Author: Alexandra Borchardt

This text was published by NewsMavens on September 30, 2018

It used to take quite an effort to manipulate people. Considerable amounts of skill, knowledge, engagement and financial means were needed to sway public opinion, influence elections, create a popular uprising or sell low-value products at high cost. Not any longer. And now social media can do it for everybody.

Creating divisive content, lies, fake images, pictures, voice recordings and spreading them at scale has become easy for private and state actors alike, and it’s not surprising so many are taking advantage of it. “Social media manipulation is rising globally”, warns a new report from the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) at Oxford University, and “despite efforts to combat computational propaganda, the problem is growing at a large scale”. The report found that the number of countries where formally organized social media manipulation occurs rose from 28 to 48 within a year — and this is just influence exerted by political parties and governments, primarily around elections or referendums.

Social media has introduced a particular kind of market failure into the marketplace of information. While the costs of producing and establishing truth and trust have risen, spreading lies has become dirt cheap.

And despite all the efforts and good intentions to tackle the problem, no law, no regulation, no official task force alone will be powerful enough to break the dynamics. This is especially the case since this situation delivers big-time benefits to those who profit most from manipulation. We are not only talking authoritarian governments or powerful private sector companies here. There are plenty of politicians along the political spectrum who detest being criticized by journalists and feel that their hour has come, contributing to an anti-media narrative that raises the cost of reliable information even further. So what can be done?

The key to countering these dynamics is understanding them in the first place. As much as consumers have learned not to trust the promises of glossy advertising any longer, to look at commercials more as a way of entertainment and lifestyle than as a reflection of facts (even if the stuff reads “clinically proven”), they need the same healthy scepticism when looking at information. Audiences need to know how media works, whose interests it could be serving and what the underlying financial and political dynamics are.

They need to be aware of the fact that voices and images can be manipulated, that algorithms on social media favour the bold and loud, and what to make of this. And they have to keep on training those deep reading skills that help to develop empathy, critical thinking and reflection. Neuroscientists are already warning that the kind of distracted skim reading prevalent on social media and digital devices harms the brain’s capacities to understand complexities and emotion.

It would be a major mistake to target the media literacy of young children and students only. In fact many of the “digital natives” are much savvier and better equipped to understand the new media world than older generations, who take the written word at face value and are still in awe of all the information opportunities that have opened up to them over the past decade. Indeed, older audiences might need more help in navigating facts and fiction in the digital realm than their children and grandchildren.

As strange as it sounds — more skepticism can be the first step towards greater certainty.

This text was published by NewsMavens on September 8, 2018

In a fast-paced world  attacked by rampant capitalism from one side and authoritarianism from the other, the institutions of democracy must be nourished. Public service media is one way to do it.

Imagine if there was a war and there were no pictures of it. This is the thought that comes to mind when visiting the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, admittedly a rather one-sided account of what happened to and in Vietnam at a time when many of us were already alive. For this is a museum comprised of harrowing images, one after another, culminating in a whole floor of photos from demonstrations all over the world asking the US to keep out of the atrocities that in the end cost more than three million lives, two million of them civilians. It is safe to say that journalists helped to bring this war to an end, and an entire exhibition in the Museum is dedicated to killed or missing photo journalists and cameramen.

These were journalists from all walks of media — commercial, news agencies, and public broadcasters — and all these people and organisations paid a high price to keep the public up to date with what happened in an area of the world many people couldn’t have found on a map, if it hadn’t been pointed out to them on the evening news. But just imagine a day when people won’t be willing to pay this price any longer because they will be satisfied with what they can get on Netflix or YouTube.

Journalism is developing from a must-have into a nice-to-have service these days. Something audiences are willing to pay for if they feel the need, and many don’t. According to the Digital News Report 2018, only 14% of the 74,000 respondents paid for online news in the last year, and newsrooms are feeling the pain.

Staff cuts and the loss of capacities to hold power to account is what describes the commercial side of the industry today.

So luckily, there’s public service media. And they better hang in there as a pillar of democracy, and people better pay for them. Luckily, they do. In March, the Swiss referendum attacking the public service licence fee was killed by 71% of voters who wanted to maintain access to reliable information. And there was only limited outrage when the German Constitutional Court in July ruled in favour of the German public media fee. Citizens know what is at stake. In the Digital News Report, trust figures for public broadcasters regularly exceed those of commercial media.

They seem to be institutions of last resort when it comes to (relatively) unbiased and in-depth information, covering even local regions where producing journalism is a high-cost-affair that many private news organisations can’t or don’t want to afford any longer.

Critics argue that young people are abandoning TV and radio in droves, so why should they pay for them? And the web presence of many public broadcasters is limited at best, indeed. But that is a call for reform rather than for abolishment. Yes, there is a lot of red tape in public broadcasting, and very often there is too much politics and too little agility and innovation. But that can be tackled. It is vital to transport these institutions into the digital world by making them understand the rules of this new world and the needs of younger generations.

As with every institution, mechanisms of accountability have to be established, talent is needed to push them to the next level, cultural change has to be implemented and privilege scrutinized. But that doesn’t mean these institutions are not needed any longer. To the contrary, in a fast-paced world that is attacked by rampant capitalism from one side and new authoritarianism from the other, the institutions of democracy must be nourished. Public service media is one of the ways to do it.

This column was first published by NewsMavens on July 29, 2018   

 

A comparative study by the European Journalism Observatory (EJO) revealed what has been obvious all along, but now it has some tough numbers to back it up. 41% of all stories published in eleven countries’ major newspapers were written by men and only 23% by women.

This is not just another report about gender inequality, it is about what our daughters are learning as they grow up — that it’s still a man’s world. In the eleven European countries covered by the EJO study, 41% of all stories were written by men and only 23% by women, the rest was mainly news agency material.

The authors wrote: “News coverage in Europe is overwhelmingly dominated by male journalists and commentators, who spend much of their time writing about other men.” Only in Portugal did bylines by women exceed those by men. Italy and Germany came in last — by the way, the second devastating analysis about gender equality in Germany published this week.

And it gets worse. In the newspapers and news websites that were analysed, only 15% of pictures showed women by themselves — and this included every female who made it into print or on screen, from German chancellor Angela Merkel to the barely-clad fashion model. In contrast, 43% of pictures showed just men.

Now please don’t anybody dare call this a pipeline problem. There are plenty of female journalists and often they even outnumber men, which is no coincidence either. This is newsroom culture. Like almost everywhere else in the business world, news organizations reward those who belong to the dominant group and behave accordingly, other talent doesn’t get seen. But journalism isn’t just any industry.

Journalism is supposed to represent society and be its voice, at least in democracies. Journalists filter images, facts, quotes and opinion – – they decide who gets a say. And they pride themselves on doing this job much better than algorithms. Only here is the catch, for while it’s important to question algorithmic choice, sometimes editorial choice can be just as bad or even worse. In the 2017 Digital News Report of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, an alarming 54 of respondents said they’d prefer news selection by algorithms to choices made by editors. Looking at the EJO study, who can blame them?

This is a call to action, if journalism doesn’t want to lose its credibility. And yes, there are ways to tackle this challenge. First, editors need to make sure that women are equally represented across all hierarchy levels, particularly in the prestigious genres.

But this alone doesn’t help. Many female journalists learn their skills in a male environment and adjust their work accordingly. This doesn’t make room for the new perspectives that people are attracted by, a critical mass of constructive dissenters is needed. No story the Financial Times ever published online was more read than an undercover report about hostesses being groped at a prestigious fundraising event. Women have an increasing say in the FT newsroom, and it shows.

Second, get the data! The Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, for example, monitors the percentage of male and female coverage with a dashboard. They even invented a bot that points out to every single author how balanced their stories are along gender lines. Awareness is key, problems need to be acknowledged to get solved. And to solve them, clear targets are essential.

Third, newsrooms need to debate their values and think critically about their products. A distorted male/female ratio is a good indicator for a distorted view on society. If news is all about winning and losing, it’s most likely losing out on the people who don’t even show up for the game. Journalism needs to focus more on things that matter to citizens in their daily lives. Otherwise audiences tune out. According to the Digital News Report, 29% are already doing so.

Outside of the news media, the world is full of women. We need to show them to our daughters — and to our sons.

This column was first published in NewsMavens on May 18th, 2018

There are many similarities between the trust deficit that still plagues the financial sector and the one that is beginning to undermine technology companies. Firms like Amazon, Facebook, and Google should study five lessons that most banks never learned after the 2008 crisis.

OXFORD – The predictions were wrong: the global economy didn’t collapse after the 2008 financial crisis. Buoyed by taxpayer-financed bailouts, banks recovered and business at most institutions stabilized. But if there is one lingering casualty of that era, it is the erosion of public trust in the financial sector. Ten years after the crisis began, Main Street still has little faith in Wall

A similar crisis of confidence plagues the technology industry today. As executives at Facebook and Cambridge Analytica rationalize their companies’ use and abuse of personal data, trust in technology firms is approaching a tipping point. “Big Tech” can still salvage its reputation, but its most powerful companies will need to change fundamentally how they operate. And to do that, they must avoid the mistakes that nearly crippled the financial sector a decade ago.

Five key lessons from the financial crisis should guide decision-making in the tech sector today. First, consumer illiteracy can be costly. Shortly before the housing bubble burst, many investors realized they had no understanding of the products they were buying; some didn’t even know they were buying anything. Financial journalism contributed to this atmosphere of ignorance by focusing only on the potential gains, and ignoring the risks.

People engage with technology in similar ways. Companies, governments, and businesses happily plug their entire operations into platforms they cannot control. Doubt, if it does arise, is usually subdued, because the technology is too convenient to abandon. But, just like perilous financial products, the only way to mitigate the risks of new technologies is to be fully educated about what could go wrong.

The second lesson is that hidden costs add up. Before the financial crisis, many customers were sold products with undisclosed fees and financial add-ons that became massive liabilities. Today, more investors recognize that higher returns imply higher risk, but in the technology business, hidden costs continue to entrap unsuspecting consumers. Some of these costs are social – like being pressured by advertisers to buy products. And others are more tangible, like giving away personal data in exchange for access to a service.

Third, inequitable pay and incentive structures are bad for business. Much has been written about the extraordinary bonuses paid to investment bankers during the height of the financial crisis. But the CEOs of Silicon Valley are no Robin Hoods, either. Tech entrepreneurs might tell their investors they want to change the world, but many are intoxicated by the idea that the world will be better when they sell their business to the highest bidder.

Finally, as we learned a decade ago, the global economy is deeply interconnected; no bank was too big to fail or to be rescued. This is true for the largest technology companies as well. The collapse of Amazon or Google – however invulnerable they may seem – would have devastating ripple effects. While many argue that it would be unwise to regulate technology firms with a view to concerns over censorship and access to knowledge, these companies, like their financial-sector counterparts, have grown too big to be left to their own devices.

In the decade since the financial crisis erupted, structural changes have helped stabilize the banking and financial-services industry. Regulations have increased transparency and improved consumer awareness. But the old dynamics, power structures, and bloated pay scales have largely survived. As a result, the sector’s reputation remains in tatters.

For the technology industry to avoid a similar fate, its leaders must increase consumers’ literacy about the products they offer – and the potential dangers they hold. CEOs must support regulation, increase workplace diversity, and make compensation and incentive structures more equitable. Above all, tech leaders should avoid the mistakes made by other industries navigating crisis. And no industry offers a more relevant case study than the one that almost took down the global economy.

This text was first published with Project Syndicate, April 25, 2018

The loss of freedom in the digital age seemed inevitable even before the Cambridge Analytica scandal with its massive breach of data privacy. Citizens appear destined to live in one of these two worlds: Number one is the world of monopoly capitalism, where they are primarily regarded as customers. These customers’ sole purpose is it to generate data that at some stage can be converted into money. This is the world shaped by big American Tech. Number two is the world of state surveillance, where freedom has never been appreciated much in the first place. In this Chinese version of the digital world, citizens are valued only if they serve a state sanctioned purpose.

While world number one conveys at least the illusion of freedom, because it is shaped by the private sector and the package of surveillance and manipulation is wrapped up nicely in huge amounts of customer convenience, world number two doesn’t need that much pretence. The Chinese government is fairly transparent about its goals when it monitors citizen behaviour, ranks them along the lines of their compliance with the state’s agenda and distributes privileges accordingly.

The obvious problem in both of these worlds is the violation of basic human rights. Rights that cannot be relinquished by ticking a box, by the way. But what is wrong structurally is monopolies. In world number one these are the huge conglomerates of Facebook and the like, that dominate search, social media, communication and shopping (Amazon is a powerful search engine). In world number two the monopoly is state power, uncontested by political competition.

While monopolies and freedom don’t go down well together, encouraging monopolies is one of digital technology’s basic functions. Based on data gobbling algorithms tech works towards convergence and the accumulation of power, towards super efficiency and structures that are too big to fail. Freedom in contrast, like nature, allows for variety, independence, redundancy, inefficiency and choice.

As a consequence, what needs to happen is the break-up of monopolies, as quite a few commentators have suggested this week.

This is where Europe comes in. The capacity to negotiate among an abundance of diverse interests, find compromises and push forward effective regulation will be a great asset in a digital world that has promised freedom but has increasingly delivered control.

There is no better known way to promote freedom than through democracy. Regulation, derived from public interest, is at democracy’s core because the interests of the weak can only be protected with rules that restrict the freedom of the powerful.

Silicon Valley used to be admired and envied. Many have wished to follow in its footsteps. But now is the time for more self-confidence on this side of the Atlantic. It is essential that Europe leads a third way between the American and the Chinese varieties of a digital world that currently doesn’t serve its inhabitants but only its proprietors.

This text was originally published with News Mavens, Europe’s all female newsroom.

In a democracy, the rights of the many cannot come at the expense of the rights of the few. In the age of algorithms, government must, more than ever, ensure the protection of vulnerable voices, even erring on victims’ side at times.

OXFORD – Germany’s Network Enforcement Act – according to which social-media platforms like Facebook and YouTube could be fined €50 million ($63 million) for every “obviously illegal” post within 24 hours of receiving a notification – has been controversial from the start. After it entered fully into effect in January, there was a tremendous outcry, with critics from all over the political map arguing that it was an enticement to censorship. Government was relinquishing its powers to private interests, they protested.

So, is this the beginning of the end of free speech in Germany?

Of course not. To be sure, Germany’s Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz (or NetzDG) is the strictest regulation of its kind in a Europe that is growing increasingly annoyed with America’s powerful social-media companies. And critics do have some valid points about the law’s weaknesses. But the possibilities for free expression will remain abundant, even if some posts are deleted mistakenly.

The truth is that the law sends an important message: democracies won’t stay silent while their citizens are exposed to hateful and violent speech and images – content that, as we know, can spur real-life hate and violence. Refusing to protect the public, especially the most vulnerable, from dangerous content in the name of “free speech” actually serves the interests of those who are already privileged, beginning with the powerful companies that drive the dissemination of information.

Speech has always been filtered. In democratic societies, everyone has the right to express themselves within the boundaries of the law, but no one has ever been guaranteed an audience. To have an impact, citizens have always needed to appeal to – or bypass – the “gatekeepers” who decide which causes and ideas are relevant and worth amplifying, whether through the media, political institutions, or protest.

The same is true today, except that the gatekeepers are the algorithms that automatically filter and rank all contributions. Of course, algorithms can be programmed any way companies like, meaning that they may place a premium on qualities shared by professional journalists: credibility, intelligence, and coherence.

But today’s social-media platforms are far more likely to prioritize potential for advertising revenue above all else. So the noisiest are often rewarded with a megaphone, while less polarizing, less privileged voices are drowned out, even if they are providing the smart and nuanced perspectives that can truly enrich public discussions.

If the algorithm doesn’t do the job of silencing less privileged voices, online trolls often step in, directing hateful and threatening speech at whomever they choose. Women and minorities are particularly likely to be victims of online harassment, but anyone may be targeted. The German blogger Richard Gutjahr, for example, became the object of conspiracy theories and the target of intense harassment after being present at two terrorist attacks within two weeks of each other.

Victims of online harassment often respond with self-censorship, and many, with their sense of security and even self-worth eroded, remove themselves from social media altogether. In this sense, by offering blanket protections in the name of “free speech,” countries actually privilege hate speech. But why should a victim’s rights count less than those of their bullies?

In a democracy, the rights of the many cannot come at the expense of the rights of the few. In the age of algorithms, government must, more than ever, ensure the protection of vulnerable voices, even erring on victims’ side at times. If already-vulnerable people are besieged by mobs of extremists and aggressors, it is entirely understandable that they will fear speaking up. If that happens, “free speech” is dead.

Not all NetzDG critics dispute this assessment: some agree that the speech of the vulnerable does need extra protection. But they argue that the necessary protections are already in place. After all, severe insult and incitement to hatred and violence are prohibited, and perpetrators can be prosecuted. French President Emmanuel Macron, for example, favors focusing on strengthening the judicial system’s ability to deal with hate speech and misinformation.

But, in the digital age, speed is decisive. The technology is instant, and online posts can be shared widely within minutes. Democratic institutions move rather slowly – much too slowly for police and the courts to be effective in fighting trolls and online hate. And many victims are not in any position to hire a high-quality lawyer, as Gutjahr did. Relying on the state’s most cumbersome institutions alone is not an effective strategy for protecting free speech on today’s digital communication networks.

Hate speech and other kinds of dangerous and illegal content must be attacked at the source. On one hand, there is a need for increased media literacy on the part of consumers, who need to be taught, from a young age, about the real-world consequences of online hate speech. On the other hand – and this is what the NetzDG attempts to ensure – social-media platforms must ensure that their products are designed in ways that encourage responsible use.

But this is no quick fix. On the contrary, it demands a fundamental rethink of business models that facilitate and even reward hate speech. Firms cannot be allowed to profit from damaging content, while shrugging off responsibility for its consequences. Instead, they must revise their algorithms more effectively and scrupulously to flag content that humans should monitor and assess, while entrenching in all of their business decisions an awareness of their responsibility in the fight for truly free speech.

This may contradict the straightforward business logic of doing whatever maximizes profit and shareholder value. But it is, without a doubt, what is best for society. The German government is right to push companies in the proper direction.

This text was published by Project Syndicate on 16th February 2018