often very different. The anonymity here helps people be more direct about what they are trying to say.”
Demographic data replaces stereotypes with a more nuanced picture of society
Participants often arrived with broad assumptions about how political groups, generations or genders think. These assumptions are reinforced by the way social platforms frame public opinion as opposing camps: left versus right, young versus old, women versus men. That framing makes disagreement seem total and can obscure areas of overlap within and between groups.
Seeing demographic breakdowns in Parlia challenged these simplified pictures. Participants found shared views where they expected division and variation within groups they had assumed were uniform. The effect was not that differences disappeared, but that they became more specific and more human. Instead of treating a group as a single opinion, participants could see a distribution of positions and reconsider their own assumptions.
Supporting participant quotes
Woman, 26: “I consider myself a leftist, and there were many things that people on the right also agreed with me on. It makes you see that you are not completely different, as the world would have you believe.”
Woman, 23: “Not everything you see on social media is true. The men you see on TikTok are not the general picture. I came away with a changed view of men: more men were positive about, or understood, the danger of climate change.”
Woman, 22: “You might think the older generation believes one thing and younger people something completely different. But perhaps the difference is not that large; at a basic level, people may think similarly.”
Man, 21: “Being able to understand why people think the way they do across several policies or statements gives you a really balanced perspective of what is happening in the world. It is more three-dimensional, nuanced and balanced.”
Woman, 24: “People are different even within the political positions we think they have. It was exciting to see that there was not one shared opinion for everyone in a group.”
Woman, 21: “You see them on the street or on the ballot and think, ‘This is crazy - can someone think like that?’ Then you realise, ‘Oh, we think the same thing.’ If anything, I am beginning to understand them more now.”