Cameron Hickey
Two decades documenting how the world works.Now building the instruments to measure and repair it.
What the work is doing right now
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Consumer chatbots now answer the civic questions people used to ask a librarian. This grades every answer against time-versioned ground truth.
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The words civic groups use don't land the way they assume. Measured across positivity, ownership, and togetherness.
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Public libraries, community foundations, a crochet group in Kentucky — structured conversations where people already gather.
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Leading NCoC, where the current focus is what happens to civic information as people start asking AI systems the questions they used to ask a search engine — measured directly by the Civic AI Audit.
Also: rebuilding the researcher access that platforms dismantled, following the Knight-Georgetown Better Access framework; supporting the independent census science committee after its federal predecessor was eliminated; and scaling the American Conversation Project ahead of America’s 250th.
One career, two acts
Census Quality Reinforcement
When the government dissolved its census science advisors, this reconstituted them.
Civic AI Audit
Grading what chatbots tell Americans about their own government.
Civic Language Explorer & Workbench
The words we use for democracy don't land the way we think they do.
American Conversation Project
Infrastructure for Americans to talk to each other on purpose.
CandiData
Every elected official in America, mapped to the accounts they actually post from.
International civic data infrastructure
Political actor databases for countries that don't have them.
Civic Health Index
A national instrument panel for how civic life is actually doing.
CivicLens
Software that watches what the platforms won't show you.
Contrast Agent
Looking for the machinery behind inauthentic activity.
The junk news investigation
Series Producer
What is the NewsTracker?
Producer, Writer
The Nuclear Option
Producer, Cinematographer
NewsTracker
The newsroom tool that turned a story into a discipline.
15 Years of Terror
Producer, Cinematographer
Nuclear Meltdown Disaster
Producer, Cinematographer
Libya: Trials of Spring
Producer, Cinematographer
Inside Animal Minds: Dogs and Super Senses
Producer, Cinematographer
Inside Animal Minds: Who's the Smartest?
Producer, Cinematographer
Why Planes Vanish
Producer, Cinematographer
Manhunt: Boston Bombers
Producer, Cinematographer
Megastorm Aftermath
Producer, Cinematographer
Mind of a Rampage Killer
Producer, Cinematographer
Science and technology reporting with Miles O'Brien
Producer, Cinematographer, Editor
Reporting with Soledad O'Brien
Producer, Cinematographer
Documentary work for PBS, BBC, Channel 4, Al Jazeera and others
Director, Producer, Cinematographer, Editor
Selected work
All projects →CivicLens
Software that watches what the platforms won't show you.
Civic AI Audit
Grading what chatbots tell Americans about their own government.
CandiData
Every elected official in America, mapped to the accounts they actually post from.
American Conversation Project
Infrastructure for Americans to talk to each other on purpose.
Civic Health Index
A national instrument panel for how civic life is actually doing.
Civic Language Explorer & Workbench
The words we use for democracy don't land the way we think they do.
Census Quality Reinforcement
When the government dissolved its census science advisors, this reconstituted them.
About
Civic technology executive who builds the data infrastructure democracy runs on. As CEO of the National Conference on Citizenship — a nonprofit chartered by Congress — he leads the research, product, and engineering teams that measure civic health and monitor the information environment at national scale.
He founded the Algorithmic Transparency Institute and created Junkipedia, now CivicLens, a social listening platform used by The Washington Post, Reuters, the Financial Times, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, the Carter Center, and Amnesty International — whose TikTok research with the institute became a formal regulatory complaint in France under the Digital Services Act.
Before that he spent fifteen years as an Emmy Award–winning producer and cinematographer for PBS NewsHour, NOVA, and The New York Times. He moved from documenting the erosion of the information commons to building tools to defend it.
Get in touch
For speaking, press, collaboration, or anything about the work above.