Facebook will open its data up to academics to see how it impacts elections

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

MIT Technology Review: “More than 60 researchers from 30 institutions will get access to Facebook user data to study its impact on elections and democracy, and how it’s used by advertisers and publishers.

A vast trove: Facebook will let academics see which websites its users linked to from January 2017 to February 2019. Notably, that means they won’t be able to look at the platform’s impact on the US presidential election in 2016, or on the Brexit referendum in the UK in the same year.

Despite this slightly glaring omission, it’s still hard to wrap your head around the scale of the data that will be shared, given that Facebook is used by 1.6 billion people every day. That’s more people than live in all of China, the most populous country on Earth. It will be one of the largest data sets on human behavior online to ever be released.

The process: Facebook didn’t pick the researchers. They were chosen by the Social Science Research Council, a US nonprofit. Facebook has been working on this project for over a year, as it tries to balance research interests against user privacy and confidentiality.

Privacy: In a blog post, Facebook said it will use a number of statistical techniques to make sure the data set can’t be used to identify individuals. Researchers will be able to access it only via a secure portal that uses a VPN and two-factor authentication, and there will be limits on the number of queries they can each run….(More)”.

Nagging misconceptions about nudge theory

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Cass Sunstein at The Hill: “Nudges are private or public initiatives that steer people in particular directions but that also allow them to go their own way.

A reminder is a nudge; so is a warning. A GPS device nudges; a default rule, automatically enrolling people in some program, is a nudge.

To qualify as a nudge, an initiative must not impose significant economic incentives. A subsidy is not a nudge; a tax is not a nudge; a fine or a jail sentence is not a nudge. To count as such, a nudge must fully preserve freedom of choice.

In 2009, University of Chicago economist Richard Thaler and I co-wrote a book that drew on research in psychology and behavioral economics to help people and institutions, both public and private, improve their decision-making.

In the 10 years since “Nudge” was published, there has been an extraordinary outpouring of new thought and action, with particular reference to public policy.

Behavioral insight teams, or “nudge units” of various sorts, can be found in many nations, including Australia, Canada, Denmark, United Kingdom, the United States, the Netherlands, Germany, Singapore, Japan and Qatar.

Those teams are delivering. By making government more efficient, and by improving safety and health, they are helping to save a lot of money and a lot of lives. And in many countries, including the U.S., they don’t raise partisan hackles; both Democrats and Republicans have enthusiastically embraced them.   

Still, there are a lot of mistakes and misconceptions out there, and they are diverting attention and hence stalling progress. Here are the three big ones:

1. Nudges do not respect freedom. …

2. Nudges are based on excessive trust in government...

3. Nudges cannot achieve a whole lot.…(More)”.

Revisiting the causal effect of democracy on long-run development

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog post by Markus Eberhardt: “In a recent paper, Acemoglu et al. (2019), henceforth “ANRR”, demonstrated a significant and large causal effect of democracy on long-run growth. By adopting a simple binary indicator for democracy, and accounting for the dynamics of development, these authors found that a shift to democracy leads to a 20% higher level of development in the long run.1

The findings are remarkable in three ways: 

  1. Previous research often emphasised that a simple binary measure for democracy was perhaps “too blunt a concept” (Persson and Tabellini 2006) to provide robust empirical evidence.
  2.  Positive effects of democracy on growth were typically only a “short-run boost” (Rodrik and Wacziarg 2005). 
  3. The empirical findings are robust across a host of empirical estimators with different assumptions about the data generating process, including one adopting a novel instrumentation strategy (regional waves of democratisation).

ANRR’s findings are important because, as they highlight in a column on Vox, there is “a belief that democracy is bad for economic growth is common in both academic political economy as well as the popular press.” For example, Posner (2010) wrote that “[d]ictatorship will often be optimal for very poor countries”. 

The simplicity of ANRR’s empirical setup, the large sample of countries, the long time horizon (1960 to 2010), and the robust positive – and remarkably stable – results across the many empirical methods they employ send a very powerful message against such doubts that democracy does cause growth.

I agree with their conclusion, but with qualifications. …(More)”.

Finding Crtl: Visions for the Future Internet

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Nesta: “In March 2019, the World Wide Web turned thirty, and October will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the internet itself. These anniversaries offer us an important opportunity to reflect on the internet’s history, but also a chance to ponder its future.

While early internet pioneers dreamed of an internet that would be open, free and decentralised, the story of the internet today is mostly a story of loss of control. Just a handful of companies determine what we read, see and buy, where we work and where we live, who we vote for, who we love, and who we are. Many of us feel increasingly uneasy about these developments. We live in a world where new technologies happen to us; the average person has very little agency to change things within the current political and economic parameters.

Yet things don’t have to be this way. In a time where the future of the internet is usually painted as bleak and uncertain, we need positive visions about where we go next.

As part of the Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative – the European Commission’s new flagship programme working on building a more democratic, inclusive and resilient internet – we have created this “visions book”, a collection of essays, short stories, poetry and artworks from over 30 contributors from 15 countries and five continents. Each contributor has a unique background, as most were selected via an open call for submissions held last autumn. As such, the book collects both established and emerging voices, all reflecting on the same crucial questions: where did we come from, but more importantly, where do we go next?

The NGI hopes to empower everyone to take active control in shaping the future: the internet does not just belong to those who hold power today, but to all of us….(More)”.

The Blockchain Game: A great new tool for your classroom

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

IBM Blockchain Blog: “Blockchain technology can be a game-changer for accounting, supply chain, banking, contract law, and many other fields. But it will only be useful if lots and lots of non-technical managers and leaders trust and adopt it. And right now, just understanding what blockchain is, can be difficult to understand even for the brightest in these fields. Enter The Blockchain Game, a hands-on exercise that explains blockchain’s core principals, and serves as a launching pad for discussion of blockchain’s real-world applications.

In The Blockchain Game students act as nodes and miners on a blockchain network for storing student grades at a university. Participants record the grade and course information, and then “build the block” by calculating a unique identifier (a hash) to secure the grade ledger, and miners get rewarded for their work. As the game is played, the audience learns about hashes, private keys, and what uses are appropriate for a blockchain ledger.

Basics of the Game

  • A hands-on simulation centering around a blockchain for academic scores, including a discussion at the end of the simulation regarding if storing grades would be a good application for blockchain.
  • No computers. Participants are the computors and calculate blocks.
  • The game seeks to teach core concepts about a distributed ledger but can be modified to whichever use case the educator wishes to use — smart contracts, supply chain, applications and others.
  • Additional elements can be added if instructors want to facilitate the game on a computer….(More)”.

How Ireland’s Citizens’ Assembly helped climate action

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog post by Frances Foley: “..In July 2016, the new government – led by Fine Gael, backed by independents – put forward a bill to establish a national-level Citizens’ Assembly to look at the biggest issues of the day. These included the challenges of an ageing population; the role fixed-term parliaments; referendums; the 8th Amendment on abortion; and climate change.

Citizens from every region, every socio-economic background, each ethnicity and age group and from right across the spectrum of political opinion convened over the course of two weekends between September and November 2017. The issue seemed daunting in scale and complexity, but the participants had been well-briefed and had at their disposal a line up of experts, scientists, advocates and other witnesses who would help them make sense of the material. By the end, citizens had produced a radical series of recommendations which went far beyond what any major Irish party was promising, surprising even the initiators of the process….

As expected, the passage for some of the proposals through the Irish party gauntlet has not been smooth. The 8-hour long debate on increasing the carbon tax, for example, suggests that mixing deliberative and representative democracy still produces conflict and confusion. It is certainly clear that parliaments have to adapt and develop if citizens’ assemblies are ever to find their place in our modern democracies.

But the most encouraging move has been the simple acknowledgement that many of the barriers to implementation lie at the level of governance. The new Climate Action Commission, with a mandate to monitor climate action across government, should act as the governmental guarantor of the vision from the Citizens’ Assembly. Citizens’ proposals have themselves stimulated a review of internal government processes to stop their demands getting mired in party wrangling and government bureaucracy. By their very nature, the success of citizens’ assemblies can also provide an alternative vision of how decisions can be made – and in so doing shame political parties and parliaments into improving their decision-making practices.

Does the Irish Citizens’ Assembly constitute a case of rapid transition? In terms of its breadth, scale and vision, the experiment is impressive. But in terms of speed, deliberative processes are often criticised for being slow, unwieldly and costly. The response to this should be to ask what we’re getting: whilst an Assembly is not the most rapid vehicle for change – most serious processes take several months, if not a couple of years – the results, both in specific outcomes and in cultural or political shifts – can be astounding….

In respect to climate change, this harmony between ends and means is particularly significant. The climate crisis is the most severe collective decision-making challenge of our times, one that demands courage, but also careful thought….(More)”.

AI & Global Governance: Robots Will Not Only Wage Future Wars but also Future Peace

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Daanish Masood & Martin Waehlisch at the United Nations University: “At the United Nations, we have been exploring completely different scenarios for AI: its potential to be used for the noble purposes of peace and security. This could revolutionize the way of how we prevent and solve conflicts globally.

Two of the most promising areas are Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing. Machine Learning involves computer algorithms detecting patterns from data to learn how to make predictions and recommendations. Natural Language Processing involves computers learning to understand human languages.

At the UN Secretariat, our chief concern is with how these emerging technologies can be deployed for the good of humanity to de-escalate violence and increase international stability.

This endeavor has admirable precedent. During the Cold War, computer scientists used multilayered simulations to predict the scale and potential outcome of the arms race between the East and the West.

Since then, governments and international agencies have increasingly used computational models and advanced Machine Learning to try to understand recurrent conflict patterns and forecast moments of state fragility.

But two things have transformed the scope for progress in this field.

The first is the sheer volume of data now available from what people say and do online. The second is the game-changing growth in computational capacity that allows us to crunch unprecedented, inconceivable quantities data with relative speed and ease.

So how can this help the United Nations build peace? Three ways come to mind.

Firstly, overcoming cultural and language barriers. By teaching computers to understand human language and the nuances of dialects, not only can we better link up what people write on social media to local contexts of conflict, we can also more methodically follow what people say on radio and TV. As part of the UN’s early warning efforts, this can help us detect hate speech in a place where the potential for conflict is high. This is crucial because the UN often works in countries where internet coverage is low, and where the spoken languages may not be well understood by many of its international staff.

Natural Language Processing algorithms can help to track and improve understanding of local debates, which might well be blind spots for the international community. If we combine such methods with Machine Learning chatbots, the UN could conduct large-scale digital focus groups with thousands in real-time, enabling different demographic segments in a country to voice their views on, say, a proposed peace deal – instantly testing public support, and indicating the chances of sustainability.

Secondly, anticipating the deeper drivers of conflict. We could combine new imaging techniques – whether satellites or drones – with automation. For instance, many parts of the world are experiencing severe groundwater withdrawal and water aquifer depletion. Water scarcity, in turn, drives conflicts and undermines stability in post-conflict environments, where violence around water access becomes more likely, along with large movements of people leaving newly arid areas.

One of the best predictors of water depletion is land subsidence or sinking, which can be measured by satellite and drone imagery. By combining these imaging techniques with Machine Learning, the UN can work in partnership with governments and local communities to anticipate future water conflicts and begin working proactively to reduce their likelihood.

Thirdly, advancing decision making. In the work of peace and security, it is surprising how many consequential decisions are still made solely on the basis of intuition.

Yet complex decisions often need to navigate conflicting goals and undiscovered options, against a landscape of limited information and political preference. This is where we can use Deep Learning – where a network can absorb huge amounts of public data and test it against real-world examples on which it is trained while applying with probabilistic modeling. This mathematical approach can help us to generate models of our uncertain, dynamic world with limited data.

With better data, we can eventually make better predictions to guide complex decisions. Future senior peace envoys charged with mediating a conflict would benefit from such advances to stress test elements of a peace agreement. Of course, human decision-making will remain crucial, but would be informed by more evidence-driven robust analytical tools….(More)”.

Introducing the Contractual Wheel of Data Collaboration

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog by Andrew Young and Stefaan Verhulst: “Earlier this year we launched the Contracts for Data Collaboration (C4DC) initiative — an open collaborative with charter members from The GovLab, UN SDSN Thematic Research Network on Data and Statistics (TReNDS), University of Washington and the World Economic Forum. C4DC seeks to address the inefficiencies of developing contractual agreements for public-private data collaboration by informing and guiding those seeking to establish a data collaborative by developing and making available a shared repository of relevant contractual clauses taken from existing legal agreements. Today TReNDS published “Partnerships Founded on Trust,” a brief capturing some initial findings from the C4DC initiative.

The Contractual Wheel of Data Collaboration [beta]

The Contractual Wheel of Data Collaboration [beta] — Stefaan G. Verhulst and Andrew Young, The GovLab

As part of the C4DC effort, and to support Data Stewards in the private sector and decision-makers in the public and civil sectors seeking to establish Data Collaboratives, The GovLab developed the Contractual Wheel of Data Collaboration [beta]. The Wheel seeks to capture key elements involved in data collaboration while demystifying contracts and moving beyond the type of legalese that can create confusion and barriers to experimentation.

The Wheel was developed based on an assessment of existing legal agreements, engagement with The GovLab-facilitated Data Stewards Network, and analysis of the key elements of our Data Collaboratives Methodology. It features 22 legal considerations organized across 6 operational categories that can act as a checklist for the development of a legal agreement between parties participating in a Data Collaborative:…(More)”.

Selling civic engagement: A unique role for the private sector?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Rebecca Winthrop at Brookings: “Much has been written on the worrisome trends in Americans’ faith and participation in our nation’s democracy. According to the World Values Survey, almost 20 percent of millennials in the U.S. think that military rule or an authoritarian dictator is a “fairly good” form of government, and only 29 percent believe that living in a country that is governed democratically is “absolutely important.” In the last year, trust in American democratic institutions has dropped—only 53 percent of Americans view American democracy positively. This decline in faith and participation in our democracy has been ongoing for some time, as noted in the 2005 collection of essays, “Democracy At Risk: How Political Choices Undermine Citizen Participation, and What We Can Do About It.” The essays chart the “erosion of the activities and capacities of citizenship” from voting to broad civic engagement over the past several decades.

While civil society and government have been the actors most commonly addressing this worrisome trend, is there also a constructive role for the private sector to play? After all, compared to other options like military or authoritarian rule, a functioning democracy is much more likely to provide the conditions for free enterprise that business desires. One only has to look to the current events in Venezuela for a quick reminder of this.

Many companies do engage in a range of activities that broadly support civic engagement, from dedicating corporate social responsibility (CSR) dollars to civically-minded community activities to supporting employee volunteerism. These are worthy activities and should certainly continue, but given the crisis of faith in the foundations of our democratic process, the private sector could play a much bigger role in helping support a movement for renewed understanding of and participation in our political process. Many of the private sector’s most powerful tools for doing this lie not inside companies’ CSR portfolios but in their unique expertise in selling things. Every day companies leverage their expertise in influence—from branding to market-segmentation—to get Americans to use their products and services. What if this expertise were harnessed toward promoting civic understanding and engagement?

Companies could play a particularly useful role by tapping new resources to amplify existing good work and build increasing interest in civic engagement. Two ways of doing this could include the below….(More)”

Finding Wisdom in Politically Polarized Crowds

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Eamon Duede at Nature Research: “We were seeing that the consumption of ideas seemed deeply related io political alignment, and because our group (Knowledge Lab) is concerned with understanding the social dynamics involved in production of ideas, we began wondering whether and to what extent the political alignment of individuals contributes to a group’s ability to produce knowledge. A Wikipedia article is full of smuggled content and worked into a narrative by a diverse team of editors. Because those articles constitute knowledge, we were curious to know whether political polarization within those teams had an effect on the quality of that production. So, we decided to braid both strands of research together and look at the way in which individual political alignments and the polarization of the teams they form affect the quality of the work that is produced collaboratively on Wikipedia.

To answer this question, we turned not to the article itself, but the immense history of articles on Wikipedia. Every edit to every article, no matter how insignificant, is documented and saved in Wikipedia’s astonishingly massive archives. And every edit to every article, no matter how insignificant, is evaluated for its relevance or validity by the vast community of editors, both robotic and human. Remarkable teamwork has gone into producing the encyclopedia. Some people edit randomly, simply cleaning typos, adding citations, or contributing graffiti and vandalism (I’ve experimented with this, and it gets painted over very quickly, no matter where you put it). Yet, many people are genuinely purposeful in their work, and contribute specifically to topics on which they have both interest and knowledge. They tend and grow a handful of articles or a few broad topics like gardeners. We walked through the histories of these gardens, looking back at who made contributions here and there, how much they contributed, and where. We thought that editors who make frequent contributions to pages associated with American liberalism would hold left leaning opinions, and for conservatism opinions on the right. This was a controversial hypothesis, and many in the Wikipedia community felt that perhaps the opposite would be true, with liberals correcting conservative pages and conservatives kindly returning the favor -like weeding or applying pesticide. But a survey we conducted of active Wikipedia editors found that building a function over the relative number of bits they contributed to liberal versus conservative pages predicted more than a third of the probability that they identified as such and voted accordingly.

Following this validation, we assigned a political alignment score to hundreds of thousands of editors by looking at where they make contributions, and then examined the polarization within teams of editors that produced hundreds of thousands of Wikipedia articles in the broad topic areas of politics, social issues, and science. We found that when most members of a team have the same political alignment, whether conservative, liberal, or “independent”, the quality of the Wikipedia pages they produce is not as strong as those of teams with polarized compositions of editors (Shi et al. 2019).

The United States Senate is increasingly polarized, but largely balanced in its polarization. If the Senate was trying to write a Wikipedia article, would they produce a high quality article? If they are doing so on Wikipedia, following norms of civility and balance inscribed within Wikipedia’s policies and guidelines, committed to the production of knowledge rather than self-promotion, then the answer is probably “yes”. That is a surprising finding. We think that the reason for this is that the policies of Wikipedia work to suppress the kind of rhetoric and sophistry common in everyday discourse, not to mention toxic language and name calling. Wikipedia’s policies are intolerant of discussion that could distort balanced consideration of the edit and topic under consideration, and, given that these policies shut down discourse that could bias proposed edits, teams with polarized viewpoints have to spend significantly more time discussing and debating the content that is up for consideration for inclusion in an article. These diverse viewpoints seem to bring out points and arguments between team members that sharpen and refine the quality of the content they can collectively agree to. With assumptions and norms of respect and civility, political polarization can be powerful and generative….(More)”