Social Media – Pike & Hurricane

The Clash of the Titans – Public Figures against the Tech Giants

Julia Kavanto — Wed, 10 Feb 2021 20:17:53 +0000

President Donald Trump of the United States of America became the first president to achieve many things. He was the first US president to be impeached twice, and his administration was the first to declare that China was committing genocide on Uighurs, but now I am talking about Trump being the first world leader to be permanently suspended from Twitter.

Trump supporters stormed the halls of the United States Capitol on January 6th, and their agenda was to stop the inauguration of Joe Biden. Soon after the coup, Trump’s Twitter account was first suspended for twelve hours, and then for good, as he continued to violate the community rules of the platform.

Multiple social media platforms followed Twitter’s example and suspended Trump’s accounts. We are having this discussion because permanently suspending a person of authority is considered a threat to the freedom of speech. The concern is valid. The common social media platforms, especially Twitter, are crucial to the hectic politics of the modern world; it is there where the political debate is the most heated. So, is it right to suspend a political leader permanently?

What is freedom of speech? What is it not?

Freedom of speech essentially means that any individual should have the right to express their thoughts and feelings without fear of sanctions. The right is universal, so it applies to everyone regardless of status, race, religion et cetera. There is a limitation to it, though. Freedom of speech should not be exercised to harm. A very important question to this is that who decides when someone or something has been harmed. One would think that the person who is harmed decides if they have been harmed, but then there is the question of people who cannot reply or, for example, non-human entities like nature. Who decides for them?

Twitter decided for the people who were injured in the coup of Capitol. Five people died in the attack, and Twitter understood President Trump’s tweet on the 8th of January about not joining President Biden’s inauguration was an invitation for his supporters to be violent. Trump’s use of words was interpreted as violating the platform’s glorification of violence policy.

Yes, Twitter can decide, and they did right to protect American citizens from further acts of violence. However, this does not mean that there should not be a more democratic way to decide. The board of Twitter who presumably called the shot to suspend Trump’s account was not selected democratically, and should not, therefore, have the right to take away the freedom of expression, even from Donald Trump.

On the other hand…

The Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny travelled back to his home country from Berlin where he was treated after having been poisoned in August 2020. Navalny was immediately detained upon his arrival on the 17th of January, and he soon posted a video on Twitter where he urged his supporters to “take it to the streets” because of his jailing. The protests were unauthorized, but successful, as the demonstration was organized in 100 Russian cities and there were 40,000 participants only in Moscow.

It is no surprise, then, that someone got hurt in the protests; Navalny must have known that the riots were unauthorized and would be met with violence. Videos show how the police are dragging people and using batons relentlessly. For the western democrat, it seems obvious that Navalny, Putin’s arch-rival, would not be banned for social media. That would be a victory for tyranny. But essentially, Navalny and Trump used Twitter for the same: for rallying supporters to protest against the government. It can be that Navalny’s tweets were not seen “to incite violence”, as Trump’s tweets were, according to Twitter’s blog post on Trump’s suspension. That, though, is problematic, that there is no universal guideline to fall back on.

Of course, Trump was not banned solely because of the tweet to join him on the 6th, but also because of the countless times he posted fake news on the platform. A certain president of Russia would argue that Navalny has also posted fake news, as the opposition leader recently uploaded a video to Twitter exposing Putin’s palace of corruption. Putin denies that the palace is his or any of his close relatives. The media in the United States seems to have agreed that Trump often tweeted lies. The same could be said about the Russian media breaking the news of Navalny’s accusations, as Pravda and Russia Today repeat Putin denying that the palace is his. American media agrees that Trump posted lies, and Russian media that Navalny posted lies, but the reception is very different.

There needs to be a universal guideline for social media usage, which states when a person has crossed the line of what is accepted. The board of directors of tech giants should not be the ones who decide who has the right to be heard. There are many questions regarding the universal guideline for social media that I am suggesting, such as who should be trusted to tell the truth i.e. who says what is “fake news”. Russian media argues against Navalny’s allegations of Putin’s Palace, but the allegations are still not put down by Twitter as lies.

Navalny joined the suspension discussion

Navalny himself responded to the suspension of President Trump negatively by saying that it “is an unacceptable act of censorship”. He says that Twitter’s decision to suspend Trump is based on personal political views. Therefore it can be said that the decision was not democratic. But does it even have to be in a private company? I think so, as they carry so much power in the public speech arena where freedom of speech is exercised. It is a slippery slope that Twitter has entered, as with permanently suspending Trump they open the possibility to suspend other people who do not follow the prevailing ideology. Silencing people is too great a power for any company to have.

No matter how much I disagree with Trump’s views, he, too, has the right to be heard. Imagine if Navalny was suspended. How radically would the Western world react to silencing the one figure who is against the all-mighty Vladimir Putin? In a democratic world, everyone needs to be heard, regardless of views. In a democratic world, everyone is treated equally, and with the universal guideline of social media usage, the same rules would be applied to everyone, regardless of power they possess.

Related articles:

Delusive Donald

The Social Network of Ethnic Conflict

Photo credits:

Tech/Book Special NRC Handelsblad, by Jenna Arts, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Freedom of Speech, by Vladan Nikolic, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

The post The Clash of the Titans – Public Figures against the Tech Giants appeared first on Pike & Hurricane.

The Other Pandemic

Oliver Ösmark — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 22:06:45 +0000

***Trigger warning: Contains explicit language on the subject of child sexual abuse***

At times one stands before a great abyss. A great expanse ordained by dark materials to which one has to decide to gaze into or turn away from. Why should we feel the urge to brand ourselves with the horrors emanating from worst of what is distressingly familiar: the human condition. “If you stare into the abyss long enough, the abyss stares back at you.” The slime dredged from the ugliest depths of human depravity invokes literal and spiritual trauma, and corrupts hope for redemption.

The doctrines of good versus evil are riddled with complacency and glib intellectuals would claim that the problem of evil is that we are inextricably bound by it. We are either bound to evil’s mast, driven momentarily insane by its song, or we shut it out, plug our ears and go about staying our course. But the problem of evil runs deeper.

Preachers provide no satisfactory answer for evil’s prevalence. Theodicies sideline evil’s sinister human face, yet ones that embed it chime like sermons of a sententious apologist. “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” Yes, but the real and visceral evil disfigures the heart with a thousand cuts. It is the narcosis of which a deep spiritual disorientation follows. Some will never find their way out of its depths. Some don’t want to. Others belong there.

The Damned

Meet Benjamin Faulkner. Born in 1991 in North Bay, Ontario in Canada—approximately 350 kilometers north of Toronto. According to his parents, he was well-liked and not a “partier by any means” but more of a gamer and obsessed with computers. He worked as a lifeguard and swim instructor at the local YMCA and held a merit of distinction at his post—praised and appreciated by colleagues and the children he instructed alike. In his mid-twenties he’d shared an apartment with a roommate who described him as pleasant to live with. Not noisy and kept to himself. Mainly because he was on his laptop all the time. In 2016, he was arrested and charged with the rape of a four-year-old girl and for hosting the largest website on the darknet for child sexual abuse content: Childs play.

At Faulkner’s sentencing hearing he delivers a grand speech: “For the first time in my life I am speaking in front of the people that I love about the wrongs I’ve committed. Living with pedophilic disorder is a life of perpetual anxiety, fear, and debilitating depression. […] I know that people were hurt and I am sincerely sorry. I’m sorry for who I’ve hurt and I’m sorry for the lives I’ve altered. I’m sorry for how things turned out. If I could go back, things would be different.” The sentencing proceeds with rather benign testimonies from his parents attesting to the character—”patient and kind”—of Faulkner.

Later, a chief investigator is called on to lay out the facts. Faulkner had built and run Childs Play, administrated another major child exploitation site The GiftBox Exchange, as well as a site called Private Pedo Club with access reserved strictly for content creators with access to minors. He has been the “tech guy” for Peter Scully’s international child sexual abuse ring offering pay-per-view video streams of the most heinous content imaginable—content where minors are abused, tortured, and killed.

While the investigator reads out the list of Faulkner’s activities on the darknet, Faulkner’s hand is covering his face, his shoulders shaking… but he’s not crying. He’s chuckling. Laughing quietly to himself. The grin takes a while to fade from his face.

Faulkner ran what was most likely the largest online network of child abuse material in the world. Yet, at the time of the arrest, none of this got much attention in the media.

The Problem

The awful truth about child sexual abuse material, or CSAM, is that it covers everything. The abuse of babies, even newborn babies. Toddlers. Schoolchildren through to teenagers up to the age of 18. It includes children being raped by adults, or adults directing a child to be abused in another country. It also covers grooming—which involves an adult establishing an emotional connection with a child, sometimes the child’s family, to lower the child’s inhibitions with the objective of sexual abuse—and live streaming of abuse. About one-third of this material is so-called self-generated material, involving either children believing that they are sharing a private moment unaware that they are being recorded and that material being shared, or even children being frightened or coerced to perform sexual acts in front of a webcam.

The scale of CSAM online is enormous, and it appears to be growing. Approximately 132,000 webpages were removed in 2019 by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) which accounts for millions of images and videos. Of them around 95% were girls. And 47% were images of children aged under 10. 1%, a large amount in terms of absolute numbers, of children aged under two. Simon Bailey of the National Police Chief’s Council (NPCC) Lead for Child Protection and Abuse Investigations notes that the worse level of abuse happens the younger the child. “So naught to two is generally the worst level of abuse.”

The Damage

Calling this abuse child pornography is misleading and conceals the scope of the crime being committed. Pornography is commonly associated with the adult industry where consent is given and the actors know what they are engaging in. In no way can that be applied in the case of a child. A child cannot consent to being raped. Nobody can consent to being raped. What you’re seeing in an image with a child is a child being sexually abused. Using the word “pornography” gives a sense of legitimacy to a criminal act. Child sexual abuse is a serious crime and it is important not to minimize the effect that this has on the child.

Because child sexual abuse is extremely harmful. Especially if you look at the long-term consequences. A survey by the Canadian Center for Child Protection shows that 70% of people whose abuse had been shared over the internet lived in constant fear of being recognized. For good reason. 30% of them had been recognized by someone who had seen images of their abuse. In addition to high rates of anxiety, depression, eating disorders, problems sleeping, relationship issues, 60% of respondents had attempted suicide.

The Abusers

Abusers come in kinds. The worst of these are the ones who don’t feel like there’s anything wrong with engaging in child sexual abuse. These people can be impossible to treat. According to Michael Bourke of the U.S. Marshals, the task with these people is to motivate them and get them to the place where they can at least recognize that what they’ve done was potentially harmful and had negative consequences. Most sex offenders that come in through the prison system are eventually going to leave—85-90% will eventually serve their sentences and return to communities.

Bourke likens the behavior to substance abuse. There’s no cure for alcoholism or opioid addiction. There’s no cure for sex offenders either. No way to change their fantasies. “We never take anything away in psychology without replacing it with something healthy. Their crimes are how offenders got their needs met. They were the means through which they coped with stress, sadness, anger, and all the other negative emotions. If you are to take away this coping mechanism—maladaptive and harmful as it is—what do we replace that with?” If there are no readily available ways to assuage the offender’s response when confronted with stressors, they will go back to their tried and true means of relief—the website, playground, water park, whatever it may be.

By conservative measures, about 1% of the adult population has some form of pedophilic attraction—representing mostly males. Against the total global male population that makes 35 million people. It may be that a small fraction of these are going to act against a real child, but even when excluding the non-participants, this encompasses an enormous amount of people across the world who might find pleasure in viewing child sexual abuse content. Arresting and consigning all these people to life behind bars is a naïve initiative if investments and labor are wholly delegated to essentially chasing the horizon. So, what can be done?

The Platforms

In 2018, tech companies reported over 45 million online photos and videos of children being sexually abused to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC)—more than double what they found the previous year. In 2019, it had reached 70 million, and for the first time there were more videos of abuse than photos. And this year, child abuse reports have spiked during COVID-19.

“For the last 10-20 years the industry has been saying that it’s been doing everything they can to combat the proliferation of CSAM online. They clearly aren’t. If tens of millions of pieces of content are going through your services every year, there’s clearly a problem with the way you are approaching this problem,” says Hany Farid, a professor of Electrical engineering and computer science at University of California in Berkley a leading expert in the analysis of digital images.

At Microsoft, Farid helped develop PhotoDNA which has been widely successful in combating CSAM made freely available for other tech companies. It is used to create a digital fingerprint of known images of CSA which is then used to find duplicates and stop them being shared. Google has also used analytics to introduce a ban on certain search terms—a list that is constantly changing in response to how offenders are trying to keep ahead. Facebook were one of the earliest adapters of PhotoDNA and they use it across all their platforms: Instagram, Facebook, and the unencrypted spaces of WhatsApp.

Yet, it is important to note that the tools described are effective in unencrypted space. The groundwork for encrypting online services—implementing so-called DNS over HTTPS (DoH)—has already been lain. The aim is to increase privacy and security by preventing eavesdropping and manipulation of data by encrypting that data. “There are really good reasons to have end-to-end encryption, but we have to acknowledge it comes with trade-offs,” says Farid. Some consequences of encryption are that things like parental controls and filters used by the IWF and other internet block lists that allow the means of companies to block millions of images from ever reaching the public eye would be bypassed. As a result, potentially millions of internet users would be exposed to CSAM.

Among imagery reported from tech companies Facebook overshadows the rest. In 2019, Messenger was responsible for over 80% of all reports made. The numbers are, however, a reflection of companies that have put more effort into finding and removing the material from their platforms. In 2018, the company was responsible for more than 90% of reports that year according to law enforcement officials. Nevertheless, many people have expressed concerns over Facebook’s plan to encrypt its Messenger service which will mean that many of the detecting tools which have been so successful in finding CSAM and getting it removed won’t work.

Facebook says that it will provide better security and privacy for Facebook users. Antigone Davis, the Global Head of Safety at Facebook, says this, “One of the things that we really see on Facebook is that more people are using our services to have very personal and private conversations […] and one of the things that we want to do is to fundamentally ensure the data security and privacy for those kind of interactions. That’s where the market is headed and I think one thing to keep in mind is that 85% of the market—the messaging market—is already end-to-end encrypted.”

Fernando Ruiz Pérez, head of operations for cyber crimes at Europol, said Facebook was responsible for a “very high percentage” of reports to the European Union. He said that if Facebook moved to encrypt messaging, the “possibility to flag child sexual abuse content will disappear.”

Hany Farid argues that there are two options. “One such option is that we’re going to encrypt your messages so that we can’t see it, the government can’t see it, nobody can see it. The cost of that will be the hundreds of millions of pieces of sexual abuse of children, roughly from the age of two months old to 12 years old, can, without any possible chance of being caught, come through the services. Which one of those would you like?”

Encryption will create a blind spot. Baroness Joanna Shields, who served as the UK Minister for Internet Safety and Security and previously worked as EMEA VP & managing director at Facebook, says that she does not understand the decision to encrypt Messenger. “It doesn’t make any rational, logical, or business sense. The micro-targeting that is done on these platforms relies on information that people share and if you go to an encrypted message between two people then you can no longer leverage the business model of the companies. So, it makes you ask the question as to why? To me, the only answer […] is that the companies are [handling reports of child sexual abuse] and the problem is that once those are reported then it’s an acknowledgment that the problem is rampant on the platform. If you take away the ability to report it, then they can say that it’s increasing or decreasing and no one will know.”

The Way Forward

It seems as if the tech giants are each using their own services and not working together. Every company has its own engineering technology, business model, and intellectual property. There’s no one technical solution that you could build on that would work across every platform. Those are different technologies. You can set an outcome, a goal, for a company to remove or block the images we’re talking about but you can’t specify the technology that they should be using to deliver it because they are differently engineered companies. Part of that engineering is at the heart of that business model hence their business success. So, they can’t share the way they build their platform.

By insisting on total anonymity, we have created a platform through which total ideational anarchy thrives, and the taint this has wrought sometimes trickles through the cracks in society’s veneers. The rot runs deep and we are condemned to despair. This isn’t defeatist. In accepting despair, we resign ourselves to a promulgation of a welfare of antipathy. We must allow discourse that addresses the profusion of the worst crimes man can commit to enter the public sphere. The sewers are overflowing. How high will this pollution be allowed to rise before we save ourselves from drowning in it?

The internet is a technology. It doesn’t make people do anything. People do things. What the Internet contributed to was two things: One, it allowed pedophiles with an interest in sexual images of children to contact each other and find a sense of community which lets them normalize their behavior. It spurred them on, and emboldened them. Two, it made these images available with apparent anonymity. People who might in other cases never have bothered to try to find these images, all of a sudden, they’re readily available.

To achieve meaningful change, everyone has to play their part. Not just the tech industry. There are some things which there is no defense against and where privacy is not a kind of balancing factor. Child abuse is one of those things. We need to find a way where there is a mixture of technical standards and policy and legal work to make it very clear that as technology changes, we don’t accidentally undermine the sort of protection that has been put into place to try and protect children. Behind every report there are children crying for help and without those reports they go without help. They are out there on their own with no one to even know that they’re being harmed.

Engage:

Sign a petition to pressure social media companies to report the spread of CSAM on their platforms

Find out more:

CBC podcast Hunting Warhead

New York Times podcast The Daily – A Criminal Underworld of Child Abuse

IWF’s podcast – Pixels from a Crime Scene

Internet Watch Foundation’s website

WePROTECT Global Alliance’s website and Global Threat Assessment Report 2019

Photo credits:

When Kids Are Silent by Zhenya Oliinyk (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Child Sexual Exploitation by Alina Tauseef (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

The post The Other Pandemic appeared first on Pike & Hurricane.

Insults, provocation, net-politics: The war of words

Pauline Zaragoza — Sun, 29 Sep 2019 14:29:29 +0000

How new populist leaders have killed the way to practice diplomacy

In 2016, the election of Donald Trump, a former TV star, as head of the first global power marked a turning point on the world stage. The following past years have seen the arrival of other populist leaders in global superpowers such as Italy, Brazil and recently in the United Kingdom. This along with the use of social media has shuffled the cards of diplomacy’s practice.

By definition, diplomacy is the management of relationships between countries but it also implies to deal with people without offending or upsetting them. But the performance we have assisted to those previous years does not seem to correspond to this meaning anymore.

Fake news, hate speech, insults spread by political leaders have become our daily reality. In the past, we used to assist to those types of rude behavior within countries between parties. What’s new is that it is happening now at the global scale between global superpowers. This shift can be explained by the democratic accession of far-right politicians who usually represent the hard opposition to power.

Bolsonaro: provocation as the norm

One of the greatest examples of this rude diplomacy is Bolsonaro, Brazil’s president. Last summer, the Brazilian president made some great performances. During the visit of the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean Yves Le Drian, he decided at the last minute to stand him up for doing a Facebook live while he was at the hairdresser. A few days later, he declared about environmental issues:

“It’s enough to eat a little less. You talk about environmental pollution. It’s enough to poop every other day. That will be better for the whole world.”

He pronounced those words while the Amazon rainforest was being torn down at a rate that it has never seen before. Then, to sustain his momentum, he rudely insulted Macron’s wife on Twitter by commenting a tweet describing her as ugly. At the same time, one of the Brazilian ministers used the Portuguese word « calhorda » to describe the French president, which can be translated as “idiot”, “bastard” or “trickster”. A word very far from the traditional diplomatic vocabulary. The response of the French president didn’t take long to come. He declared with diplomatic words:

“He said very disrespectful things about my wife. I have great respect for the Brazilian people and can only hope they soon have a president who is up to the job”.

Is this diplomatic behaviour new?

Diplomacy has its own rules. The job of diplomats such as President is to weigh the words, use euphemism and play with semantic shades. Diplomacy as an institution appeared in the Middle Age around the sixteenth centuries. Its aim was to ensure peace and set up trade by negotiations as a tool to avoid violence. This came with stabilization between states thanks to the creation of multilateral institutions such as the League of Nations and later the United Nations, with the ratification of treaty such as the Vienna Treaty in 1815 or the International Human Rights Convention in 1948.

In addition, diplomacy is a perfect instrument when it comes to solving international crisis for example, the Cuban crisis. At least, it was created to put an end to the practice of selfish states who were only looking out for their own interests. Diplomacy helps to negotiate a conflict outcome, put a stop to state raid and raise collective security.

In the past, even Hitler wasn’t insulted by other countries’ leaders. Also, during the Cold War, both sides worried about each other’s action and thus use the diplomatic language. Usually in diplomacy, leaders used to speak frankly only in private. With time, it’s getting worse. During his presidency, Obama was treated as “son of a whore” by Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte, Johnson (who after becoming chief diplomat) compared Hillary Clinton to “a sadistic nurse in a mental hospital”, Trump named Kim Jong-Un in front of the UN Assembly “the Rocket Man”. We are spectators of a shifting diplomacy where insults represent the standards way of talking.

A redefinition of the political leader

This change in the political landscape raises the question of the definition of a political leader. Is it implied to be exemplary or a good person? Are Obama, Trudeau or Macron the definition of good leaders?

The Latin “Regere” means to govern and to act rightly. At least, is governing a moral matter? Because besides their disrespectful behavior, those extremist leaders have been democratically elected because they represented political game’s transparency. People are fed up with the expectation to be politically correct. They are acting, that is why there are in power now.

They represent their countries interest in a provocative way as Trump showed recently by his will to buy Greenland from Denmark to insure the US’s position in the subsurface resources race. Even with all those “diplomatic incidents”, it is working as they are popular in their country. They have legitimized a new style by institutionalizing their rude, impolite and unfiltered behavior and vocabulary. Perhaps right now governance means to behave badly.

Good things even in the worst times

However, there is still light in the dark. As well as there being those populist leaders, there are “standard” political leaders who do not have rude behavior as strategy. Diplomacy is not dead as the Pope gave us the proof when he sent a message to Donald Trump without naming him:

“A person who thinks only about building walls — wherever they may be — and not building bridges, is not Christian.”

In addition, this change has led to an increase of the political commitment. In France, during the second round of the presidential elections there was a huge mobilization against the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen. On Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, people are mobilized against populist leaders’ action. Demonstrations for climate change are growing around the world even if populist leader try to spread the fake news that global warming doesn’t exist. Associations for human rights, refugees’ rights, and LGBTQ rights are more active than ever in reaction to those leaders.

The hope and the opposition are here. But this change in the diplomatic area may be the reflection of our time. The question is “How are we going to respond to it?”

Written by Pauline Zaragoza

Photo Credits

Jair Bolsonaro, Jeso Carneiro, CC BY-NC 2.0

Union nations Headquarters, United Nations Photo, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Climate change march, Matthew Kirby, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Declaracao a impresa, Palacio do Planalto, CC BY 2.0

The post Insults, provocation, net-politics: The war of words appeared first on Pike & Hurricane.

Why We Still Need Feminism in 2019

Merle Emrich — Mon, 31 Dec 2018 19:17:09 +0000

When I take a step back and look at my life, I have to inevitably realise that my gender has never been much of an obstacle. I cannot remember a single instance in which I was told I could not do something because I was a girl. And sure, I am aware of sexual violence which is directed mostly towards women. And yes, I am familiar with the terms ‘second shift’, ‘gender pay gap’ and glass ceiling. But I always – naively – assumed that most people in the society I live in share my principles of gender equality. A recent incident however made me realise that, firstly, I live in a social bubble. And secondly, while we have undoubtedly taken great steps forward, feminism is a matter as urgent as ever.

The Butt Incident

The incident I am referring to is the following: I was sitting at home, brooding over my minor thesis when I received a message from Ellen Wagner, a friend of mine. She asked me to read through a letter of complaint she had written because of a job advertisement in her town’s local newspaper. In their ad the company stated that they were looking for a plumbing and heating installer. The job description was accompanied by the image of a woman’s bottom in hot pants and holding tools in her hands.

Since the German advertisement council states: ‘Most of all statements or depictions may therefore not be used in commercial advertisement which, 1. discriminate a person on the basis of their gender […] 5. reduce to their sexuality or suggest their sexual availability’ and furthermore the advertisement council emphasises the consideration ‘whether there is a socially acceptable, non-discriminatory or degrading connection between the depiction of the human body and product/ service’, Ellen decided to write a letter of complaint, and has now agreed to an interview with Pike & Hurricane.

Job advertisment published by a local German newspaper.

P&H: What was your initial reaction when you saw the advertisement in your local newspaper?

Ellen: It took me some time to realise what was actually displayed, and why. When I first saw the ad, my subconscious mind probably instantly categorised it as distasteful, not worthy of any attention. But then, a few seconds later, as soon as I caught myself just reading over it, ignoring it, I got alarmed, and I still am. So really, I had to look twice before being able to reflect on it, which really shocked me. I started asking myself, how come my subconscious mind is so indifferent to seeing women’s bodies selling stuff? Has “Sex sells” become naturalised up to a point where we find it legitimate, and we relativise it by claiming it to be a matter of taste and aesthetics, something entirely subjective?

P&H: What reaction to your letter of complaint were you (predominantly) expecting, and what happened in reality?

Ellen: I sent my letter of complaint both to the company commissioning the ad, as well as to the responsible newspaper that chose to print it. I sent it just wanting to do something about it, not even expecting much of a response from them. I was surprised to find support from the mayor who responded to the letter the same day with a very positive message of support. Another interesting part is that I decided to also share it in one of our local facebook groups, to encourage other people to become active, too. I was aware that the same topic had been thoroughly debated a few days earlier within that group, with many people making some meant-to-be-funny comments about women’s butts, not seeming to understand the problem addressed. I guess at that point, I didn’t take it seriously enough. To me, it looked like they were few, maybe because I didn’t find any convincing arguments in their comments which made my brain just skip this whole debate. For my own post, I used the “disable commenting” function because I didn’t want to have to read the same angry ranting and raving again. I explicitly addressed those people interested in becoming active, those wanting to make a change. When I think about it now, I expected at least half of the people to share my concerns about this particular ad, and maybe even some of them to show interest in becoming active in criticising the ad industry. But that impression changed rapidly after I published the post, and I slowly realised that my expectation of a 50:50 distribution would actually rather turn into a 70:30 ratio, dominated by an angry virtual mob.

The Angry Virtual Mob

The comments of this ‘angry virtual mob’ included remarks as to how ‘[w]hat this woman has written is hard to surpass in ridiculousness’, that ‘she can very well wear a burka during summer’ and ‘must be really bored’, as well as assumptions about the body hair of women criticising this type of advertisement. I imagined this to be the result of the (stereo)typical ‘fragile male ego’ but to my surprise – and utter horror – a considerable amount of the comments showing incomprehension for Ellen’s open criticism of this clearly objectifying and over-sexualised advertisement were posted by women.

Facebook reactions to the letter of complaint ranging from incomprehension to comments such as ‘[s]he can very well wear a burka during summer instead of running around in a bikini’.

P&H: Do you see the issue of or need for feminism differently now in comparison to before the incident?

Ellen: After this incident, I see it as especially urgent to reach out beyond our own, comfortable bubbles. When I think about it now, it’s no surprise that I completely underestimated the negative reactions – because most of the time, I am surrounded by people who share my perspective on many issues. That’s why I think we should never jump to the conclusion that the fight for justice – including feminism – isn’t topical anymore. If we only get out of your bubble, we’ll witness how different other people’s realities are from ours. And then, really, it is just about confronting others with the problems we see. Despite all the negative reactions I am receiving at the moment, I do hope that the anger of the mob turned into food for thought for them. If only few of them start reflecting on the problem, this whole initiative was so worth it. Spreading this personal experience with as many people as possible will definitely be one of my goals in 2019, just to make people aware of how we are taking for granted what we had to fight for throughout history.

P&H: Do you have any explanation for the overwhelmingly negative reactions you received?

Ellen: Of course, the scene where all of this happened was quite a rural area, a small town in Bavaria, where people tend to think less critically about politics and how their lives relate to it. People live in their cozy little worlds – of course they feel under attack if somebody comes and turns it around. And once they saw their conceptual world endangered, I think it was mostly the feeling of anonymity online that encouraged people to join the mob and to start making discriminatory remarks. The barrier is lower online than it is in real life, and people enjoy the kind of anarchy they feel to be given in social networks. Though I have to mention that facebook deleted approximately ten comments because they were considered either hate speech or sexual harassment – so it might not be as anarchical after all…

P&H: What changes in society regarding women/ changes in the debates about women’s/ feminist issues would you like to see?

Ellen: Not seeing feminism as a “women only” club, but as an inclusive movement, driven by empathy and togetherness. In the end, for me, it all goes back to the question of how we want to live together on this planet.

by Merle Emrich

Photo Credits

Job advertisement published in Blickpunkt Pegnitz (Nordbayerischer Kurier), Dez 7, 2018

Facebook Screenshots, Merle Emrich & Ellen Wagner

Slutwalk Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne, 04.06.11, Ben Ponton, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

The post Why We Still Need Feminism in 2019 appeared first on Pike & Hurricane.

Hitting the (Pay)wall

Maya Diekmann — Sun, 07 Oct 2018 16:00:22 +0000

Everyone loves Spotify. And how could you not? The concept of listening to whatever music you feel like, whenever you feel like it and however much you want to for a fixed monthly fee has become so popular that the number of worldwide subscribers has skyrocketed over the past few years – from 15 million paying subscribers in the beginning of 2015 to almost 83 million subscribers as of June 2018. Spotify is just one of many popular content players that show the willingness of consumers to pay for quality content – something that many newspapers have been struggling with over the last few years in their attempts of making digital profitable.

Building a Wall

With a decrease in advertising revenues, newspapers are forced to reform their digital framework. Offering online articles for free is no longer an option, yet the alternative of charging monthly or annual fees doesn’t seem too appealing to the readers. And how can you blame them? Ever since the first newspapers started publishing online, almost all articles could be accessed free of charge. Absurdly enough, people have no problem paying to buy a printed newspaper but paywalls usually cause dissent if not anger among readers. The alteration from freely accessible to paywall protected articles does not necessarily make it easier for newspapers to consolidate their position in the digital business.

Paragon New York Times

One of the forerunners regarding profitable transition from print to digital and the implementation of paywalls online is the New York Times (NYT). Out of their 3.8 million subscribers, 2.9 are digital only. The newspaper’s digital success can be traced back, among other factors, to a high level of engagement with their audience. Using customer data, the NYT strives for a better understanding of potential subscribers and their behavior towards the newspaper. With what frequency do readers visit the website? What articles do they read and what measures can be taken to make them more engaged to ultimately become paying subscribers?

A series of studies conducted by the Media Inside Project reveals readers’ motives for becoming subscribers. Among the findings is the relevance for certain preconditions that will eventually lead to subscription, such as a degree of interest in news and even more so the accuracy of news that social media often fail to provide. The final ‘hop’ over the paywall is prompted by so-called ‘trigger factors’ which can be a certain incident – a famous example is the ‘Trump-bump’ – but more commonly a promotion or a free trial.

Measuring audience engagement is at its core simple and effective, especially on the highly competitive news market. Newspapers can no longer rely on the readers coming to them but they have to meet them—three quarters of the way. Overall, focusing on subscribers certainly is a more sustainable approach to making digital profitable than trying to maximize clicks—a concept with the inherent risk of the proliferation of headline sensationalization. However, a marketing concept based on circulation revenue also entails risk, especially with regards to newspaper content.

Creating Content

Said risk comes with applying analytics to create popular content. If customer data shows a high popularity of sport articles, a strategy to increasingly cover sports is not far-fetched. Yet, such a direct response can be tricky. According to a 2017 article of the Guardian, the newspaper’s most popular article since 2010 with nearly 4,000,000 clicks deals with Edward Snowden’s activities as an NSA whistleblower. In 2017, the Economist’s third most popular article revolved around the world’s most dangerous cities and the New Yorker’s most popular piece was on the sexual assault accusations against Harvey Weinstein.

This should not in any way imply that coverage of these topics is unimportant. However, a general trend of the popularity of articles related to politics, crime, and celebrities and a following ‘over-coverage’ can be observed. Rather than letting customer data dictate topic coverage, analytics should be used by newspapers to allocate resources to content which is not as popular to make it attractive to more readers.

Quid Pro Quotability

Readers traditionally hold a key position when it comes to the success of newspapers. This makes sense: as a journalist you can invest an immense amount of time and money into researching and writing an article but in the end, if no one is buying the finished product, you will not survive in your profession.

Perhaps the most important aspect to consider in the newspapers’ ongoing struggle for digital profitability is not to grant too much power to the reader. There is no doubt that subscribers play a vital role in the fight for survival, but rather than making the audience a content tyrant, newspaper-reader relations should be a symbiosis where in return for keeping the industry alive, newspapers provide authentic content with an added value that is worth paying for. The added value to be received are the factors of professionality and truth – something of great importance in a world of ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’.

Busting the Paywall

Content-wise Spotify and online newspapers are two entirely different worlds, yet their marketing concept is pretty much identical. However, while the music streaming service seems to be perceived as the invention of the century, which listeners are more than happy to invest their money into, newspapers are struggling to gain a foothold in the world of subscriptions. For now, paywalls act more than anything as a deterrent. But the human being is a creature of habit, and time will tell whether subscription based news is a sustainable concept for digital newspapers. In the end it all comes down to people’s willingness to award the same value to authentic news as they do to good music.

By Maya Diekmann

Photo Credits

Paywall, Sofiya Ballin

new york times, samchills, CC BY 2.0

Newspaper readers, Dmitry Dzhus, CC BY 2.0

Related articles:

Information Overload

Online Advertisement – an Outdated Business Model?

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What’s that app doing?

Ryan Campbell — Sun, 07 Oct 2018 15:59:22 +0000

Fake news is prevalent in our society today and we find it on almost every platform, from social media, to television news, to presidential campaigns, and most of the time it seems harmless. But what if it is not? What if a text message you have received has the potential to be dangerous, or even lethal? What would you do with that message? How would you react? Would you kill?

The Trust Issue

When information originates from trusted sources such as a family member, a friend, or even government officials, it becomes hard to question its validity, as you trust its source. This is especially true when the information we receive validates our opinions, prejudices, or even the fears we may hold about a particular group within or aspect of our society. We seek to confirm our biases and it provides us comfort in knowing that we are not alone in what we are thinking about or noticing in our communities.

This trust, this satisfaction we find in the information we choose to consume, makes the dissemination of information, and even misinformation, an easy task across social media platforms, where an immense amount of information congregates. Fake news can often be harmless, such as a video showing a commercial airliner doing a barrel roll during a typhoon, or a shark which appears in almost every hurricane, to the more disturbing such as the allegation that a Washington D.C. based pizza restaurant was a front for a child sex ring ran by Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other prominent Democrats. Fake news, however, can be a lot more dangerous, even deadly.

The Rumors

Over the past few months, mobs, driven by misinformation spread on the popular messaging service WhatsApp, have killed multiple people in states across the Republic of India. The communications in question targets the fears people of any community hold: suspicion of outsiders and that of having your children taken. The rumors spreading on WhatsApp alerted people to the fabricated threat of outsiders entering their area with the intention of abducting children, killing people, or even harvesting organs.

The popular messaging app, with over two-hundred million users just within India, allows for messages and video/audio clips to be shared without any indication as to its authenticity or origin. India is WhatsApp’s largest market and with the price of smartphones and internet data decreasing annually, that market is only going to expand. The rumors even spread from WhatsApp to local media stations where they took on a life of their own. This, alongside the ease and pace as to which information can be shared, and with the general lack of education about the dangers of sharing false information, contributes to the problem India finds themselves in today.

So What Happened?

In May, a family of five was driving in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu to visit a temple; they were lost however, and asked for directions. This raised the suspicion of the locals, suspecting them of being child traffickers, and eventually the family were greeted by a mob who took them out of their car, stripped them naked, and beat them. Soon, sixty-five year old Rukmani was dead, the others close to it, and forty-six people were arrested.

This story is not unique. Nearly two-dozen people have been killed, and many more injured in this manner across India over the past few months, and these killings are not just limited to villages, attacks have even happened in major tech hubs and cities, such as one example in India’s third largest city Bangalore.

Some of the messages attributed to the killings were videos, one of which appeared to show a man on a scooter kidnapping a child. From the outside, the video appears to be exactly what the rumors have been describing: a man abducting a child in a public street. However, this video originates from a Pakistani public service announcement about the dangers of child abduction. The video ends with a message stating that in Karachi, Pakistan, three-thousand children go missing annually and urges parents to be vigilant to ensure the safety of their children.

The version found on WhatsApp however, was edited to remove the concluding message and leaving only the video of the mock kidnapping. Without the clarifying message at the end it is easy to mistake the depicted event as an actual kidnapping and when the video is shared with a message indicating that this is happening nearby it can be persuasive. The messages and clips that are received, may or may not reflect reality, and with no safeguards within the app to determine the credibility of information received, not much can be done to determine the authenticity of the message.

What Can be Done?

Discovering the origin of these false and potentially dangerous messages is no simple task. The end-to-end encryption that WhatsApp was built on makes it difficult for authorities to determine where these messages originate. If authorities join WhatsApp groups, such as was the case in Balaghat, a district in the state of Madhya Pradesh, they may be able to determine who broadcasts such messages and make arrests. But often, this is not the norm.

In an attempt to counteract the spread of dangerous misinformation, WhatsApp have taken a number of steps aimed at educating the public and limiting the spread of false information. Two blog posts from July, posted on WhatsApp’s website, indicate two tools that the company has implemented to help curb this issue: limitations on forwarded messages and indicators on forwarded messages stating that the messages you received were indeed forwarded. This is done to urge users to consider the validity of the message before sharing it with others. WhatsApp also removed the “quick-forward” button that would appear next to messages containing any form of media. This is expected to help curb the spread of fake news as users in India forward more messages than users in any other country.

Authorities in India are doing their best to educate the public about how to discern what is false from what is true. Police have been taking to the streets, handing out flyers, holding town meetings, and even speaking to students, all in an effort to urge the public to be skeptical of what they may come across online. WhatsApp themselves recently have taken out informational ads in leading Indian newspapers both in Hindi and English. In some areas, the Indian government even shut down the internet at times in attempts to quell the flow of misinformation and WhatsApp even offered a $50,000 USD reward to anyone who can come up with a solution for this problem.

However, these are all just temporary fixes to a larger problem. While many things can be done to improve the app, it is not fair to place all the blame for these events on WhatsApp, for on the other side of these messages are real people who decide to create and distribute this information. This points to a larger societal problem that cannot be changed by some alterations to the app’s policies or code. Change needs to occur which dissuades people from wanting to produce misinformation in the first place, before it is spread. If those people are reached, then WhatsApp, Indian officials, and the general public have a chance at preventing its spread. In the meantime, think before you share a post.

By Ryan Campbell

Photo Credits

WhatsApp, Senado Federal (CC BY 2.0)

Angry Mob, Dalibor Levíček (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Screenshot WhatsApp, Ryan Campbell

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The Social Network of Ethnic Conflict

Nikhil Gupta — Sun, 07 Oct 2018 15:59:14 +0000

Social media is a place where you will find anything ranging from a passively nihilistic moth meme– to rallying people into committing violence. The latter is slightly more concerning. How does one go about drawing a line here? Surely, social media platforms extend a certain responsibility when it comes to controlling hostile and potentially life threatening content…right? Let’s take a closer look at how the use of Facebook can be a dangerous prospect in some countries.

The Coveted Torch of Information

In a typically democratic and well-developed country- the responsibility of filtering and distributing information is bestowed onto the industry of traditional journalism. Clearly, such a responsibility is no joke and there are conventional standards set to uphold the integrity of this industry. The journalist is, for instance, required to be objective and unbiased. In this regard the press is referred to as the 4th estate, and its freedom is essential to maintain democracy. The Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) substantiates this through statistical research and have found that a freer press is an integral part of freedom.

Such a status quo has encountered a post-millennial, generation Z problem. The press has been using long-established, traditional media platforms such as TV broadcasts, radio and newspapers. However, the world is changing. Social media platforms have been – either knowingly or unwittingly – competing with these traditional media platforms over the coveted torch of information. The former makes the audience its nucleus, whereas the latter puts the audience in a passive position- Nobody likes being told what’s what!

Information Rivers and Floods

An exponential rise of social media platforms has accelerated the flow of information in the world. A vast amount of information is available to us at our utmost convenience. The catch here is that its independence means that there are no conventional standards of filtering this information. Consequently, the combination of an information overload and convenience can be disastrous. This is mainly because the traditional media has been heavily undermined by the so-called fake news epidemic. The gimmick here is that people don’t like being told what’s what on the one hand – but ironically on the other hand resort to dubious sources of information that confirm their pre-existing biases. This can be observed in the watershed cases of the presidential elections in the US, and Brexit.

If the impact of misinformation via social media on countries with an established political structure and a 4th estate is this high, then what about misinformation in countries without such a system? In the cases of Myanmar and South Sudan, misinformation and hate speech spread across Facebook have contributed to ethnic conflict.

Dark Side of the Coin

I remember being immensely fascinated and inspired by my friend who participated in the Egyptian Revolution. People – in absolute solidarity – rose up against a despot in a revolution that inspired its neighbors to muster the courage and follow suit. The role of Facebook for Egyptians evolved from a place to vent into a platform to organize protests and rallies. However, Facebook was a mere tool used by Egyptians in a cause that was already echoed in the country. In the words of Professor Henry Jenkins, “We do not live on platforms, we live across platforms. We choose the right tools for the right job.” The dark side of the coin here is that false information circulating around Facebook can be misinterpreted as truth.

In Myanmar, for instance, Facebook is often seen as ‘the internet’. This is unsurprising when you realize that half a decade ago, Myanmar was one of the least connected countries in the world. In 2012, only 1.1% of its population had access to the internet. However, in 2013, the price of mobile SIM cards dropped from over $200 to $2 due to the deregulation of telecommunications. This led to a majority of the population to purchase SIM cards with internet access. Around this time, Facebook went viral and soon was considered a status symbol. In essence, people resorted to this social media platform for daily information.

The flipside is manifested in Buddhist extremists that circulate hate speech against Rohingya muslims. In 2014, a Muslim man was rumoured to have raped a Buddhist woman, and this information spread like wildfire on Facebook. Upon reading this on extremist Buddhist monk- Ashin Wirathu’s public page, people did not question the legitimacy of the information by searching for evidence. Instead, it resulted in a riot of people that ultimately ended with two people dying.

Facebook and ‘the Enemy’

Myanmar has, in recent times, been scrutinized by the international community over cases of multiple human rights violations against the Rohingyas. According to Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF), casualties are a shattering 10,000 deaths. Facebook is used as a tool by influential individuals to paint a picture of ¨an enemy¨ according to their arbitrary bidding. They have no journalistic responsibility to relay an unbiased truth. Instead, misinformation is used for the pursuit of power by the manipulation of a vulnerable people. I know, sometimes, the truth hurts.

Feeling unnerved yet? Well, it gets darker. It seems political vulnerability and Facebook’s openness have more in common than you thought, as a similar dynamic can be seen in other countries. South Sudan’s on and off civil war has left its 4th estate in shambles. Information isn’t relayed through the metric of objectivity, but as a tool to rally for the war effort. Berlin based researcher Stephen Kovats notes, “Linkages between social media, and word of mouth, and ending up with a gun in the hand or a machete, those are fairly clear.”

The logic is painfully straightforward. Unity is good for the cause and anger is a powerful fuel that unites. Someone finds a gruesome image of people killed in an unrelated war. Regardless of its truth, it is spread around Facebook with the claim that the enemy had a hand in it. The resulting anger creates a larger divide between the two factions and in the case of South Sudan, takes a racial context. In 2016, a UN report concluded that “social media has been used by partisans on all sides, including some senior government officials, to exaggerate incidents, spread falsehoods and veiled threats, or post outright messages of incitement.”

Accountability to the people

So how did this come to be? Surely Facebook must have a protocol to deal with hate speech and life threatening misinformation. The truth is that it heavily relies on users reporting the hate speech for it to be flagged and ultimately removed. However, there exists a massive problem in translation. The main languages of both South Sudan and Myanmar are in a different text and Facebook is severely understaffed in both countries to have the resources to deal with these intricacies.

In the case of South Sudan, Facebook is not equipped to recognize certain offensive discourses and there are several terms used commonly in South Sudan that go under the radar. For instance, the term ‘kokoro’ is a derogatory term used to describe people that eat too much. However, in a social context it is used to refer to the Dinka tribe in an offensive manner. Similarly, the term ‘ber’ is used to address people who do not associate with either tribes and must, therefore, be killed. In Myanmar, discourses such as ¨if its kalar, get rid of the whole race¨, and ¨just feed them to the pigs¨ are circulated on Facebook.

The truth hurts because Facebook has it all backwards. While Mark Zuckerberg has officially acknowledged these concerns, attempts to rectify this are frankly not enough because countries like Myanmar and South Sudan are nowhere near Facebook’s list of priorities.

What now?

So in a nutshell, Facebook’s prioritization of incessant expansion abroad has left the social media platform vulnerable to being a breeding ground for violence. In an attempt to expand their business, they managed to become ever-present in countries where its omnipotence has, albeit as a bi-product, resulted in a monopoly of information. This monopoly is unfortunately used for misinformation.

What can be done to change this? The main focus should be raising awareness to people in these countries about misinformation. I believe that this is a calling for the industry of journalism to evolve from the use of not only mass media, but also to be equally active and prevalent in social media. If people are -from a position of convenience i.e. social media-made aware of legitimate sources of information, it could save lives.

Related articles:

Ashin Wirathu: One Man Triggering Ethnic Conflict

Lessons Learned from Chapel Hill

Photo Credits

Ayeyarwady Bagan, Yoshitaka Ando (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Facebook Translations, Marco Bardus (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Information, Rosalyn Davis (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Myanmar: Urgent Humanitarin Needs in Rakhine State, EU Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Myanmar’s Rakhine State: different realites of displaced, confined and resettled communities, EU Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

South Sudan, Steve Evans (CC BY-NC 2.0)

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Information Overload

Eligija Rukšytė — Sun, 07 Oct 2018 15:58:21 +0000

Lying and misinterpretation. These are the things you think of first when you hear the concept of misinformation. However, if you take a different approach it could be said that misinformation does not come from being dishonest, but rather from an excessive amount of information.

Media Expansion

A few decades ago the main sources of information were written papers, radio and television, but over the years, the concept of news has expanded. Now they involve new media creating content and new meanings. Not only is there traditional literacy, but digital too. All information that is present can be digital at any time. People are becoming more involved in creating literacy, which can be a source of information for others.

Since the earlier days when the printing press was the dominant medium, only those who had access to it had the power of the written word, but now most people can spread their ideas freely. Today, organizations, politicians and other important people have social media accounts which gives citizens an opportunity to ask them questions directly, and to complain or share their concerns. Through this new open space of discussion, more opinions are put out without restriction or fact check. Moreover, with visual language being involved even more information is being provided. An infographic from WebDAM states that posts with added gifs, pictures, videos or even emojis get higher engagement than text-only posts. Overall, with the speed of life that society is functioning in nowadays, everyone is a participant of this information culture.

The whole concept of using different methods to communicate and share ideas on the internet has its own definition called netspeak. Cambridge Dictionary describes netspeak as “the words, abbreviations, etc. that people use when communicating on the internet”. With the help of new media technologies, there are more and more people who create literate content on social media, blogs, chats, comments, and articles every day.

How do we select useful information?

All the information we consume comes from various sources and in different forms and with even more comments and ideas attached to them. Back in 1990, Professors Michael McKenna and Richard Robinson introduced a concept of Content Literacy, which means the ‘ability to use reading and writing for the acquisition of new content in a given discipline’. This skill allows to provide material for the world daily. A study done by Dr. Martin Hilbert and his team at the University of Southern California shows that now, with 24-hour television, internet, and mobile phones, we receive five times more information every day than in 1986. Due to this, people could get easily misled. The only way not to get caught up with this information madness is to be knowledgeable about it.

Paul Gilster, the author of the book “Digital Literacy”, has said in an interview that digital literacy must be more than the ability to use digital sources effectively; it is a special kind of mindset or thinking. Literacy affected by new media could have multiple meanings behind it. Now that literacy also involves visual aspects, there are endless possibilities to understand text. People can interpret content transferred through technologies (TV, films, magazines, newspapers, games, internet, mobile phones, etc.) however they want to.

It can be hard to keep up with all information if we do not choose to analyze what we read. Political parties or high profile politicians usually use the help of professional writers to make their official statements, while some make ordinary post on social media. That way, after you read it or hear it, you might think the way it was purposely intended for you to think. Thus, it is really important to identify what information people can be relying on, otherwise choices could be influenced by the authorities. Over the years, the same concept of content literacy has changed and Professor Barbara Moss describes it as ‘Content area literacy is a cognitive and social practice involving the ability and desire to read, comprehend, critique and write about multiple forms of print ’. Therefore, content literacy is the ability to create information, but also a knowledge of how to find different meanings, intentions behind it which is a way to select useful material and not to get caught up with too much information.

Digital natives and digital immigrants

This digital era, which brings us a massive amount of information daily, is not new for everyone. Digital natives, or people who were born in an age of technology, are already closely familiar with new media and digital literacy. They are already able to use different media channels, create content, understand meanings behind different text and has skills on writing in digital world. However, there are digital immigrants to whom all these new ways of viewing content was brought up as they were older, which means they are still adapting, learning to have essential skills in order to create the right content or select useful information. Since more people are born in the technology world, the generation gap between these groups is decreasing.

Since new ways of receiving information are created every day, for new generations, it could still become difficult to stay updated. As a result, there is a possibility to have a big generation gap which prevents technologies from developing and that would stop new media and literacy from processing, because new mediums would not be created. In a case like this, misinformation could develop another concept which comes from the generation gap.

Mastering the (Mis)Information Overload

Information and the audience who are reacting to it, are a powerful tool which can change opinions or even actions. This means that with this big amount of content that we receive daily it is essential to be digitally literate and to understand news your own way. In order to progress and to be more open to the world, we should not be trying to stop ourselves from receiving information but rather gain abilities to recognize different meanings and intentions behind it. Misinformation or information overload only happens when certain knowledge, skills are not applied.

By Eligija Rukšytė

Pictures

by Freepik

The post Information Overload appeared first on Pike & Hurricane.

Mis(sed) Information: Who killed Father Christmas? We Did!

Julia Glatthaar — Sun, 07 Oct 2018 15:58:00 +0000

Did you know that Christmas was banned in Berlin in 2013? And have you heard about that time when immigrants looted a Christmas tree in a Western shopping center? No? But surely you must know about the Swedish law that bans Christmas lights to avoid angering Muslim refugees. Still not ringing any Christmas bells? No? That is because all of these bizarre headlines constitute a part of the fake news that are cursing the internet and our minds. However, fake news and alternative facts are not the only way in which misinformation spreads.

Today when you are enjoying the beginning autumn, and the first Christmas ads are popping up in the stores, we will discuss how news get to us, and why every one of us is affected by misinformation. This article is not about weird Christmas headlines, but about the headlines we don’t read.

Net neutrality

In order to talk about missed information, we need to clarify, how certain topics reach us. And net neutrality, a lovely alliteration, is the means which should provide us, the internet users, with neutral and unbiased search results. However, search algorithms are shaped by and based upon our personal search history. Therefore, it often happens that some information, and not only cat videos but at times very relevant information, slips through the world wide web.

So, when we look something up, different websites are ranked by both google search algorithms as well as by our personal preferences. And, as all of us know, nobody looks up the search hits on page 36, right? Moreover, more and more people use social media as their primary news source. Since you actively shape for instance your facebook news feed, you actually end up with narrow and single-minded stories. Hence, a lot of information will never reach you.

Prioritisation and Missed Information

The same goes for TV news and newspapers, since they need to prioritise the news in order to cover what they deem to be the most important information. Different shows and newspapers are made for a specific audience, catering towards their backgrounds and political preferences. That way the same event is reported in different ways, or events are not reported at all.

Additionally, a study by Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) on local newspapers claims that the vast majority of the news was essentially repetitive with less than 20 percent of all news actually containing new information. And even if you do look at a variety of sources, your personal bias influences the types of news you look out for, actively remember and act upon. For instance our so called “negative bias“ makes us hear and remember mainly bad news.

Father Christmas Is Still Alive

Everytime fake news that made their round on public or social media are debunked, there is an outcry of indignation. Who could have known that no Christmas tree has been set ablaze on purpose? Who could have known that Christmas is still legal? We should have bought some decoration after all! And why would anybody knowingly spread these lies in the first place? What can we do? Yet, as you know now, there are much more subtle mechanisms through which bias is introduced into our daily news consumption. And Father Christmas might be still alive after all and is waiting on page 36 of google.

By Julia Glathaar

Photo Credits

Wanted: Santa Claus, Kevin Dooley (CC BY 2.0)

Net Neutrality, Free Press Action Fund (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

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