Searching for "democracy"

bots and disinformation

Computer-generated humans and disinformation campaigns could soon take over political debate. Last year, researchers found that 70 countries had political disinformation campaigns over two years from r/Futurology

Bots will dominate political debate, experts warn

 

 

Last year, researchers at Oxford University found that 70 countries had political disinformation campaigns over two years.
Perhaps the most notable of such campaigns was that initiated by a Russian propaganda group to influence the 2016 US election result.

he US Federal Communications Commission hosted a period in 2017 where the public could comment on its plans to repeal net neutrality. Harvard Kennedy School lecturer Bruce Schneier notes that while the agency received 22 million comments, many of them were made by fake identities.
Schneier argues that the escalating prevalence of computer-generated personas could “starve” people of democracy

 

++++++++++++
more on deepfake in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=deepfake

Idolization of Technology

Narcissism and the Idolization of Technology

Marshall McLuhan , Understanding Media,

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
one of the greatest future threats to liberal democracy was society being caught unprepared by an advancing technology that changes social conditions, so that people find themselves “in a situation which they didn’t foresee and doing all sorts of things they didn’t want to do.”

while the user of media is distracted by its content, he is more susceptible to the actual agent of its influence— the medium itself. Hence, McLuhan’s most famous aphorism, “The medium is the message.”

Viewing social media through this lens, it seems obvious that it is not the content, or what is said on these very popular platforms where the true power to influence lies, rather it is in the medium itself.

information gerrymandering

Information gerrymandering in social networks skews collective decision-making

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02562-z

https://www.facebook.com/mariana.damova/posts/10221298893368558

An analysis shows that information flow between individuals in a social network can be ‘gerrymandered’ to skew perceptions of how others in the community will vote — which can alter the outcomes of elections.

The Internet has erased geographical barriers and allowed people across the globe to interact in real time around their common interests. But social media is starting to compete with, or even replace, nationally visible conversations in print and on broadcast media with ad libitum, personalized discourse on virtual social networks3. Instead of broadening their spheres of association, people gravitate towards interactions with ideologically aligned content and similarly minded individuals.

n information gerrymandering, the way in which voters are concentrated into districts is not what matters; rather, it is the way in which the connections between them are arranged (Fig. 1). Nevertheless, like geographical gerrymandering, information gerrymandering threatens ideas about proportional representation in a democracy.

Figure 1 | Social-network structure affects voters’ perceptions. In these social networks, ten individuals favour orange and eight favour blue. Each individual has four reciprocal social connections. a, In this random network, eight individuals correctly infer from their contacts’ preferences that orange is more popular, eight infer a draw and only two incorrectly infer that blue is more popular. b, When individuals largely interact with like-minded individuals, filter bubbles arise in which all individuals believe that their party is the most popular. Voting gridlock is more likely in such situations, because no one recognizes a need to compromise. c, Stewart et al.1 describe ‘information gerrymandering’, in which the network structure skews voters’ perceptions about others’ preferences. Here, two-thirds of voters mistakenly infer that blue is more popular. This is because blue proponents strategically influence a small number of orange-preferring individuals, whereas orange proponents squander their influence on like-minded individuals who have exclusively orane-preferring contacts, or on blue-preferring individuals who have enough blue-preferring contacts to remain unswayed.

deepfake

Deepfake danger: what a viral clip of Bill Hader morphing into Tom Cruise tells us

Are deepfakes a threat to democracy? The creator of a series of viral clips says he is raising awareness of their subversive potential

Elle Hunt  August 13, 2019

https://www.theguardian.com/news/shortcuts/2019/aug/13/danger-deepfakes-viral-video-bill-hader-tom-cruise

deepfakes – doctored videos fabricating apparently real footage of people – and their potential to disrupt democracy.

+++++++++
more on #fakenews and audio/video in this this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2017/07/15/fake-news-and-video/

https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2019/07/21/deep-fake-audio/

Iris Murdoch on Storytelling

Iris Murdoch on Storytelling, Why Art Is Essential for Democracy, and the Key to Good Writing

“A good society contains many different artists doing many different things. A bad society coerces artists because it knows that they can reveal all kinds of truths.”

“Storytelling is a tool for knowing who we are and what we want.” Ursula K. Le Guin

philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch (July 15, 1919–February 8, 1999) — one of the most lucid and luminous minds of the twentieth century — explored in a long, deep, immensely insightful 1977 conversation with the British broadcaster and philosopher Bryan McGee, which aired on McGee’s television series Men of Ideas.

Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature (public library).

the fundamental difference between the function of philosophy and that of art — one being to clarify and concretize, the other to mystify and expand.

A century after Nietzsche examined the power of language to both conceal and reveal truth, and several years before Oliver Sacks’s trailblazing insight into narrative as the pillar of identity, Murdoch considers how we, as storytelling creatures, use language in the parallel arts of literature and living

Hemingway’s admonition against the dangers of ego in creative work. distinguish a recognisable style from a personal presence. 

bridging William James’s landmark assertion that “a purely disembodied human emotion is a nonentity” and Tolstoy’s insistence that “emotional infectiousness” is what separates good art from the bad

There is always more bad art around than good art, and more people like bad art than like good art.

James Baldwin wielded the double-edged sword of the artist’s duty to society, Murdoch insists on this largeness: The artist’s duty is to art, to truth-telling in his own medium, the writer’s duty is to produce the best literary work of which he is capable, and he must find out how this can be done.

In consonance with John F. Kennedy’s exhortation to a propaganda-smothered society — “We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.”
(My note: Lenin – Art is always political. He did not distinguish art and propaganda. http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1924-2/socialist-cinema/socialist-cinema-texts/lenin-on-the-most-important-of-the-arts/)

after the teenage Sylvia Plath precociously observed that “once a poem is made available to the public, the right of interpretation belongs to the reader,”Murdoch examines the laboratory for reflection and interpretation
My note: on Sylvia Plath, see Elif Shafak’s Black Milk: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9923549-black-milk

Susan Sontag’s beautiful wisdom on storytelling and what it means to be a moral human being, Murdoch weighs the relationship between morality and truth, as mediated by language

Rebecca West on storytelling as a survival mechanism,

+++++++++++++
more on storytelling in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=storytelling

surveillance technology and education

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-06-10-is-school-surveillance-going-too-far-privacy-leaders-urge-a-slow-down

New York’s Lockport City School District, which is using public funds from a Smart Schools bond to help pay for a reported $3.8 million security system that uses facial recognition technology to identify individuals who don’t belong on campus

The Lockport case has drawn the attention of national media, ire of many parents and criticism from the New York Civil Liberties Union, among other privacy groups.

the Future of Privacy Forum (FPF), a nonprofit think tank based in Washington, D.C., published an animated video that illustrates the possible harm that surveillance technology can cause to children and the steps schools should take before making any decisions, such as identifying specific goals for the technology and establishing who will have access to the data and for how long.

A few days later, the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology, in partnership with New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, released a brief examining the same topic.

My note: same considerations were relayed to the SCSU SOE dean in regard of the purchase of Premethean and its installation in SOE building without discussion with faculty, who work with technology. This information was also shared with the dean: https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2018/10/31/students-data-privacy/

++++++++++++
more on surveillance in education in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=surveillance+education

fake news hybrid war

https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000006188102/what-is-pizzagate.html

Russia and far right spreading disinformation ahead of EU elections, investigators say

‘The goal here is bigger than any one election. It is to constantly divide, increase distrust and undermine our faith in institutions and democracy itself’
Matt Apuzzo, Adam Satariano 2019-05-12T13:13:04+01:00″

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/eu-elections-latest-russia-far-right-interference-fake-news-meddling-a8910311.html

difference between EU and US school systems

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN HIGHER EDUCATION

 | Published in Interesting Facts | Written by Patricia May

Differences between European and American Higher Education

What are some of the major differences between schooling in Europe vs the US?

https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-of-the-major-differences-between-schooling-in-Europe-vs-the-US

School Systems in Europe and America
http://www.moltke.de/inhalt/seite/school-systems-europe-and-america

Differences between German and American high schools
http://toridykes.com/blog/2014/6/20/schoolsystemdifferences#.XMxnkZNKhTY

Compare U.S., European Bachelor’s Degree Programs

Undergraduate programs in the U.S. are typically four years long, while many European programs last three years.

Kelly Mae Ross, Staff WriterAug. 11, 2017, at 7:00 a.m. https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/articles/2017-08-11/how-bachelors-degree-programs-in-the-us-and-europe-differ

European Universities vs. American Universities: We Win
http://www.thecollegesolution.com/european-universities-vs-american-universities-we-win/

Schools and class in Europe and America
The secret to a sound American education? Have rich parents
https://www.economist.com/democracy-in-america/2010/03/29/schools-and-class-in-europe-and-america

++++++ peer reviewed +++++++++++
.
West, M. (2012). Global lessons for improving U.S. Education: international comparisons of student achievement illustrate the gains possible for students in the United States and offer insights on how to achieve them. Issues in Science and Technology, 28(3), 37–44. https://mnpals-scs.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=gale_ofa287392223&context=PC&vid=01MNPALS_SCS:SCS&search_scope=MyInst_and_CI&tab=Everything&lang=en

Launched in 2000 as a project of the OECD, the PISA is administered every three years to nationally representative samples of students in each OECD country and in a growing number of partner countries and subnational units such as Shanghai. The 74 education systems that participated in the latest PISA study, conducted during 2009, represented more than 85% of the global economy and included virtually all of the United States’ major trading partners, making it a particularly useful source of information on U.S. students’ relative standing.

The United States’ historical advantage in terms of educational attainment has long since eroded, however. U.S. high-school graduation rates peaked in 1970 at roughly 80% and have declined slightly since, a trend often masked in official statistics by the growing number of students receiving alternative credentials, such as a General Educational Development (GED) certificate.

in many respects the U.S. higher education system remains the envy of the world. Despite recent concerns about rapidly increasing costs, declining degree completion rates, and the quality of instruction available to undergraduate students, U.S. universities continue to dominate world rankings of research productivity. The 2011 Academic Rankings of World Universities, an annual publication of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, placed eight U.S. universities within the global top 10, 17 within the top 20, and 151 within the top 500. A 2008 RAND study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Defense found that 63% of the world’s most highly cited academic papers in science and technology were produced by researchers based in the United States. Moreover, the United States remains the top destination for graduate students studying outside of their own countries, attracting 19% of all foreign students in 2008. This rate is nine percentage points higher than the rate of the closest U.S. competitor, the United Kingdom.

Abel, H. (1959). Polytechnische Bildung und Berufserziehung in internationaler Sicht. International Review of Education / Internationale Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft / Revue Internationale de l’Education, 5(4), 369–382. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01417254

https://mnpals-scs.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=jstor_archive_43441316&context=PC&vid=01MNPALS_SCS:SCS&search_scope=MyInst_and_CI&tab=Everything&lang=en

Peterson, P., Woessmann, L., Hanushek, E., & Lastra-Anadon, C. (2011). Are U.S students ready to compete? The latest on each state’s international standing.(feature). Education Next, 11(4), 50–59.

https://mnpals-scs.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=gale_ofa267524305&context=PC&vid=01MNPALS_SCS:SCS&search_scope=MyInst_and_CI&tab=Everything&lang=en

Student Proficiency on NAEP

At one time it was left to teachers and administrators to decide exactiy what level of math proficiency should be expected of students. But, increasingly, states, and the federal government itself, have established proficiency levels that students are asked to reach. A national proficiency standard was set by the board that governs the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which is administered by the U.S. Department of Education and generally known as the nation’s report card.

a crosswalk between NAEP and PISA. The crosswalk is made possible by the fact that representative (but separate) samples of the high-school graduating Class of 2011 took the NAEP and PISA math and reading examinations. NAEP tests were taken in 2007 when the Class of 2011 was in 8th grade and PISA tested 15-year-olds in 2009, most of whom are members of the Class of 2011. Given that NAEP identified 32 percent of U.S. 8th-grade students as proficient in math, the PISA equivalent is estimated by calculating the minimum score reached by the top-performing 32 percent of U.S. students participating in the 2009 PISA test. (See methodological sidebar for further details.)

++++++++++ dissertations ++++++++++++++

CAO perspectives: The role of general education objectives in career and technical programs in the United States and Europe
by Schanker, Jennifer Ballard, Ed.D., National-Louis University, 2011, 162; 3459884
https://pqdtopen.proquest.com/doc/875963371.html?FMT=ABS
Factors Related to Student Achievement in Mathematics and Comparison of the U.S. with Other Countries: A Study Based on TIMSS 2007 Report
by Patnam, Venkata Subbaiah, Ph.D., George Mason University, 2013, 232; 3591696
https://pqdtopen.proquest.com/doc/1434876028.html?FMT=ABS
An analysis of international student achievement test outcomes and the competitiveness of nations
by Meyer, David D., Ed.D., Northwest Nazarene University, 2015, 119; 3719078

data interference

APRIL 21, 2019 Zeynep Tufekci

Think You’re Discreet Online? Think Again

Because of technological advances and the sheer amount of data now available about billions of other people, discretion no longer suffices to protect your privacy. Computer algorithms and network analyses can now infer, with a sufficiently high degree of accuracy, a wide range of things about you that you may have never disclosed, including your moods, your political beliefs, your sexual orientation and your health.

There is no longer such a thing as individually “opting out” of our privacy-compromised world.

In 2017, the newspaper The Australian published an article, based on a leaked document from Facebook, revealing that the company had told advertisers that it could predict when younger users, including teenagers, were feeling “insecure,” “worthless” or otherwise in need of a “confidence boost.” Facebook was apparently able to draw these inferences by monitoring photos, posts and other social media data.

In 2017, academic researchers, armed with data from more than 40,000 Instagram photos, used machine-learning tools to accurately identify signs of depression in a group of 166 Instagram users. Their computer models turned out to be better predictors of depression than humans who were asked to rate whether photos were happy or sad and so forth.

Computational inference can also be a tool of social control. The Chinese government, having gathered biometric data on its citizens, is trying to use big data and artificial intelligence to single out “threats” to Communist rule, including the country’s Uighurs, a mostly Muslim ethnic group.

+++++++++++++

Zeynep Tufekci and Seth Stephens-Davidowitz: Privacy is over

https://www.centreforideas.com/article/zeynep-tufekci-and-seth-stephens-davidowitz-privacy-over

+++++++++++

Zeynep Tufekci writes about security and data privacy for NY Times, disinformation’s threat to democracy for WIRED

++++++++++
more on privacy in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=privacy

Chief Privacy Officers

Chief Privacy Officers: The Unicorns of K-12 Education

By Emily Tate     Feb 25, 2019

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-02-25-chief-privacy-officers-the-unicorns-of-k-12-education

Last month, the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) published a report arguing schools and districts should go the way of other industries and hire a Chief Privacy Officer to oversee their organization’s privacy policies and practices.

But the reality is that Chief Privacy Officers in K-12 education are about as common as unicorns.

Two years ago, Denver Public Schools created a new role, the Student Data Privacy Officer, after the Colorado legislature passed a law to promote student data privacy and transparency.

 

1 2 3 4 5 7