media

The Next Great Experiment

Curated on May 3, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

“A collection of essays from technologists and scholars about how machines are reshaping civil society” in the Atlantic:” Technology is changing the way people think about—and participate in—democratic society. What does that mean for democracy?…

We are witnessing, on a massive scale, diminishing faith in institutions of all kinds. People don’t trust the government. They don’t trust banks and other corporations. They certainly don’t trust the news media.

At the same time, we are living through a period of profound technological change. Along with the rise of bioengineering, networked devices, autonomous robots, space exploration, and machine learning, the mobile internet is recontextualizing how we relate to one another, dramatically changing the way people seek and share information, and reconfiguring how we express our will as citizens in a democratic society.

But trust is a requisite for democratic governance. And now, many are growing disillusioned with democracy itself.

Disentangling the complex forces that are driving these changes can help us better understand what ails democracies today, and potentially guide us toward compelling solutions. That’s why we asked more than two dozen people who think deeply about the intersection of technology and civics to reflect on two straightforward questions: Is technology hurting democracy? And can technology help save democracy?

We received an overwhelming response. Our contributors widely view 2017 as a moment of reckoning. They are concerned with many aspects of democratic life and put a spotlight in particular on correcting institutional failures that have contributed most to inequality of access—to education, information, and voting—as well as to ideological divisiveness and the spread of misinformation. They also offer concrete solutions for how citizens, corporations, and governmental bodies can improve the free flow of reliable information, pull one another out of ever-deepening partisan echo chambers, rebuild spaces for robust and civil discourse, and shore up the integrity of the voting process itself.

Despite the unanimous sense of urgency, the authors of these essays are cautiously optimistic, too. Everyone who participated in this series believes there is hope yet—for democracy, and for the institutions that support it. They also believe that technology can help, though it will take time and money to make it so. Democracy can still thrive in this uncertain age, they argue, but not without deliberate and immediate action from the people who believe it is worth protecting.

We’ll publish a new essay every day for the next several weeks, beginning with Shannon Vallor’s “Lessons From Isaac Asimov’s Multivac.”…(More)”

Wiki-journalism may be part of the answer to fake news

Curated on May 2, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

John Thornhill at the Financial Times: “During the Iraq war, the Los Angeles Times attempted to harness the collective wisdom of its readers by crowdsourcing an editorial, called a wikitorial, on the conflict. It was a disaster. The arguments between the hawks and doves quickly erupted into a ranting match. The only way to salvage the mess was to “fork” the debate inviting the two sides to refine separate arguments.

If it is impossible to crowdsource an opinion column, is it any more realistic to do so with news in our hyper-partisan age? We are about to find out as Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, is launching Wikitribune in an attempt to do just that. Declaring that “news is broken”, Mr Wales said his intention was to combine the radical community spirit of Wikipedia with the best practices of journalism. His crowdfunded news site, free of advertising and paywalls, will initially be staffed by 10 journalists working alongside volunteer contributors.

Mr Wales is right that the news business desperately needs to regain credibility given the erosion of trusted media organisations, the proliferation of fake news and the howling whirlwind of social media. It is doubly problematic in an era in which unscrupulous politicians, governments and corporations can now disintermediate the media by providing their own “alternative facts” direct to the public.

Unlikely as it is that Wikitribune has stumbled upon the answer, it should be applauded for asking the right questions. How can the media invent sustainable new models that combine credibility, relevance and reach? One thing to note is that Wikipedia has for years been producing crowdsourced news in the Wikinews section of its site, with little impact. Wikinews invites anyone to write the news. But the service is slow, clunky and dull.

As a separate project, Wikitribune is breaking with Wikipedia’s core philosophy by entrusting experts with authority. As a journalist, I warm to the idea that Mr Wales thinks we serve some useful purpose. But it will surely take time for his new site to create a viable hybrid culture….(More)”.

Using a New Roadmap to Democratize Climate Change

Curated on April 29, 2017July 19, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Anne Glusker at Smithsonian: “…Grimsson’s group felt that due to changes in information technology and social transformations, the large organizations and structures that used to be necessary to effect change were now not needed. And thus was born Roadmap, a new crowdsourcing tool for anyone and everyone interested in climate action. Still in its very early stages, Roadmap’s founders envision it as a platform for those working on climate issues—from scientist and policymaker to farmer and fisherman—to facilitate the sharing of knowledge and ideas, methods and techniques.

“A new political model is possible—where everyone can be a doer, where you no longer need big government or big enterprises to bring about success,” Grimsson says.

This new model for social change that skips the usual cumbersome channels and processes has been seen everywhere from public health, where the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has redefined the sector, to the hospitality industry, which is working to combat the human trafficking that plagues its businesses, to perhaps most famously the Arab Spring, where the role of social media in bringing about political change is still being debated today.

And this new model is complemented by technological changes. “The innovation in energy technology is such that we no longer have to wait for the big energy breakthrough,” Grimsson says. “We already have the available technologies. Every individual, home, village, community, town and region can execute change. The good news from the climate point of view is that, in addition to the information technology revolution, there has now also taken place an energy revolution. A house can be a power station: If the people who live in that house have extra energy, they can sell their energy through the smart grid. The notion that every house can be a power station is as revolutionary as saying that every mobile phone can be a media company.”

Grimsson admits that it may seem odd for someone in his position to be advocating that ordinary citizens take action apart from the conventional corridors of governmental power.

“For me to say that these traditional political organizations and positions are somewhat outdated is perhaps a strange statement: I was a professor of political science, I’ve been a member of parliament, I’ve been a minister of finance, I was president for 20 years,” he says.

It was during Iceland’s financial meltdown that he first experienced this new kind of social change: “I saw this very strongly through the financial crisis in my own country, which led to a big social economic uprising. All those activities were engineered by unknown people, people who were not part of a big organization, who used Facebook and the information media to bring thousands of people together in one day.”

Right now, Roadmap consists of a website and a lofty manifesto that speaks of raising the value of “moral currency” and creating a “best practices warehouse.” Visitors to the site can fill out a form if they want to become part of its community of “doers.” The practical part of the manifesto speaks of identifying the best methodologies and models; implementing a “real-time system of measurement” and a way to “gauge and understand what is working, what is not, and exactly what is being achieved.” As the platform develops, it will be interesting to see exactly what form these gauges, measurement systems, and warehouses take….(More)”.

Not everyone in advanced economies is using social media

Curated on April 25, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Jacob Poushter at Pew: “Despite the seeming ubiquity of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, many in Europe, the U.S., Canada, Australia and Japan do not report regularly visiting social media sites. But majorities in all of the 14 countries surveyed say they at least use the internet.

Social media use is relatively common among people in Sweden, the Netherlands, Australia and the U.S. Around seven-in-ten report using social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, but that still leaves a significant minority of the population in those countries (around 30%) who are non-users.

At the other end of the spectrum, in France, only 48% say they use social networking sites. That figure is even lower in Greece (46%), Japan (43%) and Germany (37%). In Germany, this means that more than half of internet users say they do not use social media.

The differences in reported social media use across the 14 countries are due in part to whether people use the internet, since low rates of internet access limit the potential social media audience. While fewer than one-in-ten Dutch (5%), Swedes (7%) and Australians (7%) don’t access the internet or own a smartphone, that figure is 40% in Greece, 33% in Hungary and 29% in Italy.

However, internet access doesn’t guarantee social media use. In Germany, for example, 85% of adults are online, but less than half of this group report using Facebook, Twitter or Xing. A similar pattern is seen in some of the other developed economies polled, including Japan and France, where social media use is low relative to overall internet penetration….(More)

Design thinking and health communication: learning from failure

Curated on April 24, 2017May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Priyanka Dutt at BBC Media Action: “Anyone working in international development will attest that human-centred design (HCD) has been a ‘trending topic’ in recent years. Design thinking has been applied to a range of challenges, from supporting democratic transition in Libya to building an all-terrain wheelchair for under $200. Melinda Gates even hailed HCD as the innovation changing the most lives in the developing world.

But what exactly is design thinking? It involves bringing together multi-disciplinary teams – think creative writers working alongside ICT specialists – to address challenges through rapid prototyping and repeated testing. At the core of HCD is building empathy with the people you’re designing for with the overarching aim of producing something genuinely valuable to them.

Marrying these principles with our own core value of putting audiences at the heart of everything we do, we decided to set up a ‘laboratory’ in Bihar, in northern India, which aimed to improve child and maternal health through communication. We saw Bihar as a great site for HCD-style innovation because it offered us the scope to test and fine tune new ways of using communication to promote healthy behaviours for women and children alike.

Bihar is home to 29 million women of reproductive age, who give birth 3 million times every year. And although Bihar’s maternal mortality rate has declined in recent years to 93 per 100,000 live births, it is still well above the Sustainable Development Goals target of 70. As for the communication challenges, less than a fifth of these women watch TV and only 12% listen to the radio.

Yet the lab’s early creations achieved a great deal. Over 50,000 people have graduated from our Mobile Academy training course, which is delivered through mobile phone audio messages. The course teaches health workers how to communicate more effectively to persuade families to lead healthier lives.

We also produced a set of cards and audio messages delivered via mobile phone – called Mobile Kunji – for health workers to use during their visits with families. The evidence shows that families subsequently asked health workers more questions and were more likely to follow advice on preparing for birth, family planning and how to feed babies.

Rethinking strategy: learning from failure

High on our early successes, we set about developing Kilkari (a baby’s gurgle in Hindi). This programme sends weekly audio messages about pregnancy, child birth, and child care, directly to families’ mobile phones, from the second trimester of pregnancy until the child is one year old. The aim was that Kilkari would be listened to across Bihar, by the most vulnerable families, with the greatest need and least access to information and services.

Drawing on lessons from two similar services from around the world, Mobile Midwife and BabyCenter, in addition to our own prior experience in Bihar, we were confident Kilkari would be a success. Just to be certain, we ran some tests before rollout and found that we had failed in our vision – and spectacularly so. We weren’t getting through to our main audience, women, as we weren’t using the right channels and language.

In the end, we went back to the drawing board on Kilkari four times, simplifying and stripping down the content time and again, until we got it right. Through repeated prototype-test-redesign cycles, we made the vitally important discovery that our basic assumptions about our audiences were wrong. So we went back to basics and asked ourselves the following questions to push us to rethink our strategy:

1. Is the content relevant and easy to understand?…

2. Are we getting through to our target audience?…

3. Can we do more to keep our target audience engaged?…(More)”

Can Democracy Survive the Internet?

Curated on April 23, 2017May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Nathaniel Persily in the Journal of Democracy: “…The actual story of the 2016 digital campaign is, of course, quite different, and we are only beginning to come to grips with what it might mean for campaigns going forward. Whereas the stories of the last two campaigns focused on the use of new tools, most of the 2016 story revolves around the online explosion of campaign-relevant communication from all corners of cyberspace. Fake news, social-media bots (automated accounts that can exist on all types of platforms), and propaganda from inside and outside the United States—alongside revolutionary uses of new media by the winning campaign—combined to upset established paradigms of how to run for president.

Indeed, the 2016 campaign broke down all the established distinctions that observers had used to describe campaigns: between insiders and outsiders, earned media and advertising, media and nonmedia, legacy media and new media, news and entertainment, and even foreign and domestic sources of campaign communication. How does one characterize a campaign, for example, in which the chief strategist is also the chairman of a media website (Breitbart) that is the campaign’s chief promoter and whose articles the candidate retweets to tens of millions of his followers, with those tweets then picked up and rebroadcast on cable-television news channels, including one (RT, formerly known as Russia Today) that is funded by a foreign government?

The 2016 election represents the latest chapter in the disintegration of the legacy institutions that had set bounds for U.S. politics in the postwar era. It is tempting (and in many ways correct) to view the Donald Trump campaign as unprecedented in its breaking of established norms of politics. Yet this type of campaign could only be successful because established institutions—especially the mainstream media and politicalparty organizations—had already lost most of their power, both in the United States and around the world….(More)”

Need an improved solution to a development challenge? Consider collaborative design

Curated on April 22, 2017May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Michelle Marshall at the Inter-American Development Bank: “The challenges faced in the development and public policy arenas are often complex in nature. Devising relevant, practical, and innovative solutions requires intensive research, analysis and expertise from multiple sectors. Could there be a way to streamline this process and also make it more inclusive?

Collaborative Design, like other open innovation methodologies, leverages the power of a group for collective problem-solving. In particular, it is a process that virtually convenes a diverse group of specialists to support the iterative development of an intervention.

Last year, the Inter-American Development Bank and the New York University’s Governance Lab hosted an initiative called “Smarter Crowdsourcing for Zika“, which brought together health specialists with experts in social media, predictive analytics, and water and sanitation during a series of online sessions to generate innovative responses to the Zika epidemic. Based on this experience, we have considered how to continue applying a similar collaboration-based approach to additional projects in different areas. The result is what we call a “Collaborative Design” approach.

Implementing a Collaborative Design approach along the course of a project can help to achieve the following:

1. Convert knowledge gaps into opportunities…

2. Expand your community of practice across sectors…

3. Identify innovative and practical solutions…

As promising ideas are identified, Collaborative Design requires documenting possible solutions within the framework of an implementation plan, protocol, or other actionable guideline to support their subsequent real-life application. This will help substantiate the most viable interventions that were previously unmapped and also prepare additional practical resources for other project teams in the future.

For instance, the results of the Zika Smarter Crowdsourcing initiative were structured with information related to the costs and timelines to facilitate their implementation in different local contexts….(More)”

Are blockchain applications guided by adequate social values?

Curated on April 6, 2017May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Philip Boucher at EuroScientist: “…The way blockchains create fast, cheap and secure public records means that they also can be used for many non-financial tasks, such as casting votes in elections or proving that a document existed at a specific time. Blockchains are particularly well suited to situations where it is necessary to record ownership histories. For example, they could help keep track of how and where our diamonds are sourced and our clothes are made, or to be sure that our champagne really came from Champagne.

They could help us to finally resolve the problem of music and video piracy while enabling second-hand markets for digital media; just like we have for books and vinyl. They also present opportunities in all kinds of public services, such as health and welfare payments. At the frontier of blockchain development, self-executing contracts are paving the way for companies that run themselves without human intervention.

The opportunities are many, but there are also some challenges to consider. For example, blockchain’s transparency is fine for matters of public record such as land registries, but what about bank balances and other sensitive data? It is possible (albeit only sometimes and with substantial effort), to identify the individuals associated with transactions, which could compromise their privacy and anonymity. While some blockchains do offer full anonymity, some sensitive information simply should not be distributed in this way.

We often talk about blockchain’s economic and functional potential. These are important, but its most profound legacy may be in subtle changes to broad social values and political structures. Just because technologies can be used for both ‘good’ actions and ‘bad’ actions does not mean that they are neutral.

To the contrary, all technologies have values and politics, and they usually reinforce the interests of those that control them. Each time we use a centralised ledger – like a bank or government database – we confirm their owners’ legitimacy and strengthen their position.

Perhaps each time we use a decentralised blockchain ledger instead, we will participate in the gradual relegation of traditional financial and governance institutions and the prioritisation of transparency over anonymity. But this would only happen if we develop and use blockchains that have these values at their core….

We cannot know exactly where and how blockchain will change our lives. They have the potential to help us develop more transparent and distributed social and economic structures. However, we have to look closely to see whether this is really what we are getting.

The sharing economy also promised to connect individuals more directly, ousting middlemen and unburdening people from the intervention of states, banks and other traditional institutions. It also had a similar rhetoric of transition, disruption and even revolution. However, the most successful initiatives of this movement are, at heart, very effective middlemen. Even with ubiquitous blockchain development, we might not achieve the levels of transparency and distribution that we expected.

For example, as an alternative to the most open and transparent blockchain applications such as Bitcoin, so-called permissioned blockchains allow their creators to maintain some centralised control. These blockchains offer a more moderate form of decentralisation and are favoured by many governments and businesses.

Blockchains and regulation

For now, there is little appetite for intervention in blockchain development at a European level. Indeed, a recent European Parliament report on virtual currencies, published in May 2016, acknowledged the increased risks, which will require enhanced regulatory oversight and adequate technical expertise to handle such currencies. However, the report also calls for a proportionate EU regulatory approach to avoid hampering innovation in the field at such an early stage. This means that, for now, we will continue to analyse developments and promote dialogue amongst policymakers, businesses and citizens….(More)”