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[post_content] => Smart Cities are controversial because they are sponsored by Big Tech, which is offering 'free services' in exchange for detailed private information. But there is a way to overhaul the concept so that it serves ordinary citizens. The real issue is finding the political will to tackle those necessary changes
From Toronto to Singapore, and New York City to Malta, municipalities flying the “smart city” flag are on the rise across the globe, promising to improve the quality of life for urban residents. Using artificial intelligence to analyze data collected from Internet-connected cameras, sensors, license plate readers, drones, digital identification cards, personal electronic devices, and mobile crowd sourcing, smart cities can, advocates say, eliminate traffic jams, improve energy conservation, assist in crime detection, better respond to weather conditions, and provide faster and better citizen services.
But the massive amount of data needed for smart cities to work has given the concept a bad name among those concerned about personal privacy. Tech companies supplying software and hardware to smart cities are hungry for citizens’ data, which they want to monetize and share with partners. For law enforcement agencies and municipal governments, data collected for smart cities represent a treasure trove of information about people’s movements, preferences, associations, and habits. Suddenly smart cities are starting to sound more like surveillance cities with less traffic jams. And there are plenty of people who’d prefer the traffic jams to the loss of control over their privacy.
Smart cities for the people?
Whether smart cities can truly benefit people in a meaningful way without handing over their private information to AT&T, Google, Amazon, and other corporations is unclear. We need to rethink the smart city concept to offer smart services to people without allowing corporations to exploit and profit off their data in the process.
At present, cities that want to become “smart” rely heavily on vendors that can supply the technical know-how about networking systems, AI algorithms, data optimization, cloud storage, infrastructure technologies, risk management, high-speed broadband, and security, just to name a few. City officials and municipal information technology departments don’t have the technical expertise to build and manage smart cities on their own. That’s where companies like Google come in.
The city of Toronto contracted with Sidewalk Labs in October 2017 to design a neighborhood on the city’s waterfront “from the Internet up." Sidewalk Labs is owned by Alphabet, which is Google’s parent company. According to the plan for this smart city initiative, a network of sensors will collect real-time data about the environment, while it also gathers location-based information about buildings and infrastructure. Citizens would access services through a personalized portal. The project will be a “global testbed where people can use data about how the neighbourhood works to make it work better,” Sidewalk said.
Almost immediately, Toronto's residents began asking questions about data collection and privacy. Who would own the data, and how would it be protected? A privacy expert hired by Sidewalk to assist with these issues resigned a year after project launch, telling the Global News newspaper that she couldn’t support the project after learning that third parties might have access to identifiable data collected. Another technologist resigned her post on the project’s digital strategy advisory panel, saying it had disregarded residents’ concern about data. Sidewalk CEO Dan Doctoroff said earlier this month that the company has no interest in monetizing personal information, just as a citizens’ group in Toronto launched #BlockSidewalk.
Citizens should be involved
There are more than a few lessons to be learned from Toronto. People are rightly concerned about their personal data being used without their knowledge and permission, and being tracked online. Recent privacy scandals at Facebook, numerous data breaches, and online misinformation campaigns have heightened those concerns. Cities going “smart” should be prepared to respond with specifics about whether they or their technology partners, or those partners’ partners, will have access to identifiable data. And they should expect a public backlash if the answer is yes, or “we don’t know yet.”
Citizens should be involved in the planning and development of data collection efforts from Day One. They should have a strong say in how and where they are being surveilled rather than be told that Vendor X’s cameras will be installed on every corner filming 24 hours a day, and the feed will go into a massive data base to be kept indefinitely.
Cities need experts who can defend citizens’ privacy and challenge inadequate safeguards over private information. They must incoluate themselves before signing contracts or entering into agreements with vendors, by engaging with top-notch security and privacy experts who can match the tech smarts of Google engineers and demand a privacy and human rights framework for smart city projects. To accomplish this, cities would have to make big investments in their IT departments, hiring cryptography and experts in data anonymization.
Smart city projects should start with the fewest privacy invasive methods of data collection, instead of using the most invasive and then winnowing that down. Vendors and developers would have to think creatively, in order to come up with ways to obtain data for smart city applications without defaulting to facial scans and license plate readers.
Municipal governments need to get tough about rules regarding data privacy. The effective way to do this is as follows:
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[post_content] => In honor of Earth Day this week, we’ve collected stories about environmental activists who are having an impact on policy. These individuals, companies, and organizations are refusing to succumb to inertia and fatalism
Mass-produced cleaning solution tablets that consumers mix with water at home can drastically reduce the environmental damage caused by toxic chemicals. Several new companies are now producing those tablets, which consumers can use in reusable cleaning bottles instead of relying on disposable plastic. A little change can go a long way. Learn more here.
In London, climate activists showed that the act of disruption is a powerful tactic. After police arrested more than 1,000 protesters with the Extinction Rebellion movement, the movement leaders “paused” the protests, saying they have enough momentum and support to “enter into negotiations with those in power.” Read more.
The Guardian profiled nine of the “ordinary people” arrested for standing up for the climate. Read those here.
Disrupting business as usual doesn’t always take the form of marching in the streets. The increasing number of climate-change-related lawsuits suggests that the sheer volume of such cases could force corporations and governments to change their ways. Read more here.
Researchers are using mushrooms to clean up toxic messes, like oil spills. Check out this fun infographic to find out how it works.
Can science fiction help us envision better worlds? This article looks at what the world would look like after we’ve solved climate change. On a practical level, it could help policy-makers and politicians set appropriate goals and priorities. Read about the possible future here.
[post_title] => Climate change disrupted
[post_excerpt] => This week's roundup is about environmental activists whose disruptive tactics succeeded in changing policy
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[post_content] => Technology is a seemingly overwhelming force in our personal lives and society, but as these stories show, people are working to check Big Tech’s power at every turn, whether by resisting expansion to new American cities or by introducing legislation to force companies into implementing more user-friendly design.
[caption id="attachment_847" align="alignnone" width="4608"]
Photo by Victoria Heath on Unsplash[/caption]
America’s love affair with Big Tech is finally over, asserts Micah Sifry in his review of three books that look at surveillance of capitalism. But now that we are re-evaluating our relationship with Facebook, Amazon, and other social media apps that have traded convenience for our money and our attention, will we insist on real change? Perhaps. But only if we put some effort into understanding, describing, and analyzing the impact it has had on our lives. Read the review here.
Here is a fun, not entirely unrelated thought experiment: Could we blow up the internet? As we consider its ubiquitousness in our lives and how to mediate and improve the internet’s influence, perhaps it’s important to recognize that no, actually just blowing it up (probably) isn’t an option. Read more here.
Regulating Big Tech is a more likely scenario than blowing it up and starting over. Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) have introduced a bill that is meant to outlaw some of the most manipulative design tricks employed by technology companies to get users to hand over more of the data or personal information than they might otherwise choose to, if they understood that they had a choice. Learn more about the bill here.
The U.K. is also taking steps to limit the worst features of technology companies, particularly as it relates to users under the age of 18. The Information Commissioner's Office also wants internet companies to make privacy settings high by default, to turn location tracking off when the app is not in use and make it clear when it’s on, and explain how personal data is used, among other proposed changes. Learn more here.
Opposition to tech companies can actually have a unifying effect on groups that otherwise espouse ideologically opposed worldviews. That is what is happening in Nashville, where free-market libertarians and union-backed activists are both working to oppose a deal in which Nashville will give public money to Amazon in exchange for jobs. Activists are pressuring Amazon to prove to the public that they have followed through on their promises to the city. Read more here.
[post_title] => The People v Big Tech
[post_excerpt] => Blind love for Big Tech is over as people re-assess the high price they pay for convenience
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[post_content] => Google is not known for self-sacrifice. That is why New York should be more skeptical of its latest 'free' offer
Earlier this week, Google opened their temporary "Grow with Google New York City Learning Center" on the first floor of the company's Chelsea offices. The "pop-up" space embodies techno-optimism: well-lit classrooms with nearly floor-to-ceiling windows, decorated in neutrals with occasional pops of primary colors, and well-stocked with Google Chromebooks. For five months, the technology company will provide free and open-to-the-public classes on topics like "Manage Projects More Effectively with Online Tools" and "Make Your Website Work For You."
The vast majority of classes are based on Google products: Learn to manage projects with Google Sheets; get your business online with Google My Business; discover new job opportunities with Google Search. In other words, Google is further entrenching their business monopoly under the pretence of helping entrepreneurs and job seekers. The company is cynically deploying the American dream of hard work and the self-made success story for its own benefit, expecting New Yorkers to thank them for the opportunity to help make Google even richer and more powerful.
But, you say, knowing how to use Google products effectively is a great and marketable skill! Why shouldn’t we accept trickle-down education? Perhaps because to do so is to cede another facet of our society to a company that already has an outsized influence on our lives. The money spent on this glorified PR stunt could have been used to support the original programming of the initiative’s partner organizations, like the New York Public Library, which already offers free classes on subjects like basic computer skills, creating a resume, and social media marketing. Unlike the Google Learning Center, the NYPL won’t close up shop in five months.
Exploiting our fears
Enthusiasm for technology skills programs often stems from our collective anxieties about the future of work, or what will happen when the robots come for our jobs. "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em," goes this line of thinking. Google is subtly playing to these fears, to our desire to come out on top in a tech-dominated world.
"Tech related skills are essential for people looking for jobs in the modern economy, and Grow with Google will go far toward helping New Yorkers gain the expertise they need to thrive," Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer said in a statement given to a local reporter.
The cause-and-effect is made even more explicit in another article on a tech news website that covered the center's launch. "The Google NYC Learning Center is part of the "Grow with Google" initiative, first launched in 2017," AJ Dellinger writes for Engadget. "As part of that project, Google has pledged to spend $1 billion to help people adapt to an increasingly digital world and learn new skills that may place them in suitable jobs should their current career get wiped out by automation." Even if Google hasn’t made such a promise, the company has let the misconception stand.
Google describes the material taught at the learning center as "digital skills.” The phrase is almost meaningless given that nearly every facet of our lives is mediated by digital devices, but it conveys the impression that the company is generously preparing New York workers for an automated future — the very future they're doing their best to bring about.
The reality is not quite so cutting-edge: In addition to the Google product-based courses, there are classes like "Design an Effective Resume" and "Optimize Your Energy for High Performance" and "Coach Your Team to Success." These are important and valuable skills, to be sure — but they are not "digital skills." The marketing of this project is an ingenious and insidious bait and switch: offer glitzy and in-demand tech skills, but limit the actual courses to the walled garden of Google products, which has the additional benefit (for Google) of drumming up more customers for their services. The model is similar to Facebook's Free Basics program, whereby Facebook subsidizes free internet access, but only to an incomplete and partial internet that is mediated by Facebook. Thus neophyte users conflate Facebook with the internet, and become captive users of the social media platform.
Google's spokespeople have been more careful about what they promise. Ruth Porat, the Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Google and Alphabet, characterizes the pop-up shop as part of their commitment to "STEM education, workforce development and access to technology." Porat describes Grow With Google as "our initiative to create economic opportunities for all Americans" — an ambitious goal that is so vague, it becomes meaningless.
Torrence Boone, the NYC site lead, describes Grow with Google as "our program to help individuals and small businesses gain the skills that can set them up for success, today and in the future."
Digital robber barons
Even this seemingly innocuous statement is based on an outdated fantasy; it perpetuates the myth that it's easy to pull yourself up by the bootstraps in contemporary America.
In the United States between 1978 and 2012, the number of startups (companies less than a year old) plummeted, their share of all businesses falling nearly 44 percent. While there are a number of factors at play, the most significant is that the largest players are crowding out the little guys. Google is among those big baddies. As Robert Levine reported for The Boston Globe, Google controls 90 percent of the search market. It operates the most popular online video site, mapping application, and internet browser. The company has used their market dominance to stifle the competition — by giving Google products preference in the Google search engine, for example.
As Open Markets Institute outlines in this explainer on "Entrepreneurship and Monopoly," market concentration centralizes resources, talent, and money while squeezing out potential up-and-comers. This happens at the expense of the larger job market; nearly two-thirds of the nation's net jobs created over the past 15 years have been at smaller companies.
In other words, we have a monopolistic company with a track record of self-promotion and stifling competition dispersing crumbs of knowledge to the unskilled masses, while creating more revenue opportunities for Google.
And what Google is offering truly is just crumbs — not even a full loaf of bread. Students are limited to just three classes at the learning center, a fact that is not mentioned either in Google's promotional material or in any of the launch publicity. (Some partner organizations are using the space to hold their own private or public classes, which may run over three classes, but registration for those appears to be handled by the partners, not Google.) It's not clear from the class registration page if prospective students are limited to just three classes over the five weeks, or if one can only sign up for three classes at one time. Either way, three classes on any topic is hardly sufficient to prepare someone for a job they weren't already qualified to do.
Judging by the registration page, nearly every class at the learning center — through April 27 — is entirely full. There is clearly a demand for this kind of programming. Google worked with local partners like the New York Public Library to design course offerings that would be worthwhile for New Yorkers, but one might be justified in seeing this as a case of a tech giant having rebranded programming suggestions from local experts and taking the credit. But only a grinch would deny kids the opportunity to learn to code, so what’s the problem?
Gifts with strings attached
The gap between what has been promised and is provided is a problem, especially if Google is getting more from the programming than the company is giving. There is a question of what goodwill or favors initiatives like this will buy the company as they expand their New York City footprint. A $5 million investment in workforce development and job training was part of the deal with Amazon that fell through; what will Google get when they point to their generous free programming and say "Look what we did for you, NYC"? The same could be said for any of the cities and towns where Google has disseminated their “Grow With” programming, albeit over the course of weeks, not months.
Anxiety about the future of work is real. As local governments seek to prepare residents for potentially grim employment prospects, they will surely be tempted to cede responsibility to the tech giants. After all, local officials aren't usually known for being particularly tech-savvy, so why not let the experts handle it?
But when those experts are monopolistic corporate giants upon which society is already reliant and beholden in so many ways, we cannot trust them to fix the problems that their business models exacerbate. Their track record proves they are unwilling to share information that will help anyone but themselves. If we've learned anything from the surveillance economy, it's that nothing is ever really free.
Local government officials should follow Google’s example: look to public libraries to help create equitable paths to prosperity and ongoing education. Empower them and fund them. Don’t let the corporate monopolies stifling innovation and throttling the American dream determine the future of workforce development solely to their benefit and not ours.
Jessica McKenzie is a freelance journalist based in Brooklyn, NY. You can follow her on Twitter @jessimckenzi.
[post_title] => Beware of Google bearing gifts
[post_excerpt] => Google's offer of free courses in digital skills is packaged as a philanthropic initiative, but a closer look raises serious questions about its motives and the intangible but serious costs to the public.
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[post_content] => In times of repression and despair, art plays an essential role — politically, intellectually, and spiritually
What do Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” and a giant penis on a drawbridge in St. Petersburg have in common?
Both tell us something about the importance of art in political life.
In societies that place a high value on monetary wealth, and which regard not having money as a moral failing, artists, whose careers are precarious, are marginalized. In contemporary America, we like to think that people with the most brains and ambition go into finance, or head to Silicon Valley.
The truth about artists and their function is far more complicated. Russian art is a good example here, because the oppressive mechanisms used against people in Russia are disturbingly similar to those employed by the current U.S. administration and its powerful supporters. The power of these reactionary forces could become even more entrenched after the 2020 election.
It’s undeniable that the current U.S. president’s penis occupies its own space in cultural lore. With that in mind, recall the penis drawing that Voina, the Russian art collective supported by Banksy, drew to taunt agents inside the St. Petersburg headquarters of the FSB, the notorious state security agency. That drawing famously won a state-supported Russian art prize in 2011, despite the official uproar.
[caption id="attachment_809" align="alignnone" width="300"]
A Dick Captured by the FSB, 2010, Liteiny Bridge, St. Petersburg. (photo: Voina)[/caption]
The FSB is one of the most feared institutions in Russia. Art critics understood that taunting the successor to the KGB with an enormous image of an erect penis drawn on the bridge outside its headquarters makes an interesting statement. Is that statement juvenile? Yes, it is. But it also identifies the fact that power in Russia, and power in general, is a dick-measuring contest.
Art as catharsis
The immaturity of the gesture is also a statement. In a chaotically repressive country like modern Russia, where self-expression can be an exhausting maze of dead ends because officials have power to make capricious decisions like cutting off an organization’s funding for political reasons, or having someone arrested on trumped up charges, waving a dick at an official organ of the state is catharsis.
Catharsis — and the fearless desire to shock — brings me back to Donald Glover, a.k.a. Childish Gambino, with his tight combination of laughs, parodies of racist fantasies of blackness, unflinching gun violence, and so much more. The song and the video for This Is America unspool into a dissertation’s worth of political commentary. But what ties Glover’s work together is how it elevates surviving malevolent, oppressive conditions into living; it flips the experience of being caricatured into owning the narrative. If you’re looking for ways to understand how important art is to real resistance (not the hashtag kind), this is it.
[caption id="attachment_810" align="alignnone" width="300"]
Childish Gambino (This is America, screencap)[/caption]
In an oppressive political framework, the artist occupies an interesting position — and we shouldn’t always assume it to be subversive. All art can be co-opted by a repressive state apparatus, but its meaning and role in history can also change over time.
Art as resistance
One of the most interesting, and sadly overlooked, examples of artistic resistance in practice was the husband and wife team of Arkadiy Aktsynov and Lyudmila Aktsynova. These two talented painters met and fell in love in the Soviet gulag; like millions of other Soviet citizens, the state had sent them there in the 1930s for imaginary crimes. Miraculously, they survived well into the 1990s and left behind a treasure trove of both joyful and contemplative work; their landscapes, which they frequently collaborated on, are a particular favorite of mine. Having been forced out of the Soviet cultural mainstream by the legacy of the gulag, they dedicated their lives and their work to provincial Russia, where they found recognition.
“We were saved by our faith in people and in kindness, and by an immeasurable fury in our work,” they recalled in their jointly authored memoir. The fury was both a symbol of their productivity and their desire to carve out a space for themselves, to create their own landscape, even while they were prisoners hemmed in by barbed wire.
[caption id="attachment_812" align="alignnone" width="300"]
Landscape by Arkadiy Aktsynov and Lyudmila Aktsynova, 1962. Oil and cardboard.[/caption]
The nature of state oppression is such that it penetrates into all levels of society and all factors of daily life. It seeks to demonstrate that you do not “own” yourself, and do not have a right to any damn landscape — be it outside or in your head. In the Soviet Union, oppression had a totalitarian aspect; it was bloody and brutal at the beginning of the USSR and lackadaisical toward its end. In Putin’s Russia, oppressive measures are frequently random and chaotic, their goal more psychological than ideological, creating a gripping unease that allows a small group of people to casually plunder the country. Yet the mechanisms in both instances remain the same: your life can be changed at any moment, because an official stomped his foot or waved her hand, and you will have little to no recourse in the aftermath.
For Americans who follow Donald Trump’s tweets — i.e. for Americans who until recently had not considered the unpredictable nature of marginalized existence as captured by Childish Gambino — that feeling of instability might suddenly seem familiar.
Art as a teacher
The passage of time meanwhile has a salutary effect on the interpretation of art that was originally created as an act of subversion. The Aktsynovs created art in the gulag as an act of survival. But after the state rehabilitated them in the post-Stalin era, their work became woven into the history of the Soviet nation as a cautionary tale. The message was, “These terrific painters were forced to suffer because our government made terrible mistakes!”
Today, I’m sure that many of the people who admire the Aktsynovs, collect their paintings, and help organize their exhibitions, are also Putin supporters. Putin wouldn’t be a very good authoritarian if he didn’t know how to harness collective complicity. As for what meanings can be gleaned from the Aktsynovs work in the future — and what kind of cultural space they will come to occupy — only time can tell.
The history and fate of dissident artists under repressive regimes might sound discouraging, but it need not be. In fact, it should inspire. An authoritarian can tell you to look or not look at a certain work of art, and tell you how you should feel about it. For example, when Vladimir Putin was elected for the fourth time, Russian graffiti artists co-opted the classical ballet Swan Lake to express a political statement about the decline of Russia’s democracy.
[caption id="attachment_813" align="alignnone" width="300"]
Swan Lake graffiti by Yav Zone art collective, (Moscow, 2018)[/caption]
In Nazi Germany, the Nazis banned as degenerate some of the most important art and artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But you are the one who is responsible for what you feel when you look at a moody rural painting by a repressed artist. I’m specifically using the word “responsible,” because authoritarianism, due to its controlling nature, is ultimately infantilizing; this is something that Childish Gambino captures brilliantly in “This Is America,” by demonstrating how oppressive infantilization was practiced against generations of black people.
In Russia, the late artist Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe acted as a kind of bridge between the stuffy paternalism of the late Soviet era and the shiny cynicism in the age of Putin. Most people gravitate toward Mamyshev-Monroe’s depictions of male political leaders in bold makeup, and search for very serious political meaning. Mamyshev-Monroe was indeed a serious artist, but my admiration for his work stems from how much fun he had — how expressive, vulnerable, and powerful in his vulnerability this man was, whether dressed in drag to shock the elderly or poking fun at the celebrity cult embraced by Russia’s younger generation.
[caption id="attachment_823" align="alignnone" width="300"]
Russian Questions and Life of Marvellous Monroes shining with gold and silver foil. (New Museum)[/caption]
Art to bind communities
Once, the West exported capitalism to the post-Soviet countries. Now, the former Soviet Union is selling capitalism back to the West in a purer, more vicious form. Donald Trump, the sleazy real estate man who would sell state secrets for the opportunity to build a dubious casino on the banks of the Moskva River, is a good example of this exchange. But this phenomenon is bigger than one individual. It is present in greater social atomization, in greater political extremes, and in our fetishization of voting as a purely individual, consumerist act.
Today, Mamyshev-Monroe is a good artist to turn to if we’re looking for creative ways to respond to seismic changes and growing rifts in our society. He knew how to poke fun while maintaining compassion toward his subject matter, inserting himself into his work not out of narcissism, but a sense of intimacy. In other words, Mamyshev-Monroe observed extremes in society — Soviet bureaucracy, the extravagance of crony capitalism — and sought to contain them, and forge something new out of them. In this light, politically engaged artists are not just cool or interesting. They work to repair the common threads that run through society.
In good times or bad, art is not an escape. It’s about being present. The world being what it is, we end up being present for a lot of crap. Some people will sell you on the idea of art as transcendence, but I think of it as wading through the thick mess of existence alongside other people, reminding them that they are not alone. It’s a silly-sounding issue that is deadly serious: if we’re to make it through our current troubles, and the troubles yet to come, we must connect. We must be there for one another.
Natalia Antonova is a writer, journalist, and editor of Bellingcat. She is currently based in D.C. Follow her on Twitter @nataliaantonova.
[post_title] => This is your mind on art
[post_excerpt] => In times of repression and despair, art plays an essential role — politically, intellectually, and spiritually
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[post_content] => The following stories all address ways in which expectations, precedents, and like-begets-like can stifle, hinder, and hold back society — and how breaking from tradition can be revolutionary. Cara Marsh Sheffler broached this issue in an article for the Anti-Nihilist Institute that made the case for diversifying the liberal media, but this problem is not limited to news and storytelling: it extends to politics, elections, and to personal technology.
“Flooding” is a term to describe the effect of tens or hundreds of media outlets reporting the same story simultaneously, all with the same point of view. The result is an echo chamber that drowns out dissent and sidelines important stories. How can we outsmart the algorithms and be better informed? Read more.
Big Tech is eroding our expectations of privacy by offering us convenience. When ordinary people try to resist — as in the case of an English village that tried to stop Google Street View from mapping their village, Big Tech wears down opposition with “years of litigation, media misdirection, and political manipulation, until the land grab becomes established fact.” The only response to this can be: “Create friction”; do not go gently, etc. Read more.
Speaking of obsolete structures and habits holding society back — shall we consider the electoral college? As the debate over the future of our elections rages, it's worth considering the pros and cons, and why some people are so invested in the status quo. Read the op-ed.
In an op-ed for The New York Times, Tina Brown makes the case that women leading like women can pave the way for a more just, even-keeled society — she points to Jacinda Ardern's response to the Christchurch massacre as an example. Read the op-ed, "What Happens When Women Stop Leading Like Men."
Jessica McKenzie is a freelance journalist based in Brooklyn, NY. You can follow her on Twitter @jessimckenzi.
[post_title] => How to beat the algorithms and become a better-informed person
[post_excerpt] => This week we look at articles about how expectations, precedents, and like-begets-like can stifle, hinder, and hold back society — and how breaking from tradition can be revolutionary.
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[post_content] => The following stories all explore how information spreads: the dissemination of news items in the digital age; cross-border feminist movements connecting and communing on Instagram; getting people to the polls on election day. But is quick and easy access to information the same as access to good information? Who gets to lead digital place-based movements—locals on the ground or members of the diaspora? As always, we choose articles that examine the major issues of our day through a lens that focuses on strengthening democracy and civil society.
Apple is already in a billion pockets, which is why Oprah was so excited to sign on to their newly revamped media product, Apple News Plus — and why many are disappointed Apple hasn’t leveraged their power to do more for the news industry. The focus on magazine content over news — especially local news, which is basically nonexistent on the platform — is one disappointment. Read the op-ed.
There is also a question of whether publishers (and by extension the news industry as a whole) benefit enough financially. The Verge reports that Apple will take a whopping 50 percent of the revenue generated through the platform. One good sign for the vitality of the industry is that not all players have signed on — notably The New York Times and The Washington Post, which have led the way in signing up subscribers over the past few years. Read more.
In this short video, the co-founders of The Skimm explain how they saw an opportunity gap in news consumption — their non-media friends weren’t seeing their writing or reporting because it wasn’t being delivered to them where they are — and rose to fill it. Watch here.
And some more food for thought: Over the past decade, newspaper circulation in India has grown 60 percent, due to rising literacy rates and unreliable electric grids that make paper far more appealing than digital news. Read more about India’s remarkable newspaper growth.
Recently, Bina Shah wrote for the Anti-Nihilist Institute about the rise of a second-generation feminist movement in Pakistan that is part of a global feminist movement but rooted in a unique Pakistani feminist legacy of resisting dictatorship going back to the 1970s. Similarly, BuzzFeed recently reported that the documentary “Surviving R. Kelly” sparked a #MeToo movement on Instagram in Ethiopia and the diaspora, bringing stories of sexual abuse into the open, often for the first time. Like the second-generation Pakistani feminists, Ethiopians also have to defend their feminism against accusations that it has been borrowed or forced upon them from the West. There is tension between local leaders and leaders in the diaspora, but they are trying to listen and learn from each other to build a stronger, anti-sexual violence movement. Read more.
Finally, as the United States prepares for the 2020 election, it’s worth looking at how states are increasing voter turnout. The 2018 midterms had the largest increase in turnout from one midterm election to the next in American history; much of that was due to Trump fever (or furor), but some can be traced to positive policy changes. Here are the factors that increased voter turnout.
[post_title] => Is democratizing the media good for democracy?
[post_excerpt] => Is quick and easy access to information the same as access to good information? This week we look at how rapid, low-cost digital news and information sharing affects politics and civil society — for good and for ill.
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[post_content] => While westerners argue about whether or not disinformation really exists, eastern European states have figured out how to combat it.
On a recent Friday night in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, about one hundred people gathered in an open concrete atrium. At first glance, it appeared to be a normal birthday celebration — there was ample champagne and a DJ spun records in the corner — until the guests started reading excerpts from George Orwell’s 1984. The guest of honor was not a person, but an organization: StopFake, one of the first organizations to draw attention to and fight the now familiar phenomenon of Russian disinformation, was marking its fifth birthday.
While the term “fake news” gained prominence in the West only after the 2016 U.S. presidential election, organizations across central and eastern Europe like StopFake have been battling disinformation for years. What they possess that Westerners lack is a clear-eyed recognition of Russian intentions and tactics. For the citizens of countries in the post-communist space, Russian disinformation isn’t foreign, ancient, or theoretical; it is a lived experience, and one that moves their societies past debate about its existence and toward practicable solutions.
Meanwhile, the western world is still debating whether disinformation exists, and if it does, whether or not it is effective. But it has not yet begun to fight it. For lessons, the West would be well advised to look eastward.
Back in the USSR
It wasn’t long ago that the former communist bloc was subject to a constant barrage of disinformation and propaganda from the Soviet authorities and their allies. The government-controlled press was the ultimate vehicle for “fake news,” and its influence permeated every aspect of life — including education, the arts, and science. The Soviet authorities set out to control the narrative about their rule. Three of their most egregious lies include: blaming the 1940 Katyn massacre of thousands of Polish military officers on Nazi Germany, although it was in fact carried out by the KGB; denying that Stalin had deliberately allowed millions of Ukrainians to starve during the man-made famine of 1932-33 known as Holodomor; and the claim, manufactured and disseminated by the KGB during the 1980s, that the U.S. military had invented AIDS as part of a biological weapons project.
Lessons learned: how to identify propaganda
The Soviet Union’s lies unraveled with its demise. But it left the former Soviet republics and satellite states deeply mistrustful of the Russian Federation. This historical experience is part of the reason officials across the former communist space now describe their populations as “inoculated” against Soviet propaganda.
But this mistrust is not enough to protect all people from the internet, which has proven an insidiously effective mechanism for disseminating disinformation. During the Soviet period, official propaganda was relegated to the pages and airwaves of state newspapers and broadcast outlets. Information did not move nearly as quickly as it does today, in the internet age; but even more importantly, it was clearly recognizable as state-sponsored propaganda because it was published by state-owned media outlets.
But while the purpose of Soviet propaganda was to promote a single political ideology the purpose of contemporary disinformation disseminated by the Russian Federation under Vladimir Putin is only to sow chaos. It has no political ideology; Russia’s strategy today is to promote many points of view, including some that are at polar opposites of the political spectrum. The tools available to anyone on the internet allow disinformation to travel across the world at the click of a mouse, and to be micro-targeted to reach exactly the audience that will find it most appealing. Russia and other bad actors, both foreign and domestic, use these tools weaponize the fissures in our societies, creating chaos and undermining the Western democratic order.
Contemporary Russian disinformation weaponizes the fractures in target societies and amplifies them via traditional media. They disseminate state propaganda via Russia Today (RT), the state-sponsored TV channel that has a heavily watched YouTube channel, and online outlet Sputnik. Russia launders its propaganda stories via fake NGOs and fake experts who travel to conferences, appear on television, and conduct “research” in support of disinformation goals. Russian narratives are also supported and spread by local organizations, media outlets, and political parties in target countries.
For example, in an attempt to destabilize Ukraine and neutralize support for the country’s democratic reforms both domestically and internationally, Russia advances the narrative that Ukraine is a “failed state” harboring “fascists” and violating the rights of Russian speakers who live in Ukraine (approximately 30 percent of Ukrainians are native Russian speakers). These narratives begin on Russian state television and travel to local Russian media properties abroad. In some cases, their editorial control is clearly labeled; but in other cases the reporting outlets attempt to disguise themselves as legitimate local media outlets, when in fact they are government owned-and-operated propaganda outlets. Facebook recently removed over 100 pages and accounts that were driving traffic in Ukraine to Sputnik, the Russian state-owned outlet that is one of its propaganda arms.
How to combat Russia’s online troll army
Eastern Europe has been quick to recognize the threat of online propaganda, and to take action. Estonia, a Baltic nation that was occupied by the Soviet Union after World War Two, leads the NATO Cyber Center of Excellence, which researches and builds capacity among NATO members on cyber security. It has invested in Russian language media programs and educational initiatives to bridge the divide between the Russian and Estonian populations; this initiative came about after Estonia discovered in 2007 that Russia had released a massive cyber attack intended to divide Russian and Estonian speakers in that country. But the attack backfired: Today Estonia leads the EU and NATO in its efforts to build both national and global awareness about the Russian threat; just last week, it released an intelligence report about Russia’s intention to meddle in European elections in 2019.
When disinformation weaponizing anti-migrant sentiment cropped up on shadowy outlets in the Czech Republic, the country created a “Center Against Terrorism and Hybrid Threats” within its Ministry of Interior to deal with information warfare. Across the region, including in Ukraine, where StopFake just celebrated its fifth anniversary after being formed during the height of the Euromaidan protests, when Ukraine was the epicenter of Russian disinformation, and in Lithuania, where a group of “elves” counter Russian trolls’ lies, fact-checking has taken on new life. It’s no longer the domain of journalists; it is an act of resistance.
Media literacy: the essential tool
But the Kremlin has financial and human resources that cannot be beaten back by armies of fact-checkers alone, no matter how large or well-funded. This is why the countries bordering Russia have also invested in their citizens as defense against Russian disinformation.
In Ukraine, media literacy is now integrated into the secondary school curriculum. And a program for adults found that 18 months after attending a media literacy training, participants were 25 per cent more likely to consult multiple sources in their news consumption. Finland, though not part of the former communist space, has dealt with its fair share of Russian disinformation; it begins teaching media literacy in kindergarten.
These responses show that while there is no silver bullet to fighting disinformation, a clear recognition from the government is critical in order to pursue the many prongs of programs and policies required to begin producing an effective response. The West must recognize the insidiousness of disinformation and implement programs and policies that both discredit the lies and teach people how to be critical media consumers. Since the 2016 election, our political leaders have further complicated the American response to disinformation by politicizing the issue. But until they recognize that Russian disinformation’s ultimate victim is confidence in our democratic system, the government will not be in a position to enter the important battle for truth and accuracy that Eastern Europe has been waging for years.
[post_title] => If the West wants to combat fake news, it should look to eastern Europe
[post_excerpt] => While westerners are still arguing about whether or not disinformation really exists, the countries of central and eastern Europe have been fighting it for years with serious policy implementation.
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[post_content] => Our collected stories this week look at how ordinary citizens can strengthen the essential pillars of democracy. One way is to streamline direct communication between constituents and their political leaders, to help guide policy and governance. A strong Fourth Estate keeps politicians accountable. And now we know that we need to rethink the purpose and functioning of technology, so that it works for the people rather than as a means by which the government controls the people.
Civic hackers are remaking Taiwan’s democracy from within. Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s Digital Minister, describes in The Economist the rise of the g0v-zero movement, which encourages the public to participate in writing and rewriting new laws and policies, and to suggest new ideas for consideration. If an e-petition reaches a certain threshold of signatures, the relevant ministry is required to respond. Tang’s message is that technology can enable the promise of democracy in ways that were previously impossible. Read more.
How can we make the media more diverse? Broadcast and print media in the western democracies remain stubbornly dominated by white men, despite rising levels of awareness and some conscious efforts to change hiring practices. Sarah Jones, a staff writer at The New Republic, examines the structural problems that prevent aspiring journalists of non-white and/or working class backgrounds from breaking into journalism. One of the main issues, she writes, is that an entry level job in journalism usually begins with unpaid internships — or at the very least, years of low pay and job insecurity. Read more.
Making social media more civil is the goal of entrepreneur Brian Whitman. The New York-based technologist created an algorithm that is essentially a more ethical recommendation system, so that users won’t be duped by clickbait into spreading the worst racist, sexist, and conspiratorial content. Read more.
Will anti-trust activism be the driving issue for the Democrats in 2020? Barry Lynn, a prolific writer and former New America fellow, has joined presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren in pushing for a breakup of the big tech monopolies for a more democratic capitalist system. This is the story of a few tough activists pushing hard against a system that has failed to check unrestrained consolidation of money, power, and market dominance. Read more.
[post_title] => What you can do to strengthen democracy
[post_excerpt] => The theme of this week's curated stories is tangible steps that ordinary citizens can take to strengthen the essential pillars of democracy.
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[post_content] => Small changes can have big impacts: Style guides can help journalists be more accurate and precise about conflicts around the world. Cutting through red tape in bureaucratic processes can expand access to progressive programs without passing new laws. Taking low-level offenders to treatment instead of jail can change the trajectory of a life.
Then again, big changes—like Yazidi women creating a women-only community to rebuild and heal after genocide—can have big impacts, too. This is our roundup of stories about making changes of all sizes for the better.
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[post_content] => The MeToo movement inspired a much-needed conversation about the treatment of women at the hands of powerful men. For the past year and half, those with “an upper hand” have learned it’s best to keep both hands to themselves. Society is finally beginning to internalize the understanding that women are not mere sexual objects.
But while that same society has cautioned men about their behavior, it has done little to widen their perspectives about who women are – and can be: experts.
We are still far behind in acknowledging and learning from the knowledge and contributions of women who are leading experts in a wide range of professional fields. This is especially true in science, technology, finance, law, and national security. “Expertise” in these fields is still one-dimensional and dominated by men. Given the enormous challenges we face today – from climate change to extremism and pandemics to inequality, it is imperative that we graduate from peering at the world through a peephole and instead look at it through a much wider frame.
In 2018 my organization, Foreign Policy Interrupted (FPI), released a study that looked at foreign policy op-eds across three one-year periods, in four major U.S. newspapers. The op-eds we examined were on a broad variety of topics that included global affairs, national security, war, development, human rights, global trade and commerce, and bilateral and multilateral issues. We found that over a 20-year period, from 1996-2016, women authored only 15 percent of all the op-eds published in those four newspapers.
Breaking the all-male habit
“Women don’t pitch,” is the response commonly heard from editors. Often they will add that “women lack confidence.” In this way they place the blame on women, rather than acknowledging a fact of which all women are aware: that the majority of institutions, such as government, finance, and media, were and still are man-made and male-dominated. The same is true for the professional and social networks from which those experts are selected.
Women have been struggling for decades just to break into those institutions and networks — never mind actually rise in the ranks and become influencers. It is still the case that most editors, producers, and reporters are men, as a study published this week shows, and men are unlikely to seek out female experts. The result is that the public does not hear from leading experts who could bring real insight to pressing issues.
In an article I co-authored last August for the Columbia Journalism Review, I note that journalists tend to return to the same sources because they are “...driven by the pressure to produce ever more content with ever fewer resources.” When breaking news hits, journalists, editors, and producers are under tremendous deadline pressure, and so they do not have the time or inclination to research and talk to real experts. Instead, they go directly to the people working on and influencing an issue. If it’s North Korea, the media is knocking at the National Security Council and Defense Department. If it’s the Amazon headquarters deal in New York City, the media calls up contacts in the tech industry. If it’s a drop in the NASDAQ, the media rushes to Wall Street bankers and investors.
In each case, men occupy the top spots – which means, of course, that the reporting on these stories is dominated by opinions expressed by men. These men are presented as the “experts,” but in fact they are the kingmakers. They drive the narrative – not to share understanding, but to justify their own positions and decisions.
The perils of quick 'n easy information
This is a dangerous state of affairs. The public is led to believe that their media platforms present them with the best information, when in fact they are mostly presenting them with information that happens to be the easiest and quickest to obtain. The troubling result is an opinionated public that believes it is well-informed, when it is actually being kept in the dark.
Because female expertise has for so long been ignored or minimized, women who pitch opinion pieces to media outlets are often held to a different, harsher standard than a man. When, for example, Beatrice Fihn, the director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, pitched a piece about her work on disarmament in the fall of 2017, editors turned it down on the grounds that it was “too idealistic” or not “hard hitting.” Several months later Ms. Fihn accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of her organization.
Perhaps it is, indeed, “idealistic” to campaign for the abolishment of nuclear weapons. But that campaign represents an important point of view that adds another dimension to a consequential topic — specifically, the fate of humanity. The only way we are going to hear about these added dimensions is by reaching beyond the status quo and tapping into different experiences and backgrounds. That is true not only for women, but also for people of color.
The consequences of ignoring women and other diverse voices are far reaching. Not only are we presented with an incomplete picture but, even more gravely, we are overlooking the people who have the knowledge and skills to help us all reach comprehensive solutions to serious problems. When women participate in peace talks, for example, agreements are 64 percent less likely to fail. When women play a role in creating a peace process, the resulting agreement is 35 percent more likely to last at least 15 years.
How to do better
A number of journalists have made an effort to seek out alternative voices. Ed Young from The Atlantic has talked about the efforts he has put in to diversify his sources, doing extra work to find women in science. A number of other journalists have contacted me about female voices in foreign policy, namely from NPR, and Australia’s ABC. Bloomberg has also reached out. Time, CNN, and The New Republic have been champions — in each case, because female editors have taken the lead.
Given the enormity of global challenges and the rapid pace at which the world is changing, it is vitally incumbent upon editors to widen their scope. They must consider pitches from voices that diverge from the ones they are accustomed to hearing, and they must be open to different perspectives — even if they sound “idealistic.” When editors make the effort to expand their worldview, they will find numerous resources to support their work. FPI’s Friday newsletter, SheSource, Women Also Know Stuff, and Sourcelist, list female experts in all areas, in multitudes.
The point is not to reach down and pull women up. Rather, it is to throw off the blinders and reach wide to grasp the abundant and multidimensional expertise that will make the world a better place for all of us.
Elmira Bayrasli is the author of From The Other Side of The World: Extraordinary Entrepreneurs, Unlikely Places. She is the co-founder and CEO of Foreign Policy Interrupted and teaches at Bard College. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
[post_title] => Media outlets are still not amplifying female experts, and this means we really don't know what's going on in the world
[post_excerpt] => According to a 2018 study that looked at foreign policy op-eds across three one-year periods in four major U.S. newspapers, women authored only 15 percent of all the op-eds published in those four newspapers over a 20-year period.
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[post_content] => Compassion seems to be the common theme in the articles ANI has curated for this week’s look at journalism that goes beyond reporting the problem by presenting possible solutions. A non-profit initiative in Oklahoma helps chronically homeless children catch up on essential life skills; an editor suggests the means of making a story about a white teenage boy who supports Trump more insightful and thoughtful; a Finnish study on basic income suggests that alleviating poverty is an effective means of combating depression; and perhaps there is a simple solution for the crisis of student debt in the United States.
