Stefaan Verhulst

How crowdfunding is shaping the war in Ukraine

Curated on July 25, 2022July 27, 2022 by Stefaan Verhulst

The Economist: “This month Aerorozvidka, a Ukrainian drone unit, celebrated the acquisition of four Chinese-made DJI Phantom 3 drones, provided by a German donor. The group, founded in 2014 after the Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine and annexation of Crimea, is led by civilians. The gift is just one example of crowdfunding in Russia’s latest war against Ukraine. Citizens from both sides are supplying much-needed equipment to the front lines. What is the impact of these donations, and how do the two countries differ in their approach?

Private citizens have chipped in to help in times of war for centuries. A writing tablet found near Hadrian’s Wall in northern England mentions a gift of sandals, socks and underwear for Roman soldiers. During the first world war America’s government asked civilians to knit warm clothing for troops. But besides such small morale-boosting efforts, some schemes to rally civilians have proved strikingly productive. During the second world war Britain introduced a “Spitfire Fund”, encouraging civilian groups to raise the £12,600 (£490,000, or $590,000, in today’s money) needed to build the top-of-the-range fighter. Individual contributors could buy wings, machineguns or even a rivet, for six old pence (two and a half modern ones) apiece. The scheme raised around £13m in total—enough for more than 1,000 aircraft (of a total of 20,000 built)…(More)”.

The end of participatory destination governance as we thought to know it

Curated on July 25, 2022July 25, 2022 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Eva C. Erdmenger: “In response to rising anti-tourism movements, the role of residents in destination governance has experienced a revival in tourism research. Participatory destination governance approaches have been advocated as problem-solvers for increasing conflicts, yet their implementation is still lacking. Besides a considerable amount of positivist research drafting the best participatory governance model, the socially constructed perspective of those who are supposed to participate has been widely neglected until now. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to reveal residents’ views on participating in tourism activities and destination governance processes. In pursuit of this, a mixed qualitative research method of focus groups and photo elicitation has been deployed in Copenhagen and Munich in 2020 following a social constructionist epistemology. The findings confirm that residents are not willing to participate in destination governance per se due to a lack of time, access, awareness, prioritization, knowledge, qualification, and opportunities. At the same time, residents were interested in a socio-cultural exchange with like-minded tourists and are generally proud to share their city. Ultimately, the perspectives of residents on tourism should be considered for the implementation of an inclusive urban destination governance. Via psychological, political, and social empowerment, destination governance should foster residents’ (1) motivation to connect with other city users (including tourists); (2) opportunity to influence local tourism development if they are affected by it; and (3) ability to benefit from local tourism (at least indirectly). Ultimately, by understanding how and to what extent residents’ are actually willing to participate in tourism and its governance enables tourism professionals to proactively realize a more resilient destination development while mitigating potential social conflicts caused by the renaissance of (over)tourism…(More)”.

Use of Data in Public Sector Human Resources and Workforce Management: Solutions and Challenges

Curated on July 25, 2022July 25, 2022 by Stefaan Verhulst

White Paper by Katherine Barrett and Richard Greene: “Across the U.S., a growing number of cities, counties, and states are using data across agencies to improve management and make decisions—and HR and payroll professionals in particular stand to gain much from this data to help drive staffing and other strategic decisions. In this white paper, industry experts Katherine Barrett and Richard Greene take a deep dive into both the benefits and challenges of using data with real-life examples of how data has been instrumental in building a resilient HR apparatus.

Data can be used for positive change that includes shorter new-hire onboarding, fairer overtime distribution, and even improved employee safety. However, obstacles to using data in an optimal way to improve HR management, such as insufficient funding, lack of training, and lack of software access, can keep government organizations from making the most of all it can offer.

Despite barriers, many organizations are moving toward creating a culture that is conducive to the use of the data their computers can create. Examples of how data and data analysis can transform workforce management practices include:

Studying existing hiring and onboarding data to facilitate more effective and efficient administration
Tracking turnover data to document employee departures and reveal information about those most at risk of sudden departure
Reducing overtime by using the data to ensure fairer distribution of overtime
Uncovering equity issues by assessing and comparing the demographic makeup of a workforce to see how closely it matches their population…(More)”

Towards Human-Centric Algorithmic Governance

Curated on July 25, 2022July 25, 2022 by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog by Zeynep Engin: “It is no longer news to say that the capabilities afforded by Data Science, AI and their associated technologies (such as Digital Twins, Smart Cities, Ledger Systems and other platforms) are poised to revolutionise governance, radically transforming the way democratic processes work, citizen services are provided, and justice is delivered. Emerging applications range from the way election campaigns are run and how crises at population level are managed (e.g. pandemics) to everyday operations like simple parking enforcement and traffic management, and to decisions at critical individual junctures, such as hiring or sentencing decisions. What it means to be a ‘human’ is also a hot topic for both scholarly and everyday discussions, since our societal interactions and values are also shifting fast in an increasingly digital and data-driven world.

As a millennial who grew up in a ‘developing’ economy in the ’90s and later established a cross-sector career in a ‘developed’ economy in the fields of data for policy and algorithmic governance, I believe I can credibly claim a pertinent, hands-on experience of the transformation from a fully analogue world into a largely digital one. I started off trying hard to find sufficient printed information to refer to in my term papers at secondary school, gradually adapting to trying hard to extract useful information amongst practically unlimited resources available online today. The world has become a lot more connected: communities are formed online, goods and services customised to individual tastes and preferences, work and education are increasingly hybrid, reducing dependency on physical environment, geography and time zones. Despite all these developments in nearly every aspect of our lives, one thing that has persisted in the face of this change is the nature of collective decision-making, particularly at the civic/governmental level. It still comprises the same election cycles with more or less similar political incentives and working practices, and the same type of politicians, bureaucracies, hierarchies and networks making and executing important (and often suboptimal) decisions on behalf of the public. Unelected private sector stakeholders in the meantime are quick to fill the growing gap — they increasingly make policies that affect large populations and define the public discourse, to primarily maximise their profit behind their IP protection walls…(More)”.

Landsat turns 50: How satellites revolutionized the way we see – and protect – the natural world

Curated on July 25, 2022July 25, 2022 by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Stacy Morford: “Fifty years ago, U.S. scientists launched a satellite that dramatically changed how we see the world.

It captured images of Earth’s surface in minute detail, showing how wildfires burned landscapes, how farms erased forests, and many other ways humans were changing the face of the planet.

The first satellite in the Landsat series launched on July 23, 1972. Eight others followed, providing the same views so changes could be tracked over time, but with increasingly powerful instruments. Landsat 8 and Landsat 9 are orbiting the planet today, and NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey are planning a new Landsat mission.

The images and data from these satellites are used to track deforestation and changing landscapes around the world, locate urban heat islands, and understand the impact of new river dams, among many other projects. Often, the results help communities respond to risks that may not be obvious from the ground.

Here are three examples of Landsat in action, from The Conversation’s archive.

Tracking changes in the Amazon

When work began on the Belo Monte Dam project in the Brazilian Amazon in 2015, Indigenous tribes living along the Big Bend of the Xingu River started noticing changes in the river’s flow. The water they relied on for food and transportation was disappearing.

Upstream, a new channel would eventually divert as much as 80% of the water to the hydroelectric dam, bypassing the bend.

The consortium that runs the dam argued that there was no scientific proof that the change in water flow harmed fish.

But there is clear proof of the Belo Monte Dam project’s impact – from above, write Pritam Das, Faisal Hossain, Hörður Helgason and Shahzaib Khan at the University of Washington. Using satellite data from the Landsat program, the team showed how the dam dramatically altered the hydrology of the river…

It’s hot in the city – and even hotter in some neighborhoods

Landsat’s instruments can also measure surface temperatures, allowing scientists to map heat risk street by street within cities as global temperatures rise.

“Cities are generally hotter than surrounding rural areas, but even within cities, some residential neighborhoods get dangerously warmer than others just a few miles away,” writes Daniel P. Johnson, who uses satellites to study the urban heat island effect at Indiana University.

Neighborhoods with more pavement and buildings and fewer trees can be 10 degrees Fahrenheit (5.5 C) or more warmer than leafier neighborhoods, Johnson writes. He found that the hottest neighborhoods tend to be low-income, have majority Black or Hispanic residents and had been subjected to redlining, the discriminatory practice once used to deny loans in racial and ethnic minority communities…(More)”.

Governing the ‘Datafied’ School: Bridging the Divergence between Universal Education and Student Autonomy

Curated on July 25, 2022July 25, 2022 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Theresa Henne and Oskar Josef Gstrein: “Students and teachers find themselves increasingly surrounded by Big Data and AI technologies that facilitate the learning process and the organisation of school life. Accordingly, vast amounts of data are being collected on the working of the entire school community. This trend–referred to as the ‘datafication’ of education–was pushed immensely during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, already before the necessity to quickly find digital solutions for remote teaching and learning, many scholars were concerned about the privacy and autonomy of the ‘datafied’ student and the corresponding larger effects on public education and democracy as such. In this chapter, we approach the datafication of school education through the lens of data protection and autonomy. We point to the inadequacies in the European data protection framework, which is considered as the state of the art by many. In search of other capable legal concepts, we explore the German ‘right to informational self-determination’, which introduces the distinct argument that restricting data flows is a necessity for the free personal development of the individual–a notion relevant for the tumbling, ever evolving minds of children and teenagers. We find that the fuzzy realities of school life demand a nuanced governance approach that balances individual control and privacy protection with the interests, needs and visions of the school community…(More)”.

Digital Literacy Doesn’t Stop the Spread of Misinformation

Curated on July 24, 2022July 27, 2022 by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by David Rand, and Nathaniel Sirlin: “There has been tremendous concern recently over misinformation on social media. It was a pervasive topic during the 2020 U.S. presidential election, continues to be an issue during the COVID-19 pandemic and plays an important part in Russian propaganda efforts in the war on Ukraine. This concern is plenty justified, as the consequences of believing false information are arguably shaping the future of nations and greatly affecting our individual and collective health.

One popular theory about why some people fall for misinformation they encounter online is that they lack digital literacy skills, a nebulous term that describes how a person navigates digital spaces. Someone lacking digital literacy skills, the thinking goes, may be more susceptible to believing—and sharing—false information. As a result, less digitally literate people may play a significant role in the spread of misinformation.

This argument makes intuitive sense. Yet very little research has actually investigated the link between digital literacy and susceptibility to believe false information. There’s even less understanding of the potential link between digital literacy and what people share on social media. As researchers who study the psychology of online misinformation, we wanted to explore these potential associations….

When we looked at the connection between digital literacy and the willingness to share false information with others through social media, however, the results were different. People who were more digitally literate were just as likely to say they’d share false articles as people who lacked digital literacy. Like the first finding, the (lack of) connection between digital literacy and sharing false news was not affected by political party affiliation or whether the topic was politics or the pandemic…(More)”

Measuring sustainable tourism with online platform data

Curated on July 24, 2022July 21, 2022 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Felix J. Hoffmann, Fabian Braesemann & Timm Teubner: “Sustainability in tourism is a topic of global relevance, finding multiple mentions in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The complex task of balancing tourism’s economic, environmental, and social effects requires detailed and up-to-date data. This paper investigates whether online platform data can be employed as an alternative data source in sustainable tourism statistics. Using a web-scraped dataset from a large online tourism platform, a sustainability label for accommodations can be predicted reasonably well with machine learning techniques. The algorithmic prediction of accommodations’ sustainability using online data can provide a cost-effective and accurate measure that allows to track developments of tourism sustainability across the globe with high spatial and temporal granularity…(More)”.

How Minds Change

Curated on July 23, 2022July 23, 2022 by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by David McRaney: “What made a prominent conspiracy-theorist YouTuber finally see that 9/11 was not a hoax? How do voter opinions shift from neutral to resolute? Can widespread social change only take place when a generation dies out? From one of our greatest thinkers on reasoning, HOW MINDS CHANGE is a book about the science, and the experience, of transformation.

When self-delusion expert and psychology nerd David McRaney began a book about how to change someone’s mind in one conversation, he never expected to change his own. But then a diehard 9/11 Truther’s conversion blew up his theories—inspiring him to ask not just how to persuade, but why we believe, from the eye of the beholder. Delving into the latest research of psychologists and neuroscientists, HOW MINDS CHANGE explores the limits of reasoning, the power of groupthink, and the effects of deep canvassing. Told with McRaney’s trademark sense of humor, compassion, and scientific curiosity, it’s an eye-opening journey among cult members, conspiracy theorists, and political activists, from Westboro Baptist Church picketers to LGBTQ campaigners in California—that ultimately challenges us to question our own motives and beliefs. In an age of dangerous conspiratorial thinking, can we rise to the occasion with empathy?

An expansive, big-hearted journalistic narrative, HOW MINDS CHANGE reaches surprising and thought-provoking conclusions, to demonstrate the rare but transformative circumstances under which minds can change…(More)”.