Overview: Politics

"to provide for Progressive Trust, you need to establish what is known as an "Intimacy Gradient"". From architect Christopher Alexander's "A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction:Pattern #127 - Intimacy Gradient:Conflict: Unless the spaces in a building are arranged in a sequence which corresponds to their…

"5 interesting things ... distilled from a helicopter view of trust from various branches of psychology, sociology, behavioural science and Responsible Research and Innovation."focus on others: "perhaps similar to love and happiness, the more doggedly trust is pursued for its own sake, the more elusive it may become", so turn y…

"Almost unbelievably, scepticism is highest among healthcare workers."Examines both the specific mistakes and the general antivaxxer European setting undermining the vaccination campaign.Specific mistakes: "by publicly trashing [AstraZeneca], the commission undermined trust in the vaccines... compounded by confusion over the vaccine…

counties that had voted for Donald Trump in 2016 exhibited 14% less physical distancing... higher Covid-19 infection and fatality growth rates ...the hormone oxytocin... promotes bonding... plays a role in trust... When participants trusted and felt trusted, oxytocin levels ... jumped... Trust just feels good... But risky if we give it to the w…

echo chambers and epistemic bubbles... systematically exclude sources of information... exaggerate their members’ confidence in their beliefs... work in entirely different ways... epistemic bubble is when you don’t hear people from the other side. An echo chamber is what happens when you don’t trust people from the other side...‘epistemic bubble’ …

After years of influencers buying fake followers, hiring click farms and promoting products that they don’t even use, consumers feel that they can’t trust much of what influencers say... today’s consumers... gravitating toward more grassroots communities, where people share information and original content about the brands and products they love w…

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…

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…

recent UK election was a quarrel about the character of politics...Labour Party argued that it can be used for good... Conservative Party claimed that politics is bad... promised to... ‘get Brexit done’, so that we can all forget about it ...wage war on the political process, on trust, and on truth. Ensure the whole experience is miserable, bewild…

More Americans have confidence in scientists, but there are political divides over the role of scientific experts in policy issues... six-in-ten Americans say scientists should play an active role in policy debates about scientific issues... but Americans are divided along party lines in terms of how they view the value and objectivity of scientis…

“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 …

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…

federal investigators are looking at whether the Trump campaign helped Russia disseminate “fake news.”... just as the Trump administration appears poised to ramp up its own campaign against the news media... a new phase of escalation in Trump’s “fake news” wars, in which he will counter reports ... by calling those reports “fake news.”... Trump …

I finally vlogged my first event. Some first impressions.

if he tried to make ads that were beautiful and perfect, it wouldn’t work and his fans would know... his work routinely pulls in millions of views because he’s transparent with his audience... mostly teenage boys know when they’re being peddled a product.

NYTimes' “verified commenters.”... few hundred people whose comments are posted without moderation can end up dominating the reader commenting system... causes quite understandable resentment among thousands of others...Because they go up first, their comments are almost guaranteed to get the most exposure, “and hence rise to the top and be seen …

A tl;dr version of “From One Spokesperson To Millions” the brilliant 45-minute longread by @jessedee on taking one of the most successful campaigns of all time - Paul Hogan’s 1980s Tourism Australia campaign - and updating it for the age of user-generated content. Some key quotes:

What happened when 60 odd people had a go at the Participation mindmap?

Over 70% of EU voters did not vote for the EU. Where now?

How nice to see a positive answer to the perennial question: Where are the MEPs?

One of the topics I've been developing on this blog for quite some time came up at last week's get-together organised by the Belgian IABC chapter: the need (or not) for social media guidelines for EU staff.

PR firm interns posting fake reviews about iPhone apps for their clients. Ghost blogging and tweeting by just about everyone, including thought-leaders in social media.  Bloggers not disclosing sponsorship. It's just a matter of time before someone poisons the well for EU social media.

Over on the Belgian IABC's web2eu site, Philip Weiss embedded a TED video of Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody, discussing the revolutionary impact of social media. It's really so good I thought I'd repost it here and add some observations

Following rapid and significant expansion into new markets and sectors of governance and policy, innovative union of nation states ("European Union", or EU) seeks an experienced Online Community Manager to gain buy-in at all levels throughout our 27 Members, as well as with external stakeholders on a global level.

I was discussing online communities and the EU with some friends before Christmas, when a few interlinked thoughts and ideas popped up, stemming from an earlier post about "trust2". I thought I'd commit them to screen while they were fresh in my mind, and ask for some ideas.Trust and (election) turnoutGiven that election turnout is …

Over on iBlog, Claus used a term that caught my attention:Networks such as ERRIN, which is funded by membership contributions and invests in what I would call “TRUST 2.0.”, help to establish that collective understanding and culture of cooperation and facilitate successful involvement in EU projects.While he freely admitted that "Trust 2.0 do…