• Le 29 octobre 2024, la région de Valencia (Espagne) subit une catastrophe liée à un « orage en V très peu mobile ».

    The scale of the flooding currently unfolding in Valencia, Spain is unfathomable. This is footage from Chiva, where a jaw-dropping 343 mm of rain was recorded in just 4 hours earlier today, between 4:30 PM and 8:30 PM.

    https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/1851374950826860544/vid/avc1/1080x1440/8vXiOd9nt1GEa9UX.mp4?tag=16

    (Source : https://x.com/WxNB_/status/1851375012688658443)

    Varios muertos y desaparecidos por la DANA. Zonas como Valencia y Albacete, especialmente afectadas #dana

    https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/1851418883149750272/vid/avc1/1080x1632/wGzYweShNZ7KH-Ju.mp4?tag=16

    (https://x.com/JesusCintora/status/1851419147667701761)

    • Ce fut d’une extrême violence comme le montrent toutes les vidéos diffusées sur les réseaux sociaux. Et on est dans un réchauffement global d’à peine 1,5 °C. Imaginez la suite ...

      Inondations en Espagne hier : au moins 54 morts.
      Pensez à cette image à chaque fois qu’un journaliste ou qu’un membre du gouvernement se plaint des activistes climat qui bloquent la route...


      (https://x.com/BonPote/status/1851576628280799282)

    • Un article de WP sur la Gran Riada de Valencia en 1957, où l’on nous parle du détournement du Rio Turia pour protéger la ville des conséquences d’un nouveau débordement (le Plan Sud).
      https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grande_inondation_de_1957_de_Valence

      Évidemment, certains ont sauté sur l’occasion en venant te raconter que « ça s’est déjà vu » et que l’évènement du 29 octobre dernier, c’est pas si dramatique que ça. (Un an de pluie en huit heures de temps et on va dépasser les 100 décès sans compter les « disparus »).

      Quelques explication « après coup » d’un météorologue :
      https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1851653746570235914.html

      Les pluies extrêmes sur #Valence sont associées à une goutte froide qui s’isole vers Gibraltar.
      Cette dynamique n’est pas créée par le changement climatique (même config pour les épisodes similaires du passé -ex : 1957) mais il en amplifie les conséquences (quantité de pluie)
      1/🧵
      Il est faux/réducteur d’attribuer cet événement a une méditerranée +chaude. C’est l’ensemble des océans +chauds en lien avec une atmosphère +chaude qui explique l’excès de vapeur d’eau dans l’atmosphère, véritable réservoir ++ pour les pluies.
      https://video.twimg.com/tweet_video/GbJfsgPW4AAbnl9.mp4


      2/
      C’est donc l’ensemble de l’environnement planétaire qui devient favorable aux pluies extrêmes, ce qui explique que l’ensemble des régions du monde peut être touché par ces coups météo dopés qui frappent ici ou là. Pas forcement d’augmentation en fréquence mais en intensité !

      3/
      La France n’est en aucun cas a l’abri d’un tel événement qui peut frapper sur tout le pourtour méditerranéen. Diminuer les risques impose de réduire immédiatement nos émissions de gaz a effet de serre et de s’adapter en diminuant autant que possible le ruissellement.

      (https://x.com/cassouman40/status/1851653746570235914)

    • Inondations en Espagne : un arbitrage controversé entre [sans] sécurité du public et [ni] intérêts économiques
      https://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2024/10/31/en-espagne-un-arbitrage-controverse-entre-securite-du-public-et-interets-eco

      Alors que le bilan des terribles crues qui ont frappé le sud-est espagnol ne cesse de s’alourdir, et a atteint, jeudi 31 octobre, les 158 morts, la question de la responsabilité de l’administration mais aussi des entreprises valenciennes hante l’Espagne. Pourquoi la région n’a-t-elle envoyé l’alerte sur les téléphones portables des habitants qu’à 20 heures, mardi 29 octobre, quand beaucoup de gens se trouvaient déjà pris aux pièges dans leur véhicule ? L’Agence espagnole de météorologie (Aemet) avait pourtant décrété l’alerte maximale le matin, dès la première heure.
      Et pourquoi les entreprises n’ont-elles pas renvoyé les salariés chez eux ? « Je veux envoyer un appel à la responsabilité des entreprises. Elles ont l’obligation de protéger la vie des travailleurs », a rappelé la ministre espagnole du travail, Yolanda Diaz (Sumar, gauche), le 30 octobre, ajoutant en direction des salariés qu’ils « n’ont pas à courir de risques ».

      « Les pertes humaines sont les seules choses irréparables »
      Ceux que la région et les entreprises ont pris témoignent d’un manque de confiance dans les prédictions météorologiques et de sensibilité aux phénomènes atmosphériques extrêmes, ce qui n’est pas nouveau. En septembre 2023, la présidente de la région de Madrid, Isabel Diaz Ayuso (Parti populaire, PP, droite), avait utilisé pour la première fois le protocole ES-Alert, capable d’envoyer un message à tous les téléphones des personnes présentes sur une zone à risques grâce à un système de radiofréquence, à l’occasion d’une « goutte froide » qui devait déverser des pluies « exceptionnelles » sur Madrid, selon l’Aemet. Sa décision de demander aux Madrilènes de ne pas se déplacer, sauf nécessité absolue, fut très controversée.

      #changement_climatique #climat #inondations #catastrophes_climatiques

    • Illustration de l’#incurie des « autorités » de la région de Valencia (article du 30/10) :
      https://www.vilaweb.cat/noticies/people-trapped-in-a-deadly-trap-the-valencian-governments-negligence-has-si


      People trapped in a deadly trap: The Valencian Government’s Negligence Has Significantly Worsened the Consequences of the Floods

      The disappearance of the President of the Generalitat during the crucial hours of the floods highlights a lack of capacity to manage a catastrophe

      The storm that has ravaged the central regions of the Valencian Country, the most populated strip, is by far the most severe in contemporary times. What was initially announced as a “dana” (the new term for “cold drops” that Valencians are so familiar with) has resulted, thus far, in a provisional toll of 62 dead and dozens still missing. People who cannot locate their loved ones and places where rescue teams are unable to enter even twelve, fourteen, or sixteen hours later. And, for now, material damages are incalculable.

      This dana had been announced, publicized, commented upon, written about, drawn, and explained in a way that seemed almost excessive. Authorities had time to prepare, to activate every possible system to prevent harm to the population. Measures to protect people should have gone beyond school or university closures taken by some local councils.

      But something went wrong to produce such a terrifying provisional figure. Today, even though waters are starting to recede and reveal the landscape of devastation, it’s not yet the aftermath. Today is still “the day.” The “day after” will be when we clarify what happened, why it happened, who made which decisions, and who conveyed which messages.

      In this tragedy, which reeks of diesel mixed with mud, of tears and desperation, there is an implacable chronology. There is a series of political decisions that, read in sequence, give a picture of the lightness with which policies were executed, the lack of political weight of those who make and implement them. They reveal a desolate panorama: the irresponsibility and negligence of those managing public administrations—in this case, President Carlos Mazón (PP).

      The Consell, the Valencian government, took office in July of last year. In November, it abolished the Valencian Emergency Unit. This was part of its electoral program, and Vox, its allies, demanded it loudly. They called it a “chiringuito” (a derogatory term meaning “boondoggle”) of former socialist president Ximo Puig. They stated it this way and even tweeted it—a post that resurfaced when the Campanar building caught fire last February: “The Valencian Emergency Unit, the first agency of Ximo Puig dismantled by Carlos Mazón. The first step in the restructuring of the public business sector announced by the Valencian government.”

      The Consell decided it could do without a global emergency management body, thereby removing a layer of protection for the population.

      Eleven o’clock in the morning of Tuesday was a key moment to perceive the solitude of Valencians facing this catastrophe. At eleven, the spokesperson for the Consell, Ruth Merino, was supposed to hold a press conference to explain the Consell’s decisions. At eleven, the Spanish government’s delegate, Pilar Bernabé, was expected to report on the morning’s developments after a very tough night in Safor and Ribera. And at eleven, the President was scheduled to make statements after attending a sectoral event. The statements overlapped.

      Bernabé explained which roads were closed and a few incidents, but little more. Ruth Merino mentioned the number of schools closed and also listed closed roads, adding little more. President Mazón was more expansive in his statements. Expansive and oddly optimistic, despite media coverage that had already been broadcasting special programming on the human tragedies, stories of people unable to reach work, flooded basements, and the swelling Magre River, which originates in Utiel. Yet he said:

      “As for hydrological alerts, the reservoirs are well below capacity. They are absorbing the incoming water without any issues. There is no hydrological alert for any reservoir so far. So, I’d like to emphasize that the rains are particularly affecting the Magre River, but so far, we have no hydrological alert. This is good news at this hour.”

      And he added: “According to the forecast, the storm is moving towards the Serrania de Cuenca, and consequently, by around six in the evening, the intensity is expected to decrease across the rest of the Valencian Community.”

      After these statements, the president continued his agenda, meeting with various people and taking photos that were disseminated through the communication channels of the presidency. He made no further comments on the floods.

      It was half-past eleven when Mazón made these statements. At 11:45, the Emergency Coordination Center issued a special hydrological alert for the riverside towns along the Magre River. “Alert of increased flow in the Magre River with a record of 350 cubic meters per second. Riversides and towns along the Xúquer River up to the mouth in Cullera are warned.”

      If, when the president spoke, he knew that the Magre River was becoming a danger to the population and did not say so, he committed a highly reprehensible act. If he did not know, it was also serious, as it showed he did not know what he was talking about when he said the reservoirs could contain the water that was already spilling over the riverbed. He called for caution, of course, but conveyed a message of calm that bore no relation to what was actually happening.

      A few hours later, at five in the afternoon, the Xúquer Hydrographic Confederation began to release water from the Forata Reservoir in Yátova. Thus, it ceased its regulatory function, and the Magre River surged towards Algemesí, meeting the Xúquer. It devastated everything in its path. The images circulating on social networks left no doubt that this was a catastrophe of unknown dimensions.

      At the same time, the Poio ravine also filled rapidly, flowing towards the Albufera of Valencia. Disbelieving residents and workers in the metropolitan area of Valencia, where it had barely rained all day, found themselves trapped in a deadly trap. They were in cinemas, shopping for furniture, at work. And there they spent the night. Or they died. The president had spoken of calm at half-past ten in the morning, and he had not been seen since.

      He did not appear again until after half-past nine in the evening. And when he did, he communicated nothing—neither information, nor reassurance, nor encouragement, nor any sense that he had control over the situation. Rather, he admitted that they lacked significant information, that rescue teams couldn’t reach certain places, that communications were indeed down, and that they had no confirmation of fatalities. His statement left the population with an extraordinary sense of vulnerability. The President of the Generalitat appeared, in a corridor, before the microphone of public TV À Punt and the Presidency’s microphone, to say that À Punt was the official broadcaster. Thus, incidentally, he muzzled the press, who could only report what the Generalitat said.

      An Empty Statement

      The president’s silence became an unprecedented cry from people trapped, soaked, lost, and terrified. Testimonies began to emerge from people abandoned on highways, in shopping centers, in a funeral home… People calling 112 and getting no answer. People on rooftops watching firefighters pass by because they couldn’t help them.

      In the middle of this wild, dark, windy, and rainy night, President Mazón appeared again. It was past half-past twelve in the morning. He had donned the red vest of emergency services and spoke of fatalities without specifying a number. As he had done with the Campanar fire, he hid in the darkness to deliver bad news. This time he could not provide an estimated number of fatalities, nor could he give precise information on what was happening. Empty words to say that the Spanish government’s Military Emergency Unit was now working. Nothing more.

      Until this morning, when the count stands at 62 dead, for now. Sixty-two lives cut short in an episode of intense, fierce rain. Perhaps the most severe ever seen in the Valencian Country, yet announced, marked, and warned of.

  • danah boyd on Digital Technology and Everyday Life - New Books Network
    https://newbooksnetwork.com/danah-boyd-on-digital-technology-and-everyday-life

    Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel talks with danah boyd, Partner Researcher at Microsoft Research, founder of the Data & Society Research Institute, and a distinguished visiting professor at Georgetown University, about her career and work. The pair discuss boyd’s the genesis and intellectual background of boyd’s now classic text, It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Teens (Yale UP, 2014) as well as her more recent work on digital infrastructure and the US Census Bureau.

    #danah_boyd

  • 86. danah boyd on freaks, geeks, queers, and lying to the US Census - Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure at UMass Amherst
    https://publicinfrastructure.org/podcast/86-danah-boyd

    Ethan Zuckerman:
    Hey everybody, welcome back to “Reimagining the Internet.” I am your host, Ethan Zuckerman. I am here today with a dear friend of mine, danah boyd is a partner researcher at Microsoft Research, a distinguished visiting professor at Georgetown. She’s the founder of the celebrated research institute Data and Society, where she remains an advisor. She’s one of the most cited scholars on social media. Her book, “It’s Complicated the Social Lives of network teens” is really one of the key works on understanding youth and the social internet. I could keep talking about her, but you would eventually turn off this podcast.
    danah, it’s so great to have you. Welcome to the show.
    danah boyd:
    Thank you. It’s a total delight to be here with you today.

    And so when we put in regulatory frameworks, where the goal is to segment young people from these other things, we’re doing it for a political agenda and we’re not focused on a socialization process. The key to speech for me is that you socialize young people and understanding the speech acts of our world, why they play out the way they do, what is really at play, what is being contested, how do you make sense of the language that’s being thrown around you? 
    Because the other thing that I also struggle with is in the United States where we valorize that idea of quote unquote freedom of speech. We miss the whole point of freedom of speech is to be able to be a responsible speaker for an informed citizenry. It doesn’t mean the right to be amplified. Those are two different things. 
    And so I think for me, it’s this process of like, what are the consequences of your speech? If your speech hurts another person, you have to learn to pay consequences for that. 
    And that’s by the way, what young people are learning, you know, even in the school environment, like we take something like bullying. Bullying is worse in the school than it ever is at home. And we’ve known that in our data for a very long time, the irony of COVID was that bullying is integrated. 
    Turns out when kids don’t go to school, they can get bullied. It’s not that they actually went up higher because of online. The online bullying went through the floor. So it was this weird natural experiment for all of us where like school actually turns out to be the main site of meanness and cruelty and nobody’s going to be sitting there like, “let’s ban school.”

    You know, and again, we can take other parallels. Right? We have a law that says you cannot drink alcohol under 21. I’m sorry, we know the date on of this. This is not what stops people from drinking alcohol under 21. They drink it. But unfortunately they drink it in a way that they’re again not being socialized into thinking about it housely and anybody on a college campus knows that like the drinking dynamic in the United States is far more toxic than in most other countries around the world. And so this is where I find these bans are playing one set of politics and not thinking about the consequences of them, let alone how to negotiate it.

    Ethan Zuckerman:
    You and I are part of a generation who get dismissed as cyberutopians, but maybe a healthy way of looking at it is to say, we actually imagine these technologies being built consistent with our values and towards some of the goals that we hold dear, we did not did a good enough job politically ensuring that our values got built into those technologies. I think one of the interesting questions at this point is, you know, how redeemable are these spaces as we head into 2024 do we still have idealistic views of how these spaces might get used in the backdrop of our politics or is the project dismantling them building alternatives to them keeping them in a box to one extent or another?
    danah boyd:
    So I think my very definition of activism is to fight for a better future than a present. And one of the things that I love are the various versions of dreamers and activists who you do imagine and strive for and work towards a better future that doesn’t necessarily accept the present. And I think there’s really reasonable differences of view of how to get to that, you know, various versions of better futures, more inclusive futures, more equitable futures. And I think the things that I, you know, that has sort of shifted over my career is like certainly growing up as, you know, this queer kid in, you know, rural America, I saw technology in my youth as the thing that would be allowing me to go to that better future because the technology of my youth and the ways in which these technologies that I was living with were already marginalized, already appeared to align with it. So I thought that that was something I could hook to.
    At this point, the technologies of the present are entirely entangled with forms of late-stage capitalism that are about exploitation at its core. So I’m not as committed to saying that hooking my activist future and my belief of towards a better future on a fight for these technologies is going to necessarily work towards an aligned arrangement. And so I think a lot of what I’m struggling with personally and intellectually is like, how do I fight for a better future? Because I’m not committed to thinking that it’s technology.
    And this is where for me, I think like you, I was always seen as like, you know, a techno-optimist. And I think that that was, you know, a misnomer because I think that what I was, I’m an optimist that it’s possible to get to a better future. I for a long time saw technology as one of the tools in that and one of the sites where those things could play out. And I do believe that many, it’s been an amazing site of contestation that’s like made visible a whole set of values and enables so many people to come together.
    But it’s not, I’m not a tech determinist. I don’t believe that the technology is the thing. It just, it was the thing that made sense to use at the time. And I think I’m asking myself, what are the things to use now to fight for a better future.

    And so this is also one of those moments where it’s like, where do we have the political will? And we’re going to regulate technology. We’ve seen state level regulations. But I’d also like to note, most of these are actually to encourage parents to be more surveillant of young people.
    And this is one of my also big sites of frustration because I think a lot of people think that that’s actually a good thing because they imagine all parents are good. And one of the heartbreaking things about my work is learning that, like, no, not always are parents the best actor for young people.
    And it’s worse than that. When we’re in the middle of a cultural war, where we’re trying to actually encourage parents to have control over children’s bodies, you know, in this way that’s actually strategically oppressive, these are laws that are about trying to enable and encourage large mechanisms of oppression that will actually cause more damage long-term than they will actually address the problems at bay.
    So this is one of the reasons why these current debates are very disheartening for me, very confusing for me, because it’s not actually about privacy, or it’s not actually about helping young people. It’s about maximizing surveillance, giving parents power over their children, and actually making certain that we cause more harm long term under this sort of fantasy of moral values and oppression. And that scares me.

    #danah_boyd #Ethan_Zuckerman #Census #Recensement #Médias_sociaux #Parents

  • The Planning of Palestine: Urban Planning under and as Occupation with #Dana_Erekat and #Eyal_Weizman

    This episode is about planning in Palestine, and especially Gaza. As you all know, this is a podcast about Latin American Cities. However, right now it seems difficult to talk or think about anything other than the genocide unfolding in Palestine. Many of those of us who think critically about Latin American cities find so many connections between our histories and struggles and the settler-colonial project of Israel and its occupation of Palestine. This is particularly true when we reflect on the role of planning and architecture in cementing the occupation, dispossession and violence upon Palestinian people, and particularly Gazans. This is the focus of today’s episode.

    To discuss this, it is truly my privilege to host cohost, Mekarem Eljamal and our two guests, Dana Erekat and Eyal Weizman.

    Dana is a Palestinian architect and planner, with a BA in architecture from UC Berkeley and an Masters in City Planing from MIT. The list of positions she has held is as impressive at it is long. Among these, she has worked with the UNDP, with the World Bank, the Kenyon Institute, and more. From 2013-2012, she was Head of Aid Management and Coordination Directorate/ Special Advisor to the Minister at the Palestinian Ministry of Planning and Administrative Development, during which she led the technical committee for the 2014 Gaza Reconstruction plan. She is currently the CEO of the data analytic company Whyise.

    Eyal Weizman is Professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures and founding director of the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is perhaps most known as the founder and director of Forensic Architecture, a multidisciplinary research group based at Goldsmiths, University of London that uses architectural techniques and technologies to investigate cases of state violence and violations of human rights around the world.

    Mekarem Eljamal is a Doctoral Student in Urban Planning at Columbia GSAPP. Her current research looks into the political economy of “mixed cities” within Israel, with particular attention to how the discursive invocations and conceptualizations of the “mixed city” sit vis-à-vis the material realities of the city. Eljamal’s work draws heavily on settler colonial scholarship as she explores the ways in which the deployment of the mixed city classification intersects with questions of multiculturalism, right to the city, and citizenship.

    https://open.spotify.com/episode/5ADzbTjRf0prYjmUB5HnxO
    #urban_matter #Palestine #Israël #Gaza #villes #aménagement_territorial #urbanisme #architecture_forensique #dépossession #violence #occupation #à_écouter #à_lire #audio

  • Crisis Text Line, from my perspective | danah boyd | apophenia
    http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2022/01/31/crisis-text-line-from-my-perspective.html

    Passionnant. Les questions que se pose danah boyd sur les questions éthiques liée à l’activité d’aide et de conseil par texto avec des personnes en grande difficulté mentales (appels à l’aide en situations de crise, voire de suicide). Comment et faut-il utiliser les données que constituent ces échanges ? Que veut dire « consentement » quand on a affaire à des personnes en situation de crise psychologique ? Comment former les conseillers qui répondent aux personnes en difficulté ? Peut-on trouver des patterns dans les échanges qui permettent de prioritiser les réponses en fonction de l’urgence détectée par algorithme ? Enfin, comment financer l’activité des organisations bénévoles et hors marché quand les entreprises et l’Etat ne donnent pas les moyens réels de remplir des missions sociales pourtant nécessaires ?

    Un très long texte, honnête dans son positionnement, ouvert dans ses questionnement, et bien loin des réponses en noir & blanc.

    Like everyone who cares about Crisis Text Line and the people we serve, I have spent the last few days reflecting on recent critiques about the organization’s practices. Having spent my career thinking about and grappling with tech ethics and privacy issues, I knew that – had I not been privy to the details and context that I know – I would be outraged by what folks heard this weekend. I would be doing what many of my friends and colleagues are doing, voicing anger and disgust. But as a founding board member of Crisis Text Line, who served as board chair from June 2020 until the beginning of January 2021, I also have additional information that shaped how I thought about these matters and informed my actions and votes over the last eight years.

    As a director, I am currently working with others on the board and in the organization to chart a path forward. As was just announced, we have concluded that we were wrong to share texter data with Loris.ai and have ended our data-sharing agreement, effective immediately. We had not shared data since we changed leadership; the board had chosen to prioritize other organizational changes to support our staff, but this call-to-action was heard loud and clear and shifted our priorities. But that doesn’t mean that the broader questions being raised are resolved.

    Texters come to us in their darkest moments. What it means to govern the traces they leave behind looks different than what it means to govern other types of data. We are always asking ourselves when, how, and should we leverage individual conversations borne out of crisis to better help that individual, our counselors, and others who are suffering. These are challenging ethical questions with no easy answer.

    What follows is how I personally thought through, balanced, and made decisions related to the trade-offs around data that we face every day at Crisis Text Line. This has been a journey for me and everyone else involved in this organization, precisely because we care so deeply. I owe it to the people we serve, the workers of Crisis Text Line, and the broader community who are challenging me to come forward to own my decisions and role in this conversation. This is my attempt to share both the role that I played and the framework that shaped my thinking. Since my peers are asking for this to be a case study in tech ethics, I am going into significant detail. For those not seeking such detail, I apologize for the length of this.

    Most of the current conversation is focused on the ethics of private-sector access to messages from texters in crisis. These are important issues that I will address, but I want to walk through how earlier decisions influenced that decision. I also want to share how the ethical struggles we face are not as simple as a binary around private-sector access. There are ethical questions all the way down.

    #danah_boyd #Crisis_Text_Line #Santé_mentale #Algorithmes #Formation #Données_médicales

  • The 10 most influential women in tech right now - Big Think
    https://bigthink.com/technology-innovation/women-in-tech

    Statistics on the number of women in tech careers reveal a hard truth: the industry is overwhelmingly dominated by one gender. In a 2018 study, women made up only about 25% of the United States’ tech workforce and those women often earn less than their male colleagues.

    So in celebration of the small yet powerful tribe of women who are moving tech forward, we’ve compiled a list of some of the top thought leaders, founders, influencers, and CEOs in the industry. This collection of innovators and entrepreneurs runs some of the world’s biggest tech companies and most promising startups, but most importantly, they’re propelling the kind of future we want to be a part of.

    Although there are many, many more tech leaders we could have included on this list, this group was selected based on their following and sphere of influence in the world today.

    10 women in tech you should be following

    Et parmi elles danah boyd, dont j’ai eu l’honneur de traduire le livre en français «C’est compliqué : les vies numériques des adolescents»

    Danah Boyd, founder and president of Data & Society

    A nationally recognized scholar and thought leader, Danah Boyd founded her own research institute to address the ethical and legal implications of emerging technologies. She also currently serves as a partner researcher for Microsoft.

    Boyd studied at Brown, MIT, and Berkeley. She attributes the fact that she survived high school to a misogynistic classmate who once told her that girls couldn’t “do science.” From then on, she was determined to prove him wrong. Today, her work includes countless thought-provoking publications on topics such as accountability in machine learning and media manipulation.

    #danah_boyd

  • #Danakali done first phase of Eritrea potash project

    Australia’s Danakali (ASX, LON:DNK) has finished the first phase of development of its world-class Colluli potash project in Eritrea, Africa, which takes the company a step closer to the construction phase and then onto production in 2022.

    The Perth-based miner is now moving to Phase 2, which includes finalizing geotechnical work, buying critical equipment such as a reverse osmosis plant and looking into optimization opportunities.

    Colluli, a 50:50 joint venture between Danakali and the Eritrean National Mining Corporation (ENAMCO), has been called “a game changer” for Eritrea’s economy, as is expected to become one of the world’s most significant and lowest-cost sources of sulphate of potash (SOP), a premium grade fertilizer.

    “The government will benefit from the longer-term development of the project, and the expected significant boost to royalties, taxation and exports, and from jobs and skills and economic development of the region,” chief executive Niels Wage told MINING.COM last year.

    The development of the Colluli potash projects coincides with the move towards diplomatic relations between the once feuding countries of Eritrea and Ethiopia, which officially declared peace in July 2018.
    Welcome boost

    A United Nations report published last year suggested that Colluli could significantly boost the economy of Eritrea, a country that, until 2018, was on the UN’s sanctions list.

    The document estimated that Colluli would contribute 3% of the country’s GDP by 2021 and 50% of the nation’s exports by 2030, while providing 10,000 direct and indirect local jobs.

    The report also identified how the mine could help Eritrea advance its sustainable development agenda, which are 13 priority Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These include: No poverty, zero hunger, quality education, gender equality, clean water and sanitation, sustainable economic growth and decent work, industry, innovation and infrastructure, reduced inequalities, climate action, peace, justice and strong institutions and partnerships for the SDGs.

    In the initial phase of operation, Wage said, Colluli would produce more than 472,000 tonnes a year of Sulphate of Potash. Annual output could rise to almost 944,000 tonnes if Danakali decides to go ahead with a second phase of development, as the project has a possible 200-year plus mine-life.

    The asset has the potential to produce other fertilizer products, such as Sulphate of Potash Magnesium (SOP-M), muriate of potash (MOP) and gypsum, along with rock salt. There is also potential for kieserite and mag chloride to be commercialized with minimal further processing required.

    https://www.mining.com/danakalis-first-phase-of-eritrean-potash-project-done
    #extractivisme #Erythrée #mines #Colluli_potash_project #Eritrean_National_Mining_Corporation (#ENAMCO) #Sulfate #fertilisants #industrie_agro-alimentaire #Sulfate_de_potassium

    La belle rhétorique du #développement... (sic), voire des #SDGs (#sustainable_development_goals)

    –-> ATTENTION : site de propagande commerciale... donc pas du tout mais pas du tout critique vis-à-vis de ce projet...

    ping @daphne @albertocampiphoto @reka

  • Context collapses and strategic silences - Stabroek News
    https://www.stabroeknews.com/2020/01/04/opinion/editorial/context-collapses-and-strategic-silences

    If it feels as though nearly all the news is bad, all the time, and that it is possibly getting worse, that’s because it is – by design. The digital news platforms which curate what is often called “the attention economy”, rely on us feeling that way. Fear and anxiety keep us glued to smartphones and social media, spreading discomfort to our private networks and swelling profits for the advertising-driven companies which spend lavishly to ensure that their products hook “users” – the language of addiction is inevitable – by maximizing their “time-on-device”. Sophisti-cated datamining allows these companies to microtarget us with alarms and provocations that rivet our eyes to a seemingly infinite scroll of data.

    A decade ago the media scholar danah boyd drew attention to the ways in which “like many social network sites, Twitter flattens multiple audiences into one – a phenomenon known as ‘context collapse’”. Twitter users who tried to reconcile the tensions between different parts of their audiences “adopted a variety of tactics, such as using multiple accounts, pseudonyms, and nicknames, and creating ‘fakesters’ to obscure their real identities … [they created] a lowest-common denominator effect, as individuals only post things they believe their broadest group of acquaintances will find non-offensive.”

    In the intervening decade context collapse has been weaponized by a wide range of individuals and governments. They have turned boyd’s original insight on its head and crafted the most provocative material, in order to spread confusion, mistrust, hatred and doubt across these platforms. Gradually this sense of endless emergency has become the preferred mode of the platforms. More recently, boyd has written about the need for “strategic silence”: “a mechanism of editorial discretion by which those who have the ability to publish or amplify a particular voice, perspective, or incident weigh the benefits and costs of doing so against broader social values, including enabling an informed public and building community.” This is not, as she and her co-author emphasize, “a call to stop the presses, but rather is the recognition that there is a need to be strategic about what information is amplified in any media ecosystem so as to not allow damaging and harmful messages to spread.” They point out that the idea of “strategic silence” emerged among media scholars and editors in the 1960s and 1970s when their questioning of “editorial omissions of White violence against Black civil rights groups … prompted a shift in coverage of the civil rights movement.”

    #danah_boyd #Context_collapse #Effondrement_de_contexte #Silence_stratégique

  • Balancing Data Utility and Confidentiality in the 2020 US Census | Data & Society
    https://datasociety.net/output/balancing-data-utility-and-confidentiality-in-the-2020-us-census

    Par danah boyd

    In the age of commercial data and advanced computer science, the US Census Bureau is implementing a new technical system to ensure the confidentiality of individual data in the 2020 census. This system is based on a mathematical technique known as “differential privacy.” A new living document by Data & Society Founder and President danah boyd, Balancing Data Utility and Confidentiality in the 2020 US Census, explains how differential privacy works in the context of the US Census and illuminates key conversations, misunderstandings, and anxieties surrounding this disclosure avoidance system.

    Differential privacy allows the Census Bureau to mathematically balance between privacy and data utility. By examining how much risk there is of reconstructing identifying information from a particular census statistical table, the Census Bureau can ensure a certain degree of confidentiality by inserting noise in strategic places. Previous disclosure avoidance systems could not withstand the risks brought on by the increase in commercial data from data-centric technologies.

    Every 10 years, the Census Bureau conducts the census, and the resulting data and statistical tables support the appointment of the House of Representatives, the allocation of federal tax dollars, and the redistricting within each state, as well as social science research and local policy making. Since this data plays such a vital role in our democracy, used by government, academia, and civil society among others, it is important that people trust the data. As the paper explains, the introduction of differential privacy has surfaced a range of anxieties about how the data products will be produced for 2020.

    With useful insights for academics, civil society, data users, and anyone concerned about their privacy in the 2020 census, boyd uses this living document to clarify the motivations, risks, and unknowns surrounding differential privacy. She calls for communication, collaboration, and understanding between all parties tackling the trade-offs between confidentiality and accuracy.

    Key messages:

    Trust of census data is vital to “democracy, resource allocation, justice, and research.”
    Differential privacy is a mathematical definition of privacy. The Census Bureau’s disclosure avoidance system for 2020 is based on differential privacy and creates the opportunity to balance between the utility of the data and the risk to confidentiality.
    New advanced computing technologies and commercial data collection have made it easier to reidentify individuals from census statistical tables, creating a need for a new type of privacy security.
    Data users and the Census Bureau’s disclosure avoidance team have struggled to communicate with each other and find common ground for balancing the need for accurate data with the need for privacy.
    Protecting confidentiality is essential for counting hard-to-reach populations.

    #danah_boyd #Recensement #Vie_privée #Modélisation

  • 44 intellectuels pour penser le numérique
    https://www.franceculture.fr/numerique/44-intellectuels-pour-penser-le-numerique

    Making-of – en 2015, Soft Power consacrait une émission aux penseurs du numérique. Quatre ans plus tard, une mise à jour s’imposait tant les débats et réflexions se poursuivent. Voici la sélection de toute l’équipe et de ses chroniqueurs, sans oublier quelques recommandations faites sur les réseaux sociaux.

    Qui sont ces intellectuels, ces historiens, ces chercheurs ou sociologues, mais aussi ces ingénieurs ou ces iconoclastes, qui ont inventé ou décrypté le Web ? Inventaire à la Prévert, me direz-vous, certes, mais occasion aussi pour faire le point sur l’état de la pensée du Web – et mettre en avant quelques grands noms ou idées fortes avec lesquelles nous vivons désormais chaque jour.

    #Internet #Culture_numérique #Fred_Turner #danah_boyd

  • danah boyd : When Good Intentions Backfire – Data & Society : Points
    https://points.datasociety.net/when-good-intentions-backfire-786fb0dead03

    I find it frustrating to bear witness to good intentions getting manipulated, but it’s even harder to watch how those who are wedded to good intentions are often unwilling to acknowledge this, let alone start imagining how to develop the appropriate antibodies. Too many folks that I love dearly just want to double down on the approaches they’ve taken and the commitments they’ve made. On one hand, I get it — folks’ life-work and identities are caught up in these issues.

    I’ve never met an educator who thinks that the process of educating is easy or formulaic. (Heck, this is why most educators roll their eyes when they hear talk of computerized systems that can educate better than teachers.) So why do we assume that well-intended classroom lessons — or even well-designed curricula — might not play out as we imagine? This isn’t simply about the efficacy of the lesson or the skill of the teacher, but the cultural context in which these conversations occur.

    In many communities in which I’ve done research, the authority of teachers is often questioned. Nowhere is this more painfully visible than when well-intended highly educated (often white) teachers come to teach in poorer communities of color. Yet, how often are pedagogical interventions designed by researchers really taking into account the doubt that students and their parents have of these teachers? And how do we as educators and scholars grapple with how we might have made mistakes?

    From the outside, companies like Facebook and Google seem pretty evil to many people. They’re situated in a capitalist logic that many advocates and progressives despise. They’re opaque and they don’t engage the public in their decision-making processes, even when those decisions have huge implications for what people read and think. They’re extremely powerful and they’ve made a lot of people rich in an environment where financial inequality and instability is front and center. Primarily located in one small part of the country, they also seem like a monolithic beast.

    As a result, it’s not surprising to me that many people assume that engineers and product designers have evil (or at least financially motivated) intentions. There’s an irony here because my experience is the opposite. Most product teams have painfully good intentions, shaped by utopic visions of how the ideal person would interact with the ideal system. Nothing is more painful than sitting through a product design session with design personae that have been plucked from a collection of clichés.

    Most products and features that get released start with good intentions, but they too get munged by the system, framed by marketing plans, and manipulated by users. And then there’s the dance of chaos as companies seek to clean up PR messes (which often involves non-technical actors telling insane fictions about the product), patch bugs to prevent abuse, and throw bandaids on parts of the code that didn’t play out as intended. There’s a reason that no one can tell you exactly how Google’s search engine or Facebook’s news feed works. Sure, the PR folks will tell you that it’s proprietary code. But the ugly truth is that the code has been patched to smithereens to address countless types of manipulation and gamification (e.g., SEO to bots). It’s quaint to read the original “page rank” paper that Brin and Page wrote when they envisioned how a search engine could ideally work. That’s so not how the system works today.

    Powerful actors have always tried to manipulate the news media, especially State actors. This is why the fourth estate is seen as so important in the American context. Yet, the game has changed, in part because of the distributed power of the masses. Social media marketers quickly figured out that manufacturing outrage and spectacle would give them a pathway to attention, attracting news media like bees to honey. Most folks rolled their eyes, watching as monied people played the same games as State actors. But what about the long tail? How do we grapple with the long tail? How should journalists respond to those who are hacking the attention economy?

    In short, I keep thinking that we need more well-intended folks to start thinking like hackers.

    Think just as much about how you build an ideal system as how it might be corrupted, destroyed, manipulated, or gamed. Think about unintended consequences, not simply to stop a bad idea but to build resilience into the model.

    As a developer, I always loved the notion of “extensibility” because it was an ideal of building a system that could take unimagined future development into consideration. Part of why I love the notion is that it’s bloody impossible to implement. Sure, I (poorly) comment my code and build object-oriented structures that would allow for some level of technical flexibility. But, at the end of the day, I’d always end up kicking myself for not imagining a particular use case in my original design and, as a result, doing a lot more band-aiding than I’d like to admit.

    #Hacker #Freaks #Résilience #danah_boyd

  • Designing tech for the most vulnerable users
    https://www.marketplace.org/2018/07/24/tech/designing-tech-most-vulnerable-users
    https://cms.marketplace.org/sites/default/files/styles/primary-image-900x500/public/GettyImages-135280995.jpg?itok=Z9qJAkqI

    Danah Boyd is a principal researcher at Microsoft and the founder of the research organization Data & Society, and much of her research looks at how kids are affected by the digital societies they live in. She talked with Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood about whether blocking kids from technology is really a good solution.

    Danah Boyd: I see young people who are crying out for help every day online. And it’s not because they’re online that they’re crying out for help. The idea of blocking young people from technology — what that ends up just doing is making it harder for them to be a part of a broader social world. I want to help them help their peers. And I want adults to come in and think that the solution is more about how to really engage not just their own children, but the network of children that they touch because of their kids, because of their schools, because of their communities and help young people at scale, rather than say if we just block the technology and stop being able to see it, all the problems will go away. We can kick them off of Twitter. It’s not that hard, but that won’t make the problem go away. And I want to get to the root of the problem, and I worry that we just keep thinking that the solution is at the technical layer. And I don’t think it’s at the technical layer.

    #danah_boyd #Enfants #Pratiques_sociales

  • The Messy Fourth Estate – Trust Issues – Medium
    https://medium.com/s/trustissues/the-messy-fourth-estate-a42c1586b657

    par dans boyd

    I want to believe in journalism. I want to believe in the idealized mandate of the fourth estate. I want to trust that editors and journalists are doing their best to responsibly inform the public and help create a more perfect union. But my faith is waning.
    Many Americans — especially conservative Americans — do not trust contemporary news organizations. This “crisis” is well-trod territory, but the focus on fact-checking, media literacy, and business models tends to obscure three features of the contemporary information landscape that I think are poorly understood:
    Differences in worldview are being weaponized to polarize society.
    We cannot trust organizations, institutions, or professions when they’re abstracted away from us.
    Economic structures built on value extraction cannot enable healthy information ecosystems.

    Contemporary propaganda isn’t about convincing someone to believe something, but convincing them to doubt what they think they know.

    Countless organizations and movements exist to pick you up during your personal tornado and provide structure and a framework. Take a look at how Alcoholics Anonymous works. Other institutions and social bodies know how to trigger that instability and then help you find ground. Check out the dynamics underpinning military basic training. Organizations, movements, and institutions that can manipulate psychological tendencies toward a sociological end have significant power. Religious organizations, social movements, and educational institutions all play this role, whether or not they want to understand themselves as doing so.
    Because there is power in defining a framework for people, there is good reason to be wary of any body that pulls people in when they are most vulnerable. Of course, that power is not inherently malevolent. There is fundamental goodness in providing structures to help those who are hurting make sense of the world around them. Where there be dragons is when these processes are weaponized, when these processes are designed to produce societal hatred alongside personal stability. After all, one of the fastest ways to bond people and help them find purpose is to offer up an enemy.

    School doesn’t seem like a safe place, so teenagers look around and whisper among friends about who they believe to be the most likely shooter in their community. As Stephanie Georgopulos notes, the idea that any institution can offer security seems like a farce.
    When I look around at who’s “holding” these youth, I can’t help but notice the presence of people with a hateful agenda. And they terrify me, in no small part because I remember an earlier incarnation.
    In 1995, when I was trying to make sense of my sexuality, I turned to various online forums and asked a lot of idiotic questions. I was adopted by the aforementioned transgender woman and numerous other folks who heard me out, gave me pointers, and helped me think through what I felt. In 2001, when I tried to figure out what the next generation did, I realized that struggling youth were more likely to encounter a Christian gay “conversion therapy” group than a supportive queer peer. Queer folks were sick of being attacked by anti-LGBT groups, and so they had created safe spaces on private mailing lists that were hard for lost queer youth to find. And so it was that in their darkest hours, these youth were getting picked up by those with a hurtful agenda.

    Teens who are trying to make sense of social issues aren’t finding progressive activists. They’re finding the so-called alt-right.

    Fast-forward 15 years, and teens who are trying to make sense of social issues aren’t finding progressive activists willing to pick them up. They’re finding the so-called alt-right. I can’t tell you how many youth we’ve seen asking questions like I asked being rejected by people identifying with progressive social movements, only to find camaraderie among hate groups. What’s most striking is how many people with extreme ideas are willing to spend time engaging with folks who are in the tornado.
    Spend time reading the comments below the YouTube videos of youth struggling to make sense of the world around them. You’ll quickly find comments by people who spend time in the manosphere or subscribe to white supremacist thinking. They are diving in and talking to these youth, offering a framework to make sense of the world, one rooted in deeply hateful ideas. These self-fashioned self-help actors are grooming people to see that their pain and confusion isn’t their fault, but the fault of feminists, immigrants, people of color. They’re helping them believe that the institutions they already distrust — the news media, Hollywood, government, school, even the church — are actually working to oppress them.
    Most people who encounter these ideas won’t embrace them, but some will. Still, even those who don’t will never let go of the doubt that has been instilled in the institutions around them. It just takes a spark.
    So how do we collectively make sense of the world around us? There isn’t one universal way of thinking, but even the act of constructing knowledge is becoming polarized. Responding to the uproar in the news media over “alternative facts,” Cory Doctorow noted:
    We’re not living through a crisis about what is true, we’re living through a crisis about how we know whether something is true. We’re not disagreeing about facts, we’re disagreeing about epistemology. The “establishment” version of epistemology is, “We use evidence to arrive at the truth, vetted by independent verification (but trust us when we tell you that it’s all been independently verified by people who were properly skeptical and not the bosom buddies of the people they were supposed to be fact-checking).”
    The “alternative facts” epistemological method goes like this: “The ‘independent’ experts who were supposed to be verifying the ‘evidence-based’ truth were actually in bed with the people they were supposed to be fact-checking. In the end, it’s all a matter of faith, then: you either have faith that ‘their’ experts are being
    truthful, or you have faith that we are. Ask your gut, what version feels more truthful?”
    Doctorow creates these oppositional positions to make a point and to highlight that there is a war over epistemology, or the way in which we produce knowledge.
    The reality is much messier, because what’s at stake isn’t simply about resolving two competing worldviews. Rather, what’s at stake is how there is no universal way of knowing, and we have reached a stage in our political climate where there is more power in seeding doubt, destabilizing knowledge, and encouraging others to distrust other systems of knowledge production.
    Contemporary propaganda isn’t about convincing someone to believe something, but convincing them to doubt what they think they know. And once people’s assumptions have come undone, who is going to pick them up and help them create a coherent worldview?

    Meanwhile, local journalism has nearly died. The success of local journalism didn’t just matter because those media outlets reported the news, but because it meant that many more people were likely to know journalists. It’s easier to trust an institution when it has a human face that you know and respect. And as fewer and fewer people know journalists, they trust the institution less and less. Meanwhile, the rise of social media, blogging, and new forms of talk radio has meant that countless individuals have stepped in to cover issues not being covered by mainstream news, often using a style and voice that is quite unlike that deployed by mainstream news media.
    We’ve also seen the rise of celebrity news hosts. These hosts help push the boundaries of parasocial interactions, allowing the audience to feel deep affinity toward these individuals, as though they are true friends. Tabloid papers have long capitalized on people’s desire to feel close to celebrities by helping people feel like they know the royal family or the Kardashians. Talking heads capitalize on this, in no small part by how they communicate with their audiences. So, when people watch Rachel Maddow or listen to Alex Jones, they feel more connected to the message than they would when reading a news article. They begin to trust these people as though they are neighbors. They feel real.

    Building a sustainable news business was hard enough when the news had a wealthy patron who valued the goals of the enterprise. But the finance industry doesn’t care about sustaining the news business; it wants a return on investment. And the extractive financiers who targeted the news business weren’t looking to keep the news alive. They wanted to extract as much value from those business as possible. Taking a page out of McDonald’s, they forced the newsrooms to sell their real estate. Often, news organizations had to rent from new landlords who wanted obscene sums, often forcing them to move out of their buildings. News outlets were forced to reduce staff, reproduce more junk content, sell more ads, and find countless ways to cut costs. Of course the news suffered — the goal was to push news outlets into bankruptcy or sell, especially if the companies had pensions or other costs that couldn’t be excised.
    Yes, the fragmentation of the advertising industry due to the internet hastened this process. And let’s also be clear that business models in the news business have never been clean. But no amount of innovative new business models will make up for the fact that you can’t sustain responsible journalism within a business structure that requires newsrooms to make more money quarter over quarter to appease investors. This does not mean that you can’t build a sustainable news business, but if the news is beholden to investors trying to extract value, it’s going to impossible. And if news companies have no assets to rely on (such as their now-sold real estate), they are fundamentally unstable and likely to engage in unhealthy business practices out of economic desperation.

    Fundamentally, both the New York Times and Facebook are public companies, beholden to investors and desperate to increase their market cap. Employees in both organizations believe themselves to be doing something important for society.
    Of course, journalists don’t get paid well, while Facebook’s employees can easily threaten to walk out if the stock doesn’t keep rising, since they’re also investors. But we also need to recognize that the vast majority of Americans have a stake in the stock market. Pension plans, endowments, and retirement plans all depend on stocks going up — and those public companies depend on big investors investing in them. Financial managers don’t invest in news organizations that are happy to be stable break-even businesses. Heck, even Facebook is in deep trouble if it can’t continue to increase ROI, whether through attracting new customers (advertisers and users), increasing revenue per user, or diversifying its businesses. At some point, it too will get desperate, because no business can increase ROI forever.

    At the end of the day, if journalistic ethics means anything, newsrooms cannot justify creating spectacle out of their reporting on suicide or other topics just because they feel pressure to create clicks. They have the privilege of choosing what to amplify, and they should focus on what is beneficial. If they can’t operate by those values, they don’t deserve our trust. While I strongly believe that technology companies have a lot of important work to do to be socially beneficial, I hold news organizations to a higher standard because of their own articulated commitments and expectations that they serve as the fourth estate. And if they can’t operationalize ethical practices, I fear the society that must be knitted together to self-govern is bound to fragment even further.
    Trust cannot be demanded. It’s only earned by being there at critical junctures when people are in crisis and need help. You don’t earn trust when things are going well; you earn trust by being a rock during a tornado. The winds are blowing really hard right now. Look around. Who is helping us find solid ground?

    #danah_boyd #Médias #Journalisme #Post_truth

  • De quelle éducation aux médias avons-nous besoin ? | InternetActu.net
    http://www.internetactu.net/2018/06/06/de-quelle-education-aux-medias-avons-nous-besoin/#comment-1200553
    /assets/images/logo_ia.png

    Lors du dernier SXSW consacré à l’éducation, la chercheuse américaine danah boyd (@zephoria) a, comme à son habitude, délivré une très intéressante conférence sur la question de l’éducation aux médias (vidéo) devant un parterre de spécialistes. Intéressante parce qu’elle remettait en question certaines approches faciles ou rapides de la façon dont on considère l’éducation aux médias

    L’éducation aux médias à l’heure de la post-vérité

    danah boyd avait commencé à éclairer ces questions dans un article publié l’année dernière. Elle y soulignait déjà que pour elle, les deux solutions pour combattre la désinformation, à savoir l’éducation aux médias et les initiatives de vérification de l’information, oublient de prendre en compte le contexte culturel de notre consommation d’information.

    « Lorsque les élèves sont invités à comprendre le fonctionnement des médias, on leur enseigne à être critique, tout en soulignant que certaines publications sont plus dignes de respect que d’autres. Or, tout le monde n’est pas d’accord sur ce qui fait une source fiable. Aux États-Unis (pas seulement) nous vantons la responsabilité personnelle. » Chacun est son propre maître : tant et si bien que chacun est sensé comprendre par exemple la finance pour gérer efficacement sa retraite. Cette logique culturelle libérale est très forte. Mais elle a également des conséquences pour la connaissance et l’information. « Tout ce qu’ils ont à faire est de « faire les recherches » par eux-mêmes et ils sauront mieux que quiconque ce qui est réel ». Ce qui n’est pas sans poser problème, comme le pointe une étude récente de Francesca Tripodi pour Data & Society, l’Institution de recherche que dirige danah boyd, qui a observé les pratiques de recherches d’information de conservateurs américains et qui souligne que ni Google, ni les termes que l’on recherche ne sont neutres. Les recherches visant à vérifier des faits finissent par les imposer. Tripodi parle ainsi « d’inférence scripturale » pour décrire les méthodes de recherche de ces publics, profondément influencés par leurs propres convictions et par les termes qu’utilisent les médias conservateurs auprès de leurs publics qui les invite à s’informer sur ceux-ci plutôt que sur d’autres, comme l’explique le Washington Post. Les différences de termes utilisés vous conduisent à faire des recherches différentes et à des résultats différents et orientés.

    #danah_boyd #Médias_sociaux #EMI #Education_Médias_information #Pensée_critique #Culture_participative

  • danah boyd: How Critical Thinking and Media Literacy Efforts Are ‘Backfiring’ Today | EdSurge News
    https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-03-07-danah-boyd-how-critical-thinking-and-media-literacy-efforts-are-

    Keynote par danah boyd à SXSW 2018

    Few would challenge the value of helping students develop critical thinking and information literacy. But if such skills are encouraged simply as a reactionary means to challenge knowledge, says danah boyd, the future may look even more chaotic and grim.

    Speaking at the morning keynote on the third day of SXSW EDU, boyd, a researcher at Microsoft and the founder and president of Data & Society, offered this provocative observation: “Many of the forms of critical thinking that we’ve introduced into American education are backfiring right now.”

    Touching on matters ranging from Russian propaganda efforts to Netflix, history to philosophy, boyd’s intellectually provocative talk raised plenty of deep questions around media and manipulation. But she also admitted there are few clear solutions.

    Educational groups, from Common Sense Media to PBS, have introduced online curricula designed to help teachers teach the topic. Often these tools include lessons on checking facts and analyzing sources for biases.

    Yet these exercises, while valuable, can perpetuate an even bigger problem if framed in the wrong context. “Right now, the conversation around fact checking has devolved to suggest that there is only one truth. We have to recognize that there are plenty of students who are taught that there is only one legitimate way of thinking, one accepted worldview,” boyd said.

    “Funders, journalists, social media companies and elected officials all say they want a ‘media literacy solution.’ I don’t know what it is, [but] I hope it’s not a version that’s just CNN versus Fox News,” she added.

    By describing the goal of media literacy as a way to discover the truth, adults may actually reinforce the message that there is only one explanation, a strict, black-and-white line between what’s right and wrong. That thinking generally does not sit well for adolescents and young adults, who may be naturally inclined to challenge authority and seek alternative explanations, said boyd.

    “Many people especially young people turn to online communities to make sense of the world around them. They want to ask uncomfortable questions, interrogate assumptions and poke holes at things they’ve learned,” she said. “But there are some questions that we’ve told them are unacceptable to ask in public.” In response, they’ve taken to online forums, some of which “have popped up to encourage people to go down certain paths of thinking—some of them being deeply extreme” in their views.

    #Fake_news #Litteratie_numérique #danah_boyd

  • Announcements – USC ANNENBERG PRESS
    https://annenbergpress.com/category/announcements

    Numéro spécial coordonné par danah boyd et Alice Marwick

    The International Journal of Communication is delighted to announce the publication of a new Special Section on “Privacy at the Margins” on March 1, 2018 which includes 10 articles from international scholars.

    Privacy is considered a human right, but achieving privacy in a networked age requires a certain level of privilege. This Special Section on Privacy at the Margins brings together nine original social science papers and an editorial introduction to reveal the complex dynamics—such as coercion and consent—that underpin a range of privacy experiences around the world.

    Edited by Alice E. Marwick, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Data & Society and danah boyd, Microsoft Research and Data & Society, the papers presented in this Special Section of the International Journal of Communication use a diverse array of methodologies, both quantitative and qualitative, to address issues and domains including workplace surveillance, interpersonal privacy, and government privacy processes. In order to “interrogate what privacy looks like on the margins,” the section explores privacy experiences in India and in Appalachia, and among Aboriginal Australians and Azerbaijani youth. Several papers account for the skills needed to be successful at achieving privacy, and the trade-offs required by those who both gain and lose from being visible. Notably, these articles challenge basic assumptions underlying privacy research and invite scholars to consider new facets of the problem.

    #Vie_privée #danah_boyd #Alice_Marwick

  • Bonjour,

    Comme vous l’avez peut-être appris, John Perry Barlow est décédé le 7 février des suites de ses problèmes cardiaques. Personnage flamboyant, auteur de la "Déclaration d’indépendance du cyberespace" (8 février 1996, hasard des dates), Barlow occupe une place à part dans la "mythologie" de l’internet. Bien que l’on puisse contester ses idées et son approche libertarienne, il faut lui reconnaître une plume, un style, une énergie hors du commun, qui a marqué très largement les discours sur l’internet et le cyberespace.

    L’auteur de science-fiction cyberpunk Bruce Sterling décrit Barlow en 1992 comme « un pur extraterrestre de la pratique des réseaux informatiques. Il avait une écriture de poète, concise et imagée. Il avait également la perspicacité d’un journaliste, ainsi qu’un esprit loufoque et le sens profond de l’autodérision. Enfin, il était tout simplement doué d’un charme personnel phénoménal. »

    Il est donc tout naturel que John Perry Barlow, et notamment son texte « La déclaration d’indépendance du cyberespace », ait été commenté par les auteur·e·s de C&F éditions. Quelques extraits ci-dessous.

    Olivier Ertzscheid : "L’appétit des géants : pouvoir des algorithmes, ambitions des plateformes"
    https://cfeditions.com/geants

    danah boyd : "C’est compliqué : les vies numériques des adolescents"
    https://cfeditions.com/boyd

    Fred Turner : "Aux sources de l’utopie numérique : de la contre-culture à la cyberculture, Stewart Brand un homme d’influence"
    https://cfeditions.com/utopieNumerique

    Olivier Ertzscheid

    L’auteur de « L’appétit des géants » lui a rendu un hommage très particulier et significatif dans les colonnes de Libération du 9 février. Il propose de ré-écrire la « Déclaration d’indépendance du cyberespace » en version 2018... non plus en s’adressant aux tenants du monde industriel, comme le faisait Barlow en 1996, mais aux géants du monde numérique qui emprisonnent l’énergie des internautes dans leurs systèmes de contrôle et leurs espace privés.

    Extrait :

    « Plateformes aux tons pastels et aux logos colorés, vous géants fatigués aux CGU d’airain et aux algorithmes d’acier, je viens du temps des internets d’avant, où nous n’avions pas de "comptes" mais des pages, où chacun pouvait disposer d’une adresse et n’était pas contraint d’habiter par habitude et par lassitude sous le même grand F bleu qui orne votre jardin fermé, et de vivre dans cette fausse proximité que vous nous avez tant vanté et qui est d’abord une toxique promiscuité.

    Au nom du présent que vous avez institué, je vous demande à vous qui êtes désormais le passé, de nous laisser tranquilles. Vous n’êtes plus les bienvenus parmi nous. Vous avez trop de souveraineté pour que celle-ci ne soit pas enfin questionnée et abolie. »

    On peut retrouver le texte complet et l’introduction/hommage sur Libération (http://www.liberation.fr/debats/2018/02/09/une-nouvelle-declaration-d-independance-du-cyberespace_1628377) et sur le blog Affordance (http://affordance.typepad.com//mon_weblog/2018/02/nouvelle-declaration-independance-cyberespace-hommage-john-perry )

    danah boyd :

    C’est dans la « Déclaration d’indépendance du cyberespace » que John Perry Barlow utilisa le premier la notion de " digital natives ". Jeune geekette à l’époque de ce texte, danah boyd est resté frappée par la verve de Barlow... mais montre elle aussi combien les dynamiques ont changé, et combien cette notion de "digital natives" est devenu la tarte à la crème des spécialiste du marketing, mais ne représente rien pour les jeunes, ni pour les sociologues.

    extrait :

    « Des manifestes, à l’image de la "Déclaration d’indépendance du cyberespace" de John Perry Barlow en 1996, me parlaient profondément. Barlow disait alors devant les leaders économiques réunis au forum de Davos que la nouvelle « maison de l’Esprit » permettait des « identités sans corps ». J’étais fière d’être une de ces enfants dont il parlait, et qui se vivait comme « native » de cette nouvelle civilisation.

    Vingt ans après, les dynamiques de l’identité en ligne s’avèrent très largement différentes de ce que les premiers adeptes de l’internet avaient imaginé. Même si les jeux en ligne et les mondes virtuels sont populaires parmi certains groupes de jeunes, il existe une différence culturelle majeure entre les sites qui permettent d’endosser un rôle et les médias sociaux, largement plus fréquentés, qui tendent à encourager une atmosphère beaucoup moins fictionnelle. Même si les pseudonymes sont fréquents dans ces environnements, le type de travail de l’identité qui se déroule dans les médias sociaux tels Facebook est très différent de celui que Turkle avait imaginé au départ. De nombreux adolescents aujourd’hui vont en ligne pour socialiser avec des amis qu’ils connaissent dans le monde physique, et ils se définissent eux-mêmes dans des contextes en ligne qui interagissent fortement avec des communautés sociales non-médiées. Ces pratiques, qui encouragent une plus grande continuité entre les mondes en ligne et hors ligne des adolescents, étaient bien moins fréquentes quand j’étais jeune. »

    et

    « La notion de digital natives a des racines politiques, principalement issues du techno-idéalisme américain. Dans sa volonté de contraindre l’élite globale à reconnaître l’importance de la société numérique émergente, John Perry Barlow, un poète reconnu, par ailleurs cyberlibertarien notoire, a forgé ce concept pour diviser le monde entre « eux » et « nous ». Barlow, connu pour avoir été le parolier du groupe The Grateful Dead, savait facilement trouver des mots provocants pour exprimer ses opinions politiques. Ce manifeste lançait un défi explicite aux « gouvernements du monde industriel ». En plaçant ceux qui « venaient du cyberespace » en opposition au monde du passé, il organisait l’affrontement des « natifs » et des « immigrants ».

    Barlow n’était certainement pas le premier à suggérer que les jeunes sont, en raison de leur date de naissance, intimement partie prenante de ce paysage numérique émergent. Mais son langage poétique a mis en relief les craintes implicites d’une fracture générationnelle qui accompagnerait les technologies. En écrivant sa déclaration, il voulait susciter des réactions… et il y est parvenu. Mais beaucoup ont pris sa métaphore au premier degré. Il était fréquent de voir des discours publics mettre en avant l’idée que les « natifs » auraient des pouvoirs et des compétences techniques particulières. L’idée sous-jacente de ces lectures de Barlow est que les adultes doivent craindre ces jeunes qui auraient hérité d’un savoir à leur naissance. »

    Fred Turner

    C’est bien entendu l’historien de l’internet Fred Turner qui offre dans son livre « Aux sources de l’utopie numérique » les hommages comme les critiques les plus soutenues de l’oeuvre et de l’approche de John Perry Barlow.

    Extraits :

    « Barlow rappelait à ses lecteurs « Je vis à barlow@eff.org. C’est là où j’habite. C’est ma maison. Si vous voulez me parler, c’est le seul endroit où vous êtes sûrs de me trouver, à moins que vous ne soyez déjà en face de moi – physiquement. Il est impossible de savoir où je suis. Depuis avril, je ne suis pas resté plus de six jours dans un même lieu. » Dyson et Barlow s’étaient transformés en paquets d’informations, au sens métaphorique, naviguant de conseils d’administration en conférence et agences de presse. Leur perception de l’espace s’était disloquée et s’ils avaient toujours le sentiment d’avoir un foyer, ce dernier était devenu distribué, collant parfaitement à leur idée d’avoir une maison sur la toile.

    De prime abord, la représentation du monde en système d’information telle que le conçoit Kelly s’inscrit fortement dans la pensée d’une époque, celle des années quatre-vingt-dix. Une analogie entre réseaux d’entreprises et écosystèmes naturels sous-tend cette représentation. Une analogie qui imprègne la vision, commune à Barlow et Dyson, d’un monde libéré de sa bureaucratie et guéri de sa schizophrénie grâce à l’internet. Mais à y regarder de plus près, elle pose également une énigme historique. L’idée selon laquelle le monde matériel peut être comparé à un système d’information et modélisé par ordinateur ne date pas de l’internet, mais apparaît bien plus tôt, durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, dans et autour des laboratoires de recherche financés par l’État, notamment le Radiation Laboratory du MIT. Ces laboratoires ont orienté le développement de l’informatique aux États-Unis.
    [...]
    En 1990, la technologie et les méthodes de management caractérisant le WELL, en sus des réseaux qui s’étaient regroupés autour du système et des organisations proches du Whole Earth, servirent de références pour redefinir le cyberespace lui-même. Cette année-là, John Perry Barlow, expert en informatique, fut unanimement désigné comme la première personne à avoir accolé le mot cyberespace à ce qui n’était encore que le croisement entre les télécommunications et les réseaux informatiques. Puisant largement dans son expérience du WELL, il décrivait ce nouveau cyberespace structuré autour de réseaux informatiques comme une « frontière électronique ». Ce faisant, il bousculait la représentation autrefois dystopienne d’une informatique interconnectée en un espace imaginé pour que les individus puissent se recréer et construire leurs communautés dans les termes provenant des idéaux néo-communalistes. À l’instar des territoires ruraux des années soixante, le cyberespace de Barlow demeurerait au-delà de tout contrôle gouvernemental. Et tout comme un happening ou un Acid Test, il fournirait le décor et les outils au travers desquels les individus entretiendraient des liens intimes et désincarnés entre eux. En invoquant l’image de la frontière électronique, Barlow métamorphosait les normes locales du WELL, notamment son éthique communautarienne dérivée du Whole Earth, son allégeance à une forme de gouvernance non hiérarchique et sa rhétorique cybernétique, en une métaphore universelle de l’informatique en réseau. Dès le milieu des années quatre-vingt-dix, l’image du cyberespace telle que dessinée par Barlow était sans nul doute devenue l’emblème le plus populaire non seulement des formes émergentes de communication via réseaux informatiques, mais également des formes horizontales d’organisation sociale ou encore des modèles dérégulés de transactions économiques.
    [...]

    Durant l’été 90, Barlow se rendit dans les bureaux du VPL Research de Jaron Lanier et endossa une paire de visiophones et de gants de données VPL. Il publia dans Mondo la description suivante de son expérience : « Soudain, je n’ai plus de corps. Tout ce qui reste du fatras vieillissant qui constitue la plupart du temps mon enveloppe corporelle, c’est une main auréolée d’or qui flotte devant moi telle la dague de Macbeth. Je pointe un doigt vers l’étagère de livres accrochée au mur du bureau et la parcours lentement de haut en bas sur toute sa hauteur... Dans cet environnement palpitant d’inconnu, j’ai été réduit à un seul point de vue. Le sujet “moi” bée intégralement dans un abîme de questions brûlantes. Un véritable Dysneyland pour épistémologues. » Barlow aurait très bien pu décrire là un trip sous acide. Malgré toutes les technologies numériques impliquées, l’expérience dont Barlow fait le récit appartient autant aux années soixante qu’aux années quatre-vingt-dix. Et au cas où le lecteur n’aurait pas percuté, Barlow cite Lanier : « Je pense que c’est le truc le plus incroyable depuis notre virée sur la lune » .

    Barlow qui s’était converti plutôt tardivement à la puissance des technologies numériques, était cependant un vieux briscard du mysticisme et du LSD. Fils de propriétaires de ranch dans le Wyoming, il avait été élevé dans un esprit Mormon, attaché au Parti Républicain. Il n’avait pas été autorisé à regarder la télévision avant l’âge de 11 ans et lorsqu’il le put, il regarda essentiellement des programmes de télévangélistes. À 14 ans, il fut envoyé dans une école catholique et, ironie du sort, c’est à ce moment-là qu’il commença à perdre la foi. À la n des années soixante, alors qu’il fréquentait l’Université de Wesleyan dans le Connecticut, il prit régulièrement part aux activités du groupe de Timothy Leary situé à Millbrook, dans l’État de New York. Sa foi refit surface à l’issue de son premier voyage sous acide. « Le sentiment qu’il y avait quelque chose de sacré dans l’univers m’animait de nouveau », raconta-t-il plus tard. Mais cette présence sacrée ne pouvait être contenue dans un dogme en particulier. Barlow se tourna plutôt vers les inclinations mystiques de Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, prêtre catholique dont il avait découvert les œuvres lorsqu’il était à l’université, et de Gregory Bateson, dont il avait lu Steps to an Ecology of Mind au début des années soixante-dix.
    [...]

    Au début du mois de juin, peu de temps après avoir lu le récit de Barlow sur le WELL, dans un geste qui est depuis entré dans la légende de la cyberculture, Kapor qui se trouvait à proximité de Pinedale, Wyoming, à bord de son jet privé, appela Barlow depuis son avion et lui demanda s’il pouvait faire halte chez lui. Ils s’étaient rencontrés auparavant tant socialement que professionnellement (Barlow avait interviewé Kapor pour le compte d’un magazine informatique) mais ne se connaissaient pas vraiment pour autant. Cet après-midi-là, assis dans la cuisine de Barlow, ils échangèrent sur les différentes opérations répressives menées alors par le gouvernement. Ils décidèrent ensemble de créer une organisation nommée la Computer Liberty Foundation. [...]
    La première et la plus influente des métaphores auxquelles se référait Barlow fut celle de la « frontière électronique ». Kapor et Barlow, tous deux maîtres incontestés de la mise en réseau, obtinrent rapidement une couverture médiatique pour leur nouvelle organisation ainsi que des propositions de financement en provenance de Steve Wozniak, cofon- dateur d’Apple, et de John Gilmore de Sun Microsystems. Ils initièrent une conférence sur le WELL et recrutèrent Stewart Brand pour étoffer le conseil d’administration de la fondation
    [...]

    Tous ceux qui étaient présents au dîner s’accordèrent sur l’idée que l’informatique en réseau était selon les propres termes de Barlow « d’authentiques confins ». « J’ai proposé Electronic Frontier Foundation durant le repas », se souvint Barlow, « et tout le monde semblait trouver ça bien. »

    En dépit de leur orientation libertarienne, les plumes d’Esther Dyson, de John Perry Barlow et de Kevin Kelly exhalaient un parfum de nostalgie d’un monde égalitaire. Pour ces auteurs, et pour ceux que leurs écrits auront guidé, l’internet public des premiers temps semblait préfigurer et aider à faire naître un monde dans lequel chaque individu pourrait agir dans son propre intérêt et dans le même temps produire une sphère sociale unifiée, un monde dans lequel nous serions « tous un ». Cette sphère ne serait pas gouvernée par les décisions de politiques agonistiques, mais s’en détournerait pour suivre le chemin de la prise de pouvoir individuelle assistée par les technologies et l’établissement d’agoras en pair à pair. Pour les prophètes de l’internet, comme pour celles et ceux qui s’en retournèrent à la terre quelque trente ans plus tôt, c’était le gouvernement, imaginé en colosse bureaucratique écrasant, qui menaçait de détruire l’individu ; l’information, la technologie et le marché représentaient alors le salut. »

    La boucle est bouclée. Du Barlow prestidigitateur du discours de l’internet à la situation de concentration et de dépendance actuelle de l’internet à une poignée de géants, il était temps de faire revivre des utopies positives pour que l’internet redevienne ce compagnon de la liberté et de l’action collective. Ce qu’Olivier Ertzscheid a tenté de faire dans son hommage/pastiche de la « Déclaration d’indépendance du cyberespace - V2.0 »

    Bonnes lectures à vous.

    Hervé Le Crosnier

    #John_Perry_Barlow #Fred_Turner #danah_boyd #Olivier_Ertzscheid #C&F_éditions

  • Une conversation ouverte à propos de la participation politique de chacun-e | Entre les lignes entre les mots
    https://entreleslignesentrelesmots.wordpress.com/2017/11/29/une-conversation-ouverte-a-propos-de-la-partic

    Lecture critique du livre « Culture participative » par Didier Epsztajn.

    Ce livre se présente sous la forme d’une conversation croisée, « la science a toujours été une affaire de conversation » malgré les tentatives actuelles de la privatiser et de la réduire à des droits de propriété intellectuelle.

    Une conversation, cela permet, entre autres, de « combler des trous, des hésitations, des impensés dans les propositions de chacun·e », de commenter ou d’éclairer des concepts et des idées, de souligner les chemins et de ne pas réduire la recherche à son résultat final.

    Les trois auteur-e-s considèrent la culture participative « comme un concept évolutif qu’il faut toujours interpréter selon les pratiques et les normes sociales et juridiques existantes. A chaque pas vers une culture plus participative, nous amplifions les enjeux et rehaussons les critères d’évaluation de nos pratiques réelles ».

    Dans une première partie sont abordés l’environnement médiatique, les enjeux des débats politiques autour des techniques numériques, la cyberculture, l’expansion des capacités de communication, les nouvelles formes d’expression créative, le « spectatorat de masse », la capitalisation par des entreprises des pratiques des individu-e-s (rappelant l’incorporation du travail vivant dans l’accumulation capitaliste), les plateformes de médias, « les technologies ne sont pas participatives, contrairement aux cultures » (ce qui devrait interroger sur leurs possibles utilisation ou non à d’autres fins), la participation à quelque chose et l’interaction avec quelque chose, l’inhérence de la participation à toutes les formes de pratiques sociales, les participations et les résistances, la volonté des concepteurs de « circonscrire les utilisateurs à un petit nombre d’activité acceptables », les nouvelles frontières et hiérarchies dans des espaces où potentiellement chacun-e pourrait contribuer, les privilèges « souvent ignorés dans les discours méritocratiques » (la méritocratie, selon moi, est à dénoncer comme vecteur de construction de l’inégalité), les obstacles sociaux et technologiques à une « participation pleine et entière », l’individualisme et l’égocentrisme. De nombreux éléments pour comprendre les enjeux et les possibles de la « culture participative »…

    Le second chapitre est consacré aux cultures et pratiques de la jeunesse.

    Il y reste beaucoup à analyser autour de la vie privée et publique des jeunes, en gardant le cap sur leurs auto-organisations possibles, « J’estime qu’il est essentiel de permettre aux jeunes d’explorer, de prendre des risques et de chercher un sens au monde qui les attend, eux et leurs camarades de classe », la construction sociale des individu-e-s et l’opportunité des apprentissages, les partages…

    Dans le troisième chapitre, les auteur-e-s discutent des « genres de participation » et des « écarts de participation ». Comment les modalités d’implication dans les médias « respectent elles aussi certains styles et conventions » ?,

    Les auteur-e-s abordent les politiques de participation « suivant la couleur de peau et la classe sociale » (qu’en est-il du sexe ?), l’illusion de la diversité

    Chapitre IV : « Apprentissage et littératie ». L’apprentissage comme effet secondaire de la production créative, les effets de la collaboration ou de la coopération, les toujours situés apprentissages, la littératie comme aptitude à interagir

    La cinquième partie traite de la « culture commerciale », le focus technologique (un vrai fétichisme), les outils qui renforcent les inégalités, les liens entre néolibéralisme et libertarien-ne-s, le web 2.0, le gaming et le mobile, la disparité des motivations, les problèmes de financement

    Ce qui pose bien évidement les questions de « démocratie, engagement civique et activisme » (chapitreVI), les groupes (les auteur-e-s parlent de communautés) d’apprentissage informel, la pensée d’alternatives, le « pouvoir en réseau », les buycotts, les propres conditions des jeunes, les espaces sécurisés, les autres formes de la politique…

    Je trouve intéressant dans la critique par Didier Epsztajn la confrontation entre l’approche aux Etats-Unis, telle qu’elle est développée par le livre et la tradition militante d’opposition que l’on connaît en France. Il y a un autre enjeu de la culture participative, qui mériterait d’être plus souvent débattu, c’est celui de la mondialité. Alors que les réseaux couvrent la planète, les débats sont toujours orientés par les conditions du débat aux endroits d’où sont émises les idées.

    Je reste dubitatif sur des notions comme « empowerment », « agentivité », (si les rapports sociaux ont des effets matériels puissants, ils ne sont pas pour autant des cages de fer closes, ils comportent toujours des contradictions, et les individu-e-s n’y sont jamais réduit-e-s simplement à les subir ; pour le dire autrement les êtres humains construisent leurs histoires sous contraintes), « subculture », « libertarien », l’enseignements des mathématiques de façon concrète…

    Je regrette que les prismes de classe, du genre et des processus de racisation dans la culture, les pratiques et les sociabilités ne soient pas systématisées. Il ne suffit pas d’indiquer que l’âge est la forme la moins reconnue « parmi les diverses dominations structurelles telles que la couleur de la peau, la classe sociale et le sexe », ni seulement traiter de la « politique de participation » suivant ces divisions sociales.

    #Culture_Participative #Didier_Epsztajn #danah_boyd #Mimi_Ito #Henry_Jenkins #C&F_éditions

  • Your Data is Being Manipulated – Data & Society : Points
    https://points.datasociety.net/your-data-is-being-manipulated-a7e31a83577b

    Fast forward to 2003, when the sitting Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum publicly compared homosexuality to bestiality and pedophilia. Needless to say, the LGBT community was outraged. Journalist Dan Savage called on his readers to find a way to “memorialize the scandal.” One of his fans created a website to associate Santorum’s name with anal sex. To the senator’s horror, countless members of the public jumped in to link to that website in an effort to influence search engines. This form of crowdsourced SEO is commonly referred to as “Google bombing,” and it’s a form of media manipulation intended to mess with data and the information landscape.

    At this moment, AI is at the center of every business conversation. Companies, governments, and researchers are obsessed with data. Not surprisingly, so are adversarial actors. We are currently seeing an evolution in how data is being manipulated. If we believe that data can and should be used to inform people and fuel technology, we need to start building the infrastructure necessary to limit the corruption and abuse of that data — and grapple with how biased and problematic data might work its way into technology and, through that, into the foundations of our society.

    Like search engines, social media introduced a whole new target for manipulation. This attracted all sorts of people, from social media marketers to state actors. Messing with Twitter’s trending topics or Facebook’s news feed became a hobby for many. For $5, anyone could easily buy followers, likes, and comments on almost every major site. The economic and political incentives are obvious, but alongside these powerful actors, there are also a whole host of people with less-than-obvious intentions coordinating attacks on these systems.

    The goal with a story like that isn’t to convince journalists that it’s true, but to get them to foolishly use their amplification channels to negate it. This produces a “Boomerang effect,” whereby those who don’t trust the media believe that there must be merit to the conspiracy, prompting some to “self-investigate.”

    Consider, for example, the role of reddit and Twitter data as training data. Computer scientists have long pulled from the very generous APIs of these companies to train all sorts of models, trying to understand natural language, develop metadata around links, and track social patterns. They’ve trained models to detect depression, rank news, and engage in conversation. Ignoring the fact that this data is not representative in the first place, most engineers who use these APIs believe that it’s possible to clean the data and remove all problematic content. I can promise you it’s not.

    I’m watching countless actors experimenting with ways to mess with public data with an eye on major companies’ systems. They are trying to fly below the radar. If you don’t have a structure in place for strategically grappling with how those with an agenda might try to route around your best laid plans, you’re vulnerable. This isn’t about accidental or natural content. It’s not even about culturally biased data. This is about strategically gamified content injected into systems by people who are trying to guess what you’ll do.

    If you are building data-driven systems, you need to start thinking about how that data can be corrupted, by whom, and for what purpose.

    L’article est si intéressant qu’il faut faire attention à ne pas le copier en entier ici ;-)

    #danah_boyd #Machine_learning #médias_sociaux #data #fake_news

  • Qu’est-ce que la culture participative ? | InaGlobal
    http://www.inaglobal.fr/numerique/note-de-lecture/henry-jenkins-mizuko-ito-danah-boyd/participatory-culture-networked-era/qu?tq=7

    Lecture critique du livre « Culture participative » par Mélanie Bourdaa

    Qu’est-ce que la culture participative à l’ère numérique ? Cette question a servi de fil rouge à une stimulante discussion entre trois des meilleurs chercheurs sur les études de fans et les pratiques numériques : Henry Jenkins (théoricien du transmédia), Mizuko Ito (anthropologue culturelle) et danah boyd (chercheuse chez Microsoft Research).

    Les trois auteurs, qui ont travaillé sur le projet « Initiative pour les médias numériques et l’apprentissage de la MacArthur Foundation », ont, des mois durant, tenu chez Mimi Ito une longue conversation, reproduite dans ce livre. Les trois auteurs y proposent de nouvelles approches et de nouveaux terrains, « une intersection entre les pratiques des jeunes publics, la culture de la participation, et les technologies digitales et connectées » (p. vii).

    Cet ouvrage, fait de conversations entre trois chercheurs, est fondamental pour comprendre la notion de la culture de la participation. Loin d’être techno-déterminée, celle-ci met l’accent sur la collaboration, le partage de valeurs et de normes et un engagement collectif dans des projets communs. Cette notion est toutefois en constante évolution : « [il s’agit] un concept évolutif qui doit toujours s’appréhender en relation avec des pratiques et des normes existantes » (p. 186) et notamment les pratiques et les activités de fans.

    #Culture_participative #Henry_Jenkins #Mimi_Ito #danah_boyd
    #C&Féditions

  • HEY ! ART MAG starts a SEASON #2 by HEY ! modern art & pop culture — Kickstarter
    https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1246864021/hey-art-mag-starts-a-season-2

    Aujourd’hui, après 7 années d’existence et 31 numéros, nous avons besoin de votre soutien. Pour renforcer la mission de HEY !, nous souhaitons :

    1) publier la revue en numérique (sortie décembre 2017)
    2) publier un beau livre (6 mois nécessaires de production, sortie mars 2018)

    Rejoignez-nous, aidez la production de ces 3 numéros (2 numériques + 1 Beau Livre Deluxe)

    Habités par notre dévorante passion pour les territoires affranchis de la norme, nous nous battons pour créer une alternative à la vision d’une culture unilatérale, pour contribuer à dévoiler un pan entier de l’art contemporain dédaigné par les critiques et le grand marché. Cette démarche aide les artistes à franchir les portes verrouillées des musées et galeries d’art. Pour remplir cette mission, nous avons créé une revue unique en son genre. Dédiée aux arts figuratifs pop contemporain et issus des codes de la contre-culture mondiale, elle retransmet l’énergie essentielle et spécifique de notre époque. Notre revue d’art HEY ! modern art & pop culture est bilingue (FR+ANGL) et s’adresse au monde entier. Elle présente les arts outsider et figuratifs pop hors normes (Lowbrow, Surreal Pop, Visionary art, Tattoo art, Graphic Novel, Comics, Rock Poster, Post Graffiti, Art Singulier...) et l’ensemble des arts graphiques dérivés de la culture pop en tant qu’expressions majeures de notre temps ; émanations nobles, issues de l’intelligence populaire.

    Je travail avec HEY ! et il y a des sérigraphies et un dessin de moi dans le #crowdfounding alors je tag fièrement #shameless_autopromo #HEY !

  • ► Danah Boyd On Why Fake News Is So Easy To Believe - The Ezra Klein Show (podcast)
    https://player.fm/series/the-ezra-klein-show/danah-boyd-on-why-fake-news-is-so-easy-to-believe

    “Technology,” she says, "is made by people. In a society. And it has a tendency to mirror and magnify the issues that affect everyday life.”
    boyd is a principal researcher at Microsoft Research, the founder of Data & Society, a visiting professor at New York University, and a fantastically interesting thinker. She packs more insight into a blog post than many authors get into a book. I’ve been reading her and learning from her for a long time, so I’ve been looking forward to this discussion, and it didn’t disappoint.

    #danah_boyd #fake_news