Paper by Dieter Zinnbauer: “This article seeks to map out the prospects of crowd-sourcing technologies in the area of corruption-reporting. A flurry of initiative and concomitant media hype in this area has led to exuberant hopes that the end of impunity is not such a distant possibility any more – at least not for the most blatant, ubiquitous and visible forms of administrative corruption, such as bribes and extortion payments that on average almost a quarter of citizens reported to face year in, year out in their daily lives in so many countries around the world (Transparency International 2013).
Only with hindsight will we be able to tell, if these hopes were justified. However, a closer look at an interdisciplinary body of literature on corruption and social mobilisation can help shed some interesting light on these questions and offer a fresh perspective on the potential of social media based crowd-sourcing for better governance and less corruption. So far the potential of crowd-sourcing is mainly approached from a technology-centred perspective. Where challenges are identified, pondered, and worked upon they are primarily technical and managerial in nature, ranging from issues of privacy protection and fighting off hacker attacks to challenges of data management, information validation or fundraising.
In contrast, short shrift is being paid to insights from a substantive, multi-disciplinary and growing body of literature on how corruption works, how it can be fought and more generally how observed logics of collective action and social mobilisation interact with technological affordances and condition the success of these efforts.
This imbalanced debate is not really surprising as it seems to follow the trajectory of the hype-and-bust cycle that we have seen in the public debate for a variety of other technology applications. From electronic health cards to smart government, to intelligent transport systems, all these and many other highly ambitious initiatives start with technology-centric visions of transformational impact. However, over time – with some hard lessons learnt and large sums spent – they all arrive at a more pragmatic and nuanced view on how social and economic forces shape the implementation of such technologies and require a more shrewd design approach, in order to make it more likely that potential actually translates into impact….”
Tell Everyone: Why We Share & Why It Matters
Book review by Tim Currie: “Were the people sharing these stories outraged by Doug Ford’s use of an ethnic stereotype? Joyfully amused at the ongoing campaign gaffes? Or saddened by the state of public discourse at a democratic forum? All of these emotions likely played a part in driving social shares. But a growing body of research suggests some emotions are more influential than others.
Alfred Hermida’s new book, Tell Everyone: Why We Share & Why It Matters, takes us through that research—and a pile more, from Pew Center data on the makeup of our friends lists to a Yahoo! study on the nature of social influencers. One of Hermida’s accomplishments is to have woven that research into a breezy narrative crammed with examples from recent headlines.
Not up on the concept of cognitive dissonance? Homophily? Pluralistic ignorance? Or situational awareness? Not a deal breaker. Just in time for Halloween, Tell Everyone (Doubleday Canada) is a social science literature review masquerading as light bedside reading from the business management section. Hermida has tucked the academic sourcing into 21 pages of endnotes and offered a highly readable 217-page tour of social movements, revolutions, journalistic gaffes and corporate PR disasters.
The UBC journalism professor moves easily from chronicling the activities of Boston Marathon Redditors to Tahrir Square YouTubers to Japanese earthquake tweeters. He dips frequently into the past for context, highlighting the roles of French Revolution-era salon “bloggers,” 18th-century Portuguese earthquake pamphleteers and First World War German pilots.
Indeed, this book is only marginally about journalism, made clear by the absence of a reference to “news” in its title. It is at least as much about sociology and marketing.
Mathew Ingram argued recently that journalism’s biggest competitors don’t look like journalism. Hermida would no doubt agree. The Daily Show’s blurring of comedy and journalism is now a familiar ingredient in people’s information diet, he writes. And with nearly every news event, “the reporting by journalists sits alongside the accounts, experiences, opinions and hopes of millions of others.” Journalistic accounts didn’t define Mitt Romney’s 2012 U.S. presidential campaign, he notes; thousands of users did, with their “binders full of women” meme.
Hermida devotes a chapter to chronicling the ways in which consumers are asserting themselves in the marketplace—and the ways in which brands are reacting. The communications team at Domino’s Pizza failed to engage YouTube users over a gross gag video made by two of its employees in 2009. But Lionsgate films effectively incorporated user-generated content into its promotions for the 2012 Hunger Games movie. Some of the examples are well known but their value lies in the considerable context Hermida provides.
Other chapters highlight the role of social media in the wake of natural disasters and how users—and researchers—are working to identify hoaxes.
Tell Everyone is the latest in a small but growing number of mass-market books aiming to distill social media research from the ivory tower. The most notable is Wharton School professor Jonah Berger’s 2013 book Contagious: Why Things Catch On. Hermida discusses the influential 2009 research conducted by Berger and his colleague Katherine Milkman into stories on the New York Times most-emailed list. Those conclusions now greatly influence the work of social media editors.
But, in this instance at least, the lively pacing of the book sacrifices some valuable detail.
Hermida explores the studies’ main conclusion: positive content is more viral than negative content, but the key is the presence of activating emotions in the user, such as joy or anger. However, the chapter gives only a cursory mention to a finding Berger discusses at length in Contagious—the surprisingly frequent presence of science stories in the list of most-emailed articles. The emotion at play is awe—what Berger characterizes as not quite joy, but a complex sense of surprise, unexpectedness or mystery. It’s an important aspect of our still-evolving understanding of how we use social media….”
Alfred Hermida’s new book, Tell Everyone: Why We Share & Why It Matters, takes us through that research—and a pile more, from Pew Center data on the makeup of our friends lists to a Yahoo! study on the nature of social influencers. One of Hermida’s accomplishments is to have woven that research into a breezy narrative crammed with examples from recent headlines.
Not up on the concept of cognitive dissonance? Homophily? Pluralistic ignorance? Or situational awareness? Not a deal breaker. Just in time for Halloween, Tell Everyone (Doubleday Canada) is a social science literature review masquerading as light bedside reading from the business management section. Hermida has tucked the academic sourcing into 21 pages of endnotes and offered a highly readable 217-page tour of social movements, revolutions, journalistic gaffes and corporate PR disasters.
The UBC journalism professor moves easily from chronicling the activities of Boston Marathon Redditors to Tahrir Square YouTubers to Japanese earthquake tweeters. He dips frequently into the past for context, highlighting the roles of French Revolution-era salon “bloggers,” 18th-century Portuguese earthquake pamphleteers and First World War German pilots.
Indeed, this book is only marginally about journalism, made clear by the absence of a reference to “news” in its title. It is at least as much about sociology and marketing.
Mathew Ingram argued recently that journalism’s biggest competitors don’t look like journalism. Hermida would no doubt agree. The Daily Show’s blurring of comedy and journalism is now a familiar ingredient in people’s information diet, he writes. And with nearly every news event, “the reporting by journalists sits alongside the accounts, experiences, opinions and hopes of millions of others.” Journalistic accounts didn’t define Mitt Romney’s 2012 U.S. presidential campaign, he notes; thousands of users did, with their “binders full of women” meme.
Hermida devotes a chapter to chronicling the ways in which consumers are asserting themselves in the marketplace—and the ways in which brands are reacting. The communications team at Domino’s Pizza failed to engage YouTube users over a gross gag video made by two of its employees in 2009. But Lionsgate films effectively incorporated user-generated content into its promotions for the 2012 Hunger Games movie. Some of the examples are well known but their value lies in the considerable context Hermida provides.
Other chapters highlight the role of social media in the wake of natural disasters and how users—and researchers—are working to identify hoaxes.
Tell Everyone is the latest in a small but growing number of mass-market books aiming to distill social media research from the ivory tower. The most notable is Wharton School professor Jonah Berger’s 2013 book Contagious: Why Things Catch On. Hermida discusses the influential 2009 research conducted by Berger and his colleague Katherine Milkman into stories on the New York Times most-emailed list. Those conclusions now greatly influence the work of social media editors.
But, in this instance at least, the lively pacing of the book sacrifices some valuable detail.
Hermida explores the studies’ main conclusion: positive content is more viral than negative content, but the key is the presence of activating emotions in the user, such as joy or anger. However, the chapter gives only a cursory mention to a finding Berger discusses at length in Contagious—the surprisingly frequent presence of science stories in the list of most-emailed articles. The emotion at play is awe—what Berger characterizes as not quite joy, but a complex sense of surprise, unexpectedness or mystery. It’s an important aspect of our still-evolving understanding of how we use social media….”
On policy and delivery
Speech by Mike Bracken (gov.uk): “…most of the work the civil service does goes unseen, or at least unheralded. But whether it’s Ebola screens, student loans, renewing your car tax, or a thousand other things, that work is vital to everyone in the UK.
Often that work is harder than it needs to be.
I don’t think anyone disagrees that the civil service needs reform. It’s the nature of that reform I want to talk about today.
The Internet has changed everything. Digital is the technological enabler of this century. And, in any sector you care to name, it’s been the lifeblood of organisations that have embraced it, and a death sentence for those that haven’t. If you take away one thing today, please make it this: government is not immune to the seismic changes that digital technology has brought to bear.
The Internet is changing the organising principle of every industry it touches, mostly for the better: finance, retail, media, transport, energy. Some industries refuse to change their organising principle. The music industry was dominated by producers – the record labels – now it’s dominated by digital distribution – like Spotify and their ilk.
Others, like airlines, have rapidly changed how they work internally, and are organised radically differently in order to serve users in a digital age. British Airways used to have over 80 ticket types, with departments and hierarchies competing to attract users. Now it has a handful, and the organisation is digital first and much simpler. These changes are invisible to the majority, but that’s doesn’t make the changes any less significant.
Twenty five years into the era of digital transformation, the Internet has a 100% track record of success making industries simpler to users while forcing organisations to fundamentally change how they’re structured. These characteristics are not going away. Yet the effect on the civil service has been, until very recently, marginal.
This is because we deferred our digital development by grouping digital services into enormous, multi-year IT contracts, or what we refer to as ‘Big IT’. Or in short, we gave away our digital future to the IT crowd. While most large organisations reversed these arrangements we have only recently separated our future strategy – digital literacy and digital service provision – from the same contracts that handle commodity technology. By clinging to this model for 15 years, we have created a huge problem for everyone involved in delivery and policy.
Today I want to talk about two things.
The first is delivery, because I believe delivery to users, not policy, should be the organising principle of a reformed civil service.
And the second is skills, and why it’s time for the civil service to put digital skills at the heart of the machine….”
The Data Manifesto
Development Initiatives: “Staging a Data Revolution
Accessible, useable, timely and complete data is core to sustainable development and social progress. Access to information provides people with a base to make better choices and have more control over their lives. Too often attempts to deliver sustainable economic, social and environmental results are hindered by the failure to get the right information, in the right format, to the right people, at the right time. Worse still, the most acute data deficits often affect the people and countries facing the most acute problems.
The Data Revolution should be about data grounded in real life. Data and information that gets to the people who need it at national and sub-national levels to help with the decisions they face – hospital directors, school managers, city councillors, parliamentarians. Data that goes beyond averages – that is disaggregated to show the different impacts of decisions, policies and investments on gender, social groups and people living in different places and over time.
We need a Data Revolution that sets a new political agenda, that puts existing data to work, that improves the way data is gathered and ensures that information can be used. To deliver this vision, we need the following steps.
12 steps to a Data Revolution
1. Implement a national ‘Data Pledge’ to citizens that is supported by governments, private and non-governmental sectors
2. Address real world questions with joined up and disaggregated data
3. Empower and up-skill data users of the future through education
4. Examine existing frameworks and publish existing data
5. Build an information bank of data assets
6. Allocate funding available for better data according to national and sub-national priorities
7. Strengthen national statistical systems’ capacity to collect data
8. Implement a policy that data is ‘open by default’
9. Improve data quality by subjecting it to public scrutiny
10. Put information users’ needs first
11. Recognise technology cannot solve all barriers to information
12. Invest in infomediaries’ capacity to translate data into information that policymakers, civil society and the media can actually use…”
VouliWatch – Empowering Democracy in Greece
Proposal at IndieGogo: “In the wake of the economic crisis and in a country where politics has all too often been beset by scandals and corruption, Vouliwatch aims to help develop an open and accountable political system that uses new digital technology to promote citizen participation in the political process and to rebuild trust in parliamentary democracy. In the heyday of Ancient Greek democracy, citizens actively participated in political dialogue, and Vouliwatch aims to revive this essential aspect of a democratic society through the use of digital technology.
How it actually works!
Vouliwatch is a digital platform that offers Greek citizens the opportunity to publicly question MPs and MEPs on the topic of their choice, and to hold their elected representatives accountable for their parliamentary activity. It is loosely modelled on similar initiatives that are already running successfully in other countries (Ireland, Luxemburg, Tunisia, Germany, France and Austria)….
Crowdsourcing/bottom up approach
The platform also gives users the chance to influence political debate and to focus the attention of both the media and the politicians on issues that citizens believe are important and are not being discussed widely.Vouliwatch offers citizens the chance to share their ideas and experiences and to make proposals to parliament for political action. The community of users can then comment on and rate them. A Google map application depicts all submitted data with the option of filtering based on different criteria (location; subject categories such as e.g. education, tourism, etc.). Every 2 months all submitted data is summarized in a report and sent to all MPs by our team, as food for thought and action. Vouliwatch will then publish and promote any resulting parliamentary reaction….”
New Technology and the Prevention of Violence and Conflict
Report edited by Francesco Mancini for the International Peace Institute: “In an era of unprecedented interconnectivity, this report explores the ways in which new technologies can assist international actors, governments, and civil society organizations to more effectively prevent violence and conflict. It examines the contributions that cell phones, social media, crowdsourcing, crisis mapping, blogging, and big data analytics can make to short-term efforts to forestall crises and to long-term initiatives to address the root causes of violence.
Five case studies assess the use of such tools in a variety of regions (Africa, Asia, Latin America) experiencing different types of violence (criminal violence, election-related violence, armed conflict, short-term crisis) in different political contexts (restrictive and collaborative governments).
Drawing on lessons and insights from across the cases, the authors outline a how-to guide for leveraging new technology in conflict-prevention efforts:
1. Examine all tools.
2. Consider the context.
3. Do no harm.
4. Integrate local input.
5. Help information flow horizontally.
6. Establish consensus regarding data use.
7. Foster partnerships for better results.”
Things Fall Apart: How Social Media Leads to a Less Stable World
Commentary by Curtis Hougland at Knowledge@Wharton: “James Foley. David Haines. Steven Sotloff. The list of people beheaded by followers of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) keeps growing. The filming of these acts on video and distribution via social media platforms such as Twitter represent a geopolitical trend in which social media has become the new frontline for proxy wars across the globe. While social media does indeed advance connectivity and wealth among people, its proliferation at the same time results in a markedly less stable world.
That social media benefits mankind is irrefutable. I have been an evangelist for the power of new media for 20 years. However, technology in the form of globalized communication, transportation and supply chains conspires to make today’s world more complex. Events in any corner of the world now impact the rest of the globe quickly and sharply. Nations are being pulled apart along sectarian seams in Iraq, tribal divisions in Afghanistan, national interests in Ukraine and territorial fences in Gaza. These conflicts portend a quickening of global unrest, confirmed by Foreign Policy magazine’s map of civil protest. The ISIS videos are simply the exposed wire. I believe that over the next century, even great nations will Balkanize — break into smaller nations. One of the principal drivers of this Balkanization is social media Twitter .
Social media is a behavior, an expression of the innate human need to socialize and share experiences. Social media is not simply a set of technology channels and networks. Both the public and private sectors have underestimated the human imperative to behave socially. The evidence is now clear with more than 52% of the population living in cities and approximately 2 billion people active in social media globally. Some 96% of content emanates from individuals, not brands, media or governments — a volume that far exceeds participation in democratic elections.
Social media is not egalitarian, though. Despite the exponential growth of user-generated content, people prefer to congregate online around like-minded individuals. Rather than seek out new beliefs, people choose to reinforce their existing political opinions through their actions online. This is illustrated in Pew Internet’s 2014 study, “Mapping Twitter Topic Networks from Polarized Crowds to Community Clusters.” Individuals self-organize by affinity, and within affinity, by sensibility and personality. The ecosystem of social media is predicated on delivering more of what the user already likes. This, precisely, is the function of a Follow or Like. In this way, media coagulates rather than fragments online….”
We Want Privacy, but Can’t Stop Sharing
Kate Murphy in the New York Times: “Well, that’s essentially the state of affairs on the Internet. There is no privacy. If those creepy targeted ads on Google hadn’t tipped you off, then surely Edward J. Snowden’s revelations, or, more recently, Jennifer Lawrence’s nude selfies, made your vulnerability to cybersnooping abundantly clear.
You need only read George Orwell’s “1984” or watch the film “Minority Report” to understand how surveillance is incompatible with a free society. And increasingly, people are coming to understand how their online data might be used against them. You might not get a job, a loan or a date because of an indiscreet tweet or if your address on Google Street View shows your brother-in-law’s clunker in the driveway. But less obvious is the psychic toll of the current data free-for-all.
“With all the focus on the legal aspects of privacy and the impact on global trade there’s been little discussion of why you want privacy and why it’s intrinsically important to you as an individual,” said Adam Joinson, professor of behavior change at the University of the West of England in Bristol, who coined the term “digital crowding” to describe excessive social contact and loss of personal space online.
Perhaps that’s because there is no agreement over what constitutes private information. It varies among cultures, genders and individuals. Moreover, it’s hard to argue for the value of privacy when people eagerly share so much achingly personal information on social media.
But the history of privacy (loosely defined as freedom from being observed) is one of status. Those who are institutionalized for criminal behavior or ill health, children and the impoverished have less privacy than those who are upstanding, healthy, mature and wealthy. Think of crowded tenements versus mansions behind high hedges.
“The implication is that if you don’t have it, you haven’t earned the right or aren’t capable or trustworthy,” said Christena Nippert-Eng, professor of sociology at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago and author of “Islands of Privacy.”
So it’s not surprising that privacy research in both online and offline environments has shown that just the perception, let alone the reality, of being watched results in feelings of low self-esteem, depression and anxiety. Whether observed by a supervisor at work or Facebook friends, people are inclined to conform and demonstrate less individuality and creativity. Their performance of tasks suffers and they have elevated pulse rates and levels of stress hormones.
An analogy in the psychological literature is that privacy is like sleep….”
MIT launches Laboratory for Social Machines with major Twitter investment
MIT Press Release: “The MIT Media Lab today announced the creation of the Laboratory for Social Machines (LSM), funded by a five-year, $10 million commitment from Twitter. As part of the new program, Twitter will also provide full access to its real-time, public stream of tweets, as well as the archive of every tweet dating back to the first.
The new initiative, based at the Media Lab, will focus on the development of new technologies to make sense of semantic and social patterns across the broad span of public mass media, social media, data streams, and digital content. Pattern discovery and data visualization will be explored to reveal interaction patterns and shared interests in relevant social systems, while collaborative tools and mobile apps will be developed to enable new forms of public communication and social organization.
A main goal for the LSM will be to create new platforms for both individuals and institutions to identify, discuss, and act on pressing societal problems. Though funded by Twitter, the LSM will have complete operational and academic independence. In keeping with the academic mission of LSM, students and staff will work across many social media and mass media platforms — including, but not limited to, Twitter.
“The Laboratory for Social Machines will experiment in areas of public communication and social organization where humans and machines collaborate on problems that can’t be solved manually or through automation alone,” says Deb Roy, an associate professor at the Media Lab who will lead the LSM, and who also serves as Twitter’s chief media scientist. “Social feedback loops based on analysis of public media and data can be an effective catalyst for increasing accountability and transparency — creating mutual visibility among institutions and individuals.”
“With this investment, Twitter is seizing the opportunity to go deeper into research to understand the role Twitter and other platforms play in the way people communicate, the effect that rapid and fluid communication can have and apply those findings to complex societal issues,” says Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter…”
Antidisciplinary
Joi Ito at LinkedIn: “One of the first words that I learned when I joined the Media Lab was “antidisciplinary.” It was listed an a requirement in an ad seeking applicants for a new faculty position. Interdisciplinary work is when people from different disciplines work together. An antidisciplinary project isn’t a sum of a bunch of disciplines but something entirely new – the word defies easy definition. But what it means to me is someone or something that doesn’t fit within traditional academic discipline–a field of study with its own particular words, frameworks, and methods. Most academics are judged by how many times they have published in prestigious, peer-reviewed journals. Peer review usually consists of the influential members of your field reviewing your work and deciding whether it is important and unique. This architecture often leads to a dynamic where researchers focus more on impressing a small number of experts in their own field than on taking the high risk of an unconventional approach. This dynamic reinforces the cliché of academics–learning more and more about less and less. It causes a hyper-specialization where people in different areas have a very difficult time collaborating–or even communicating–with people in different fields. For me, antidisciplinary research is akin to mathematician Stanislaw Ulam’s famous observation that the study of non-linear physics is like the study of “non-elephant animals.” Antidisciplinary is all about the non-elephant animals.
The Media Lab focuses on “uniqueness, impact and magic.” What our students and faculty do should be unique. We shouldn’t be doing something that someone else is doing. If someone else starts doing it, we should stop. Everything we do should have impact. Lastly, things should induce us to be passionate and should go beyond incremental thinking. “Magic” means that we take on projects that inspire us. In the Lifelong Kindergarten group, researchers often describe the “Four Ps of Creative Learning” as Projects, Peers, Passion and Play. Play is extremely important for creative learning. There is a great deal of research showing that rewards and pressure can motivate people to “produce,” but creative learning and thinking requires the “space” that play creates. Pressure and rewards can often diminish that space, and thus, squash creative thinking….”