Overview: Politics

“We are so screwed it's beyond what most of us can imagine... And depending how far you look into the future it just gets worse.”... a slew of slick, easy-to-use, and eventually seamless technological tools for manipulating perception and falsifying reality... They’re running war game–style disaster scenarios based on technologies that have begun …

The vote marked the culmination of a targeted, 11-day information operation that was amplified by computational propaganda techniques and aimed to change both public perceptions and the behavior of American lawmakers...Computational propaganda... the use of [ICTs] to manipulate perceptions, affect cognition, and influence behavior”... #releaset…

time to deliberately focus on design for interconnectedness and relationships ... customer (user) centric design created a narrative of isolation: the customer is ... someone that is provided with a solution ... to get the job done... [but] research ... explained that customers (users) may often look to engage more deeply with products... relat…

it just felt like the conversations that we were having subsequently were actually pretty shallow and actually pretty useless, because we were talking over each other because everybody meant different things... we can only really start talking about interventions if we understand what we’re talking about... I say, “Please don’t use the term.” “Yea…

Wales wants to bring the power of the Wiki community and the wisdom of crowds to bear on the media business by creating a hybrid model... local community members can help direct the work of WikiTribune journalists when such events occur, suggesting avenues to explore and co-creating a more permanent news resource that will serve a longer-term comm…

algorithmic systems don’t simply cost money to implement. They cost money to maintain. They cost money to audit. They cost money to evolve ... divert taxpayer money from direct services, to lining the pockets of for-profit entities under the illusion of helping people....a diversion of liability ... those in powerful positions blame the algorithms…

regulation needn’t be such a compliance burden... an opportunity - how can we sustain a sophisticated and modern regulatory system, and at the same time manage complexity for end users?... re-imagining regulation as an open platform, based on digital logic... supports a future ecosystem of digital regulation tools and services... working with gov…

Over the coming years, we’ll see the BBC develop and roll-out more and more machine learning algorithms for storing, retrieving, tagging and possibly even creating content.... What if we lock our audiences in to what they just want to hear, never challenging them? ... Should the algorithms we use be open to public scrutiny?... inform our own thin…

my team and I studied how people use different information when it comes to voting... presented voters with ... “Public information” was seen by everyone and referred to as “expert”. “Private information” was given to individuals and referred to “personal opinion”... with a probability of it being correct,... They followed their personal informa…

organic, authentic voices in the public debate — more than 99% of which are in favor of keeping net neutrality — are being drowned out by a chorus of spambots.

“If your job consists of Tweeting for someone else, you owe it to yourself to think of something else in 2018. Particularly if you’re under 35."It’s early January, and so time to add to the slew of “What you should do in 2018” posts sloshing around the Net.

Aggregation Theory describes how platforms (i.e. aggregators) come to dominate the industries in which they compete in a systematic and predictable way.... how value has shifted away from companies that control the distribution of scarce resources to those that control demand for abundant ones; the purpose of this article is to catalog exactly wha…

Third of several posts written in reaction to Luc van den Brande’s Reaching out to EU Citizens: A New Opportunity. Sets out the public policy participation model first presented at EWRC 2017, and sets up the fourth.

I’ve recently published five posts on three interrelated ideas, two projects one report and a workshop. That happened because the competition brought a Brussels Bubble Outsider to Brussels. Which happens to be one principle of the participation model I presented at the EWRC workshop. Full circle.

a report published with the Council of Europe... offers better categorizations for the tangle of bad information ... more specific than “fake news” ... [for] The U.S. midterms ... build out a hub ... monitoring disinformation, connecting with newsrooms around the country... we can start scaling it globally in 2019... The benefit of having centrali…

When it comes to how Europeans identify themselves, there are actually six different “political tribes,”... the current polarized debate of “pro-EU” versus “anti-EU” fails to capture the complexity ... 36 percent were the “hesitant Europeans”... proud to belong to the EU but also concerned about issues like immigration.... “contented Europeans.…

The EU Lobbyist's quick guide to "influencers"

Engaging Europeans with the EU requires a new Brussels Bubble culture - fourth of several posts written in reaction to Luc van den Brand’s Reaching out to EU Citizens: A New Opportunity.

The second meeting Madeleina Kay had was with Luca Jahier. It went longer, and the wifi cut out midway this time - see the 2nd part of this lovely chat.

Could hybrid crowdfunding allow public Institutions to support citizen-driven projects without killing them in the cradle?- 2nd post in reaction to Luc van den Brande’s Reaching out to EU Citizens: A New Opportunity

Chatbots are the digital democratizer of our day... natural, conversational interaction ... enabling participation ... for everyone... At the heart of creating chatbot ease of use is language design...

CFPs also have the capacity to help foster and strengthen non-parliamentary democratic structures and practices. As such, they should be supported and encouraged as part of a framework of further European democratization and civic integration.

give ourselves the following assignment: Government engagement must contribute to the quality of democracy.... provides a solid foundation for the design and execution of ... communication and participation forms and processes... an angle to critically review ... collaboration formats and tools. Participation is not an end in itself; reinforcing …

Every day the web is becoming more personal... ... brands ... need to understand more than theoretical profiles or carefully honed audience segments.... master the fundamentals of identity...  In this report you’ll learn:  - What it takes to create a persistent individualized identity that crosses platforms and screens  - How brands and agencie…

Mom did a very brave thing, considering where and when she lived... She watched a TV documentary about transgender identity... She let it change her thinking. .. turned to me during a commercial break and said, “I think maybe sometimes God makes mistakes.”... never spoke an unkind word about gay, lesbian, or transgender people after that day. For …

“We wanted democracy... but got mobocracy.”... Bots generated one out of every five political messages posted on Twitter in America’s presidential campaign last year... “we need to reform our attention economy.”... groups which had mostly been excluded from the mainstream media... developed the dark arts they would use to further their agendas..…

“Governments in Europe have been spending money for years on improving the availability of services online, and uptake was always below expectations... citizens didn’t want to use the online platform. The idea was to digitise a process without improving it.”... there is a much bigger prize ... an opportunity to use the internet as a platform for…

I have an obvious incentive to get claps: pretty decent money. ... I can write more polarized headlines... on polarizing topics. I can piggy back on the hot news of the day... write things I don’t actually believe using incendiary language ... Medium has safeguards ... a team of curators ... a policy against abuse that it actually enforces... a t…

Resources and first thoughts from my recent ‘EU communities & policy participation’ workshop at the European Week of Regions and Cities (EWRC).

AI is increasingly being used to support public participation in policy. While they offer a lot, they could invisibly skew policy if used carelessly.- 3rd post in preparation for my EWRC 2017 workshop on online communities and public participation in policy