
Neil Seeman is the co-founder and publisher of Sutherland House Experts as well as editorial advisor to the companion press, Sutherland House Books. Sutherland House Experts is a co-publishing imprint dedicated to experts, seeking to advance a narrative of lasting impact.
During the Investigative Journalism Bureau’s inaugural project Generation Distress, Seeman served as the founder and CEO of RIWI, which was integral to collecting the opinions of more than 6,000 Canadian and American university and college students for the project.
- What drives your work?
I am driven by a commitment to amplifying the quiet voices of people who need to be heard – in order to drive effective public policy, innovation, and to build trust in a society where trust is decaying and fragile. As co-founder of the Innovation Cell, I wanted to shine a light on the needs and desires of patients left out of decision-making; as founder of RIWI, I was driven to monitor and engage quiet voices from across the world whose needs are often missing from important debates about public policy, especially public health and mental health policy. And at Sutherland House Experts, I seek out quiet experts with untold, engaging stories. These authors prosecute narratives born of lived experience and applied expertise.
- How does RIWI’s model of gathering trend intelligence differ from traditional methods?
The RIWI machine, built on the architecture of the internet (the Domain Name System, or “DNS”), learns every day and functions based on people stumbling into a RIWI domain that is no longer, or never was, commercially active. There are hundreds of millions of these domains, they change and rise in number every day, on any device. RIWI controls access to a huge, changing dynamic pool of such ‘clean use’ domains. The domains host surveys that may arrive at you from broken links to hypertext on diverse blogs or digital media you consume. That’s because once a web domain goes commercially vacant all the links associated with that domain potentially fall into the fast-growing RIWI ocean of domains capable of inviting you to be RIWI’ed or subject to a RIWI ad test or survey. You anonymously choose to respond. Unlike traditional online survey approaches, the technology’s algorithms ensure that anyone on the web in an area of interest has an equal chance of being randomly exposed to the questions. Also, unlike government or panel surveys, all data are gathered anonymously, reducing social desirability bias and thus eliminating a major barrier to participation. Furthermore, respondents are not incentivized to participate in any way. We randomly engage a new, random set of unique respondents each day. So far, more than 1.6 billion interviewees from 229 countries and territories have participated in a RIWI ad test or survey.
- “The company has specialized in gathering public perspectives on stigmatized topics like access to mental health services, as well as terrorism, gang activity and the treatment of women, girls and LGBTQ communities around the world. Walk us through some of those findings.
In 2011, we went on record for tracking the abrupt change of sentiment on the streets of Egypt prior to the fall of the Mubarak regime. That took me and the world by shock. In 2017, RIWI predictors (people who answer RIWI questions, this time run in partnership with Viacom) successfully predicted the outcome of the Australian same-sex marriage referendum. For us, a lot of this work for which we are recognized internationally in the area of socially stigmatized topics comes both from commercial demand and from decades of expertise studying the many elements of anonymous interaction in an online setting that are relevant to bias mitigation. Stigma is a cross-cutting lens that applies to all our data collection work. Whether it is in the field of finance, humanitarian aid impact or consumer goods trends, our systems and methods ensure that the “RIWI machine” is bias-aware and built to reach as diverse an audience as possible in order to mitigate the bias that inexorably affects the analysis of all events.
- Most recently, RIWI collected the opinions of more than 6,000 Canadian and American university and college students for the IJB’s inaugural project Generation Distress. Why was this project of interest and what did you discover?
Prior to Generation Distress, the prevalence, intensity and trends of major mental illness at university and college campuses across North America had not been assess using a system to measure the phenomenon at scale. I was motivated by addressing the measurement gap, and by the need to overlay the data with journalistic stories that could help reduce stigma surrounding mental health needs for parents, students, university leaders, and the broader public. I learned there is wide disparity in accessibility and availability of counselling services on campuses despite intensifying student demand. The variability in access and availability is hindered by social stigma and self-stigma – which can be reduced through long-form journalism that offers readers a window into the ‘heartbeat and humanity’ of the lives of people upended by mental illness.
To see the RIWI analysis and interpretation of the mental health work, visit here.
- What was your experience with this model of collaborative research between academics and journalists?
In academia, we call outreach to the public “knowledge translation”. At the IJB, unique in the world from everything I’ve seen, we combine the expertise of academia with the expertise of long-form journalism, data journalism, visualization, storytelling, podcasting, interviews, and solution-based journalism. That combination is a force multiplier. It holds institutions to account; it helps academics appreciate new avenues of investigation. And, through that compounding success, we are seeing a growing ecosystem of partners and academics come to the IJB to support us in our ambitions to tell stories untold.
- How does this work connect with the groundbreaking mental health work of your parents, University of Toronto Professors Mary Seeman and Philip Seeman?
This journey reminded me of what my parents –– long-time University of Toronto researchers Mary Seeman, OC, MD, DSc, Professor Emerita of Psychiatry, and Philip Seeman, OC, MD, PhD, DSc, Professor Emeritus of Neuropharmacology –– taught me about the foundation of knowledge. Knowledge-seeking is based on humility and asking questions –– always asking questions –– of diverse people with different views, and listening diligently. It is very hard to listen and ask questions well, and this is a process of continuous learning.