Facebook Features Connect Lawmakers With Constituents

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Griffin Connolly at RollCall: “Facebook users now have the option to pin “constituent badges” to their profiles, letting friends — and members of Congress — know which district they live in. And users can now search for articles, links, and posts that other residents in their districts engage with most frequently.

“When we think about civic engagement, we think about building communities of people,” said Erin Egan, Facebook’s vice president of U.S. public policy. “And this is about making sure that people engage with government.”

The new features can also help identify the issues that voters care about most. That could be a valuable tool for lawmakers — and their opponents — during election season.

“I’ve always been fascinated by how the internet helps citizens have a voice like never before,” Samidh Chakrabarti, Facebook’s head of civic engagement, told reporters and congressional staffers at the unveiling Wednesday. “But at the same time, it makes it more complicated for decision-makers to actually make sense of it all.”

Facebook’s new technology can help, he said.

The constituent badge unlocks a number of possibilities for lawmakers looking to engage voters more directly.

They can now choose to make their posts available exclusively to voters in their district, which Facebook calls “district targeting.” In the past, policymakers could only post publicly from their pages….

The badge tool also enables lawmakers to host virtual town halls with an exclusive audience of their own constituents via the Facebook Live streaming medium and to tailor their messages to a narrower band of local media sources and citizens.

One unintended consequence of these more private Facebook Live sessions is that reporters who don’t live in a lawmaker’s district may not be able to view it. Facebook users can only provide one address, and that determines their constituent badge. …

A number of tech-savvy lawmakers have led the charge in leveraging new social media features and platforms to promote their image and policies.

In March, two Texas House members, Democrat Beto O’Rourke and Republican Will Hurd, struck out on a multiday “bipartisan road trip” from the Lone Star State back to Washington, using Facebook Live and the livestreaming app Periscope to update viewers and answer questions on policy.

Democrat Rick Nolan and Republican Jason Lewis copied that approach in April when the two Minnesota congressmen traveled back to their home state.

Louisiana Republican Rep. Garret Graves, who spoke at the Facebook unveiling on Wednesday, has gone full bore with his use of Facebook Live, hosting town halls every Friday around lunchtime and periodically on evenings throughout the week….(More)”

The Citizen Marketer

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Joel Penney: “From hashtag activism to the flood of political memes on social media, the landscape of political communication is being transformed by the grassroots circulation of opinion on digital platforms and beyond. By exploring how everyday people assist in the promotion of political media messages to persuade their peers and shape the public mind, Joel Penney offers a new framework for understanding the phenomenon of viral political communication: the citizen marketer. Like the citizen consumer, the citizen marketer is guided by the logics of marketing practice, but, rather than being passive, actively circulates persuasive media to advance political interests. Such practices include using protest symbols in social media profile pictures, strategically tweeting links to news articles to raise awareness about select issues, sharing politically-charged internet memes and viral videos, and displaying mass-produced T-shirts, buttons, and bumper stickers that promote a favored electoral candidate or cause. Citizens view their participation in such activities not only in terms of how it may shape or influence outcomes, but as a statement of their own identity. As the book argues, these practices signal an important shift in how political participation is conceptualized and performed in advanced capitalist democratic societies, as they casually inject political ideas into the everyday spaces and places of popular culture.

While marketing is considered a dirty word in certain critical circles — particularly among segments of the left that have identified neoliberal market logics and consumer capitalist structures as a major focus of political struggle — some of these very critics have determined that the most effective way to push back against the forces of neoliberal capitalism is to co-opt its own marketing and advertising techniques to spread counter-hegemonic ideas to the public. Accordingly, this book argues that the citizen marketer approach to political action is much broader than any one ideological constituency or bloc. Rather, it is a means of promoting a wide range of political ideas, including those that are broadly critical of elite uses of marketing in consumer capitalist societies. The book includes an extensive historical treatment of citizen-level political promotion in modern democratic societies, connecting contemporary digital practices to both the 19th century tradition of mass political spectacle as well as more informal, culturally-situated forms of political expression that emerge from postwar countercultures. By investigating the logics and motivations behind the citizen marketer approach, as well as how it has developed in response to key social, cultural, and technological changes, Penney charts the evolution of activism in an age of mediatized politics, promotional culture, and viral circulation….(More)”.

What drives legitimacy in government?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Discussion paper by the Centre for Public Impact (CPI):  “…What are the sources of legitimacy, and how can legitimacy be strengthened? By legitimacy we mean the reservoir of support that that allows governments to deliver positive outcomes for people, what we at the CPI call public impact. We are interested in exploring how governments can build constructive relationships with their citizens for the benefit of each of us and society as a whole. This might be at a wholeof-government level or the level of an individual service or policy. We will explore how legitimacy flows between these levels, and how legitimacy can be built both from the top down and from the bottom up.

Occasionally legitimacy is discussed as a black or white concept – with governments labelled as either “legitimate” (meaning rightfully in power) or “illegitimate” (meaning not rightfully in power). We will try to avoid getting mired down in such discussions. The concept of legitimacy is also often used as shorthand for other concepts such as “a democratic mandate”, “fitness to serve” or “honesty”. Our project aims to determine what legitimacy means in reality to people and governments in different parts of the world, providing some shades of grey as well greater rigour and clarity. There will be no easy answers. Building legitimacy requires action in many parts of a complex system, involving multiple institutions and actors. And the sources of legitimacy in one country or in one policy area may not be easily translatable to other countries or other policy areas….(More)”.

The law and big data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Felin, Teppo, Devins, Caryn, Kauffman, Stuart and Koppl, Roger: “In this article we critically examine the use of Big Data in the legal system. Big Data is driving a trend towards behavioral optimization and “personalized law,” in which legal decisions and rules are optimized for best outcomes and where law is tailored to individual consumers based on analysis of past data. Big Data, however, has serious limitations and dangers when applied in the legal context. Advocates of Big Data make theoretically problematic assumptions about the objectivity of data and scientific observation. Law is always theory-laden. Although Big Data strives to be objective, law and data have multiple possible meanings and uses and thus require theory and interpretation in order to be applied. Further, the meanings and uses of law and data are indefinite and continually evolving in ways that cannot be captured or predicted by Big Data.

Due to these limitations, the use of Big Data will likely generate unintended consequences in the legal system. Large-scale use of Big Data will create distortions that adversely influence legal decision-making, causing irrational herding behaviors in the law. The centralized nature of the collection and application of Big Data also poses serious threats to legal evolution and democratic accountability. Furthermore, its focus on behavioral optimization necessarily restricts and even eliminates the local variation and heterogeneity that makes the legal system adaptive. In all, though Big Data has legitimate uses, this article cautions against using Big Data to replace independent legal judgment….(More)”

Smart Cities: The Internet of Things, People and Systems

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Schahram Dustdar, Stefan Nastić and Ognjen Šćekić: “This book presents a coherent, novel vision of Smart Cities, built around a value-driven architecture. It describes the limitations of the contemporary notion of the Smart City and argues that the next developmental step must actively include not only the physical infrastructure, but information technology and human infrastructure as well, requiring the intensive integration of technical solutions from the Internet of Things (IoT) and social computing.
The book is divided into five major parts, the first of which provides both a general introduction and a coherent vision that ties together all the components that are required to realize the vision for Smart Cities. Part II then discusses the provisioning and governance of Smart City systems and infrastructures. In turn, Part III addresses the core technologies and technological enablers for managing the social component of the Smart City platform. Both parts combine state-of-the-art research with cutting-edge industrial efforts in the respective fields. Lastly, Part IV details a road map to achieving Cyber-Human Smart Cities. Rounding out the coverage, it discusses the concrete technological advances needed to move beyond contemporary Smart Cities and toward the Smart Cities of the future.
Overall, the book provides an essential overview of the latest developments in the areas of IoT and social computing research, and outlines a research roadmap for a closer integration of the two areas in the context of the Smart City. As such, it offers a valuable resource for researchers and graduate students alike….(More)”.

We use big data to sentence criminals. But can the algorithms really tell us what we need to know?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

 at the Conversation: “In 2013, a man named Eric L. Loomis was sentenced for eluding police and driving a car without the owner’s consent.

When the judge weighed Loomis’ sentence, he considered an array of evidence, including the results of an automated risk assessment tool called COMPAS. Loomis’ COMPAS score indicated he was at a “high risk” of committing new crimes. Considering this prediction, the judge sentenced him to seven years.

Loomis challenged his sentence, arguing it was unfair to use the data-driven score against him. The U.S. Supreme Court now must consider whether to hear his case – and perhaps settle a nationwide debate over whether it’s appropriate for any court to use these tools when sentencing criminals.

Today, judges across the U.S. use risk assessment tools like COMPAS in sentencing decisions. In at least 10 states, these tools are a formal part of the sentencing process. Elsewhere, judges informally refer to them for guidance.

I have studied the legal and scientific bases for risk assessments. The more I investigate the tools, the more my caution about them grows.

The scientific reality is that these risk assessment tools cannot do what advocates claim. The algorithms cannot actually make predictions about future risk for the individual defendants being sentenced….

Algorithms such as COMPAS cannot make predictions about individual defendants, because data-driven risk tools are based on group statistics. This creates an issue that academics sometimes call the “group-to-individual” or G2i problem.

Scientists study groups. But the law sentences the individual. Consider the disconnect between science and the law here.

The algorithms in risk assessment tools commonly assign specific points to different factors. The points are totaled. The total is then often translated to a risk bin, such as low or high risk. Typically, more points means a higher risk of recidivism.

Say a score of 6 points out of 10 on a certain tool is considered “high risk.” In the historical groups studied, perhaps 50 percent of people with a score of 6 points did reoffend.

Thus, one might be inclined to think that a new offender who also scores 6 points is at a 50 percent risk of reoffending. But that would be incorrect.

It may be the case that half of those with a score of 6 in the historical groups studied would later reoffend. However, the tool is unable to select which of the offenders with 6 points will reoffend and which will go on to lead productive lives.

The studies of factors associated with reoffending are not causation studies. They can tell only which factors are correlated with new crimes. Individuals retain some measure of free will to decide to break the law again, or not.

These issues may explain why risk tools often have significant false positive rates. The predictions made by the most popular risk tools for violence and sex offending have been shown to get it wrong for some groups over 50 percent of the time.

A ProPublica investigation found that COMPAS, the tool used in Loomis’ case, is burdened by large error rates. For example, COMPAS failed to predict reoffending in one study at a 37 percent rate. The company that makes COMPAS has disputed the study’s methodology….

There are also a host of thorny issues with risk assessment tools incorporating, either directly or indirectly, sociodemographic variables, such as gender, race and social class. Law professor Anupam Chander has named it the problem of the “racist algorithm.”

Big data may have its allure. But, data-driven tools cannot make the individual predictions that sentencing decisions require. The Supreme Court might helpfully opine on these legal and scientific issues by deciding to hear the Loomis case…(More)”.

Mapping the invisible: Street View cars add air pollution sensors

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Environment at Google: “There are 1.3 million miles of natural gas distribution pipelines in the U.S. These pipelines exist pretty much everywhere that people do, and when they leak, the escaping methane — the main ingredient in natural gas — is a potent greenhouse gas, with 84 times the short-term warming effect of carbon dioxide. These leaks can be time-consuming to identify and measure using existing technologies. Utilities are required by law to quickly fix any leaks that are deemed a safety threat, but thousands of others can — and often do — go on leaking for months or years.

To help gas utilities, regulators, and others understand the scale of the challenge and help prioritize the most cost-effective solutions, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) worked with Joe von Fischer, a scientist at Colorado State University, to develop technology to detect and measure methane concentrations from a moving vehicle. Initial tests were promising, and EDF decided to expand the effort to more locations.

That’s when the organization reached out to Google. The project needed to scale, and we had the infrastructure to make it happen: computing power, secure data storage, and, most important, a fleet of Street View cars. These vehicles, equipped with high-precision GPS, were already driving around pretty much everywhere, capturing 360-degree photos for Google Maps; maybe they could measure methane while they were at it. The hypothesis, says Karin Tuxen-Bettman of Google Earth Outreach, was that “we had the potential to turn our Street View fleet into an environmental sensing platform.”

Street View cars make at least 2 trips around a given area in order to capture good air quality data. An intake tube on the front bumper collects air samples, which are then processed by a methane analyzer in the trunk. Finally, the data is sent to the Google Cloud for analysis and integration into a map showing the size and location of methane leaks. Since the trial began in 2012, EDF has built methane maps for 11 cities and found more than 5,500 leaks. The results range from one leak for every mile driven (sorry, Bostonians) to one every 200 miles (congrats, Indianapolis, for replacing all those corrosive steel and iron pipes with plastic).

All of us can go on our smartphone and get the weather. But what if you could scroll down and see what the air quality is on the street where you’re walking?…

This promising start inspired the team to take the next step and explore using Street View cars to measure overall air quality. For years, Google has worked on measuring indoor environmental quality across company offices with Aclima, which builds environmental sensor networks. In 2014, we expanded the partnership to the outside world, equipping several more Street View cars with its ‘Environmental Intelligence’ (Ei) mobile platform, including scientific-grade analyzers and arrays of small-scale, low-cost sensors to measure pollutants, including particulate matter, NO2, CO2 black carbon, and more. The new project began with a pilot in Denver, and we’ll finish mapping cities in 3 regions of California by the end of 2016. And today the system is delivering reliable data that corresponds to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s stationary measurement network….

The project began with a few cars, but Aclima’s mobile platform, which has already produced one of the world’s largest data sets on air quality, could also be expanded via deployment on vehicles like buses and mail trucks, on the way to creating a street-level pollution map. This hyper-local data could help people make more informed choices about things like when to let their kids play outside and which changes to advocate for to make their communities healthier….(More)”.

Europol introduce crowdsourcing to catch child abusers

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

LeakofNations: “The criminal intelligence branch of the European Union, known as Europol, have started a campaign called #TraceAnObject which uses social media crowdsourcing to detect potentially-identifying objects in material that depicts child abuse….

Investigative crowdsourcing has gained traction in academic and journalistic circles in recent years, but this represents the first case of government bureaus relying on social media people-power to conduct more effective analysis.

Journalists are increasingly relying on a combination of high-end computing to organise terabytes of data and internet cloud hubs that allow a consortium of journalists from around the world to share their analysis of the material. In the Panama Papers scoop the Australian software Nuix was used to analyse, extract, and index documents into an encrypted central hub in which thousands of journalists from 80 countries were able to post their workings and assist others in a forum-type setting. This model was remarkably efficient; over 11.5 million documents, dating back to the 1970’s, were analysed in less than a year.

The website Zooinverse has achieved huge success in creating public participation on academic projects, producing the pioneering game Foldit, where participants play with digital models of proteins. The Oxford University-based organisation has now engaged over 1 million volunteers, and has has significant successes in astronomy, ecology, cell biology, humanities, and climate science.

The most complex investigations still require thousands of hours of straightforward tasks that cannot be computerised. The citizen science website Planet Four studies conditions on Mars, and needs volunteers to compare photographs and detect blotches on Mars’ surface – enabling anyone to feel like Elon Musk, regardless of their educational background.

Child abuse is something that incites anger in most people. Crowdsourcing is an opportunity to take the donkey-work away from slow bureaucratic offices and allow ordinary citizens, many of whom felt powerless to protect children from these vile crimes, to genuinely progress cases that will make children safer.

Zooinverse proves that the public are hungry for this kind of work; the ICIJ project model of a central cloud forum shows that crowdsourcing across international borders allows data to be interpreted more efficiently. Europol’s latest idea could well be a huge success.

Even the most basic object could potentially provide vital clues to the culprit’s identity. The most significant items released so far include a school uniform complete with ID card necktie, and a group of snow-covered lodges….(More) (see also #TraceAnObject).

South Sudan: Satellite Images Used to Track Food Insecurity

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Salem Solomon at VOA news: “The world is watching closely as food shortages grip parts of Africa and the Middle East. As humanitarian groups respond to the crisis, they have to solve a major problem: how to track food security in areas that are simply too remote or too dangerous to access.

The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWSNET) has come up with an innovative answer. The U.S.-funded organization is working with DigitalGlobe, a Colorado satellite company, to crowdsource analysis of satellite imagery of South Sudan.

The effort will rely on thousands of volunteers — normal people with no subject matter expertise — to scour satellite images looking for things like livestock herds, temporary dwellings and permanent dwellings. The group has selected an area of 18,000 square kilometers across five counties in South Sudan to analyze.

“The crowd can identify settlement imagery, they can identify roads, hospitals, airplanes, you name it. It allows us to tap into this network of folks around the world, not necessarily in country, but they are folks who are interested and compelled by whatever the campaign is,” said Rhiannan Price, senior manager of the Seeing a Better World Program at DigitalGlobe….(More)”.

The Internet Doesn’t Have to Be Bad for Democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Tom Simonite at MIT Technology Review: “Accusations that the Internet and social media sow political division have flown thick and fast since recent contentious elections in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has even pledged to start working on technology that will turn the energy of online interactions into a more positive force (see “We Need More Alternatives to Facebook”).

Tiny, largely self-funded U.S. startup Pol.is has been working on a similar project longer than Zuckerberg and already has some promising results. The company’s interactive, crowdsourced survey tool can be used to generate maps of public opinion that help citizens, governments, and legislators discover the nuances of agreement and disagreement on contentious issues that exist. In 2016, that information helped the government of Taiwan break a six-year deadlock over how to regulate online alcohol sales, caused by entrenched, opposing views among citizens on what rules should apply.

“It allowed different sides to gradually see that they share the same underlying concern despite superficial disagreements,” says Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s digital minister. The island’s government now routinely sends out Pol.is surveys using Facebook ads, and to special-interest groups. It has also used the system to help thrash out what rules should apply to Airbnb rentals and mobile ride-hailing services such as Uber.

Pol.is’s open-source software is designed to serve up interactive online surveys around a particular issue. People are shown a series of short statements about aspects of a broader issue—for example, “Uber drivers should need the same licenses cab drivers do”—and asked to click to signal that they agree or disagree. People can contribute new statements of their own for others to respond to. The tangle of crisscrossing responses is used to automatically generate charts that map out different clusters of opinion, making it easy to see the points on which people tend to overlap or disagree.

Alternativet, a progressive Danish political party with nine members of parliament, is piloting Pol.is as a way to give its members a more direct role in formulating policy. Jon Skjerning-Rasmussen, a senior process coordinator with the party, says the way Pol.is visualizations are shared with people as they participate in a survey—letting them see how their opinions compare with those of others—helps people engage with the tool….(More).