How Media Ownership Matters

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Rodney Benson, Mattias Hessérus, Timothy Neff, and Julie Sedel: “Does it matter who owns and funds the media? As journalists and management consultants set off in search of new business models, there’s a pressing need to understand anew the economic underpinnings of journalism and its role in democratic societies.

How Media Ownership Matters provides a fresh approach to understanding news media power, moving beyond the typical emphasis on market concentration or media moguls. Through a comparative analysis of the US, Sweden, and France, as well as interviews of news executives and editors and an original collection of industry data, this book maps and analyzes four ownership models: market, private, civil society, and public. Highlighting the effects of organizational logics, funding, and target audiences on the content of news, the authors identify both the strengths and weaknesses various forms of ownership have in facilitating journalism that meets the democratic ideals of reasoned, critical, and inclusive public debate. Ultimately, How Media Ownership Matters provides a roadmap to understanding how variable forms of ownership are shaping the future of journalism and democracy…(More)”.

From Software to Society — Openness in a changing world

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Henriette Litta and Peter Bihr: “…takes stock and looks to the future: What does openness mean in the digital age? Is the concept still up to date? The study traces the development of openness and analyses current challenges. It is based on interviews with experts and extensive literature research. The key insights at a glance are:

Give Openness a purpose. Especially in times of increasing injustice, surveillance and power monopolies, a clear framework for meaningful openness is needed, as this is often lacking. Companies market ‘open’ products without enabling co-creation. Political actors invoke openness without strengthening democratic control. This is particularly evident when dealing with AI. AI systems are complex and are often dominated by a few tech companies – which makes opening them up a fundamental challenge. The dominance of some tech companies is also massively exploited, which can lead to the censorship of other opinions.

Protect Openness by adding guard rails. Those who demand openness must also be prepared to get involved in political disputes – against a market monopoly, for example. According to Litta and Bihr, this requires new licence models that include obligations to return and share, as well as stricter enforcement of antitrust law and data protection. Openness therefore needs rules…(More)”.

Government ‘With’ The People 

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Nathan Gardels: “The rigid polarization that has gripped our societies and eroded trust in each other and in governing institutions feeds the appeal of authoritarian strongmen. Poised as tribunes of the people, they promise to lay down the law (rather than be constrained by it) and put the house in order not by bridging divides, but by targeting scapegoats and persecuting political adversaries who don’t conform to their ideological and cultural worldview.

The alternative to this course of illiberal democracy is the exact opposite: engaging citizens directly in governance through non-partisan platforms that encourage and enable deliberation, negotiation and compromise, to reach consensus across divides. Even as politics is tilting the other way at the national level, this approach of participation without populism is gaining traction from the bottom up.

The embryonic forms of this next step in democratic innovation, such as citizens’ assemblies or virtual platforms for bringing the public together and listening at scale, have so far been mostly advisory to the powers-that-be, with no guarantee that citizen input will have a binding impact on legislation or policy formation. That is beginning to change….

Claudia Chwalisz, who heads DemocracyNext, has spelled out the key elements of this innovative process that make it a model for others elsewhere:

  • “Implementation should be considered from the start, not as an afterthought. The format of the final recommendations, the process for final approval, and the time needed to ensure this part of the process does not get neglected need to be considered in the early design stages of the assembly.
  • Dedicated time and resources for transforming recommendations into legislation are also crucial for successful implementation. Bringing citizens, politicians, and civil servants together in the final stages can help bridge the gap between recommendations and action. While it has been more typical for citizens’ assemblies to draft recommendations that they then hand onward to elected officials and civil servants, who review them and then respond to the citizens’ assembly, the Parisian model demonstrates another way.
  • Collaborative workshops where consensus amongst the triad of actors is needed adds more time to the process, but ensures that there is a high level of consensus for the final output, and reduces the time that would have been needed for officials to review and respond to the citizens’ assembly’s recommendations.
  • Formal institutional integration of citizens’ assemblies through legal measures can help ensure their recommendations are taken seriously and ensures the assembly’s continuity regardless of shifts in government. The citizens’ assembly has become a part of Paris’s democratic architecture, as have other permanent citizens’ assemblies elsewhere. While one-off assemblies typically depend on political will at a moment in time and risk becoming politicized — i.e. in being associated with the party that initially launched the first one — an institutionalized citizens’ assembly anchored in policy and political decision-making helps to set the foundation for a new institution that can endure.
  • It is also important that there is regular engagement with all political parties and stakeholders throughout the process. This helps build cross-partisan support for final recommendations, as well as more sustainable support for the enduring nature of the permanent citizens assembly.”…(More)”.

Federated learning for children’s data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Roy Saurabh: “Across the world, governments are prioritizing the protection of citizens’ data – especially that of children. New laws, dedicated data protection authorities, and digital infrastructure initiatives reflect a growing recognition that data is not just an asset, but a foundation for public trust. 

Yet a major challenge remains: how can governments use sensitive data to improve outcomes – such as in education – without undermining the very privacy protections they are committed to uphold?

One promising answer lies in federated, governance-aware approaches to data use. But realizing this potential requires more than new technology; it demands robust data governance frameworks designed from the outset.

Data governance: The missing link

In many countries, ministries of education, health, and social protection each hold pieces of the puzzle that together could provide a more complete picture of children’s learning and well-being. For example, a child’s school attendance, nutritional status, and family circumstances all shape their ability to thrive, yet these records are kept in separate systems.

Efforts to combine such data often run into legal and technical barriers. Centralized data lakes raise concerns about consent, security, and compliance with privacy laws. In fact, many international standards stress the principle of data minimization – the idea that personal information should not be gathered or combined unnecessarily. 

“In many countries, ministries of education, health, and social protection each hold pieces of the puzzle that together could provide a more complete picture of children’s learning and well-being.”

This is where the right data governance frameworks become essential. Effective governance defines clear rules about how data can be accessed, shared, and used – specifying who has the authority, what purposes are permitted, and how rights are protected. These frameworks make it possible to collaborate with data responsibly, especially when it comes to children…(More)”

Addressing Digital Harms in Conflict

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Henriette Litta and Peter Bihr: “…takes stock and looks to the future: What does openness mean in the digital age? Is the concept still up to date? The study traces the development of Openness and analyses current challenges. It is based on interviews with experts and extensive literature research. The key insights at a glance are:

  • Give Openness a purpose.
  • Protect Openness by adding guard rails.
  • Open innovation and infrastructure need investments.
  • Openness is not neutral.
  • Market domination needs to be curtailed…(More)”.

Reimagining Data Governance for AI: Operationalizing Social Licensing for Data Reuse

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Stefaan Verhulst, Adam Zable, Andrew J. Zahuranec, and Peter Addo: “…introduces a practical, community-centered framework for governing data reuse in the development and deployment of artificial intelligence systems in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). As AI increasingly relies on data from LMICs, affected communities are often excluded from decision-making and see little benefit from how their data is used. This report,…reframes data governance through social licensing—a participatory model that empowers communities to collectively define, document, and enforce conditions for how their data is reused. It offers a step-by-step methodology and actionable tools, including a Social Licensing Questionnaire and adaptable contract clauses, alongisde real-world scenarios and recommendations for enforcement, policy integration, and future research. This report recasts data governance as a collective, continuous process – shifting the focus from individual consent to community decision-making…(More)”.

The Technopolar Paradox

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Ian Bremmer: “In February 2022, as Russian forces advanced on Kyiv, Ukraine’s government faced a critical vulnerability: with its Internet and communication networks under attack, its troops and leaders would soon be in the dark. Elon Musk—the de facto head of Tesla, SpaceX, X (formerly Twitter), xAI, the Boring Company, and Neuralink—stepped in. Within days, SpaceX had deployed thousands of Starlink terminals to Ukraine and activated satellite Internet service at no cost. Having kept the country online, Musk was hailed as a hero.

But the centibillionaire’s personal intervention—and Kyiv’s reliance on it—came with risks. Months later, Ukraine asked SpaceX to extend Starlink’s coverage to Russian-occupied Crimea, to enable a submarine drone strike that Kyiv wanted to carry out against Russian naval assets. Musk refused—worried, he said, that this would cause a major escalation in the war. Even the Pentagon’s entreaties on behalf of Ukraine failed to convince him. An unelected, unaccountable private citizen had unilaterally thwarted a military operation in an active war zone while exposing the fact that governments had remarkably little control over crucial decisions affecting their citizens and national security.

This was “technopolarity” in action: a technology leader not only driving stock market returns but also controlling aspects of civil society, politics, and international affairs that have been traditionally the exclusive preserve of nation-states. Over the past decade, the rise of such individuals and the firms they control has transformed the global order, which had been defined by states since the Peace of Westphalia enshrined them as the building blocks of geopolitics nearly 400 years ago. For most of this time, the structure of that order could be described as unipolar, bipolar, or multipolar, depending on how power was distributed among countries. The world, however, has since entered a “technopolar moment,” a term I used in Foreign Affairs in 2021 to describe an emerging order in which “a handful of large technology companies rival [states] for geopolitical influence.” Major tech firms have become powerful geopolitical actors, exercising a form of sovereignty over digital space and, increasingly, the physical world that potentially rivals that of states…(More)”.

Crowded Out: The Competitive Landscape of Contemporary International NGOs

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Sarah Sunn Bush and Jennifer Hadden: “…delves into the complex landscape of international non-governmental organizations (INGOs). Bush and Hadden trace INGOs’ rise to prominence at the end of the twentieth century and three significant but overlooked recent trends: a decrease in new INGO foundings, despite persistent global need; a shift towards specialization, despite the complexity of global problems; and a dispersal of INGO activities globally, despite potential gains from concentrating on areas of acute need. Assembling a wealth of new data on INGO foundings, missions, and locations, Bush and Hadden show how INGOs are being crowded out of dense organizational environments. They conduct case studies of INGOs across issue areas, relying on dozens of interviews and a large-scale survey to bring practitioners’ voices to the study of INGOs. To effectively address today’s global challenges, organizations must innovate in a crowded world. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core…(More)”.

The Theory of Deliberative Wisdom

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Eric Racine: “Humanity faces a multitude of profound challenges at present: technological advances, environmental changes, rising inequality, and deep social and political pluralism. These transformations raise moral questions—questions about how we view ourselves and how we ought to engage with the world in the pursuit of human flourishing. In The Theory of Deliberative Wisdom, Eric Racine puts forward an original interdisciplinary ethics theory that offers both an explanation of the workings of human morality and a model for deliberation-based imaginative processes to tackle moral problems.

Drawing from a wide array of disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, sociology, political science, neuroscience, and economics, this book offers an engaging account of situated moral agency and of ethical life as the pursuit of human flourishing. Moral experience, Racine explains, is accounted for in the form of situational units—morally problematic situations. These units are, in turn, theorized as actionable and participatory building blocks of moral existence mapping to mechanisms of episodic memory and to the construction of personal identity. Such explanations pave the way for an understanding of the social and psychological mechanisms of the awareness and neglect of morally problematic situations as well as of the imaginative ethical deliberation needed to respond to these situations. Deliberative wisdom is explained as an engaged and ongoing learning process about human flourishing…(More)”

Societal and technological progress as sewing an ever-growing, ever-changing, patchy, and polychrome quilt

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Joel Z. Leibo et al: “Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems are increasingly placed in positions where their decisions have real consequences, e.g., moderating online spaces, conducting research, and advising on policy. Ensuring they operate in a safe and ethically acceptable fashion is thus critical. However, most solutions have been a form of one-size-fits-all “alignment”. We are worried that such systems, which overlook enduring moral diversity, will spark resistance, erode trust, and destabilize our institutions. This paper traces the underlying problem to an often-unstated Axiom of Rational Convergence: the idea that under ideal conditions, rational agents will converge in the limit of conversation on a single ethics. Treating that premise as both optional and doubtful, we propose what we call the appropriateness framework: an alternative approach grounded in conflict theory, cultural evolution, multi-agent systems, and institutional economics. The appropriateness framework treats persistent disagreement as the normal case and designs for it by applying four principles: (1) contextual grounding, (2) community customization, (3) continual adaptation, and (4) polycentric governance. We argue here that adopting these design principles is a good way to shift the main alignment metaphor from moral unification to a more productive metaphor of conflict management, and that taking this step is both desirable and urgent…(More)”.