Conformity: The Power of Social Influences

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Cass Sunstein: “We live in an era of tribalism, polarization, and intense social division—separating people along lines of religion, political conviction, race, ethnicity, and sometimes gender.  How did this happen? In Conformity, Cass R. Sunstein argues that the key to making sense of living in this fractured world lies in understanding the idea of conformity—what it is and how it works—as well as the countervailing force of dissent.

An understanding of conformity sheds new light on many issues confronting us today: the role of social media, the rise of fake news, the growth of authoritarianism, the success of Donald Trump, the functions of free speech, debates over immigration and the Supreme Court, and much more.

Lacking information of our own and seeking the good opinion of others, we often follow the crowd, but Sunstein shows that when individuals suppress their own instincts about what is true and what is right, it can lead to significant social harm. While dissenters tend to be seen as selfish individualists, dissent is actually an important means of correcting the natural human tendency toward conformity and has enormous social benefits in reducing extremism, encouraging critical thinking, and protecting freedom itself.

Sunstein concludes that while much of the time it is in the individual’s interest to follow the crowd, it is in the social interest for individuals to say and do what they think is best.  A well-functioning democracy depends on it….(More)”.

MegaPixels

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

About: “…MegaPixels is an art and research project first launched in 2017 for an installation at Tactical Technology Collective’s GlassRoom about face recognition datasets. In 2018 MegaPixels was extended to cover pedestrian analysis datasets for a commission by Elevate Arts festival in Austria. Since then MegaPixels has evolved into a large-scale interrogation of hundreds of publicly-available face and person analysis datasets, the first of which launched on this site in April 2019.

MegaPixels aims to provide a critical perspective on machine learning image datasets, one that might otherwise escape academia and industry funded artificial intelligence think tanks that are often supported by the several of the same technology companies who have created datasets presented on this site.

MegaPixels is an independent project, designed as a public resource for educators, students, journalists, and researchers. Each dataset presented on this site undergoes a thorough review of its images, intent, and funding sources. Though the goals are similar to publishing an academic paper, MegaPixels is a website-first research project, with an academic publication to follow.

One of the main focuses of the dataset investigations presented on this site is to uncover where funding originated. Because of our emphasis on other researcher’s funding sources, it is important that we are transparent about our own….(More)”.

Does Aid Effectiveness Differ per Political Ideologies?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Vincent Tawiah, Barnes Evans and Abdulrasheed Zakari: “Despite the extensive empirical literature on aid effectiveness, existing studies have not addressed directly how political ideology affects the use of foreign aid in the recipient country. This study, therefore, uses a unique dataset of 12 democratic countries in Africa to investigate the impact of political ideologies on aid effectiveness. Our results indicate that each political party uses aid differently in peruse of their political, ideological orientation. Further analyses suggest that rightist capitalist parties are likely to use aid to improve the private sector environment. Leftist socialist on the other hand, use aid effectively on pro-poor projects such as short-term poverty reduction, mass education and health services. Our additional analysis on the lines of colonialisation shows that the difference in the use of aid by political parties is much stronger in French colonies than Britain colonies. The study provides insight on how the recipient government are likely to use foreign aid….(More)”.

Virtual Briefing at the Supreme Court

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Alli Orr Larsen and Jeffrey L. Fisher: “The open secret of Supreme Court advocacy in a digital era is that there is a new way to argue to the Justices. Today’s Supreme Court arguments are developed online: They are dissected and explored in blog posts, fleshed out in popular podcasts, and analyzed and re-analyzed by experts who do not represent parties or have even filed a brief in the case at all. This “virtual briefing” (as we call it) is intended to influence the Justices and their law clerks but exists completely outside of traditional briefing rules. This article describes virtual briefing and makes a case that the key players inside the Court are listening. In particular, we show that the Twitter patterns of law clerks indicate they are paying close attention to producers of virtual briefing, and threads of these arguments (proposed and developed online) are starting to appear in the Court’s decisions.

We argue that this “crowdsourcing” dynamic to Supreme Court decision-making is at least worth a serious pause. There is surely merit to enlarging the dialogue around the issues the Supreme Court decides – maybe the best ideas will come from new voices in the crowd. But the confines of the adversarial process have been around for centuries, and there are significant risks that come with operating outside of it particularly given the unique nature and speed of online discussions. We analyze those risks in this article and suggest it is time to think hard about embracing virtual briefing — truly assessing what can be gained and what will be lost along the way….(More)”.

Citizen, Science, and Citizen Science

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Introduction by Shun-Ling and Chen Fa-ti Fan to special issue on citizen science: “The term citizen science has become very popular among scholars as well as the general public, and, given its growing presence in East Asia, it is perhaps not a moment too soon to have a special issue of EASTS on the topic. However, the quick expansion of citizen science, as a notion and a practice, has also spawned a mass of blurred meanings. The term is ill-defined and has been used in diverse ways. To avoid confusion, it is necessary to categorize the various and often ambiguous usages of the term and clarify their meanings.

As in any taxonomy, there are as many typologies as the particular perspectives, parameters, and criteria adopted for classification. There have been helpful attempts at classifying different modes of citizen science (Cooper and Lewenstein 2016; Wiggins and Crowston 2012; Haklay 2012). However, they focused primarily on the different approaches or methods in citizen science. Ottinger’s two categories of citizen science—“scientific authority driven” and “social movement based”—foreground the criteria of action and justification, but they unnecessarily juxtapose science and society; in any case, they may be too general and leaving out too much at the same time.1

In contrast, our classification will emphasize the different conceptions of citizen and citizenship in how we think about citizen science. We believe that this move can help us contextualize the ideas and practices of citizen science in the diverse socio-political conditions found in East Asia and beyond (Leach, Scoones, and Wynne 2005). To explain that point, we’ll begin with a few observations. First, the current discourse on citizen science tends to glide over such concepts as state, citizen, and the public and to assume that the reader will understand what they mean. This confidence originates in part from the fact that the default political framework of the discourse is usually Western (particularly Anglo-American). As a result, one often easily accepts a commonsense notion of participatory liberal democracy as the reference framework. However, one cannot assume that that is the de facto political framework for discussion of citizen science….(More)”.

A Symphony, Not a Solo: How Collective Management Organisations Can Embrace Innovation and Drive Data Sharing in the Music Industry

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by David Osimo, Laia Pujol Priego, Turo Pekari and Ano Sirppiniemi: “…data is becoming a fundamental source of competitive advantage in music, just as in other sectors, and streaming services in particular are generating large volume of new data offering unique insight around customer taste and behavior. (As Financial Times recently put it, the music
industry is having its “moneyball” moment) But how are the different players getting ready for this change?

This policy brief aims to look at the question from the perspective of CMOs, the organisations charged with redistributing royalties from music users to music rightsholders (such as musical authors and publishers).

The paper is divided in three sections. Part I will look at the current positioning of CMOs in this new data-intensive ecosystem. Part II will discuss how greater data sharing and reuse can maximize innovation, comparing the music industries with other industries. Part III will make policy and business-model reform recommendations for CMOs to stimulate data-driven innovation, internally and in the industry as a whole….(More)”

Companies That Rely On Census Data Worry Citizenship Question Will Hurt

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Hansi Lo Wang at NPR: “Some critics of the citizenship question the Trump administration wants to add to the 2020 census are coming from a group that tends to stay away from politically heated issues — business leaders.

From longtime corporations like Levi Strauss & Co. to upstarts like Warby Parker, some companies say that including the question — “Is this person a citizen of the United States?” — could harm not only next year’s national head count, but also their bottom line.

How governments use census data is a common refrain in the lead-up to a constitutionally mandated head count of every person living in the U.S. The new population counts, gathered once a decade, are used to determine how congressional seats and Electoral College votes are distributed among the states. They also guide how hundreds of billions in federal tax dollars are spread around the country to fund public services.

What is often less visible is how the census data undergird decisions made by large and small businesses across the country. The demographic information the census collects — including the age, sex, race, ethnicity and housing status of all U.S. residents — informs business owners about who their existing and future customers are, which new products and services those markets may want and where to build new locations.

Weeks before the Supreme Court heard oral arguments over the citizenship question last month, more than two dozen companies and business groups filed a friend-of-the-court brief against the question. Its potential impact on the accuracy of census data, especially about immigrants and people of color, is drawing concern from both Lyft and Uber, as well as Levi Strauss, Warby Parker and Univision.

“We don’t view this as a political situation at all,” says Christine Pierce, the senior vice president of data science at Nielsen — a major data analytics company in the business world that filed its own brief with the high court. “We see this as one that is around sound research and good science.”…(More)”.

Democracy in Retreat: Freedom in the World 2019

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Freedom House: “In 2018, Freedom in the World recorded the 13th consecutive year of decline in global freedom. The reversal has spanned a variety of countries in every region, from long-standing democracies like the United States to consolidated authoritarian regimes like China and Russia. The overall losses are still shallow compared with the gains of the late 20th century, but the pattern is consistent and ominous. Democracy is in retreat.

In states that were already authoritarian, earning Not Free designations from Freedom House, governments have increasingly shed the thin façade of democratic practice that they established in previous decades, when international incentives and pressure for reform were stronger. More authoritarian powers are now banning opposition groups or jailing their leaders, dispensing with term limits, and tightening the screws on any independent media that remain. Meanwhile, many countries that democratized after the end of the Cold War have regressed in the face of rampant corruption, antiliberal populist movements, and breakdowns in the rule of law. Most troublingly, even long-standing democracies have been shaken by populist political forces that reject basic principles like the separation of powers and target minorities for discriminatory treatment.

Some light shined through these gathering clouds in 2018. Surprising improvements in individual countries—including Malaysia, Armenia, Ethiopia, Angola, and Ecuador—show that democracy has enduring appeal as a means of holding leaders accountable and creating the conditions for a better life. Even in the countries of Europe and North America where democratic institutions are under pressure, dynamic civic movements for justice and inclusion continue to build on the achievements of their predecessors, expanding the scope of what citizens can and should expect from democracy. The promise of democracy remains real and powerful. Not only defending it but broadening its reach is one of the great causes of our time….(More)”.

What can we learn from billions of food purchases derived from fidelity cards?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Daniele Quercia at Medium: “By combining 1.6B food item purchases with 1.1B medical prescriptions for the entire city of London for one year, we discovered that, to predict health outcomes, socio-economic conditions matter less than what previous research has shown: despite being of lower-income, certain areas are healthy, and that is because of what their residents eat!

This result comes from our latest project “Poor but Healthy”, which was published in the Springer European Physical Journal (EPJ) of Data Science this month, and comes with a @tobi_vierzwo’s stunningly beautiful map of London I invite all of you to explore.

Why are we interested in urban health? In our cities, food is cheap and exercise discretionary, and health takes its toll. Half of European citizens will be obese by 2050, and obesity and its diseases are likely to reach crisis proportions. In this project, we set out to show that fidelity cards of grocery stores represent a treasure trove of health data — they can be used not only to (e)mail discount coupons to customers but also to effectively track a neighbourhood’s health in real-time for an entire city or even an entire country.

In research circles, the impact of eating habits on people’s health has mostly been studied using dietary surveys, which are costly and of limited scale.

To complement these surveys, we have recently resorted to grocery fidelity cards. We analyzed the anonymized records of 1.6B grocery items purchased by 1.6M grocery store customers in London over one whole year, and combined them with 1.1B medical prescriptions.

In so doing, we found that, as one expects, the “trick” to not being associated with chronic diseases is eating less what we instinctively like (e.g., sugar, carbohydrates), balancing all the nutrients, and avoiding the (big) quantities that are readily available. These results come as no surprise yet speak to the validity of using fidelity cards to capture health outcomes…(More)”.


Data Stewardship on the map: A study of tasks and roles in Dutch research institutes

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Verheul, Ingeborg et al: “Good research requires good data stewardship. Data stewardship encompasses all the different tasks and responsibilities that relate to caring for data during the various phases of the whole research life cycle. The basic assumption is that the researcher himself/herself is primarily responsible for all data.

However, the researcher does need professional support to achieve this. To that end, diverse supportive data stewardship roles and functions have evolved in recent years. Often they have developed over the course of time.

Their functional implementation depends largely on their place in the organization. This comes as no surprise when one considers that data stewardship consists of many facets that are traditionally assigned to different departments. Researchers regularly take on data stewardship tasks as well, not only for themselves but also in a wider context for a research group. This data stewardship work often remains unnoticed….(More)”.