Paper by Amory Gethin & Vincent Pons: “Recent social movements stand out by their spontaneous nature and lack of stable leadership, raising doubts on their ability to generate political change. This article provides systematic evidence on the effects of protests on public opinion and political attitudes. Drawing on a database covering the quasi-universe of protests held in the United States, we identify 14 social movements that took place from 2017 to 2022, covering topics related to environmental protection, gender equality, gun control, immigration, national and international politics, and racial issues. We use Twitter data, Google search volumes, and high-frequency surveys to track the evolution of online interest, policy views, and vote intentions before and after the outset of each movement. Combining national-level event studies with difference-in-differences designs exploiting variation in local protest intensity, we find that protests generate substantial internet activity but have limited effects on political attitudes. Except for the Black Lives Matter protests following the death of George Floyd, which shifted views on racial discrimination and increased votes for the Democrats, we estimate precise null effects of protests on public opinion and electoral behavior…(More)”.
Could artificial intelligence benefit democracy?
Article by Brian Wheeler: “Each week sees a new set of warnings about the potential impact of AI-generated deepfakes – realistic video and audio of politicians saying things they never said – spreading confusion and mistrust among the voting public.
And in the UK, regulators, security services and government are battling to protect this year’s general election from malign foreign interference.
Less attention has been given to the possible benefits of AI.
But a lot of work is going on, often below the radar, to try to harness its power in ways that might enhance democracy rather than destroy it.
“While this technology does pose some important risks in terms of disinformation, it also offers some significant opportunities for campaigns, which we can’t ignore,” Hannah O’Rourke, co-founder of Campaign Lab, a left-leaning network of tech volunteers, says.
“Like all technology, what matters is how AI is actually implemented. “Its impact will be felt in the way campaigners actually use it.”
Among other things, Campaign Lab runs training courses for Labour and Liberal Democrat campaigners on how to use ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer) to create the first draft of election leaflets.
It reminds them to edit the final product carefully, though, as large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT have a worrying tendency to “hallucinate” or make things up.
The group is also experimenting with chatbots to help train canvassers to have more engaging conversations on the doorstep.
AI is already embedded in everyday programs, from Microsoft Outlook to Adobe Photoshop, Ms O’Rourke says, so why not use it in a responsible way to free up time for more face-to-face campaigning?…
Conservative-supporting AI expert Joe Reeve is another young political campaigner convinced the new technology can transform things for the better.
He runs Future London, a community of “techno optimists” who use AI to seek answers to big questions such as “Why can’t I buy a house?” and, crucially, “Where’s my robot butler?”
In 2020, Mr Reeve founded Tory Techs, partly as a right-wing response to Campaign Lab.
The group has run programming sessions and explored how to use AI to hone Tory campaign messages but, Mr Reeve says, it now “mostly focuses on speaking with MPs in more private and safe spaces to help coach politicians on what AI means and how it can be a positive force”.
“Technology has an opportunity to make the world a lot better for a lot of people and that is regardless of politics,” he tells BBC News…(More)”.
Synthetic Politics: Preparing democracy for Generative AI
Report by Demos: “This year is a politically momentous one, with almost half the world voting in elections. Generative AI may revolutionise our political information environments by making them more effective, relevant, and participatory. But it’s also possible that they will become more manipulative, confusing, and dangerous. We’ve already seen AI-generated audio of politicians going viral and chatbots offering incorrect information about elections.
This report, produced in partnership with University College London, explores how synthetic content produced by generative AI poses risks to the core democratic values of truth, equality, and non-violence. It proposes two action plans for what private and public decision-makers should be doing to safeguard democratic integrity immediately and in the long run:
- In Action Plan 1, we consider the actions that should be urgently put in place to reduce the acute risks to democratic integrity presented by generative AI tools. This includes reducing the production and dissemination of harmful synthetic content and empowering users so that harmful impacts of synthetic content are reduced in the immediate term.
- In Action Plan 2, we set out a longer-term vision for how the fundamental risks to democratic integrity should be addressed. We explore the ways in which generative AI tools can help bolster equality, truth and non-violence, from enabling greater democratic participation to improving how key information institutions operate…(More)”.
Understanding the Crisis in Institutional Trust
Essay by Jacob Harold: “Institutions are patterns of relationship. They form essential threads of our social contract. But those threads are fraying. In the United States, individuals’ trust in major institutions has declined 22 percentage points since 1979.
Institutions face a range of profound challenges. A long-overdue reckoning with the history of racial injustice has highlighted how many institutions reflect patterns of inequity. Technology platforms have supercharged access to information but also reinforced bubbles of interpretation. Anti-elite sentiment has evolved into anti-institutional rebellion.
These forces are affecting institutions of all kinds—from disciplines like journalism to traditions like the nuclear family. This essay focuses on a particular type of institution: organizations. The decline in trust in organizations has practical implications: trust is essential to the day-to-day work of an organization—whether an elite university, a traffic court, or a corner store. The stakes for society are hard to overstate. Organizations “organize” much of our society, culture, and economy.
This essay is meant to offer background for ongoing conversations about the crisis in institutional trust. It does not claim to offer a solution; instead, it lays out the parts of the problem as a step toward shared solutions.
It is not possible to isolate the question of institutional trust from other trends. The institutional trust crisis is intertwined with broader issues of polarization, gridlock, fragility, and social malaise. Figure 1 maps out eight adjacent issues. Some of these may be seen as drivers of the institutional trust crisis, others as consequences of it. Most are both.
This essay considers trust as a form of information. It is data about the external perceptions of institutions. Declining trust can thus be seen as society teaching itself. Viewing a decline in trust as information reframes the challenge. Sometimes, institutions may “deserve” some of the mistrust that has been granted to them. In those cases, the information can serve as a direct corrective…(More)”.
Evidence Ecosystems and the Challenge of Humanising and Normalising Evidence
Article by Geoff Mulgan: “It is reasonable to assume that the work of governments, businesses and civil society goes better if the people making decisions are well-informed, using reliable facts and strong evidence rather than only hunch and anecdote. The term ‘evidence ecosystem’1 is a useful shorthand for the results of systematic attempts to make this easier, enabling decision makers, particularly in governments, to access the best available evidence, in easily digestible forms and when it’s needed.
…This sounds simple. But these ecosystems are as varied as ecosystems in nature. How they work depends on many factors, including how political or technical the issues are; the presence or absence of confident, well-organised professions; the availability of good quality evidence; whether there is a political culture that values research; and much more.
In particular, the paper argues that the next generation of evidence ecosystems need a sharper understanding of how the supply of evidence meets demand, and the human dimension of evidence. That means cultivating lasting relationships rather than relying too much on a linear flow of evidence from researchers to decision-makers; it means using conversation as much as prose reports to ensure evidence is understood and acted on; and it means making use of stories as well as dry analysis. It depends, in other words, on recognising that the users of evidence are humans.
In terms of prescription the paper emphasises:
- Sustainability/normalisation: the best approaches are embedded, part of the daily life of decision-making rather than depending on one-off projects and programmes. This applies both to evidence and to data. Yet embeddedness is the exception rather than the rule.
- Multiplicity: multiple types of knowledge, and logics, are relevant to decisions, which is why people and institutions that understand these different logics are so vital.
- Credibility and relationships: the intermediaries who connect the supply and demand of knowledge need to be credible, with both depth of knowledge and an ability to interpret it for diverse audiences, and they need to be able to create and maintain relationships, which will usually be either place or topic based, and will take time to develop, with the communication of evidence often done best in conversation.
- Stories: influencing decision-makers depends on indirect as well as direct communication, since the media in all their forms play a crucial role in validating evidence and evidence travels best with stories, vignettes and anecdotes.
In short, while evidence is founded on rigorous analysis, good data and robust methods, it also needs to be humanised – embedded in relationships, brought alive in conversations and vivid, human stories – and normalised, becoming part of everyday work…(More)”.
Digital Inclusion: International Policy and Research
Book edited by Simeon Yates and Elinor Carmi: “This collection presents policy and research that addresses digital inequalities, access, and skills, from multiple international perspectives. With a special focus on the impact of the COVID-19, the collection is based on the 2021 Digital Inclusion, Policy and Research Conference, with chapters from both academia and civic organizations.
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed citizens’ relationship with digital technologies for the foreseeable future. Many people’s main channels of communication were transferred to digital services, platforms, and apps. Everything ‘went online’: our families, friends, partners, health, work, news, politics, culture, arts and protesting. Yet access to digital technologies remained highly unequal. This brought digital inclusion policy and research to the fore, highlighting to policymakers and the public the ‘hidden’ challenges and impacts of digital exclusion and inequalities.
The cutting-edge volume offers research findings and policycase studies that explore digital inclusion from the provision of basic access to digital, via education and digital literacy, and on to issues of gender and technology. Case studies are drawn from varied sources including the UK, Australia, South America, and Eastern Europe, providing a valuable resource in the pursuit of social equity and justice…(More)”
Feminist democratic innovations in policy and politics
Article by Paloma Caravantes and Emanuela Lombardo: “This article examines the potential of feminist democratic innovations in policy and institutional politics. It examines how feminist democratic innovations can be conceptualised and articulated in local institutions. Combining theories on democratic governance, feminist democracy, social movements, municipalism, decentralisation, gender equality policies and state feminism, it conceptualises feminist democratic innovations in policy and politics as innovations oriented at (a) transforming knowledge, (b) transforming policymaking and public funding, (c) transforming institutions, and (d) transforming actors’ coalitions. Through analysis of municipal plans and interviews with key actors, the article examines feminist democratic innovations in the policy and politics of Barcelona’s local government from 2015 to 2023. Emerging from the mobilisation of progressive social movements after the 2008 economic crisis, the findings uncover a laboratory of feminist municipal politics, following the election of a new government and self-proclaimed feminist mayor. Critical actors and an enabling political context play a pivotal role in the adoption of this feminist institutional politics. The article concludes by arguing that feminist institutional politics at the local level contribute to democratising policy and politics in innovative ways, in particular encouraging inclusive intersectionality and participatory discourses and practices…(More)”.
Regulatory experimentation: Moving ahead on the agile regulatory governance agenda
OECD Policy Paper: “This policy paper aims to help governments develop regulatory experimentation constructively and appropriately as part of their implementation of the 2021 OECD Recommendation for Agile Regulatory Governance to Harness Innovation. Regulatory experimentation can help promote adaptive learning and innovative and better-informed regulatory policies and practices. This policy paper examines key concepts, definitions and constitutive elements of regulatory experimentation. It outlines the rationale for using regulatory experimentation, discusses enabling factors and governance requirements, and presents a set of forward-looking conclusions…(More)”.
Plurality: The Future of Collaborative Technology and Democracy
Book by E. Glen Weyl, Audrey Tang and ⿻ Community: “Technology and democracy today are at odds: technology reinforces authoritarian oversight and corrupts democratic institutions, while democracies fight back with restrictive regulation and public sector conservatism. However, this conflict is not inevitable. This is the consequence of choosing to invest in technologies such as AI and cryptocurrencies at the expense of democratic principles. In some places, such as the Ether community, Estonia, Colorado, and especially Taiwan, the focus has shifted to technologies that promote pluralistic collaboration, and have witnessed the co-prosperity of both democracy and technology. Written by the paradigm leaders of the Plurality, this book shows for the first time how every technologist, policymaker, business leader, and activist can use it to build a more collaborative, diverse, and productive democratic world.
When Uber arrived in Taiwan, it sparked a lot of controversy, as it has in most parts of the world. But instead of fueling the controversy, social media, with the help of vTaiwan, a platform developed with the help of cabinet ministers, encouraged citizens to share their feelings and engage in deep conversations with thousands of participants to brainstorm how to regulate online ride-hailing services. The technology, which uses statistical tools often associated with AI to aggregate opinions, allows each participant to quickly view a clear representation of all people’s viewpoints and provide feedback on their own thoughts. From the outset, a broadly supported viewpoint is brought to the forefront among a diverse group of people with different perspectives, creating a rough consensus that ensures the benefits of this new form of ridesharing while protecting the rights of the drivers, and is implemented by the government. This process has been used in Taiwan to solve dozens of controversial problems and has quickly spread to governments, cooperatives, and blockchain communities around the world…(More)”.
The Unintended Consequences of Data Standardization
Article by Cathleen Clerkin: “The benefits of data standardization within the social sector—and indeed just about any industry—are multiple, important, and undeniable. Access to the same type of data over time lends the ability to track progress and increase accountability. For example, over the last 20 years, my organization, Candid, has tracked grantmaking by the largest foundations to assess changes in giving trends. The data allowed us to demonstrate philanthropy’s disinvestment in historically Black colleges and universities. Data standardization also creates opportunities for benchmarking—allowing individuals and organizations to assess how they stack up to their colleagues and competitors. Moreover, large amounts of standardized data can help predict trends in the sector. Finally—and perhaps most importantly to the social sector—data standardization invariably reduces the significant reporting burdens placed on nonprofits.
Yet, for all of its benefits, data is too often proposed as a universal cure that will allow us to unequivocally determine the success of social change programs and processes. The reality is far more complex and nuanced. Left unchecked, the unintended consequences of data standardization pose significant risks to achieving a more effective, efficient, and equitable social sector…(More)”.