Foolproof: Why We Fall for Misinformation and How to Build Immunity

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Sander van der Linden: “From fake news to conspiracy theories, from pandemics to politics, misinformation may be the defining problem of our era. Like a virus, misinformation infects our minds – altering our beliefs and replicating at astonishing rates. Once the virus takes hold, our primary strategies of fact-checking and debunking are an insufficient cure.

In Foolproof Sander van der Linden describes how to inoculate yourself and others against the spread of misinformation, discern fact from fiction and push back against methods of mass persuasion.

Everyone is susceptible to fake news. There are polarising narratives in society, conspiracy theories are rife, fake experts dole out misleading advice and accuracy is often lost in favour of sensationalist headlines. So how and why does misinformation spread if we’re all aware of its existence? And, more importantly, what can we do about it?…(More)”.

How four countries practise direct democracy today

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Bruno Kaufmann: “We are the people,” protesters on the streets of East Germany shouted back in 1989 as a challenge to the then-communist one-party state. One year later, they had succeeded in overcoming half a century of dictatorship and establishing a united democratic country with West Germany.

Since then, hundreds of millions of people around the world have demanded the fulfilment of a fundamental human right, set out in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 21.1): “Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.” 

“The idea of having ordinary people capable of governing themselves is much older than the UN Human Rights Declaration”, says John Matusaka, a finance professor at the University of Southern California and the author of several books on the role of modern direct democracy in representative government systems. “Popular self-government is an experiment that continues to shape the modern world.” 

Although this experiment has sometimes ended in a populist or even autocratic backlash, a growing number of political communities – cities, regions, nation-states and even continents – have been able to establish and implement a large variety of people-led initiatives and referendums in recent years. Some countries, like Switzerland and the United States, have been practising citizen-lawmaking for more than a century. Others, like Taiwan, are relative newcomers to the field and showcase the breadth of participatory democracy tools being applied today…

The island of Taiwan (36,000 km2, population 23 million) has moved from a democracy on paper to a functioning democracy run by the Taiwanese people, through a process that has accelerated since the 1980s. Today it is a vibrant multiethnic society with 18 official languages.

In 2003 Taiwan introduced its first law on initiatives and referendums. In the last 20 years, the text has undergone improvements and amendments that include a relatively low threshold for forcing a popular vote on proposed legislation. These changes mean that today the people of Taiwan are able to have a genuine say in politics – both at the local and national levels. 

In November 2018 alone, more than ten citizen-led proposals, on issues ranging from environmental protection and marriage equality to the international status of the island, were put to a general vote. In 2021 the Taiwanese decided to amend their direct democracy law in a way that voting on candidates in elections and on issues by referendum were separated. 

One weakness in the process, however, is the legal requirement for a minimum 25% approval rate among the whole electorate for a proposition to pass. This  allows opponents of a proposal to influence the outcome of the vote by simply not participating. In 2021 four referendums were invalidated as they did not reach the approval of 25% among all voters…(More)”.

Expanding anticipatory governance to legislatures: The emergence and global diffusion of legislature-based future institutions

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Vesa Koskimaa et al: “Global challenges from climate change to the COVID-19 pandemic have raised legitimate questions about the ability of democratic decision-makers to prepare for such crises. Gradually, countries throughout the world have established state-level foresight mechanisms. Most operate under the executive branch, but increasingly such institutions have started to emerge also in legislatures, expanding anticipatory governance towards democratic publics. Drawing on a global survey, official documents and expert interviews, this article presents the first comprehensive analysis of the emergence and diffusion of legislature-based future institutions. We show that, despite the early emergence of a pacesetting institution, such committees have spread slowly and only very recently, and they still exist in only a few countries. For diffusion, the findings highlight the importance of the pacesetter, semi-formal networks of like-minded individuals and personalized agency. Most especially, the role of Members of Parliament (MPs) seems crucial, suggesting that expanding anticipatory governance to legislatures is largely in the hand of legislators…(More)”.

Upshift: Turning Pressure into Performance and Crisis into Creativity

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Ben Ramalingam: “… distils this expertise into an insightful, powerful, and engaging book that will show you how to reframe your set responses to stress and pressure and instead use them to harness the potential they hold not just for improving your work, your relationships, and your mindset, but for transforming them.

Upshift takes readers on an epic journey from early humans’ survival of the Ice Age to present times in our inescapable, pernicious and ever-shifting digital landscape. You will hear remarkable stories from a vast range of upshifters—all of whom carved new routes around perceived barriers using their powers to upshift. Underlying stories of how city commuters navigate train cancellations to how astronauts deal with life-threatening incidents, is one key message: We all have the power to innovate, whether or not we identify ourselves as creative or extraordinary.

Maybe you’re the challenger, who thrives by constructively disrupting the status quo like Greta Thunberg. Or perhaps you find yourself constantly tweaking, prodding, breaking, rebuilding, and improving like crafters such as the team that revolutionized space travel called the NASA Pirates. Do you love introducing people whose combined efforts will lead to greater achievements? You might be a connector, like master networker Ariana Huffington.

In a runaway world that is an engine for perpetual crisis, Upshift is not only an essential toolkit for survival, it is a roadmap for positive, and potentially life-changing transformation and influence. You don’t have to shut down – you can upshift…(More)”

850 million people globally don’t have ID—why this matters and what we can do about it

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog by Julia Clark, Anna Diofasi, and Claire Casher: “Having proof of legal identity or other officially recognized identification (ID) matters for equitable, sustainable development. It is a basic right and often provides the key to access services and opportunities, whether that is getting a job, opening a bank account, or receiving social assistance payments. The growth of digital services has further increased the need for secure and convenient ways to verify a person’s identity online and remotely.

Yet according to new estimates, some 850 million people globally do not have an official ID (let alone a digital one). 

The World Bank’s Identification for Development (ID4D) Initiative works to tackle the lack of access to identification challenge in multiple ways, starting with counting the uncounted. 

ID4D has produced estimates of global ID coverage since 2016 as part of its Global Dataset. Extensively updated in 2021-2022, the estimate now includes brand new data sources that paint the clearest picture yet of global ID ownership. 

ID4D partnered with the Global Findex survey to obtain representative survey data on adult ID ownership and usage. With this new individual-level data, as well as a significantly expanded set of administrative data provided by ID authorities, estimates released at the end of 2022 indicate that just under 850 million people around the world do not have an official ID (the full methodology is described in the ID4D Global Coverage Estimate report)…(More)”.

Design thinking was supposed to fix the world. Where did it go wrong?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Rebecca Ackermann: “…But in recent years, for a number of reasons, the shine of design thinking has been wearing off. Critics have argued that its short-term focus on novel and naive ideas has resulted in unrealistic and ungrounded recommendations. And they have maintained that by centering designers—mainly practitioners of corporate design within agencies—it has reinforced existing inequities rather than challenging them. Years in, “innovation theater”— checking a series of boxes without implementing meaningful shifts—had become endemic in corporate settings, while a number of social-impact initiatives highlighted in case studies struggled to get beyond pilot projects. Meanwhile, the #MeToo and BLM movements, along with the political turmoil of the Trump administration, have demonstrated that many big problems are rooted in centuries of dark history, too deeply entrenched to be obliterated with a touch of design thinking’s magic wand. 

Today, innovation agencies and educational institutions still continue to sell design thinking to individuals, corporations, and organizations. In 2015, IDEO even created its own “online school,” IDEO U, with a bank of design thinking courses. But some groups—including the d.school and IDEO itself—are working to reform both its principles and its methodologies. These new efforts seek a set of design tools capable of equitably serving diverse communities and solving diverse problems well into the future. It’s a much more daunting—and crucial—task than design thinking’s original remit…(More)”.

One Year Since the Invasion of Ukraine, Let Citizens Lead

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Ieva Česnulaitytė: “One year ago, Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, suddenly throwing into jeopardy decades toward democracy in Central and Eastern Europe. But as Ukraine fought back, its neighbours have rallied to its defence. 

The war still rages and it is easy to feel despair. But as a Lithuanian democracy expert, I feel confident that our region’s future is bright. It is possible, if we take the right steps, for Ukraine and its neighbours to emerge as more resilient democracies than before.

First, we must recognise the extraordinary outpouring of support for Ukraine from everyday people. Polls show that as of January 2023, two out of three Lithuanians had donated to the Ukrainian defense effort. People in the region welcomed millions of fleeing civilians, crowd-funded millions of euros, and mobilised to penetrate the propaganda wall by sending text messages to Russian citizens.

This is remarkable because, paradoxically, these same countries have abysmal voter turnout and low levels of trust in government. People are still learning to trust one another, to hold their governments accountable, and to embrace their own agency. Thirty years of democratisation has yielded varying levels of success. The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania score at the top 20 per cent on V-DEM’S Liberal Democracy Index, while Bulgaria and Moldova are still classified as electoral autocracies. 

It turns out that a transition to party politics and elections is fairly easy to undermine through corruption and foreign influence. This has led to “hybrid regimes,” with democratic and nondemocratic features. 

At the same time, the region has undergone a paradigm shift from communist regimes, successfully implementing reforms and building democratic institutions. Grounded in values of liberty and self determination, there is a palpable openness to innovate and ambition to make up for the years lost under Soviet oppression.

How can we tap into our innate capacity to collaborate and care for others—so apparent over the past year—to build resilience and accelerate our democratic renaissance? When the war ends, how can we help Ukraine do the same?..(More)”.

AI-Ready Open Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Explainer by Sean Long and Tom Romanoff: “Artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) have the potential to create applications that tackle societal challenges from human health to climate change. These applications, however, require data to power AI model development and implementation. Government’s vast amount of open data can fill this gap: McKinsey estimates that open data can help unlock $3 trillion to $5 trillion in economic value annually across seven sectors. But for open data to fuel innovations in academia and the private sector, the data must be both easy to find and use. While Data.gov makes it simpler to find the federal government’s open data, researchers still spend up to 80% of their time preparing data into a usable, AI-ready format. As Intel warns, “You’re not AI-ready until your data is.”

In this explainer, the Bipartisan Policy Center provides an overview of existing efforts across the federal government to improve the AI readiness of its open data. We answer the following questions:

  • What is AI-ready data?
  • Why is AI-ready data important to the federal government’s AI agenda?
  • Where is AI-ready data being applied across federal agencies?
  • How could AI-ready data become the federal standard?…(More)”.

European Citizens’ Virtual Worlds Panel

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Press Release: “Many people believe that virtual worlds, also referred to as metaverses, might be a change comparable to the appearance of the internet and will transform the way we work and engage with each other in the future. In the last couple of years – and particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic – numerous public and private actors have been investing massively in these so-called “extended and augmented realities”, speeding up changes in our workplaces and habits.

Despite this increased attention, such a transformation will not happen suddenly. Virtual Worlds will take many years to develop into a high-quality, realistic digital environment, and there is no clear picture yet of what metaverses could and should become.

The EU and its Members States are committed to harness the potential of this transformation, understand its opportunities, but also the risks and challenges it poses, while safeguarding the rights of European citizens. The European Commission has therefore decided to convene a citizens’ panel to formulate recommendations for the development of virtual worlds.

Find out more in the information kit that is available in the document section below….(More)”.

Mapping Civic Measurement

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the Institute for Citizens & Scholars: “…a comprehensive civic measurement landscape review and a first-of-its-kind framework for mapping civic readiness and opportunities.  

The report features a collection of measurement tools, rubrics, and more than 200 resources in use by practitioners across education, business, philanthropy, community institutions, media, government, and civil society. You’ll come away from the report with new ways to think about measuring civic learning impact, new research to inform your work, and new opportunities to connect with other practitioners. 

Now is the time to come together to cultivate people as informed, engaged, and hopeful citizens. Creating a common knowledge base and practices to measure civic readiness and opportunities will enable us to chart the course to a healthy and robust democracy that works for all…(More)”