the most successful ad that I’ve ever posted... a lot of it came from people being confused whether or not it was real...the Bloomberg campaign was offering social media influencers $150 to create content in support of Mr. Bloomberg ...

Our scientists are publishing sophisticated data visualisations for policymakers to use. But are policymakers using them? ... I interview Annie White and Nil Tuzcu of Harvard’s Growth Lab about their use of data visualisations for policymaking... summarise the resulting guidance we’re giving Knowledge4Policy publishers.

Watching Silicon Valley exercise news judgment has been like watching Walter Cronkite try to write code in Python... Four companies have created trustworthiness indicators for news websites: Facebook, Google, Twitter, and NewsGuard. Publishers have no way of learning their secret trust score from the Silicon Valley companies. NewsGuard’s journalis…

Much of modern economic theory is based around a simple idea: Human beings maximize utility... To an economist, utility simply means how much people want something... tend to assume that utility is good... But what if the things people desire don’t bring them happiness?...People seem to reliably seek out a few things that make them unhappy... peop…

Scroll, scroll, scroll... it’s got a name: zombie scrolling syndrome... Consider parasites... some have the power of mind control. Or... zombification... the jewel wasp... grabs a cockroach twice her size... injecting nonlethal venom... dopamine... alters the roach’s behavior... cleaning itself instead of running for its life...zombifying parasite…

A “Behind the Story” explanation box attached to a news story ... most people skip right over it...it didn’t impact their trust ... Banner blindness isn’t just for ads... can be confused with advertising... whether people saw a BtS card or not didn’t significantly change their ratings.

The union faces a double crisis of legitimacy... it is hard to sustain the fiction that ordinary citizens have a meaningful say over what happens in Brussels... If many voters don’t believe that they have much sway over what happens in their national capitals, the feeling of impotence is even more profound when it comes to Brussels.... the EU ... …

Uber gets an $82 billion valuation for a low-margin taxi business it has never made a dime on... WeWork implodes after the slightest scrutiny ... that’s the bullshit economy... fraudulent advertising metrics and fake numbers ... to siphon cash through Facebook and Google’s ... counterfeit goods pass through Amazon... a financial crisis based on bu…

Despite some evidence that many politically minded people live in partisan echo chambers... strong evidence that encountering information across lines of difference (a) happens and (b) is consequential. split-ticket votes mostly likely by folks who spend some time with news media that reports from a different ideological perspective than their own…

is that true?... first thing ... is click the link... most students don’t ... second ... see whether the article actually supports that summary... How? ... zero people are going to [fully read the article] ... too long ... [so] ... the Yeats Effect (“The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity”). The reckless p…

we’re headed for a miserable 24 months of purple prose, tediously long sermons and unneeded – and unheeded – speeches and moralising... a ‘Big European Moan’... Let’s capitalise on this rather jolly mood... minimising the institutional hijack and confusion ...European Parliament... traditional organisational blueprint ... plenaries, steering commi…

echo chambers and filter bubbles are slightly different... echo chambers could be a result of filtering or ... other processes, but filter bubbles have to be the result of algorithmic filtering...people main source of news roughly equal ... online and television... TV is more likely... people over 45. People under 45 are more likely to get their n…

‘Conference on the Future of Europe’ will open this spring... will not be enough... also... a real democratic debate on the final text, so that it can be followed up... if there is to be a reform of the Treaties... to be ratified in all Member States...Referenda are ... not suitable for the ratification of a new treaty... not allow a debate on its…

to make participatory democracy a reality, it is essential to avoid only paying lip-service to the idea of participation — and give citizens a real say...European federalists are hoping to gain momentum for treaty change. Many member states are afraid of that very outcome...Citizens’ participation is being tested out far more commonly across Europ…

Europe needs a new mechanism for involving citizens, not another talking shop chaired by the Guy Verhofstadt... By raising expectations it can’t easily deliver on, it risks eroding citizens’ trust...won’t directly prepare treaty change... a preparatory process ... could lead the European council ... to initiate them... this time the conference is …

How the Conference on the future of Europe will look like? ... it's the European Parliament ... to offer 1st blueprint... in essence a Constitutional Convention model PLUS... 'plus' is so tiny that fails to capture ... vivacity of EU civil society ...prepare a set of “concrete recommendations” that may be turned into legislative and…

the lean canvas... single-page template designed to distil the fundamental goals and objectives of a business, and offer a clear route to achieving them... to design a product around perceived market and consumer variables... In about 45 minutes ... journalists learned how to apply this framework to their news organisation’s editorial and business…

often our expectations for fact-checking reflect... the Scooby-Doo model of political accountability... the villain is unmasked ... off to jail... would’ve gotten away with it if it weren’t for “you meddling kids.” ... Once the facts come to light, the consequences follow ... idealized notion ... rooted at least partly in the “folk theory” of demo…

the high pitch of outrage, constant outrage, is exhausting and overwhelming... every story should ... tell you something new that you need to know about the world. Or ... move you and help shift the way you understand the world...How much of our best storytelling... helps us understand people, power, and the world...What could we learn from the wr…

Saying both sides are equally responsible... mainstream journalism, leaves the average voter at sea... left with a deeper disdain for all politics ... voters become more receptive to demagogues and those ... [who] see everything in stark black-and-white terms... bothsidesism... We’ve already seen the disastrous results of the press’ dedication to …

despite a strong global economy and near full employment, none of the four societal institutions that the study measures—government, business, NGOs and media—is trusted...Since Edelman began measuring trust 20 years ago, it has been spurred by economic growth. ..[no longer] in developed markets, where income inequality is now the more important fa…

Co-creation means involving customers in the process of making or designing your experience.... a behavioral science principle known as the IKEA Effect... people attribute more value to products they’ve helped create... brands that use co-creation methods “are outperforming the competition without outspending them...

“Conference on the Future of Europe,”... if the commission and national governments get their way, it may be a useless exercise... the European Parliament... would create ... citizens’ assemblies ... of up to 300 people each... give citizens specific questions to wrestle with... should result in major changes in how the EU works... resembles the …

people often adopt new tools ... challenges they’re facing at work. The shiny new thing ... soon becomes just another layer of complexity... the Digital Productivity Pyramid provides a framework for any stage of a knowledge worker’s learning journey, showing them where to focus next...digital productivity is not a linear learning process. You don’…

focusing exclusively on ad hoc solutions — suspending the harassing account, deplatforming the white supremacist group... won’t address the reasons the waste got there in the first place... if we don’t begin to shift our mindset to ... an ethics of responsibility... we cannot begin to act differently...challenging the assumptions ... enshrined wit…

The Theory of Constraints is deceptively simple... proposing a series of “obvious” statements... before you know it, you find yourself questioning the fundamental tenets of modern business and society...first statement ... every system has one bottleneck tighter than all the others... broaden the concept... to constraints of any kind... second sta…

Imagine for a moment the perfect organizational system. One that supported and enhanced the work you do, telling you exactly where to put a piece of information, and exactly where to find it when you needed it...P.A.R.A. stands for Projects — Areas — Resources — Archives, the four top-level categories that encompass every type of information you m…

the next generation of blogs will be shaped around the habits and conventions of today’s internet... so much communication takes place backstage, in group chats and on Slack, I’d expect new blogs to step in the same ambiguous territory as newsletters ... not everyone is looking, but privacy is neither airtight nor expected...escape hatches from th…

Most cookie consent pop-ups ... are likely to be flouting regional privacy laws... another piece of research ... also concluded a majority of ... cookie notices offer no meaningful choice to Europe’s Internet users — even though EU law requires one...if it’s configured to contain pre-ticked boxes that opt users into sharing data by default — requi…

The challenge of knowledge is not acquiring it... The challenge is knowing which knowledge is worth acquiring. And then building a system to forward bits of it through time, to the future ... challenge where it is most ... needed...when you’re applying that knowledge directly to a real-world challenge, you won’t have to worry about memorizing it..…