Paper by Dirk Helbing et al: “The technological revolution, particularly the availability of more data and more powerful computational tools, has led to the emergence of a new scientific area called Computational Diplomacy. Our work focuses on a popular subarea of it. In recent years, there has been a surge of interest in using digital technologies to promote more participatory forms of democracy. While there are numerous potential benefits to using digital tools to enhance democracy, significant challenges must be addressed. It is essential to ensure that digital technologies are used in an accessible, equitable, and fair manner rather than reinforcing existing power imbalances. This paper investigates how digital tools can be used to help design more democratic societies by investigating three key research areas: (1) the role of digital technologies in facilitating civic engagement in collective decision-making; (2) the use of digital tools to improve transparency and accountability in gover-nance; and (3) the potential for digital technologies to enable the formation of more inclusive and representative democracies. We argue that more research on how digital technologies can be used to support democracy upgrade is needed, and we make some recommendations for future research in this direction…(More)”.
How Technology Companies Are Shaping the Ukraine Conflict
Article by Abishur Prakash: “Earlier this year, Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, announced that people could create posts calling for violence against Russia on its social media platforms. This was unprecedented. One of the world’s largest technology firms very publicly picked sides in a geopolitical conflict. Russia was now not just fighting a country but also multinational companies with financial stakes in the outcome. In response, Russia announced a ban on Instagram within its borders. The fallout was significant. The ban, which eventually included Facebook, cost Meta close to $2 billion.
Through the war in Ukraine, technology companies are showing how their decisions can affect geopolitics, which is a massive shift from the past. Technology companies have been either dragged into conflicts because of how customers were using their services (e.g., people putting their houses in the West Bank on Airbnb) or have followed the foreign policy of governments (e.g., SpaceX supplying Internet to Iran after the United States removed some sanctions)…(More)”.
Principles for Responsible Algorithmic Systems
Press Release: “The Association for Computing Machinery’s global Technology Policy Council (TPC) has released a new Statement on Principles for Responsible Algorithmic Systems authored jointly by its US (USTPC) and Europe Technology Policy Committees (Europe TPC). Recognizing that algorithmic systems are increasingly used by governments and companies to make or recommend decisions that have far-reaching effects on individuals, organizations, and society, the ACM Statement lays out nine instrumental principles intended to foster fair, accurate, and beneficial algorithmic decision-making.
The statement includes a definition for each principle as well as a brief explanation of how the principle contributes to the larger goal of building responsible algorithmic systems. The nine instrumental principles include: Legitimacy and Competency; Minimizing Harm; Security and Privacy; Transparency; Interpretability and Explainability; Maintainability; Contestability and Auditability; Accountability and Responsibility; and Limiting Environmental Impacts. The new statement complements the ACM Code of Ethics and is intended as a guide for algorithm developers and designers to remain vigilant concerning the potential for bias and unfairness at each stage of the software development process….(More)”.
Everything dies, including information
Article by Erik Sherman: “Everything dies: people, machines, civilizations. Perhaps we can find some solace in knowing that all the meaningful things we’ve learned along the way will survive. But even knowledge has a life span. Documents fade. Art goes missing. Entire libraries and collections can face quick and unexpected destruction.
Surely, we’re at a stage technologically where we might devise ways to make knowledge available and accessible forever. After all, the density of data storage is already incomprehensibly high. In the ever-growing museum of the internet, one can move smoothly from images from the James Webb Space Telescope through diagrams explaining Pythagoras’s philosophy on the music of the spheres to a YouTube tutorial on blues guitar soloing. What more could you want?
Quite a bit, according to the experts. For one thing, what we think is permanent isn’t. Digital storage systems can become unreadable in as little as three to five years. Librarians and archivists race to copy things over to newer formats. But entropy is always there, waiting in the wings. “Our professions and our people often try to extend the normal life span as far as possible through a variety of techniques, but it’s still holding back the tide,” says Joseph Janes, an associate professor at the University of Washington Information School.
To complicate matters, archivists are now grappling with an unprecedented deluge of information. In the past, materials were scarce and storage space limited. “Now we have the opposite problem,” Janes says. “Everything is being recorded all the time.”…(More)”.
Computing the News: Data Journalism and the Search for Objectivity
Book by Sylvain Parasie: “…examines how data journalists and news organizations have navigated the tensions between traditional journalistic values and new technologies. Offering an in-depth analysis of how computing has become part of the daily practices of journalists, this book proposes ways for journalism to evolve in order to serve democratic societies…(More)”.
Public Access to Advance Equity
Essay by Alondra Nelson, Christopher Marcum and Jedidah Isler: “Open science began in the scientific community as a movement committed to making all aspects of research freely available to all members of society.
As a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United States is committed to promoting open science, which the OECD defines as “unhindered access to scientific articles, access to data from public research, and collaborative research enabled by information and communication technology tools and incentives.”
At the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), we have been inspired by the movement to push for openness in research by community activists, researchers, publishers, higher-education leaders, policymakers, patient advocates, scholarly associations, librarians, open-government proponents, philanthropic organizations, and the public.
Open science is an essential part of the Biden-Harris administration’s broader commitment to providing public access to data, publications, and the other important products of the nation’s taxpayer-supported research and innovation enterprise. We look to the lessons, methods, and products of open science to deliver on this commitment to policy that advances equity, accelerates discovery and innovation, provides opportunities for all to participate in research, promotes public trust, and is evidence-based. Here, we detail some of the ways OSTP is working to expand the American public’s access to the federal research and development ecosystem, and to ensure it is open, equitable, and secure…(More)”.
Hyperlocal: Place Governance in a Fragmented World
Book by By Jennifer S. Vey and Nate Storring: “Many of America’s downtowns, waterfronts, and innovation districts have experienced significant revitalization and reinvestment in recent years, but concentrated poverty and racial segregation remain persistent across thousands of urban, suburban, and rural neighborhoods. The coronavirus pandemic magnified this sustained and growing landscape of inequality.
Uneven patterns of economic growth and investment require a shift in how communities are governed and managed. This shift must take into account the changing socioeconomic realities of regions and the pressing need to bring inclusive economic growth and prosperity to more people and places.
In this context, place-based (“hyperlocal”) governance structures in the United States and around the globe have been both part of the problem and part of the solution. These organizations range from community land trusts to business improvement districts to neighborhood councils. However, very little systematic research has documented the full diversity and evolution of these organizations as part of one interrelated field. Hyperlocal helps fill that gap by describing the challenges and opportunities of “place governance.”
The chapters in Hyperlocal explore both the tensions and benefits associated with governing places in an increasingly fragmented—aneholders a structure through which to share ideas, voice concerns, advocate for investments, and co-design strategies with others both inside and outside their place. They also discuss how place governance can serve the interests of some stakeholders over others, in turn exacerbating wealth-based inequities within and across communities. Finally, they highlight innovative financing, organizing, and ownership models for creating and sustaining more effective and inclusive place governance structures…(More)”.
Evaluating Social Innovation Prototypes
Guide by Social Innovation Canada: “…practical resource for those involved with social research and development and who would like to create, test, and learn from prototypes. This how-to guide explores 12 principles to guide the testing process, five key steps for carrying out the process, and includes tables that summarize a variety of prototyping techniques, evaluation methods, and sampling strategies. Learn how to effectively use prototypes and test promising solutions to address social challenges….(More)”
The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology Is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants
Book by Karen Bakker: “The natural world teems with remarkable conversations, many beyond human hearing range. Scientists are using groundbreaking digital technologies to uncover these astonishing sounds, revealing vibrant communication among our fellow creatures across the Tree of Life.
At once meditative and scientific, The Sounds of Life shares fascinating and surprising stories of nonhuman sound, interweaving insights from technological innovation and traditional knowledge. We meet scientists using sound to protect and regenerate endangered species from the Great Barrier Reef to the Arctic and the Amazon. We discover the shocking impacts of noise pollution on both animals and plants. We learn how artificial intelligence can decode nonhuman sounds, and meet the researchers building dictionaries in East African Elephant and Sperm Whalish. At the frontiers of innovation, we explore digitally mediated dialogues with bats and honeybees. Technology often distracts us from nature, but what if it could reconnect us instead?
The Sounds of Life offers hope for environmental conservation and affirms humanity’s relationship with nature in the digital age. After learning about the unsuspected wonders of nature’s sounds, we will never see walks outdoors in the same way again…(More)”.
Can Social Media Rhetoric Incite Hate Incidents? Evidence from Trump’s “Chinese Virus” Tweets
Paper by Andy Cao, Jason M. Lindo & Jiee Zhong: “We will investigate whether Donald Trump’s “Chinese Virus” tweets contributed to the rise of anti-Asian incidents. We find that the number of incidents spiked following Trump’s initial “Chinese Virus” tweets and the subsequent dramatic rise in internet search activity for the phrase. Difference-in-differences and event-study analyses leveraging spatial variation indicate that this spike in anti-Asian incidents was significantly more pronounced in counties that supported Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election relative to those that supported Hillary Clinton. We estimate that anti-Asian incidents spiked by 4000 percent in Trump-supporting counties, over and above the spike observed in Clinton-supporting counties…(More)”.