Denialism: what drives people to reject the truth

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Keith Kahn-Harris at The Guardian: “…Denialism is an expansion, an intensification, of denial. At root, denial and denialism are simply a subset of the many ways humans have developed to use language to deceive others and themselves. Denial can be as simple as refusing to accept that someone else is speaking truthfully. Denial can be as unfathomable as the multiple ways we avoid acknowledging our weaknesses and secret desires.

Denialism is more than just another manifestation of the humdrum intricacies of our deceptions and self-deceptions. It represents the transformation of the everyday practice of denial into a whole new way of seeing the world and – most important – a collective accomplishment. Denial is furtive and routine; denialism is combative and extraordinary. Denial hides from the truth, denialism builds a new and better truth.

In recent years, the term has been used to describe a number of fields of “scholarship”, whose scholars engage in audacious projects to hold back, against seemingly insurmountable odds, the findings of an avalanche of research. They argue that the Holocaust (and other genocides) never happened, that anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change is a myth, that Aids either does not exist or is unrelated to HIV, that evolution is a scientific impossibility, and that all manner of other scientific and historical orthodoxies must be rejected.

In some ways, denialism is a terrible term. No one calls themselves a “denialist”, and no one signs up to all forms of denialism. In fact, denialism is founded on the assertion that it is not denialism. In the wake of Freud (or at least the vulgarisation of Freud), no one wants to be accused of being “in denial”, and labelling people denialists seems to compound the insult by implying that they have taken the private sickness of denial and turned it into public dogma.

But denial and denialism are closely linked; what humans do on a large scale is rooted in what we do on a small scale. While everyday denial can be harmful, it is also just a mundane way for humans to respond to the incredibly difficult challenge of living in a social world in which people lie, make mistakes and have desires that cannot be openly acknowledged. Denialism is rooted in human tendencies that are neither freakish nor pathological.

All that said, there is no doubt that denialism is dangerous. In some cases, we can point to concrete examples of denialism causing actual harm. In South Africa, President Thabo Mbeki, in office between 1999 and 2008, was influenced by Aids denialists such as Peter Duesberg, who deny the link between HIV and Aids (or even HIV’s existence) and cast doubt on the effectiveness of anti-retroviral drugs. Mbeki’s reluctance to implement national treatment programmes using anti-retrovirals has been estimated to have cost the lives of 330,000 people. On a smaller scale, in early 2017 the Somali-American community in Minnesota was struck by a childhood measles outbreak, as a direct result of proponents of the discredited theory that the MMR vaccine causes autism, persuading parents not to vaccinate their children….(More)”.

Satellites can advance sustainable development by highlighting poverty

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Cordis: “Estimating poverty is crucial for improving policymaking and advancing the sustainability of a society. Traditional poverty estimation methods such as household surveys and census data incur huge costs however, creating a need for more efficient approaches.

With this in mind, the EU-funded USES project examined how satellite images could be used to estimate household-level poverty in rural regions of developing countries. “This promises to be a radically more cost-effective way of monitoring and evaluating the Sustainable Development Goals,” says Dr Gary Watmough, USES collaborator and Interdisciplinary Lecturer in Land Use and Socioecological Systems at the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom.

Land use and land cover reveal poverty clues

To achieve its aims, the project investigated how land use and land cover information from satellite data could be linked with household survey data. “We looked particularly at how households use the landscape in the local area for agriculture and other purposes such as collecting firewood and using open areas for grazing cattle,” explains Dr Watmough.

The work also involved examining satellite images to determine which types of land use were related to household wealth or poverty using statistical analysis. “By trying to predict household poverty using the land use data we could see which land use variables were most related to the household wealth in the area,” adds Dr Watmough.

Overall, the USES project found that satellite data could predict poverty particularly the poorest households in the area. Dr Watmough comments: “This is quite remarkable given that we are trying to predict complicated household-level poverty from a simple land use map derived from high-resolution satellite data.”

A study conducted by USES in Kenya found that the most important remotely sensed variable was building size within the homestead. Buildings less than 140 m2 were mostly associated with poorer households, whereas those over 140 m2 tended to be wealthier. The amount of bare ground in agricultural fields and within the homestead region was also important. “We also found that poorer households were associated with a shorter number of agricultural growing days,” says Dr Watmough….(More)”.

The Democratization of Data Science

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Jonathan Cornelissen at Harvard Business School: “Want to catch tax cheats? The government of Rwanda does — and it’s finding them by studying anomalies in revenue-collection data.

Want to understand how American culture is changing? So does a budding sociologist in Indiana. He’s using data science to find patterns in the massive amounts of text people use each day to express their worldviews — patterns that no individual reader would be able to recognize.

Intelligent people find new uses for data science every day. Still, despite the explosion of interest in the data collected by just about every sector of American business — from financial companies and health care firms to management consultancies and the government — many organizations continue to relegate data-science knowledge to a small number of employees.

That’s a mistake — and in the long run, it’s unsustainable. Think of it this way: Very few companies expect only professional writers to know how to write. So why ask onlyprofessional data scientists to understand and analyze data, at least at a basic level?

Relegating all data knowledge to a handful of people within a company is problematic on many levels. Data scientists find it frustrating because it’s hard for them to communicate their findings to colleagues who lack basic data literacy. Business stakeholders are unhappy because data requests take too long to fulfill and often fail to answer the original questions. In some cases, that’s because the questioner failed to explain the question properly to the data scientist.

Why would non–data scientists need to learn data science? That’s like asking why non-accountants should be expected to stay within budget.

These days every industry is drenched in data, and the organizations that succeed are those that most quickly make sense of their data in order to adapt to what’s coming. The best way to enable fast discovery and deeper insights is to disperse data science expertise across an organization.

Companies that want to compete in the age of data need to do three things: share data tools, spread data skills, and spread data responsibility…(More)”.

Data Colonialism: Rethinking Big Data’s Relation to the Contemporary Subject

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Nick Couldry and Ulises Mejias in Television & New Media (TVNM): “...Data colonialism combines the predatory extractive practices of historical colonialism with the abstract quantification methods of computing. Understanding Big Data from the Global South means understanding capitalism’s current dependence on this new type of appropriation that works at every point in space where people or things are attached to today’s infrastructures of connection. The scale of this transformation means that it is premature to map the forms of capitalism that will emerge from it on a global scale. Just as historical colonialism over the long-run provided the essential preconditions for the emergence of industrial capitalism, so over time, we can expect that data colonialism will provide the preconditions for a new stage of capitalism that as yet we can barely imagine, but for which the appropriation of human life through data will be central.

Right now, the priority is not to speculate about that eventual stage of capitalism, but to resist the data colonialism that is under way. This is how we understand Big Data from the South. Through what we call ‘data relations’ (new types of human relations which enable the extraction of data for commodification), social life all over the globe becomes an ‘open’ resource for extraction that is somehow ‘just there’ for capital. These global flows of data are as expansive as historic colonialism’s appropriation of land, resources, and bodies, although the epicentre has somewhat shifted. Data colonialism involves not one pole of colonial power (‘the West’), but at least two: the USA and China. This complicates our notion of the geography of the Global South, a concept which until now helped situate resistance and disidentification along geographic divisions between former colonizers and colonized. Instead, the new data colonialism works both externally — on a global scale — and internally on its own home populations. The elites of data colonialism (think of Facebook) benefit from colonization in both dimensions, and North-South, East-West divisions no longer matter in the same way.

It is important to acknowledge both the apparent similarities and the significant differences between our argument and the many preceding critical arguments about Big Data…(More)”

Introducing CitizENGAGE – How Citizens Get Things Done

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Open Gov Partnership: “In a world full of autocracy, bureaucracy, and opacity, it can be easy to feel like you’re fighting an uphill battle against these trends.

Trust in government is at historic lows. Autocratic leaders have taken the reins in countries once thought bastions of democracy. Voter engagement has been declining around the globe for years.

Despite this reality, there is another, powerful truth: citizens are using open government to engage in their communities in innovative, exciting ways, bringing government closer and creating a more inclusive system.

These citizens are everywhere.

In Costa Rica, they are lobbying the government for better and fairer housing for indigenous communities.

In Liberia, they are bringing rights to land back to the communities who are threatened by companies on their traditional lands.

In Madrid, they are using technology to make sure you can participate in government – not just every four years, but every day.

In Mongolia, they are changing the face of education and healthcare services by empowering citizens to share their needs with government.

In Paraguay, hundreds of municipal councils are hearing directly from citizens and using their input to shape how needed public services are delivered.

These powerful examples are the inspiration for the Open Government Partnership’s (OGP) new global campaign to CItizENGAGE.  The campaign will share the stories of citizens engaging in government and changing lives for the better.

CitizENGAGE includes videos, photo essays, and impact stories about citizens changing the way government is involved in their lives. These stories talk about the very real impact open government can have on the lives of everyday citizens, and how it can change things as fundamental as schools, roads, and houses.

We invite you to visit CitizENGAGE and find out more about these reforms, and get inspired. Whether or not your government participates in OGP, you can take the lessons from these powerful stories of transformation and use them to make an impact in your own community….(More)”.

Is Open Data Working for Women in Africa?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Web Foundation: “Open data has the potential to change politics, economies and societies for the better by giving people more opportunities to engage in the decisions that affect their lives. But to reach the full potential of open data, it must be available to and used by all. Yet, across the globe — and in Africa in particular — there is a significant data gap.

This report — Is open data working for women in Africa — maps the current state of open data for women across Africa, with insights from country-specific research in Nigeria, Cameroon, Uganda and South Africa with additional data from a survey of experts in 12 countries across the continent.

Our findings show that, despite the potential for open data to empower people, it has so far changed little for women living in Africa.

Key findings

  • There is a closed data culture in Africa — Most countries lack an open culture and have legislation and processes that are not gender-responsive. Institutional resistance to disclosing data means few countries have open data policies and initiatives at the national level. In addition, gender equality legislation and policies are incomplete and failing to reduce gender inequalities. And overall, Africa lacks the cross-organisational collaboration needed to strengthen the open data movement.
  • There are barriers preventing women from using the data that is available — Cultural and social realities create additional challenges for women to engage with data and participate in the technology sector. 1GB of mobile data in Africa costs, on average, 10% of average monthly income. This high cost keeps women, who generally earn less than men, offline. Moreover, time poverty, the gender pay gap and unpaid labour create economic obstacles for women to engage with digital technology.
  • Key datasets to support the advocacy objectives of women’s groups are missing — Data on budget, health and crime are largely absent as open data. Nearly all datasets in sub-Saharan Africa (373 out of 375) are closed, and sex-disaggregated data, when available online, is often not published as open data. There are few open data policies to support opening up of key datasets and even when they do exist, they largely remain in draft form. With little investment in open data initiatives, good data management practices or for implementing Right To Information (RTI) reforms, improvement is unlikely.
  • There is no strong base of research on women’s access and use of open data — There is lack of funding, little collaboration and few open data champions. Women’s groups, digital rights groups and gender experts rarely collaborate on open data and gender issues. To overcome this barrier, multi-stakeholder collaborations are essential to develop effective solutions….(More)”.

Bad Governance and Corruption

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Textbook by Richard Rose and Caryn Peiffer: “This book explains why the role of corruption varies greatly between public services, between people, between national systems of governance, and between measures of corruption.

More than 1.8 billion people pay the price of bad government each year, by sending a bribe to a public official.

In developing countries, corruption affects social services, such as health care and education, and law enforcement institutions, such as the police. When public officials do not act as bureaucrats delivering services by the book, people can try to get them by hook or by crook. The book’s analysis draws on unique evidence: a data base of sample surveys of 175,000 people in 125 countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and North and South America. The authors avoid one-size-fits-all proposals for reform and instead provide measures that can be applied to particular public services to reduce or eliminate opportunities for corruption….(More)”.

Virtualization of government‐to‐citizen engagement process: Enablers and constraints

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Joshua Ofoeda et al: “The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors that constrain or enable process virtualization in a government‐to‐citizen engagement process. Past research has established that most e‐government projects, especially in developing countries, are regarded as total failure or partial failure.

Citizens’ unwillingness to use government electronic services and lack of awareness are among some of the reasons why these electronic services fail.

Using the process virtualization theory (PVT) as theoretical lens, the authors investigated the various activities within the driver license acquisition process at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority.

The PVT helped in identifying factors which enable or inhibit the virtualization of the driver license acquisition process in Ghana. Based on a survey data of 317 participants, we report that process characteristics in the form of relationship requirements affect citizens’ willingness toward the use of government virtualized processes. Situating the PVT within a developing country context, our findings reveal that some cultural and behavioral attributes such as socialization hinder the virtualization of some activities within the driver licensing process….(More)”.

The Palgrave Handbook of Bottom-Up Urbanism

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Mahyar Arefi and Conrad Kickert: “Who shapes our cities? In an age of increasing urban pluralism, globalization and immigration, decreasing public budgets, and an ongoing crisis of authority among designers and planners, the urban environment is shaped by a number of non-traditional stakeholders.

The book surveys the kaleidoscope of views on the agency of urbanism, providing an overview of the various scholarly debates and territories that pertain to bottom-up efforts such as everyday urbanism, DIY urbanism, guerilla urbanism, tactical urbanism, and lean urbanism. Uniquely, this books seeks connections between the various movements by curating a range of views on the past, present, and future of bottom-up urbanism. The contributors also connect the recent trend of bottom-up efforts in the West with urban informality in the Global South, drawing parallels and finding contrast between social and institutional structures across the globe. The book appeals to urbanists in the widest sense of the word: those who shape, study, and improve our urban spaces….(More)”.

When Technology Gets Ahead of Society

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Tarun Khanna at Harvard Business Review: “Drones, originally developed for military purposes, weren’t approved for commercial use in the United States until 2013. When that happened, it was immediately clear that they could be hugely useful to a whole host of industries—and almost as quickly, it became clear that regulation would be a problem. The new technology raised multiple safety and security issues, there was no consensus on who should write rules to mitigate those concerns, and the knowledge needed to develop the rules didn’t yet exist in many cases. In addition, the little flying robots made a lot of people nervous.

Such regulatory, logistical, and social barriers to adopting novel products and services are very common. In fact, technology routinely outstrips society’s ability to deal with it. That’s partly because tech entrepreneurs are often insouciant about the legal and social issues their innovations birth. Although electric cars are subsidized by the federal government, Tesla has run afoul of state and local regulations because it bypasses conventional dealers to sell directly to consumers. Facebook is only now facing up to major regulatory concerns about its use of data, despite being massively successful with users and advertisers.

It’s clear that even as innovations bring unprecedented comfort and convenience, they also threaten old ways of regulating industries, running a business, and making a living. This has always been true. Thus early cars weren’t allowed to go faster than horses, and some 19th-century textile workers used sledgehammers to attack the industrial machinery they feared would displace them. New technology can even upend social norms: Consider how dating apps have transformed the way people meet.

Entrepreneurs, of course, don’t really care that the problems they’re running into are part of a historical pattern. They want to know how they can manage—and shorten—the period between the advent of a technology and the emergence of the rules and new behaviors that allow society to embrace its possibilities.

Interestingly, the same institutional murkiness that pervades nascent industries such as drones and driverless cars is something I’ve also seen in developing countries. And strange though this may sound, I believe that tech entrepreneurs can learn a lot from businesspeople who have succeeded in the world’s emerging markets.

Entrepreneurs in Brazil or Nigeria know that it’s pointless to wait for the government to provide the institutional and market infrastructure their businesses need, because that will simply take too long. They themselves must build support structures to compensate for what Krishna Palepu and I have referred to in earlier writings as “institutional voids.” They must create the conditions that will allow them to create successful products or services.

Tech-forward entrepreneurs in developed economies may want to believe that it’s not their job to guide policy makers and the public—but the truth is that nobody else can play that role. They may favor hardball tactics, getting ahead by evading rules, co-opting regulators, or threatening to move overseas. But in the long term, they’d be wiser to use soft power, working with a range of partners to co-create the social and institutional fabric that will support their growth—as entrepreneurs in emerging markets have done.…(More)”.