Big Data. Big Obstacles.

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Dalton Conley et al. in the Chronicle of Higher Education: “After decades of fretting over declining response rates to traditional surveys (the mainstay of 20th-century social research), an exciting new era would appear to be dawning thanks to the rise of big data. Social contagion can be studied by scraping Twitter feeds; peer effects are tested on Facebook; long-term trends in inequality and mobility can be assessed by linking tax records across years and generations; social-psychology experiments can be run on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service; and cultural change can be mapped by studying the rise and fall of specific Google search terms. In many ways there has been no better time to be a scholar in sociology, political science, economics, or related fields.

However, what should be an opportunity for social science is now threatened by a three-headed monster of privatization, amateurization, and Balkanization. A coordinated public effort is needed to overcome all of these obstacles.

While the availability of social-media data may obviate the problem of declining response rates, it introduces all sorts of problems with the level of access that researchers enjoy. Although some data can be culled from the web—Twitter feeds and Google searches—other data sit behind proprietary firewalls. And as individual users tune up their privacy settings, the typical university or independent researcher is increasingly locked out. Unlike federally funded studies, there is no mandate for Yahoo or Alibaba to make its data publicly available. The result, we fear, is a two-tiered system of research. Scientists working for or with big Internet companies will feast on humongous data sets—and even conduct experiments—and scholars who do not work in Silicon Valley (or Alley) will be left with proverbial scraps….

To address this triple threat of privatization, amateurization, and Balkanization, public social science needs to be bolstered for the 21st century. In the current political and economic climate, social scientists are not waiting for huge government investment like we saw during the Cold War. Instead, researchers have started to knit together disparate data sources by scraping, harmonizing, and geo­coding any and all information they can get their hands on.

Currently, many firms employ some well-trained social and behavioral scientists free to pursue their own research; likewise, some companies have programs by which scholars can apply to be in residence or work with their data extramurally. However, as Facebook states, its program is “by invitation only and requires an internal Facebook champion.” And while Google provides services like Ngram to the public, such limited efforts at data sharing are not enough for truly transparent and replicable science….(More)”

 

You Can’t Handle the (Algorithmic) Truth

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

 at Slate: “Critics of “algorithms” are everywhere. Algorithms tell you how to vote.Algorithms can revoke your driver’s license and terminate your disability benefits. Algorithms predict crimes. Algorithms ensured you didn’t hear about #FreddieGray on Twitter. Algorithms are everywhere, and, to hear critics, they are trouble. What’s the problem? Critics allege that algorithms are opaque, automatic, emotionless, and impersonal, and that they separate decision-makers from the consequences of their actions. Algorithms cannot appreciate the context of structural discrimination, are trained on flawed datasets, and are ruining lives everywhere. There needs to be algorithmic accountability. Otherwise, who is to blame when a computational process suddenly deprives someone of his or her rights and livelihood?

But at heart, criticism of algorithmic decision-making makes an age-old argument about impersonal, automatic corporate and government bureaucracy. The machinelike bureaucracy has simply become the machine. Instead of a quest for accountability, much of the rhetoric and discourse about algorithms amounts to a surrender—an unwillingness to fight the ideas and bureaucratic logic driving the algorithms that critics find so creepy and problematic. Algorithmic transparency and accountability can only be achieved if critics understand that transparency (no modifier is needed) is the issue. If the problem is that a bureaucratic system is impersonal, unaccountable, creepy, and has a flawed or biased decision criteria, then why fetishize and render mysterious the mere mechanical instrument of the system’s will?…(More)”

Platforms connect talented Instagrammers with good causes

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Springwise: “….a number of charities using social media campaigns to spread awareness about their causes. Only last week we covered the #EndangeredEmoji campaign from WWF, which uses Twitter and emojis to highlight the plight of seventeen endangered species. Now, two startups — Gramforacause and Gramming For Good — are turning to the photocentric platform Instagram to connect photographers with non-profits, helping spread the word about their causes through social photography.

Each startup curates a service tailored to the needs of the nonprofit — whether that be providing photos to populate the feed, an Instagram takeover or simply spreading the word on a photographer’s own account. When matching a photographer, both companies consider preferred photography type — phone, DSLR or film — their expected rate of pay and where their passions lie….

Website: www.grammingforgood.com & www.gramforacause.com “

The Future of Citizen Engagement: five trends transforming government

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Catherine Andrews at GovLoop: “Every year, citizen engagement seems to improve. New technologies are born; new innovations connect citizens with the government; new ideas start to take root.

It’s 2015, and citizen engagement has gone far beyond basic social media and town halls. As we make our way through the 21st century, citizen engagement is continuing to evolve. New platforms and concepts such as geographic information systems (GIS), GitHub, open data, human-centered design and novel uses of social media have challenged the traditional notions of citizen engagement and pushed government into uncharted territories. As citizens become more tech-savvy, this growth is only continuing.

This GovLoop guide will dive into five of the latest and newest trends in citizen engagement. From the customer experience to the Internet of Things, we’ll highlight the most innovative ways federal, state and local governments are connecting with citizens….(More)”

Advances in Crowdsourcing

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

New book edited by Garrigos-Simon, Fernando J., Gil-Pechuán, Ignacio, Estelles-Miguel, Sofia: “This book attempts to link some of the recent advances in crowdsourcing with advances in innovation and management. It contributes to the literature in several ways. First, it provides a global definition, insights and examples of this managerial perspective resulting in a theoretical framework. Second, it explores the relationship between crowdsourcing and technological innovation, the development of social networks and new behaviors of Internet users. Third, it explores different crowdsourcing applications in various sectors such as medicine, tourism, information and communication technology (ICT), and marketing. Fourth, it observes the ways in which crowdsourcing can improve production, finance, management and overall managerial performance.

Crowdsourcing, also known as “massive outsourcing” or “voluntary outsourcing,” is the act of taking a job or a specific task usually performed by an employee of a company or contractors, and outsourcing it to a large group of people or a community (crowd or mass) via the Internet, through an open call. The term was coined by Jeff Howe in a 2006 issue of Wired magazine. It is being developed in different sciences (i.e., medicine, engineering, ICT, management) and is used in the most successful companies of the modern era (i.e., Apple, Facebook, Inditex, Starbucks). The developments in crowdsourcing has theoretical and practical implications, which will be explored in this book.

Including contributions from international academics, scholars and professionals within the field, this book provides a global, multidimensional perspective on crowdsourcing.​…(More)”

Privacy in the Modern Age: The Search for Solutions

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

New book edited by Marc Rotenberg, Julia Horwitz, and Jeramie Scott: “The threats to privacy are well known: the National Security Agency tracks our phone calls, Google records where we go online and how we set our thermostats, Facebook changes our privacy settings when it wishes, Target gets hacked and loses control of our credit card information, our medical records are available for sale to strangers, our children are fingerprinted and their every test score saved for posterity, and small robots patrol our schoolyards while drones may soon fill our skies.

The contributors to this anthology don’t simply describe these problems or warn about the loss of privacy- they propose solutions. They look closely at business practices, public policy, and technology design and ask, “Should this continue? Is there a better approach?” They take seriously the dictum of Thomas Edison: “What one creates with his hand, he should control with his head.” It’s a new approach to the privacy debate, one that assumes privacy is worth protecting, that there are solutions to be found, and that the future is not yet known. This volume will be an essential reference for policy makers and researchers, journalists and scholars, and others looking for answers to one of the biggest challenges of our modern day. The premise is clear: there’s a problem- let’s find a solution….(More)”

Citizen Engagement through ICT

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

AGORA Brief – May 2015: “Communication has come a long way in recent years.  The ‘90s brought us the first widely available internet browser (1993) and the first mobile phone with an internet connection (1996).  The past decade saw the evolution of these tools into new digital networks and resources: FlickR and Facebook in 2004; Youtube in 2005, and Twitter in 2006. Today, 10% of the world’s population has a fixed internet subscription and almost 30% has a mobile subscription, with the figures doubling in developed countries. Additionally, there are now 7.1 billion mobile phones and 1.9 billion smartphones with an internet subscription (ITU figures).

Parliaments around the world have embraced ICT and other new technologies at varying rates, and to varying degrees of success. The great majority of legislatives now have a website and many of them are active on social media networks. Some have gone further still, piloting mobile constituency offices, virtual hearings and a whole range of digital platforms designed to improve communication between citizens and their representatives.  Yet, countless opportunities for better use of these technologies go unexplored.

This brief illustrates how new technologies can better connect parliament with the people it represents.  It discusses the use of ICT in administration, the adoption of social media, the development of citizen engagement platforms and the strategies employed by parliamentary monitoring organisations.  It also offers suggestions on how to keep costs down and mobilise support. …(More)”

Facebook’s Filter Study Raises Questions About Transparency

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Will Knight in MIT Technology Review: “Facebook is an enormously valuable source of information about social interactions.

Facebook’s latest scientific research, about the way it shapes the political perspectives users are exposed to, has led some academics to call for the company to be more open about what it chooses to study and publish.

This week the company’s data science team published a paper in the prominent journal Science confirming what many had long suspected: that the network’s algorithms filter out some content that might challenge a person’s political leanings. However, the paper also suggested that the effect was fairly small, and less significant than a user’s own filtering behavior (see “Facebook Says You Filter News More Than Its Algorithm Does”).
Several academics have pointed to limitations of the study, such as the fact that the only people involved had indicated their political affiliation on their Facebook page. Critics point out that those users might behave in a different way from everyone else. But beyond that, a few academics have noted a potential tension between Facebook’s desire to explore the scientific value of its data and its own corporate interests….

In response to the controversy over that study, Facebook’s chief technology officer, Mike Schroepfer, wrote a Facebook post that acknowledged people’s concerns and described new guidelines for its scientific research. “We’ve created a panel including our most senior subject-area researchers, along with people from our engineering, research, legal, privacy and policy teams, that will review projects falling within these guidelines,” he wrote….(More)

Digital Democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

“Digital Democracy is a product of the Institute for Advanced Technology and Public Policy. The new online platform features a searchable database of California state legislative committees hearings, allowing the user to search videos by keyword, topic, speaker or date. Digital Democracy is a first of its kind tool because it will transcribe all legislative hearing videos and will make the transcriptions available to users in their searchable entirety. These data rich transcripts represent an entirely new data set that is currently unavailable to the public. Additionally, sophisticated meta tags attached to the transcripts will enable users to run in depth analytics to identify trends and relationships. A robust database of all speakers will track individual participants’ testimony, positions, and donation and gift histories.

This project is pushing beyond the technical challenges of providing mere access to information, instead focusing on how this new data set can be meaningfully interpreted and acted upon. Tools within the system will allow a user to quickly and easily search, locate, view, clip, and share this information and opinions on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, and other social media platforms. The video clips will provide dynamic content for grassroots mobilizers, online media outlets, bloggers, professional associations, and government watchdogs.

Digital Democracy has been deployed as a one year beta to provide searchable video files of available California state committee hearings for the 2015 legislative year….(More)”

Cops Increasingly Use Social Media to Connect, Crowdsource

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Sara E. Wilson at GovTech: “Law enforcement has long used public tip lines and missing persons bulletins to recruit citizens in helping solve crime and increasing public safety. Though the need for police departments to connect with their communities is nothing new, the array of technologies available to do so is growing all the time — as are the ways in which departments use those technologies.

In fact, 81 percent of law enforcement professionals use sites such as Facebook and Twitter on the job. And 25 percent use it daily.

Much of law enforcement is crowdsourced — Amber alerts are pushed to smartphones, seeking response from citizens; officers push wanted information and crime tips to users on Facebook and Twitter in the hopes they can help; and some departments create apps to streamline the information sharing.

Take the Johns Creek, Ga., Police Department, which has deployed a tool that allows additional citizen engagement and crowdsourcing…..Using a mobile app — the SunGard Public Sector P2C Converge app, which is branded specifically for Johns Creek PD as JCPD4Me — the department can more smoothly manage public safety announcements and other social media interactions….

Another tool cops use for communicating with citizens is Nixle, which lets agencies publish alerts, advisories, community information and traffic news. Citizens register for free and receive credible, neighborhood-level public safety information via text message and email in real time.

The Oakland, Calif., Police Department (OPD) uses the platform to engage with citizens — an April 17, 2015 post on Oakland PD’s Nixle Community feed informs readers that the department’s Special Victims Section, which is working to put an end to sex trafficking in the city, arrested five individuals for solicitation of prostitution. Since Jan. 1, 2015, OPD has arrested 70 individuals from 27 cities across the state for solicitation of prostitution.

Nixle allows two-way communication as well — the Tip Watch function allows anonymous tipsters to send information to Oakland PD in three ways (text, phone, Web). Now OPD can issue a passcode to tipsters for two-way, anonymous communication to help gather more information.

On the East Coast, the Peabody, Mass., Police Department has used the My Police Department (MyPD) app by WiredBlue, which lets citizens submit tips and feedback directly to the department, since its creation….

During the high-profile manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombers in 2013, the FBI asked the public for eyewitness photo and video evidence. The response from the public was so overwhelming that the server infrastructure couldn’t handle the massive inflow of data.

This large-scale crowdsourcing and data dilemma inspired a new product: the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department’s Large Emergency Event Digital Information Repository (LEEDIR). Developed by CitizenGlobal Inc. and Amazon Web Services, LEEDIR pairs an app with cloud storage to help police use citizens’ smartphones as tools to gather and investigate evidence. Since its creation, the repository was used in Santa Barbara, Calif., in 2014 to investigate riots in Isla Vista.

Proponents of LEEDIR say the crowdsourcing system gives authorities a secure, central repository for the countless electronic tips that can come in during a crisis. Critics, however, claim that privacy issues come into play with this kind of policing. …(More)”