Nudging the city and residents of Cape Town to save water


Leila Harris, Jiaying Zhao and Martine Visser in The Conversation: “Cape Town could become the world’s first major city to run out of water – what’s been termed Day Zero….To its credit, the city has worked with researchers at the University of Cape Town to test strategies to nudge domestic users into reducing their water use. Nudges are interventions to encourage behaviour change for better outcomes, or in this context, to achieve environmental or conservation goals.

What key insights could help inform the city’s strategies? Research from psychology and behavioural economics could prove useful to refine efforts and help to achieve further water savings.

The most effective tactics

Research suggests the following types of nudges could be effective in promoting conservation behaviours.

Social norms: International research, as well as studies conducted in Cape Town, suggest that effective conservation can be promoted by giving feedback to consumers on how they perform relative to their neighbours. To this end, Cape Town introduced a water map that highlights homes that are compliant with targets.

The city has also been bundling information on usage with easy to implement water saving tips, something that research has shown to be particularly effective.

Research also suggests that combining behavioural interventions with traditional measures – such as tariff increases and restrictions – are often effective to reduce use in the short-term.

Real-time feedback: Cape Town is presenting the daily water level in major dams on a dashboard. This approach is consistent with research that shows that real-time information can effectively reduce water and energy consumption.

Such efforts could even be more effective if information is highlighted in relation to the critical level that’s been set for Day Zero, in this case 13.5%.

In the early days of a drought, it is also advisable to make information like this readily accessible through news outlets, social media, or even text messages. The water tracker produced by eighty20, a private Cape Town-based company, provides an example.

Social recognition: There’s evidence that efforts to celebrate successes or encourage competition can be effective – for instance, recognising neighbourhoods for meeting conservation targets. Prizes needn’t be monetary. Sometimes simple recognition, such as a certificate, can be effective.

Social recognition was found to be the most successful intervention among nine others nudges tested in research conducted in Cape Town in 2016. In this experiment, households who reduced consumption by 10% were recognised on the city’s website.

Another study showed that competition between the various floors of a government building in the Western Cape led to energy savings of up to 14%.

Cooperation: In the months ahead, the city would also do well to consider the support it might offer to encourage cooperation, particularly as the situation becomes more acute and as tensions rise.

Past studies have shown that social reputation and efforts to promote reciprocity can go a long way to encourage cooperation. The point is argued in a recent article featuring the importance of cooperation among Capetonians across different income groups.

Some residents of Cape Town are already pushing for a cooperative approach such as helping neighbours who might have difficulty travelling to collection points. Support for these efforts should be an important part of policies in the run up to Day Zero. These are often the examples that provide bright spots in challenging times.

Research also suggests that to navigate moments of crisis effectively, clear and trustworthy communication is critical. This also needs to be a priority….(More)“.

Infection forecasts powered by big data


Michael Eisenstein at Nature: “…The good news is that the present era of widespread access to the Internet and digital health has created a rich reservoir of valuable data for researchers to dive into….By harvesting and combining these streams of big data with conventional ways of monitoring infectious diseases, the public-health community could gain fresh powers to catch and curb emerging outbreaks before they rage out of control.

Going viral

Data scientists at Google were the first to make a major splash using data gathered online to track infectious diseases. The Google Flu Trends algorithm, launched in November 2008, combed through hundreds of billions of users’ queries on the popular search engine to look for small increases in flu-related terms such as symptoms or vaccine availability. Initial data suggested that Google Flu Trends could accurately map the incidence of flu with a lag of roughly one day. “It was a very exciting use of these data for the purpose of public health,” says Brownstein. “It really did start a whole revolution and new field of work in query data.”

Unfortunately, Google Flu Trends faltered when it mattered the most, completely missing the onset in April 2009 of the H1N1 pandemic. The algorithm also ran into trouble later on in the pandemic. It had been trained against seasonal fluctuations of flu, says Viboud, but people’s behaviour changed in the wake of panic fuelled by media reports — and that threw off Google’s data. …

Nevertheless, its work with Internet usage data was inspirational for infectious-disease researchers. A subsequent study from a team led by Cecilia Marques-Toledo at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, used Twitter to get high-resolution data on the spread of dengue fever in the country. The researchers could quickly map new cases to specific cities and even predict where the disease might spread to next (C. A. Marques-Toledo et al. PLoS Negl. Trop. Dis. 11, e0005729; 2017). Similarly, Brownstein and his colleagues were able to use search data from Google and Twitter to project the spread of Zika virus in Latin America several weeks before formal outbreak declarations were made by public-health officials. Both Internet services are used widely, which makes them data-rich resources. But they are also proprietary systems for which access to data is controlled by a third party; for that reason, Generous and his colleagues have opted instead to make use of search data from Wikipedia, which is open source. “You can get the access logs, and how many people are viewing articles, which serves as a pretty good proxy for search interest,” he says.

However, the problems that sank Google Flu Trends still exist….Additionally, online activity differs for infectious conditions with a social stigma such as syphilis or AIDS, because people who are or might be affected are more likely to be concerned about privacy. Appropriate search-term selection is essential: Generous notes that initial attempts to track flu on Twitter were confounded by irrelevant tweets about ‘Bieber fever’ — a decidedly non-fatal condition affecting fans of Canadian pop star Justin Bieber.

Alternatively, researchers can go straight to the source — by using smartphone apps to ask people directly about their health. Brownstein’s team has partnered with the Skoll Global Threats Fund to develop an app called Flu Near You, through which users can voluntarily report symptoms of infection and other information. “You get more detailed demographics about age and gender and vaccination status — things that you can’t get from other sources,” says Brownstein. Ten European Union member states are involved in a similar surveillance programme known as Influenzanet, which has generally maintained 30,000–40,000 active users for seven consecutive flu seasons. These voluntary reporting systems are particularly useful for diseases such as flu, for which many people do not bother going to the doctor — although it can be hard to persuade people to participate for no immediate benefit, says Brownstein. “But we still get a good signal from the people that are willing to be a part of this.”…(More)”.

New game aims to inoculate people against fake news


Springwise: “The term ‘fake news’ has become all too common in media coverage. However, a news item doesn’t have to be entirely made up to be misleading. Many fake news stories intend to deceive, often with a political agenda. Disinformation works because many people fail to recognise false information. A recent study, conducted by Britain’s Channel 4, found that only four percent of those surveyed could tell fake news from real. So how to inoculate people against fake news? Dutch organisation DROG, which works against the spread of disinformation, has teamed up with researchers at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom to develop a game that they claim can help confer resistance against false or misleading information.

The game, titled The Bad News Game, works by putting players in the position of creating fake news, so that they gain insight into the tactics and methods used by ‘real’ fake news-mongers to spread their message. This, in turn, builds up resistance to fake news. In the game, players are shown short texts or images and can react to them in a variety of ways. Choosing an option similar to that followed by a ‘real’ producer of disinformation earns the player more followers and credibility. Lying too blatantly, choosing an option that is obviously ridiculous, or acting in line with journalistic best practices, and the player will lose followers and credibility. The aim of the game is to gather as many followers as possible without losing too much credibility.

The Bad News Game is suitable for use in schools and takes around 20 minutes to complete. It joins other recent socially conscious educational innovations such as a cooking app that encourages healthy eating and a board game that eases discussions about arranged marriages….(More)”.

When Fighting Fake News Aids Censorship


Courtney C. Radsch at Project Syndicate: “Many media analysts have rightly identified the dangers posed by “fake news,” but often overlook what the phenomenon means for journalists themselves. Not only has the term become a shorthand way to malign an entire industry; autocrats are invoking it as an excuse to jail reporters and justify censorship, often on trumped-up charges of supporting terrorism.

Around the world, the number of honest journalists jailed for publishing fake or fictitious news is at an all-time high of at least 21. As non-democratic leaders increasingly use the “fake news” backlash to clamp down on independent media, that number is likely to climb.

The United States, once a world leader in defending free speech, has retreated from this role. President Donald Trump’s Twitter tirades about “fake news” have given autocratic regimes an example by which to justify their own media crackdowns. In December, China’s state-run People’s Daily newspaper posted tweets and a Facebook post welcoming Trump’s fake news mantra, noting that it “speaks to a larger truth about Western media.” This followed the Egyptian government’s praise for the Trump administration in February 2017, when the country’s foreign ministry criticized Western journalists for their coverage of global terrorism.

And in January 2017, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan praised Trump for berating a CNN reporter during a live news conference. Erdoğan, who criticized the network for its coverage of pro-democracy protests in Turkey in 2013, said that Trump had put the journalist “in his place.” Trump returned the compliment when he met Erdoğan a few months later. Praising his counterpart for being an ally in the fight against terrorism, Trump made no mention of Erdoğan’s own dismal record on press freedom.

It is no accident that these three countries have been quickest to embrace Trump’s “fake news” trope. China, Egypt, and Turkey jailed more than half of the world’s journalists in 2017, continuing a trend from the previous year. The international community’s silence in the face of these governments’ attacks on independent media seems to have been interpreted as consent….(More)”.

Journalism and artificial intelligence


Notes by Charlie Beckett (at LSE’s Media Policy Project Blog) : “…AI and machine learning is a big deal for journalism and news information. Possibly as important as the other developments we have seen in the last 20 years such as online platforms, digital tools and social media. My 2008 book on how journalism was being revolutionised by technology was called SuperMedia because these technologies offered extraordinary opportunities to make journalism much more efficient and effective – but also to transform what we mean by news and how we relate to it as individuals and communities. Of course, that can be super good or super bad.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning can help the news media with its three core problems:

  1. The overabundance of information and sources that leave the public confused
  2. The credibility of journalism in a world of disinformation and falling trust and literacy
  3. The Business model crisis – how can journalism become more efficient – avoiding duplication; be more engaged, add value and be relevant to the individual’s and communities’ need for quality, accurate information and informed, useful debate.

But like any technology they can also be used by bad people or for bad purposes: in journalism that can mean clickbait, misinformation, propaganda, and trolling.

Some caveats about using AI in journalism:

  1. Narratives are difficult to program. Trusted journalists are needed to understand and write meaningful stories.
  2. Artificial Intelligence needs human inputs. Skilled journalists are required to double check results and interpret them.
  3. Artificial Intelligence increases quantity, not quality. It’s still up to the editorial team and developers to decide what kind of journalism the AI will help create….(More)”.

Citicafe: conversation-based intelligent platform for citizen engagement


Paper by Amol Dumrewal et al in the Proceedings of the ACM India Joint International Conference on Data Science and Management of Data: “Community civic engagement is a new and emerging trend in urban cities driven by the mission of developing responsible citizenship. The recognition of civic potential in every citizen goes a long way in creating sustainable societies. Technology is playing a vital role in helping this mission and over the last couple of years, there have been a plethora of social media avenues to report civic issues. Sites like Twitter, Facebook, and other online portals help citizens to report issues and register complaints. These complaints are analyzed by the public services to help understand and in-turn address these issues. However, once the complaint is registered, often no formal or informal feedback is given back from these sites to the citizens. This de-motivates citizens and may deter them from registering further complaints. In addition, these sites offer no holistic information about a neighborhood to the citizens. It is useful for people to know whether there are similar complaints posted by other people in the same area, the profile of all complaints and a know-how of how and when these complaints will be addressed.

In this paper, we create a conversation-based platform CitiCafe for enhancing citizen engagement front-ended by a virtual agent with a Twitter interface. This platform back-end stores and processes information pertaining to civic complaints in a city. A Twitter based conversation service allows citizens to have a direct correspondence with CitiCafe via “tweets” and direct messages. The platform also helps citizens to (a) report problems and (b) gather information related to civic issues in different neighborhoods. This can also help, in the long run, to develop civic conversations among citizens and also between citizens and public services….(More)”.

A primer on political bots: Part one


Stuart W. Shulman et al at Data Driven Journalism: “The rise of political bots brings into sharp focus the role of automated social media accounts in today’s democratic civil society. Events during the Brexit referendum and the 2016 U.S. Presidential election revealed the scale of this issue for the first time to the majority of citizens and policy-makers. At the same time, the deployment of Russian-linked bots designed to promote pro-gun laws in the aftermath of the Florida school shooting demonstrates the state-sponsored, real-time readiness to shape, through information warfare, the dominant narratives on platforms such as Twitter. The regular news reports on these issues lead us to conclude that the foundations of democracy have become threatened by the presence of aggressive and socially disruptive bots, which aim to manipulate online political discourse.

While there is clarity on the various functions that bot accounts can be scripted to perform, as described below, the task of accurately defining this phenomenon and identifying bot accounts remains a challenge. At Texifter, we have endeavoured to bring nuance to this issue through a research project which explores the presence of automated accounts on Twitter. Initially, this project concerned itself with an attempt to identify bots which participated in online conversations around the prevailing cryptocurrency phenomenon. This article is the first in a series of three blog posts produced by the researchers at Texifter that outlines the contemporary phenomenon of Twitter bots….

Bots in their current iteration have a relatively short, albeit rapidly evolving history. Initially constructed with non-malicious intentions, it wasn’t until the late 1990s with the advent of Web 2.0 when bots began to develop a more negative reputation. Although bots have been used maliciously in denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, spam emails, and mass identity theft, their purpose is not explicitly to incite mayhem.

Before the most recent political events, bots existed in chat rooms, operated as automated customer service agents on websites, and were a mainstay on dating websites. This familiar form of the bot is known to the majority of the general population as a “chatbot” – for instance, CleverBot was and still is a popular platform to talk to an “AI”. Another prominent example was Microsoft’s failed Twitter Chatbot Tay which made headlines in 2016 when “her” vocabulary and conversation functions were manipulated by Twitter users until “she” espoused neo-nazi views when “she” was subsequently deleted.

Image: XKCD Comic #632.

A Twitter bot is an account controlled by an algorithm or script, which is typically hosted on a cloud platform such as Heroku. They are typically, though not exclusively, scripted to conduct repetitive tasks.  For example, there are bots that retweet content containing particular keywords, reply to new followers, and direct messages to new followers; although they can be used for more complex tasks such as participating in online conversations. Bot accounts make up between 9 and 15% of all active accounts on Twitter; however, it is predicted that they account for a much greater percentage of total Twitter traffic. Twitter bots are generally not created with malicious intent; they are frequently used for online chatting or for raising the professional profile of a corporation – but their ability to pervade our online experience and shape political discourse warrants heightened scrutiny….(More)”.

How Blockchain can benefit migration programmes and migrants


Solon Ardittis at the Migration Data Portal: “According to a recent report published by CB Insights, there are today at least 36 major industries that are likely to benefit from the use of Blockchain technology, ranging from voting procedures, critical infrastructure security, education and healthcare, to car leasing, forecasting, real estate, energy management, government and public records, wills and inheritance, corporate governance and crowdfunding.

In the international aid sector, a number of experiments are currently being conducted to distribute aid funding through the use of Blockchain and thus to improve the tracing of the ways in which aid is disbursed. Among several other examples, the Start Network, which consists of 42 aid agencies across five continents, ranging from large international organizations to national NGOs, has launched a Blockchain-based project that enables the organization both to speed up the distribution of aid funding and to facilitate the tracing of every single payment, from the original donor to each individual assisted.

As Katherine Purvis of The Guardian noted, “Blockchain enthusiasts are hopeful it could be the next big development disruptor. In providing a transparent, instantaneous and indisputable record of transactions, its potential to remove corruption and provide transparency and accountability is one area of intrigue.”

In the field of international migration and refugee affairs, however, Blockchain technology is still in its infancy.

One of the few notable examples is the launch by the United Nations (UN) World Food Programme (WFP) in May 2017 of a project in the Azraq Refugee Camp in Jordan which, through the use of Blockchain technology, enables the creation of virtual accounts for refugees and the uploading of monthly entitlements that can be spent in the camp’s supermarket through the use of an authorization code. Reportedly, the programme has contributed to a reduction by 98% of the bank costs entailed by the use of a financial service provider.

This is a noteworthy achievement considering that organizations working in international relief can lose up to 3.5% of each aid transaction to various fees and costs and that an estimated 30% of all development funds do not reach their intended recipients because of third-party theft or mismanagement.

At least six other UN agencies including the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS), the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), UN Women, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the UN Development Group (UNDG), are now considering Blockchain applications that could help support international assistance, particularly supply chain management tools, self-auditing of payments, identity management and data storage.

The potential of Blockchain technology in the field of migration and asylum affairs should therefore be fully explored.

At the European Union (EU) level, while a Blockchain task force has been established by the European Parliament to assess the ways in which the technology could be used to provide digital identities to refugees, and while the European Commission has recently launched a call for project proposals to examine the potential of Blockchain in a range of sectors, little focus has been placed so far on EU assistance in the field of migration and asylum, both within the EU and in third countries with which the EU has negotiated migration partnership agreements.

This is despite the fact that the use of Blockchain in a number of major programme interventions in the field of migration and asylum could help improve not only their cost-efficiency but also, at least as importantly, their degree of transparency and accountability. This at a time when media and civil society organizations exercise increased scrutiny over the quality and ethical standards of such interventions.

In Europe, for example, Blockchain could help administer the EU Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF), both in terms of transferring funds from the European Commission to the eligible NGOs in the Member States and in terms of project managers then reporting on spending. This would help alleviate many of the recurrent challenges faced by NGOs in managing funds in line with stringent EU regulations.

As crucially, Blockchain would have the potential to increase transparency and accountability in the channeling and spending of EU funds in third countries, particularly under the Partnership Framework and other recent schemes to prevent irregular migration to Europe.

A case in point is the administration of EU aid in response to the refugee emergency in Greece where, reportedly, there continues to be insufficient oversight of the full range of commitments and outcomes of large EU-funded investments, particularly in the housing sector. Another example is the set of recent programme interventions in Libya, where a growing number of incidents of human rights abuses and financial mismanagement are being brought to light….(More)”.

Data journalism and the ethics of publishing Twitter data


Matthew L. Williams at Data Driven Journalism: “Collecting and publishing data collected from social media sites such as Twitter are everyday practices for the data journalist. Recent findings from Cardiff University’s Social Data Science Lab question the practice of publishing Twitter content without seeking some form of informed consent from users beforehand. Researchers found that tweets collected around certain topics, such as those related to terrorism, political votes, changes in the law and health problems, create datasets that might contain sensitive content, such as extreme political opinion, grossly offensive comments, overly personal revelations and threats to life (both to oneself and to others). Handling these data in the process of analysis (such as classifying content as hateful and potentially illegal) and reporting has brought the ethics of using social media in social research and journalism into sharp focus.

Ethics is an issue that is becoming increasingly salient in research and journalism using social media data. The digital revolution has outpaced parallel developments in research governance and agreed good practice. Codes of ethical conduct that were written in the mid twentieth century are being relied upon to guide the collection, analysis and representation of digital data in the twenty-first century. Social media is particularly ethically challenging because of the open availability of the data (particularly from Twitter). Many platforms’ terms of service specifically state users’ data that are public will be made available to third parties, and by accepting these terms users legally consent to this. However, researchers and data journalists must interpret and engage with these commercially motivated terms of service through a more reflexive lens, which implies a context sensitive approach, rather than focusing on the legally permissible uses of these data.

Social media researchers and data journalists have experimented with data from a range of sources, including Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Tumblr and Twitter to name a few. Twitter is by far the most studied of all these networks. This is because Twitter differs from other networks, such as Facebook, that are organised around groups of ‘friends’, in that it is more ‘open’ and the data (in part) are freely available to researchers. This makes Twitter a more public digital space that promotes the free exchange of opinions and ideas. Twitter has become the primary space for online citizens to publicly express their reaction to events of national significance, and also the primary source of data for social science research into digital publics.

The Twitter streaming API provides three levels of data access: the free random 1% that provides ~5M tweets daily and the random 10% and 100% (chargeable or free to academic researchers upon request). Datasets on social interactions of this scale, speed and ease of access have been hitherto unrealisable in the social sciences and journalism, and have led to a flood of journal articles and news pieces, many of which include tweets with full text content and author identity without informed consent. This is presumably because of Twitter’s ‘open’ nature, which leads to the assumption that ‘these are public data’ and using it does not require the rigor and scrutiny of an ethical oversight. Even when these data are scrutinised, journalists don’t need to be convinced by the ‘public data’ argument, due to the lack of a framework to evaluate the potential harms to users. The Social Data Science Lab takes a more ethically reflexive approach to the use of social media data in social research, and carefully considers users’ perceptions, online context and the role of algorithms in estimating potentially sensitive user characteristics.

recent Lab survey conducted into users’ perceptions of the use of their social media posts found the following:

  • 94% were aware that social media companies had Terms of Service
  • 65% had read the Terms of Service in whole or in part
  • 76% knew that when accepting Terms of Service they were giving permission for some of their information to be accessed by third parties
  • 80% agreed that if their social media information is used in a publication they would expect to be asked for consent
  • 90% agreed that if their tweets were used without their consent they should be anonymized…(More)”.

The Social Media Threat to Society and Security


George Soros at Project Syndicate: “It takes significant effort to assert and defend what John Stuart Mill called the freedom of mind. And there is a real chance that, once lost, those who grow up in the digital age – in which the power to command and shape people’s attention is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few companies – will have difficulty regaining it.

The current moment in world history is a painful one. Open societies are in crisis, and various forms of dictatorships and mafia states, exemplified by Vladimir Putin’s Russia, are on the rise. In the United States, President Donald Trump would like to establish his own mafia-style state but cannot, because the Constitution, other institutions, and a vibrant civil society won’t allow it….

The rise and monopolistic behavior of the giant American Internet platform companies is contributing mightily to the US government’s impotence. These companies have often played an innovative and liberating role. But as Facebook and Google have grown ever more powerful, they have become obstacles to innovation, and have caused a variety of problems of which we are only now beginning to become aware…

Social media companies’ true customers are their advertisers. But a new business model is gradually emerging, based not only on advertising but also on selling products and services directly to users. They exploit the data they control, bundle the services they offer, and use discriminatory pricing to keep more of the benefits that they would otherwise have to share with consumers. This enhances their profitability even further, but the bundling of services and discriminatory pricing undermine the efficiency of the market economy.

Social media companies deceive their users by manipulating their attention, directing it toward their own commercial purposes, and deliberately engineering addiction to the services they provide. This can be very harmful, particularly for adolescents.

There is a similarity between Internet platforms and gambling companies. Casinos have developed techniques to hook customers to the point that they gamble away all of their money, even money they don’t have.

Something similar – and potentially irreversible – is happening to human attention in our digital age. This is not a matter of mere distraction or addiction; social media companies are actually inducing people to surrender their autonomy. And this power to shape people’s attention is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few companies.

It takes significant effort to assert and defend what John Stuart Mill called the freedom of mind. Once lost, those who grow up in the digital age may have difficulty regaining it.

This would have far-reaching political consequences. People without the freedom of mind can be easily manipulated. This danger does not loom only in the future; it already played an important role in the 2016 US presidential election.

There is an even more alarming prospect on the horizon: an alliance between authoritarian states and large, data-rich IT monopolies, bringing together nascent systems of corporate surveillance with already-developed systems of state-sponsored surveillance. This may well result in a web of totalitarian control the likes of which not even George Orwell could have imagined….(More)”.