Homero Gil de Zúñiga and Trevor Diehl introducing Special Issue of the Social Science Computer Review: “This special issue of the Social Science Computer Review provides a sample of the latest strategies employing large data sets in social media and political communication research. The proliferation of information communication technologies, social media, and the Internet, alongside the ubiquity of high-performance computing and storage technologies, has ushered in the era of computational social science. However, in no way does the use of źbig dataź represent a standardized area of inquiry in any field. This article briefly summarizes pressing issues when employing big data for political communication research. Major challenges remain to ensure the validity and generalizability of findings. Strong theoretical arguments are still a central part of conducting meaningful research. In addition, ethical practices concerning how data are collected remain an area of open discussion. The article surveys studies that offer unique and creative ways to combine methods and introduce new tools while at the same time address some solutions to ethical questions. (See Table of Contents)”
Using GitHub in Government: A Look at a New Collaboration Platform
Justin Longo at the Center for Policy Informatics: “…I became interested in the potential for using GitHub to facilitate collaboration on text documents. This was largely inspired by the 2012 TED Talk by Clay Shirky where he argued that open source programmers could teach us something about how to do open governance:
Somebody put up a tool during the copyright debate last year in the Senate, saying, “It’s strange that Hollywood has more access to Canadian legislators than Canadian citizens do. Why don’t we use GitHub to show them what a citizen-developed bill might look like?” …
For this research, we undertook a census of Canadian government and public servant accounts on GitHub and surveyed those users, supplemented by interviews with key government technology leaders.
This research has now been published in the journal Canadian Public Administration. (If you don’t have access to the full document through the publisher, you can also find it here).
Despite the growing enthusiasm for GitHub (mostly from those familiar with open source software development), and the general rhetoric in favour of collaboration, we suspected that getting GitHub used in public sector organizations for text collaboration might be an uphill battle – not least of which because of the steep learning curve involved in using GitHub, and its inflexibility when being used to edit text.
The history of computer-supported collaborative work platforms is littered with really cool interfaces that failed to appeal to users. The experience to date with GitHub in Canadian governments reflects this, as far as our research shows.
We found few government agencies having an active presence on GitHub compared to social media presence in general. And while federal departments and public servants on GitHub are rare, provincial, territorial, First Nations and local governments are even rarer.
For individual accounts held by public servants, most were found in the federal government at higher rates than those found in broader society (see Mapping Collaborative Software). Within this small community, the distribution of contributions per user follows the classic long-tail distribution with a small number of contributors responsible for most of the work, a larger number of contributors doing very little on average, and many users contributing nothing.
GitHub is still resisted by all but the most technically savvy. With a peculiar terminology and work model that presupposes a familiarity with command line computer operations and the language of software coding, using GitHub presents many barriers to the novice user. But while it is tempting to dismiss GitHub, as it currently exists, as ill-suited as a collaboration tool to support document writing, it holds potential as a useful platform for facilitating collaboration in the public sector.
As an example, to help understand how GitHub might be used within governments for collaboration on text documents, we discuss a briefing note document flow in the paper (see the paper for a description of this lovely graphic).
A few other finding are addressed in the paper, from why public servants may choose not to collaborate even though they believe it’s the right thing to do, to an interesting story about what propelled the use of GitHub in the government of Canada in the first place….(More)”
Scientists have a word for studying the post-truth world: agnotology
But scientists have another word for “post-truth”. You might have heard of epistemology, or the study of knowledge. This field helps define what we know and why we know it. On the flip side of this is agnotology, or the study of ignorance. Agnotology is not often discussed, because studying the absence of something — in this case knowledge — is incredibly difficult.
Doubt is our product
Agnotology is more than the study of what we don’t know; it’s also the study of why we are not supposed to know it. One of its more important aspects is revealing how people, usually powerful ones, use ignorance as a strategic tool to hide or divert attention from societal problems in which they have a vested interest.
A perfect example is the tobacco industry’s dissemination of reports that continuously questioned the link between smoking and cancer. As one tobacco employee famously stated, “Doubt is our product.”
In a similar way, conservative think tanks such as The Heartland Institute work to discredit the science behind human-caused climate change.
Despite the fact that 97% of scientists support the anthropogenic causes of climate change, hired “experts” have been able to populate talk shows, news programmes, and the op-ed pages to suggest a lack of credible data or established consensus, even with evidence to the contrary.
These institutes generate pseudo-academic reports to counter scientific results. In this way, they are responsible for promoting ignorance….
Under agnotology 2.0, truth becomes a moot point. It is the sensation that counts. Public media leaders create an impact with whichever arguments they can muster based in whatever fictional data they can create…Donald Trump entering the White House is the pinnacle of agnotology 2.0. Washington Post journalist Fareed Zakaria has argued that in politics, what matters is no longer the economy but identity; we would like to suggest that the problem runs deeper than that.
The issue is not whether we should search for identity, for fame, or for sensational opinions and entertainment. The overarching issue is the fallen status of our collective search for truth, in its many forms. It is no longer a positive attribute to seek out truth, determine biases, evaluate facts, or share knowledge.
Under agnotology 2.0, scientific thinking itself is under attack. In a post-fact and post-truth era, we could very well become post-science….(More)”.
The Emergence of a Post-Fact World
Francis Fukuyama in Project Syndicate: “One of the more striking developments of 2016 and its highly unusual politics was the emergence of a “post-fact” world, in which virtually all authoritative information sources were called into question and challenged by contrary facts of dubious quality and provenance.
The emergence of the Internet and the World Wide Web in the 1990s was greeted as a moment of liberation and a boon for democracy worldwide. Information constitutes a form of power, and to the extent that information was becoming cheaper and more accessible, democratic publics would be able to participate in domains from which they had been hitherto excluded.
The development of social media in the early 2000s appeared to accelerate this trend, permitting the mass mobilization that fueled various democratic “color revolutions” around the world, from Ukraine to Burma (Myanmar) to Egypt. In a world of peer-to-peer communication, the old gatekeepers of information, largely seen to be oppressive authoritarian states, could now be bypassed.
While there was some truth to this positive narrative, another, darker one was also taking shape. Those old authoritarian forces were responding in dialectical fashion, learning to control the Internet, as in China, with its tens of thousands of censors, or, as in Russia, by recruiting legions of trolls and unleashing bots to flood social media with bad information. These trends all came together in a hugely visible way during 2016, in ways that bridged foreign and domestic politics….
The traditional remedy for bad information, according to freedom-of-information advocates, is simply to put out good information, which in a marketplace of ideas will rise to the top. This solution, unfortunately, works much less well in a social-media world of trolls and bots. There are estimates that as many as a third to a quarter of Twitter users fall into this category. The Internet was supposed to liberate us from gatekeepers; and, indeed, information now comes at us from all possible sources, all with equal credibility. There is no reason to think that good information will win out over bad information….
The inability to agree on the most basic facts is the direct product of an across-the-board assault on democratic institutions – in the US, in Britain, and around the world. And this is where the democracies are headed for trouble. In the US, there has in fact been real institutional decay, whereby powerful interest groups have been able to protect themselves through a system of unlimited campaign finance. The primary locus of this decay is Congress, and the bad behavior is for the most part as legal as it is widespread. So ordinary people are right to be upset.
And yet, the US election campaign has shifted the ground to a general belief that everything has been rigged or politicized, and that outright bribery is rampant. If the election authorities certify that your favored candidate is not the victor, or if the other candidate seemed to perform better in a debate, it must be the result of an elaborate conspiracy by the other side to corrupt the outcome. The belief in the corruptibility of all institutions leads to a dead end of universal distrust. American democracy, all democracy, will not survive a lack of belief in the possibility of impartial institutions; instead, partisan political combat will come to pervade every aspect of life….(More)”
The Power of Networks: Six Principles That Connect Our Lives
Book by Christopher Brinton and Mung Chiang: “What makes WiFi faster at home than at a coffee shop? How does Google order search results? Why do Amazon, Netflix, and YouTube use fundamentally different rating and recommendation methods—and why does it matter? Is it really true that everyone on Facebook is connected in six steps or less? And how do cat videos—or anything else—go viral? The Power of Networks answers questions like these for the first time in a way that all of us can understand and use, whether at home, the office, or school. Using simple language, analogies, stories, hundreds of illustrations, and no more math than simple addition and multiplication, Christopher Brinton and Mung Chiang provide a smart but accessible introduction to the handful of big ideas that drive the technical and social networks we use every day—from cellular phone networks and cloud computing to the Internet and social media platforms.
The Power of Networks unifies these ideas through six fundamental principles of networking, which explain the difficulties in sharing network resources efficiently, how crowds can be wise or not so wise depending on the nature of their connections, how there are many building-blocks of layers in a network, and more. Understanding these simple ideas unlocks the workings of everything from the connections we make on Facebook to the technology that runs such platforms. Along the way, the authors also talk with and share the special insights of renowned experts such as Google’s Eric Schmidt, former Verizon Wireless CEO Dennis Strigl, and “fathers of the Internet” Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn….(More)”
#Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media
Book by Cass Sunstein: “As the Internet grows more sophisticated, it is creating new threats to democracy. Social media companies such as Facebook can sort us ever more efficiently into groups of the like-minded, creating echo chambers that amplify our views. It’s no accident that on some occasions, people of different political views cannot even understand each other. It’s also no surprise that terrorist groups have been able to exploit social media to deadly effect.
Welcome to the age of #Republic.
In this revealing book, Cass Sunstein, the New York Times bestselling author of Nudge and The World According to Star Wars, shows how today’s Internet is driving political fragmentation, polarization, and even extremism—and what can be done about it.
Thoroughly rethinking the critical relationship between democracy and the Internet, Sunstein describes how the online world creates “cybercascades,” exploits “confirmation bias,” and assists “polarization entrepreneurs.” And he explains why online fragmentation endangers the shared conversations, experiences, and understandings that are the lifeblood of democracy.
In response, Sunstein proposes practical and legal changes to make the Internet friendlier to democratic deliberation. These changes would get us out of our information cocoons by increasing the frequency of unchosen, unplanned encounters and exposing us to people, places, things, and ideas that we would never have picked for our Twitter feed.
#Republic need not be an ironic term. As Sunstein shows, it can be a rallying cry for the kind of democracy that citizens of diverse societies most need….(More)”
Rule by the lowest common denominator? It’s baked into democracy’s design
The Trump victory, and the general disaster for Democrats this year, was the victory of ignorance, critics moan.
Writing in Foreign Policy, Georgetown’s Jason Brennan called it “the dance of the dunces” and wrote that “Trump owes his victory to the uninformed.”…
For liberals, Trump’s victory was the triumph of prejudice, bigotry and forces allied against truth and expertise in politics, science and culture at large. Trump brandishes unconcern for traditional political wisdom and protocol – much less facts – like a badge of honor, and his admirers roar with glee. His now famous rallies, the chastened media report, are often scary, sometimes giving way to violence, sometimes threatening to spark broader recriminations and social mayhem. This is a glimpse of how tyrants rise to power, some political minds worry; this is how tyrants enlist the support of rabid masses, and get them to do their bidding.
For the contemporary French philosopher Jacques Rancière, however, the Trump victory provides a useful reminder of the essential nature of democracy – a reminder of what precisely makes it vibrant. And liable to lapse into tyranny at once….
Democracy is rule by the rabble, in Plato’s view. It is the rule by the lowest common denominator. In a democracy, passions are inflamed and proliferate. Certain individuals may take advantage of and channel the storm of ignorance, Plato feared, and consolidate power out of a desire to serve their own interests.
As Rancière explains, there is a “scandal of democracy” for Plato: The best and the high born “must bow before the law of chance” and submit to the rule of the inexpert, the commoner, who knows little about politics or much else.
Merit ought to decide who rules, in Plato’s account. But democracy consigns such logic to the dustbin. The rabble may decide they want to be ruled by one of their own – and electoral conditions may favor them. Democracy makes it possible that someone who has no business ruling lands at the top. His rule may prove treacherous, and risk dooming the state. But, Rancière argues, this is a risk democracies must take. Without it, they lack legitimacy….
Rancière maintains people more happily suffer authority ascribed by chance than authority consigned by birth, merit or expertise. Liberals may be surprised about this last point. According to Rancière, expertise is no reliable, lasting or secure basis for authority. In fact, expertise soon loses authority, and with it, the legitimacy of the state. Why?…(More)”
Could Technology Remove the Politicians From Politics?
Sue Brideshead at Motherboard: “The tech industry has talked long and hard about democratizing industries. Democratizing content, democratizing taxi-cabs, and democratizing bed and breakfasts. But what about democratizing democracy?
Disruption is the word of the moment in Washington, thanks to an incoming president who counts his inexperience in government as an asset. It remains to be seen what kind of disruption Trump will bestow upon the White House, but efforts at disruption from the technology world have refined and chipped at only the topmost layer of inefficiencies. Mark Zuckerberg has poured cash into a broken school district; programmers have toyed with ways to secure digital ballots; and analysts have sought (and failed) to hone the political poll. The team of engineers Barack Obama lured to Washington has been tasked with fixing podunk websites and backend systems. But what they have failed to identify as a problem is the very system that elected their boss. Because beyond the topmost layer of government gunk lies a broad and broken structure: the idea of representation itself. In the era of the internet, the very premise of sending a man to Washington or a woman to city council is badly in need of an upgrade.
The idea of a political representative evolved out of necessity. Townspeople couldn’t afford to take a day off and ride a horse to the capital. They needed to agree upon one guy who would more or less say what they were thinking, and they voted to pick the right guy for the job.
Horses became model T’s became jets flying politicians from their constituencies to the District of Columbia, ostensibly to have an ear to the ground in their home state and a hand to the buzzers on the Senate floor. But travel—and voter awareness—requires cash that drives up the price of running for office.
The Republican President-elect scored votes by calling Washington “corrupt” and “criminal,” “rigged” and “stagnant,” but “quaint” is the first adjective I think of. In the era of the iPhone, sending a man or woman to Washington to “represent” a district back home can feel about as forward-thinking as sending an intern to Amazon headquarters to pick up the new DeLillo. Why do congressional offices read bills in hard-copy, in private, while their constituents draft their work in Google Docs? Why does a senator have to stand on the Senate floor to hear arguments or to vote, when her constituents watch proceedings on C-Span and vote for which Game of Thrones heroine her hair most resembles on BuzzFeed?..
….The price of running for office is now astronomical, literally; a New Hampshire senate race tops the cost of sending your satellite to low earth orbit with SpaceX’s rocket…But the most disturbing fact of our Republic is an upsurge of anti-intellectual rhetoric. An ongoing protest of California’s default direct democracy—its barrage of referendums—is fueled by the disturbing fact that voters are likely to base their decision on a television advertisement. Referendum protesters rightly note that a system reliant on advertising hardly cuts money out of politics or ensures an informed electorate. But the premise of this protest rests on the assumption that a Representative is more informed than a television advertisement; that a Representative makes decisions by speaking with experts, using paid time and expertise…
…Fixing an existing problem with new technology often fuels new and terrifying questions. Displacing power simply raises the same questions of control and ownership in new places. For example, even without the risk of politicians becoming susceptible to lobbyists, voters could still be influenced by special interest groups that can afford to bombard voters with their message. But by distributing the power for change among the electorate, a direct democracy model would effectively make lobbying efforts much more expensive and inefficient….
…What I do know: our system is broken. Voters crave transparency, an end to political photo-ops, an end to the influence of television, of Facebook, a way to flush the lobbyists out of Washington and drag the cash out of politicians’ pockets. As a citizenry, we hold relatively little power to destroy lobbying; to reform pay-to-play; to transform the media industries; re-engineer Facebook, or temper the bad behavior of the wealthy and powerful. But our new technologies also mean that there’s one central component we might have the power to remove from government completely: the politicians. (More)”
Open innovation in the public sector: A research agenda
Atreyi Kankanhalli et al in Government Information Quarterly: “New models of innovation are emerging in the marketplace and these are rapidly replacing traditional corporate research labs as the sole source of new ideas, new technologies, and new practices. This trend is being fueled by the ready availability of venture capital, and more importantly, by the ubiquitous presence of information technologies (IT) that are enabling firms to identify and foster new ideas from a myriad of knowledge sources, which could be geographically dispersed. This de-centralized and un-directed form of innovation, referred to as “open innovation”, is gaining traction both in the private and public sectors. In this guest editorial for the Special Issue on Open Innovation in the Public Sector, we first explore the diverse issues that are engendered when implementing open innovation in the public sector, and the IT that can facilitate such initiatives. Next, we highlight the fundamental differences in terms of focus, aim, value, and external stakeholders of open innovation in the private vs. public sectors. Last, we describe an agenda for research on open innovation in the public sector based on trends and gaps in the literature as seen from papers that were submitted to this special issue. Specifically, we suggest several useful directions for future research including conducting domain-specific studies, examining the use of tools beyond social media, and expanding the existing set of research methods and theoretical foundations….(More)”
Socialbots and Their Friends: Digital Media and the Automation of Sociality
Book edited by Robert W. Gehl and Maria Bakardjieva: “Many users of the Internet are aware of bots: automated programs that work behind the scenes to come up with search suggestions, check the weather, filter emails, or clean up Wikipedia entries. More recently, a new software robot has been making its presence felt in social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter – the socialbot. However, unlike other bots, socialbots are built to appear human. While a weatherbot will tell you if it’s sunny and a spambot will incessantly peddle Viagra, socialbots will ask you questions, have conversations, like your posts, retweet you, and become your friend. All the while, if they’re well-programmed, you won’t know that you’re tweeting and friending with a robot.
Who benefits from the use of software robots? Who loses? Does a bot deserve rights? Who pulls the strings of these bots? Who has the right to know what about them? What does it mean to be intelligent? What does it mean to be a friend? Socialbots and Their Friends: Digital Media and the Automation of Sociality is one of the first academic collections to critically consider the socialbot and tackle these pressing questions….(More)”