Eric Gordon

How and why the current public engagement model has run its course—and how AI-assisted listening at scale can help.

We often assume that citizen participation is the biggest barrier to effective representation. In fact, governments are sitting on mountains of civic data that they cannot effectively process. In How Institutions Listen, Eric Gordon shows how we can marshal this wealth of data with human-centered AI—making sense of the available civic data, acting on it, and, in turn, restoring public trust. Bridging theory and practice, he introduces the concept of “listening at scale”—an institutional capacity to listen that involves not only gathering input but discerning, responding, and evolving in dialogue with the public. The book tracks trends in digital governance, from open data to civic tech dashboards, and critiques how contemporary tools can harm communities by reducing their participation to data extraction.