This book brings together the theory and practice of managing public trust. It examines the current state of public trust, including a comprehensive global overview of both the research and practical applications of managing public trust by presenting research from seven countries (Brazil, Finland, Poland, Hungary, Portugal, Taiwan, Turkey) from three continents. The book is divided into five parts, covering the meaning of trust, types, dimension and the role of trust in management; the organizational challenges in relation to public trust; the impact of social media on the development of public trust; the dynamics of public trust in business; and public trust in different cultural contexts….(More)”.
The Power Of The Wikimedia Movement Beyond Wikimedia
Michael Bernick at Forbes: “In January 2017, we the constituents of Wikimedia, started an ambitious discussion about our collective future. We reflected on our past sixteen years together and imagined the impact we could have in the world in the next decades. Our aim was to identify a common strategic direction that would unite and inspire people across our movement on our way to 2030, and help us make decisions.”…
The final documents included a strategic direction and a research report: “Wikimedia 2030: Wikimedia’s Role in Shaping the Future of the Information Commons”: an expansive look at Wikimedia, knowledge, technologies, and communications in the next decade. It includes thoughtful sections on Demographics (global population trends, and Wikimedia’s opportunities for growth) Emerging Platforms (how Wikimedia platforms will be accessed), Misinformation (how content creators and technologists can work toward a product that is trustworthy), Literacy (changing forms of learning that can benefit from the Wikimedia movement) and the core Wikimedia issues of Open Knowledge and knowledge as a service.
Among its goals, the document calls for greater outreach to areas outside of Europe and North America (which now account for 63% of Wikimedia’s total traffic), and widening the knowledge and experiential bases of contributors. It urges greater access through mobile devices and other emerging hardware; and expanding partnerships with libraries, museums, galleries and archives.
The document captures not only the idealism of the enterprise, and but also why Wikimedia can be described as a movement not only an enterprise. It calls into question conventional wisdoms of how our political and business structures should operate.
Consider the Wikimedia editing process that seeks to reach common ground on contentious issues. Lisa Gruwell, the Chief Advancement Officer of the Wikimedia Foundation, notes that in the development of an article, often editors with diverging claims and views will weigh in. Rather than escalating divisions, the process of editing has been found to reduce these divisions. Gruwell explains,
Through the collaborative editing process, the editors have critical discussions about what reliable sources say about a topic. They have to engage and defend their own perspectives about how an article should be represented, and ultimately find some form of common ground with other editors.
A number of researchers at Harvard Business School led by Shane Greenstein, Yuan Gu and Feng Zhu actually set out to study this phenomenon. Their findings, published in 2017 as a Harvard Business School working paper found that editors with different political viewpoints tended to dialogue with each other, and over time reduce rather than increase partisanship….(More)”.
Citizen Sensing: A Toolkit
Book from Making Sense: “Collaboration using open-source technologies makes it possible to create new and powerful forms of community action, social learning and citizenship. There are now widely accessible platforms through which we can come together to make sense of urgent challenges, and discover ways to address these. Together we can shape our streets, neighbourhoods, cities and countries – and in turn, shape our future. You can join with others to become the solution to challenges in our environment, in our communities and in the way we live together.
In this book, there are ideas and ways of working that can help you build collective understanding and inspire others to take action. By coming together with others on issues you identify and define yourselves, and by designing and using the right tools collaboratively, both your awareness and ability to act will be improved. In the process, everyone involved will have better insights, better arguments and better discussions; sometimes to astonishing effect!
We hope this book will help you engage people to learn more about an issue that concerns you, support you to take action, and change the world for the better. This resource will teach you how to scope your questions, identify and nurture relevant communities, and plan an effective campaign. It will then help you gather data and evidence, interpret your findings, build awareness and achieve tangible outcomes. Finally, it will show you how to reflect on these outcomes, and offers suggestions on how you can leave a lasting legacy.
This book is intended to help community activists who are curious or concerned about one or more issues, whether local or global, and are motivated to take action. This resource can also be of value to professionals in organisations which support community actions and activists. Finally, this book will be of interest to researchers in the fields of citizen science, community activism and participatory sensing, government officials and other public policy actors who wish to include citizens’ voices in the decision-making process…(More)”.
The Potential and Practice of Data Collaboratives for Migration
Essay by Stefaan Verhulst and Andrew Young in the Stanford Social Innovation Review: “According to recent United Nations estimates, there are globally about 258 million international migrants, meaning people who live in a country other than the one in which they were born; this represents an increase of 49 percent since 2000. Of those, 26 million people have been forcibly displaced across borders, having migrated either as refugees or asylum seekers. An additional 40 million or so people are internally displaced due to conflict and violence, and millions more are displaced each year because of natural disasters. It is sobering, then, to consider that, according to many observers, global warming is likely to make the situation worse.
Migration flows of all kinds—for work, family reunification, or political or environmental reasons—create a range of both opportunities and challenges for nation states and international actors. But the issues associated with refugees and asylum seekers are particularly complex. Despite the high stakes and increased attention to the issue, our understanding of the full dimensions and root causes of refugee movements remains limited. Refugee flows arise in response to not only push factors like wars and economic insecurity, but also powerful pull factors in recipient countries, including economic opportunities, and perceived goods like greater tolerance and rule of law. In addition, more objectively measurable variables like border barriers, topography, and even the weather, play an important role in determining the number and pattern of refugee flows. These push and pull factors interact in complex and often unpredictable ways. Further complicating matters, some experts argue that push-pull research on migration is dogged by a number of conceptual and methodological limitations.
To mitigate negative impacts and anticipate opportunities arising from high levels of global migration, we need a better understanding of the various factors contributing to the international movement of people and how they work together.
Data—specifically, the widely dispersed data sets that exist across governments, the private sector, and civil society—can help alleviate today’s information shortcoming. Several recent initiatives show the potential of using data to address some of the underlying informational gaps. In particular, there is an important role for a new form of data-driven problem-solving and policymaking—what we call “data collaboratives.” Data collaboratives offer the potential for inter-sectoral collaboration, and for the merging and augmentation of otherwise siloed data sets. While public and private actors are increasingly experimenting with various types of data in a variety of sectors and geographies—including sharing disease data to accelerate disease treatments and leveraging private bus data to improve urban planning—we are only beginning to understand the potential of data collaboration in the context of migration and refugee issues….(More)”.
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Democracy is in danger when the census undercounts vulnerable populations
The Conversation: “The 2020 U.S. Census is still two years away, but experts and civil rights groups are already disputing the results.At issue is whether the census will fulfill the Census Bureau’s mandate to “count everyone once, only once, and in the right place.”
The task is hardly as simple as it seems and has serious political consequences. Recent changes to the 2020 census, such as asking about citizenship status, will make populations already vulnerable to undercounting even more likely to be missed. These vulnerable populations include the young, poor, nonwhite, non-English-speaking, foreign-born and transient.
An accurate count is critical to the functioning of the U.S. government. Census data determine how the power and resources of the federal government are distributed across the 50 states. This includes seats in the House, votes in the Electoral College and funds for federal programs. Census data also guide the drawing of congressional and other voting districts and the enforcement of civil and voting rights laws.
Places where large numbers of people go uncounted get less than their fair share of political representation and federal resources. When specific racial and ethnic groups are undercounted, it is harder to identify and rectify violations of their civil rights. My research on the international history of demography demonstrates that the question of how to equitably count the population is not new, nor is it unique to the United States. The experience of the United States and other countries may hold important lessons as the Census Bureau finalizes its plans for the 2020 count.
Let’s take a look at that history….
In 1790, the United States became the first country to take a regular census. Following World War II, the U.S. government began to promote census-taking in other countries. U.S. leaders believed data about the size and location of populations throughout the Western Hemisphere could help the government plan defense. What’s more, U.S. businesses could also use the data to identify potential markets and labor forces in nearby countries.
The U.S. government began investing in a program called the Census of the Americas. Through this program, the State Department provided financial support and the Census Bureau provided technical assistance to Western Hemisphere countries taking censuses in 1950.
United Nations demographers also viewed the Census of the Americas as an opportunity. Data that were standardized across countries could serve as the basis for projections of world population growth and the calculation of social and economic indicators. They also hoped that censuses would provide useful information to newly established governments. The U.N. turned the Census of the Americas into a global affair, recommending that “all Member States planning population censuses about 1950 use comparable schedules so far as possible.” Since 1960, the U.N. has sponsored a World Census Program every 10 years. The 2020 World Census Program will be the seventh round….
Not all countries went along with the program. For example, Lebanon’s Christian rulers feared that a census would show Christians to be a minority, undermining the legitimacy of their government. However, for the 65 sovereign countries taking censuses between 1945 and 1954, leaders faced the same question the U.S. faces today: How can we make sure that everyone has an equal chance of being counted?…(More)”.
The Age of Perplexity: Rethinking the World we Knew
BVBA Open Access Book: “The impact of globalization, of technological progress and of the insecurity that they cause is reflected in people’s decisions, and by the path that our society is following. This path that will decide our future, in the sense that it will determine our capability of facing the challenges and taking advantage of the opportunities offered up by the advances in science and technology.
In this book, we look at generalized subjects, taking in the transformation that computing and the greater availability of information brings to our perceptions and understanding of things, and in the social imaginaries, that shape our attitudes and reactions to the events that we observe.
All this underpins the changes in politics we are witnessing, the appearance of populist movements or, more generally, the lack of commitment or disaffection with political institutions and the values that support the existing democracies. In these arenas, the new digital media, new types of digital political activism, and the rise of movements that question the dominant economic and political paradigm all play a key role.
In the supranational and geopolitical level we discuss the importance of incorporating a feminist perspective to international relations (as well, of course, as to all the spheres of human activity); new types of warfare, in which neither the contenders, strategies or media resemble anything we knew before; the huge geopolitical challenge represented by the complex and diverse Arab Islamic question; the end of the brief unipolar world era, with the emergence of powers that question the United States’ hegemony, among which we highlight China; or the future role of Latin America in the global map.
Regarding the economic questions that are at the root of the current perplexity, insecurity and discontent, we examine the impact of globalization and technological change on growth, the welfare state and, above all, employment.
From this base, we look at which are the most suitable economic policies and forms of organization for harnessing the potential of the digital revolution, and also for minimizing the risks of a society with increasing inequality, with a huge number of jobs taken over by machines, or even the loss of control of individual or collective decisions.
This technological revolution will undoubtedly require a complex transition process, but we also have before us a wonderful opportunity to better tend to the needs and demands of people: with more growth, jobs and a fairer distribution of wealth, and a richer and fuller life for the whole of humanity….(More)”.
Empowerment tool for women maps cases of harassment
Springwise: “We have previously written about innovations that promote inclusion and equal rights such as edible pie charts that highlight gender inequality. Another example is a predictive text app that finds alternative words for gendered language. Now, NINA, created in Brazil, is an app for empowering women to report violence that occurs in public spaces. The project was shared to Red Bull Amaphiko, a platform for social entrepreneurs to share their work and stories.
A 2016 survey released by ActionAid and conducted by YouGov found that 86 percent of Brazilian women were victims of harassment in public spaces. Responding to these statistics, Simony César created project NINA two years ago to help tackle gender-based violence. The app collects data in real time, mapping locations in which cases of harassment have taken place. The launch and testing of the app took place on public transport. It saw 76 thousand users per day at 17 bus lines at the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE).
César states “The premise of NINA aims to empower women through an application that denounces the types of violence they suffer within public spaces”. It combats violence against women by making cases of harassment in the city locatable on a map. NINA can then use this data to find out which bus lines have the highest rate of harassment. It can also record the most common times that cases occur and store photographic records and short videos of harassers.
Another survey by ActionAid in March 2018 revealed that 64 percent of Brazilian women surveyed were victims of sexual harassment. These results demonstrate that the need for empowerment tools, such as NINA, is still necessary. The exposure of women to violence in public city spaces is a global issue and as a result, accessibility within cities is unequal based on gender….(More)”.
Cambridge Analytica scandal: legitimate researchers using Facebook data could be collateral damage
The scandal that has erupted around Cambridge Analytica’s alleged harvesting of 50m Facebook profiles assembled from data provided by a UK-based academic and his company is a worrying development for legitimate researchers.
Political data analytics company Cambridge Analytica – which is affiliated with Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL) – reportedly used Facebook data, after it was handed over by Aleksandr Kogan, a lecturer at the University of Cambridge’s department of psychology.
Kogan, through his company Global Science Research (GSR) – separate from his university work – gleaned the data from a personality test app named “thisisyourdigitallife”. Roughly 270,000 US-based Facebook users voluntarily responded to the test in 2014. But the app also collected data on those participants’ Facebook friends without their consent.
This was possible due to Facebook rules at the time that allowed third-party apps to collect data about a Facebook user’s friends. The Mark Zuckerberg-run company has since changed its policy to prevent such access to developers….
Social media data is a rich source of information for many areas of research in psychology, technology, business and humanities. Some recent examples include using Facebook to predict riots, comparing the use of Facebook with body image concern in adolescent girls and investigating whether Facebook can lower levels of stress responses, with research suggesting that it may enhance and undermine psycho-social constructs related to well-being.
It is right to believe that researchers and their employers value research integrity. But instances where trust has been betrayed by an academic – even if it’s the case that data used for university research purposes wasn’t caught in the crossfire – will have a negative impact on whether participants will continue to trust researchers. It also has implications for research governance and for companies to share data with researchers in the first place.
Universities, research organisations and funders govern the integrity of research with clear and strict ethics proceduresdesigned to protect participants in studies, such as where social media data is used. The harvesting of data without permission from users is considered an unethical activity under commonly understood research standards.
The fallout from the Cambridge Analytica controversy is potentially huge for researchers who rely on social networks for their studies, where data is routinely shared with them for research purposes. Tech companies could become more reluctant to share data with researchers. Facebook is already extremely protective of its data – the worry is that it could become doubly difficult for researchers to legitimately access this information in light of what has happened with Cambridge Analytica….(More)”.
Artificial Intelligence and the Need for Data Fairness in the Global South
Medium blog by Yasodara Cordova: “…The data collected by industry represents AI opportunities for governments, to improve their services through innovation. Data-based intelligence promises to increase the efficiency of resource management by improving transparency, logistics, social welfare distribution — and virtually every government service. E-government enthusiasm took of with the realization of the possible applications, such as using AI to fight corruption by automating the fraud-tracking capabilities of cost-control tools. Controversially, the AI enthusiasm has spread to the distribution of social benefits, optimization of tax oversight and control, credit scoring systems, crime prediction systems, and other applications based in personal and sensitive data collection, especially in countries that do not have comprehensive privacy protections.
There are so many potential applications, society may operate very differently in ten years when the “datafixation” has advanced beyond citizen data and into other applications such as energy and natural resource management. However, many countries in the Global South are not being given necessary access to their countries’ own data.
Useful data are everywhere, but only some can take advantage. Beyond smartphones, data can be collected from IoT components in common spaces. Not restricted to urban spaces, data collection includes rural technology like sensors installed in tractors. However, even when the information is related to issues of public importance in developing countries —like data taken from road mesh or vital resources like water and land — it stays hidden under contract rules and public citizens cannot access, and therefore take benefit, from it. This arrangement keeps the public uninformed about their country’s operations. The data collection and distribution frameworks are not built towards healthy partnerships between industry and government preventing countries from realizing the potential outlined in the previous paragraph.
The data necessary to the development of better cities, public policies, and common interest cannot be leveraged if kept in closed silos, yet access often costs more than is justifiable. Data are a primordial resource to all stages of new technology, especially tech adoption and integration, so the necessary long term investment in innovation needs a common ground to start with. The mismatch between the pace of the data collection among big established companies and small, new, and local businesses will likely increase with time, assuming no regulation is introduced for equal access to collected data….
Currently, data independence remains restricted to discussions on the technological infrastructure that supports data extraction. Privacy discussions focus on personal data rather than the digital accumulation of strategic data in closed silos — a necessary discussion not yet addressed. The national interest of data is not being addressed in a framework of economic and social fairness. Access to data, from a policy-making standpoint, needs to find a balance between the extremes of public, open access and limited, commercial use.
A final, but important note: the vast majority of social media act like silos. APIs play an important role in corporate business models, where industry controls the data it collects without reward, let alone user transparency. Negotiation of the specification of APIs to make data a common resource should be considered, for such an effort may align with the citizens’ interest….(More)”.
International Development Doesn’t Care About Patient Privacy
Yogesh Rajkotia at the Stanford Social Innovation Review: “In 2013, in southern Mozambique, foreign NGO workers searched for a man whom the local health facility reported as diagnosed with HIV. The workers aimed to verify that the health facility did indeed diagnose and treat him. When they could not find him, they asked the village chief for help. Together with an ever-growing crowd of onlookers, the chief led them to the man’s home. After hesitating and denying, he eventually admitted, in front of the crowd, that he had tested positive and received treatment. With his status made public, he now risked facing stigma, discrimination, and social marginalization. The incident undermined both his health and his ability to live a dignified life.
Similar privacy violations were documented in Burkina Faso in 2016, where community workers asked partners, in the presence of each other, to disclose what individual health services they had obtained.
Why was there such a disregard for the privacy and dignity of these citizens?
As it turns out, unbeknownst to these Mozambican and Burkinabé patients, their local health centers were participating in performance-based financing (PBF) programs financed by foreign assistance agencies. Implemented in more than 35 countries, PBF programs offer health workers financial bonuses for delivering priority health interventions. To ensure that providers do not cheat the system, PBF programs often send verifiers to visit patients’ homes to confirm that they have received specific health services. These verifiers are frequently community members (the World Bank callously notes in its “Performance-Based Financing Toolkit” that even “a local soccer club” can play this role), and this practice, known as “patient tracing,” is common among PBF programs. In World Bank-funded PBF programs alone, 19 out of the 25 PBF programs implement patient tracing. Yet the World Bank’s toolkit never mentions patient privacy or confidentiality. In patient tracing, patients’ rights and dignity are secondary to donor objectives.
Patient tracing within PBF programs is just one example of a bigger problem: Privacy violations are pervasive in global health. Some researchers and policymakers have raised privacy concerns about tuberculosis (TB), human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), family planning, post-abortion care, and disease surveillance programs. A study conducted by the Asia-Pacific Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS found that 34 percent of people living with HIV in India, Indonesia, Philippines, and Thailand reported that health workers breached confidentiality. In many programs, sensitive information about people’s sexual and reproductive health, disease status, and other intimate health details are often collected to improve health system effectiveness and efficiency. Usually, households have no way to opt out, nor any control over how heath care programs use, store, and disseminate this data. At the same time, most programs do not have systems to enforce health workers’ non-disclosure of private information.
In societies with strong stigma around certain health topics—especially sexual and reproductive health—the disclosure of confidential patient information can destroy lives. In contexts where HIV is highly stigmatized, people living with HIV are 2.4 times more likely to delay seeking care until they are seriously ill. In addition to stigma’s harmful effects on people’s health, it can limit individuals’ economic opportunities, cause them to be socially marginalized, and erode their psychological wellbeing….(More)”.