Book edited by Alexander Ruthemeier, Seda Röder, Kathleen Schröter, and Philipp Plugmann: “Social Innovation is not just a buzzword, it’s a global opportunity. However, it is also a very wide and heterogeneous field. The aim of this book is to give the reader different perspectives, concepts and experiences to understand the challenging tasks of the future while also showcasing some existing best-practice examples, impact-investing and social innovation strategies that successfully empower communities and individuals to shape a better life…(More)”.
Writing the Revolution
Book by Heather Ford: “A close reading of Wikipedia’s article on the Egyptian Revolution reveals the complexity inherent in establishing the facts of events as they occur and are relayed to audiences near and far.
Wikipedia bills itself as an encyclopedia built on neutrality, authority, and crowd-sourced consensus. Platforms like Google and digital assistants like Siri distribute Wikipedia’s facts widely, further burnishing its veneer of impartiality. But as Heather Ford demonstrates in Writing the Revolution, the facts that appear on Wikipedia are often the result of protracted power struggles over how data are created and used, how history is written and by whom, and the very definition of facts in a digital age.
In Writing the Revolution, Ford looks critically at how the Wikipedia article about the 2011 Egyptian Revolution evolved over the course of a decade, both shaping and being shaped by the Revolution as it happened. When data are published in real time, they are subject to an intense battle over their meaning across multiple fronts. Ford answers key questions about how Wikipedia’s so-called consensus is arrived at; who has the power to write dominant histories and which knowledges are actively rejected; how these battles play out across the chains of circulation in which data travel; and whether history is now written by algorithms…(More)”
The Data4COVID-19 Review: Assessing the Use of Non-Traditional Data During a Pandemic Crisis
Report by Hannah Chafetz, Andrew J. Zahuranec, Sara Marcucci, Behruz Davletov, and Stefaan Verhulst: “As the last two years of the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrate, pandemics pose major challenges on all levels–with cataclysmic effects on society.
Decision-makers from around the world have sought to mitigate the consequences of COVID-19 through the use of data, including data from non-traditional sources such as social media, wastewater, and credit card and telecommunications companies. However, there has been little research into how non-traditional data initiatives were designed or what impacts they had on COVID-19 responses.
Over the last eight months, The GovLab, with the support of The Knight Foundation, has sought to fill this gap by conducting a study about how non-traditional data (NTD) sources have been used during COVID-19.
On October 31st, The GovLab published the report: “The COVID-19 Review: Assessing the Use of Non-Traditional Data During a Pandemic Crisis.” The report details how decision makers around the world have used non-traditional sources through a series of briefings intended for a generalist audience.
The briefings describe and assess how non-traditional data initiatives were designed, planned, and implemented, as well as the project results.
Findings
The briefings uncovered several findings about why, where, when, and how NTD was used during COVID-19, including that:
- Officials increasingly called for the use of NTD to answer questions where and when traditional data such as surveys and case data were not sufficient or could not be leveraged. However, the collection and use of traditional data was often needed to validate insights.
- NTD sources were primarily used to understand populations’ health, mobility (or physical movements), economic activity, and sentiment of the pandemic. In comparison with previous dynamic crises, COVID-19 was a watershed moment in terms of access to and re-use of non-traditional data in those four areas.
- The majority of NTD initiatives were fragmented and uncoordinated, reflecting the larger fragmented COVID-19 response. Many projects were focused on responding to COVID-19 after outbreaks occurred. This pattern reflected an overall lack of preparedness for the pandemic and need for the rapid development of initiatives to address its consequences.
- NTD initiatives frequently took the form of cross-sectoral data partnerships or collaborations developed to respond to specific needs. Many institutions did not have the systems and infrastructure in place for these collaborations to be sustainable.
- Many of the NTD initiatives involving granular, personal data were implemented without the necessary social license to do so–leading to public concerns about ethics and hindering public trust in non-traditional data.
Stefaan Verhulst, Co-Founder and Chief R&D of The GovLab explains: “The use of NTD offers growing potential during crisis situations. When managed responsibly, NTD use can help us understand the current state of the crisis, forecast how it will progress, and respond to different aspects of it in real-time.”…(More)”.
How Technology Companies Are Shaping the Ukraine Conflict
Article by Abishur Prakash: “Earlier this year, Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, announced that people could create posts calling for violence against Russia on its social media platforms. This was unprecedented. One of the world’s largest technology firms very publicly picked sides in a geopolitical conflict. Russia was now not just fighting a country but also multinational companies with financial stakes in the outcome. In response, Russia announced a ban on Instagram within its borders. The fallout was significant. The ban, which eventually included Facebook, cost Meta close to $2 billion.
Through the war in Ukraine, technology companies are showing how their decisions can affect geopolitics, which is a massive shift from the past. Technology companies have been either dragged into conflicts because of how customers were using their services (e.g., people putting their houses in the West Bank on Airbnb) or have followed the foreign policy of governments (e.g., SpaceX supplying Internet to Iran after the United States removed some sanctions)…(More)”.
Principles for Responsible Algorithmic Systems
Press Release: “The Association for Computing Machinery’s global Technology Policy Council (TPC) has released a new Statement on Principles for Responsible Algorithmic Systems authored jointly by its US (USTPC) and Europe Technology Policy Committees (Europe TPC). Recognizing that algorithmic systems are increasingly used by governments and companies to make or recommend decisions that have far-reaching effects on individuals, organizations, and society, the ACM Statement lays out nine instrumental principles intended to foster fair, accurate, and beneficial algorithmic decision-making.
The statement includes a definition for each principle as well as a brief explanation of how the principle contributes to the larger goal of building responsible algorithmic systems. The nine instrumental principles include: Legitimacy and Competency; Minimizing Harm; Security and Privacy; Transparency; Interpretability and Explainability; Maintainability; Contestability and Auditability; Accountability and Responsibility; and Limiting Environmental Impacts. The new statement complements the ACM Code of Ethics and is intended as a guide for algorithm developers and designers to remain vigilant concerning the potential for bias and unfairness at each stage of the software development process….(More)”.
Climate Action Data Trust to unify carbon credit registry data
Press Release: “The International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) today revealed information on the forthcoming launch of Climate Action Data Trust (CAD Trust), a decentralised metadata system that can link, aggregate and harmonise all major carbon market registry data.
Climate Action Data Trust (CAD Trust) is a joint initiative of the International Emissions Trading Association, The World Bank and the Singapore government, along with a variety of governments and public and private organisations. It will provide an open-source metadata system to share information about carbon credits and projects across digital platforms, easing future integration of multiple registry systems. CAD Trust uses distributed ledger technology to create a decentralised record with the aim to avoid double counting, increase trust in carbon data and enhance climate ambition.
Many countries and companies intend to use carbon markets to deliver their contributions to the Paris Climate Agreement. IETA’s review of the latest updates to Nationally Determined Contributions shows that about 80% are interested in using Article 6 trading provisions to meet their goals. To use Article 6, countries must track and report on use of international credits through a registry system. The CAD Trust system will assist in promoting high-integrity systems and digital linkages.
The CAD Trust platform will go live in early December, when the public metadata layer will be widely available through https://climateactiondata.org. CAD Trust evolved out of the Climate Warehouse, an initiative launched by the World Bank. For the past three years, the initiative has prototyped a series of simulations of the data system with partner governments, carbon crediting programmes and other organisations. The final prototype ended in August and work is now underway to prepare the data layer to go live…(More)”.
Everything dies, including information
Article by Erik Sherman: “Everything dies: people, machines, civilizations. Perhaps we can find some solace in knowing that all the meaningful things we’ve learned along the way will survive. But even knowledge has a life span. Documents fade. Art goes missing. Entire libraries and collections can face quick and unexpected destruction.
Surely, we’re at a stage technologically where we might devise ways to make knowledge available and accessible forever. After all, the density of data storage is already incomprehensibly high. In the ever-growing museum of the internet, one can move smoothly from images from the James Webb Space Telescope through diagrams explaining Pythagoras’s philosophy on the music of the spheres to a YouTube tutorial on blues guitar soloing. What more could you want?
Quite a bit, according to the experts. For one thing, what we think is permanent isn’t. Digital storage systems can become unreadable in as little as three to five years. Librarians and archivists race to copy things over to newer formats. But entropy is always there, waiting in the wings. “Our professions and our people often try to extend the normal life span as far as possible through a variety of techniques, but it’s still holding back the tide,” says Joseph Janes, an associate professor at the University of Washington Information School.
To complicate matters, archivists are now grappling with an unprecedented deluge of information. In the past, materials were scarce and storage space limited. “Now we have the opposite problem,” Janes says. “Everything is being recorded all the time.”…(More)”.
Observing Many Researchers Using the Same Data and Hypothesis Reveals a Hidden Universe of Uncertainty
Paper by Nate Breznau et al: “This study explores how researchers’ analytical choices affect the reliability of scientific findings. Most discussions of reliability problems in science focus on systematic biases. We broaden the lens to include conscious and unconscious decisions that researchers make during data analysis and that may lead to diverging results. We coordinated 161 researchers in 73 research teams and observed their research decisions as they used the same data to independently test the same prominent social science hypothesis: that greater immigration reduces support for social policies among the public. In this typical case of research based on secondary data, we find that research teams reported widely diverging numerical findings and substantive conclusions despite identical start conditions. Researchers’ expertise, prior beliefs, and expectations barely predicted the wide variation in research outcomes. More than 90% of the total variance in numerical results remained unexplained even after accounting for research decisions identified via qualitative coding of each team’s workflow. This reveals a universe of uncertainty that is hidden when considering a single study in isolation. The idiosyncratic nature of how researchers’ results and conclusions varied is a new explanation for why many scientific hypotheses remain contested. It calls for greater humility and clarity in reporting scientific findings..(More)”.
How citizen science can help realize the full potential of data
Blog by Haishan Fu, Craig Hammer, and Edward Anderson: “Citizen science, a critical pillar of Open Science, advocates for greater citizen involvement in knowledge generation, research goals, and outcomes. By engaging citizens directly in data collection, drone imaging, and crowdsourcing into project design, we provide policymakers and citizens with valuable data and information they need to make informed and effective decisions.
Furthermore, abiding by the principles of citizen science, we can help communities establish a new social contract around data stewardship, grounded in the principles of value, trust, and equity, as proposed by the World Development Report 2021: Data for Better Lives. The report puts forward a vision of data governance that is multistakeholder and collaborative. It explicitly builds data production, protection, exchange, and use into planning and decision-making, and integrates participants from civil society, private sectors, and importantly, the public into the data life cycle and into the governance structures of the system.
As the experience of the Resilience Academy shows, increasing our commitment to citizen science by inviting public engagement before, during, and after development projects can help engage a wider swath of the public with the Bank’s Open Data Initiative.
The Tanzania-based project empowers students to adapt low-cost, low-complexity tools and open methods to collect and manage data from their changing environments. Resilience Academy students also participate in solving real-world challenges in their community, such as mapping flood- and rockfall-prone zones, surveying tourism and infrastructure needs, and other areas currently lacking critical data.
This “learning by doing” approach equips young people with the long-term tools, knowledge, and skills they need to address the world’s most pressing urban challenges and ensure resilient urban development. This project is demonstrating the many co-benefits that come from hands-on learning, job creation, and data management-related skills.
Incorporating citizen science into open data agendas and project design, however, will necessitate some changes to how the World Bank and other multilateral development agencies approach development projects….(More)”.
Digitization, Surveillance, Colonialism
Essay by Carissa Veliz: “As I write these words, articles are mushrooming in newspapers and magazines about how privacy is more important than ever after the Supreme Court ruling that has overturned the constitutionality of the right to have an abortion in the United States. In anti-abortion states, browsing histories, text messages, location data, payment data, and information from period-tracking apps can all be used to prosecute both women seeking an abortion and anyone aiding them. The National Right to Life Committee recently published policy recommendations for anti-abortion states that include criminal penalties for people who provide information about self-managed abortions, whether over the phone or online. Women considering an abortion are often in distress, and now they cannot even reach out to friends or family without endangering themselves and others.
So far, Texas, Oklahoma, and Idaho have passed citizen-enforced abortion bans, according to which anyone can file a civil lawsuit to report an abortion and have the chance of winning at least ten thousand dollars. This is an incredible incentive to use personal data towards for-profit witch-hunting. Anyone can buy personal data from data brokers and fish for suspicious behavior. The surveillance machinery that we have built in the past two decades can now be put to use by authorities and vigilantes to criminalize pregnant women and their doctors, nurses, pharmacists, friends, and family. How productive.
It is not true, however, that the overturning of Roe v. Wade has made privacy more important than ever. Rather, it has provided yet another illustration of why privacy has always been and always will be important. That it is happening in the United States is helpful, because human beings are prone to thinking that whatever happens “over there” — say, in China now, or in East Germany during the Cold War — to those “other people,” doesn’t happen to us — until it does.
Privacy is important because it protects us from possible abuses of power. As long as human beings are human beings and organizations are organizations, abuses of power will be a constant temptation and threat. That is why it is supremely reckless to build a surveillance architecture. You never know when that data might be used against you — but you can be fairly confident that sooner or later it will be used against you. Collecting personal data might be convenient, but it is also a ticking bomb; it amounts to sensitive material waiting for the chance to turn into an instance of public shaming, extortion, persecution, discrimination, or identity theft. Do you think you have nothing to hide? So did many American women on June 24, only to realize that week that their period was late. You have plenty to hide — you just don’t know what it is yet and whom you should hide it from.
In the digital age, the challenge of protecting privacy is more formidable than most people imagine — but it is nowhere near impossible, and every bit worth putting up a fight for, if you care about democracy or freedom. The challenge is this: the dogma of our time is to turn analog into digital, and as things stand today, digitization is tantamount to surveillance…(More)”.