This is technological propaganda. 5/5 (4)

28

September

2019

The results of Brexit or Trump happening were shocking but not surprising. However, a greater concern emerged: the accidental or deliberate propagation of misinformation via social media.

44% of Americans get their news from Facebook (Solon, 2016). Many millions of people saw and believed fake reports that “the pope had endorsed Trump; Democrats had paid and bussed anti-Trump protesters; Hillary Clinton was under criminal investigation for sexually assaulting a minor” (Smith, 2016). If our democracy is built on reliable information, what is real?

The good, the bad and the ugly admission fee

In the Arab Spring campaign, Facebook as well as Twitter were first politicized and used to inspire people as tool for democracy. With Brazil, Brexit, and US we saw the equilibrium shift to the other side. We assume that there is an admission fee to pay before we are allowed to the connected world (Thompson, 2019). How many times a day have you been asked to agree with the terms on a website and clicked accept to only access the data behind it?

The recent Cambridge Analytica scandal exposes Facebook’s rather porous privacy policies and the company’s casual attitude to oversight. By using the platform, Cambridge Analytica, a British data mining firm, was able to extract data of 270.000 people by conducting a survey. People accepted to share details about themselves –and unknowingly about their friends (Economist, 2018). This amounted to information from 50 million Facebook users in overall, which the company happily shared with their customers, including Trump (Economist, 2019).

Full-service propaganda machine and Nazi Germany

In essence, companies like Cambridge Analytica can use Facebook to “target voters who show an interest in the same issues or have similar profiles, packaging them into what it calls ‘lookalike audiences’.” (Economist, 2018). The practice used effectively shaped voting results in several countries such as Argentina, Kenya, Malaysia, and South Africa even before the US presidency in 2016 (Thompson, 2019).

The practice to address certain lookalike audiences with feelings rather than facts, playing up vision to create a fake emotional connection, is not new. Nazi Germany shows this. Yet, we have the internet-driven efficiency (Smith, 2016).

Clickbait

Like the headline of this article, revenue-driven platforms such as Google and Facebook are using news feeds that engage more people, essentially to expose them to more ads. Whether the article is reliable or not does not matter, the algorithm boosts sensational stories that reinforce prejudice in order to draw more clicks (Smith, 2016). As mentioned before, if we use this as our primary information source, how can we assure that we are able to make informed decisions?

To conclude, platforms cannot stand at the sidelines making profit and see how they are used as a stepping stone to the next political victory for the highest bidder. They should be held accountable. Now.

 

References:

Economist (2018) The Facebook scandal could change politics as well as the internet. Data privacy. Available at: https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/03/22/the-facebook-scandal-could-change-politics-as-well-as-the-internet

Economist (2019) “The Great Hack” is a misinformed documentary about misinformation. The Facebook scandal. Available at: https://www.economist.com/prospero/2019/07/24/the-great-hack-is-a-misinformed-documentary-about-misinformation

Smith A. (2016) The pedlars of fake news are corroding democracy. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/25/pedlars-fake-news-corroding-democracy-social-networks

Solon O. (2016). Facebook’s failure: did fake news and polarized politics get Trump elected?. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/10/facebook-fake-news-election-conspiracy-theories

Thompson A. (2019) The Great Hack terrified Sundance audiences, and then the documentary go even scarier. IndieWire. Available at: https://www.indiewire.com/2019/08/the-great-hack-documentary-oscar-cambridge-analytica-1202162430/

Photograph: Dado Ruvic/Reuters

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Social Paradox

17

September

2019

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The rise of a series of technologies in the past decades has provided us with the possibility to stay connected with anyone at any point in time. First, the internet connected computers all around the world. Then, computers started shrinking, the cable made place for wireless technology. Since about a decade it is possible to carry a computer in your pocket, connected to world. This revolution has sparked a paradox: where one would expect more social behaviour, it might cause the opposite. This blog outlines three reasons why social media may spark antisocial behaviour.

First, the most obvious occurrence is the difficulty of putting your phone down (Andrew-Gee, 2019). Social media such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook are continuously pushing notifications in an attempt to draw your attention. Facebook for example has not been shy at using algorithms that calculate exactly what to feed you, thus increasing the chance of falling for calls of attention from the app. This dependence has moved to a subconscious level, as the average American opens their phone 47 times a day according to a study conducted by Time (Price, 2019). This does not only happen when on your own, but also at parties, dinners and social situations alike.  The smartphone swallows the attention that could otherwise be given to the ones surrounding you.

Second, the same algorithms that yell for your attention and feed the user exactly what they want to see is increasingly fragmenting or pillarizing the society (Bright, 2018). A new Facebook account will be unbiased towards the selection of timeline posts. Yet, as you start using the timeline, clicking on some posts, scrolling past others, the algorithm will monitor your interests and start pushing posts that match these interests. Since the posts that are being shown, clicked and read match the already established interests, therefore enforcing the effect the effect. This may seem innocent, yet it can have large consequences. As social media is maturing, politics is increasingly using social media as a medium of campaigning. Someone slightly attracted to one political view, can outgrow into a fanatic of such ideas as social media keeps on feeding more and more information fortifying this political view. As this happens to multiple political views on the political spectrum, collisions are on the rise due to the increased extremity of views.

Lastly, an increasing issue is the rise of loneliness among youth. A study by the Independent (2019) revealed that young people feel lonelier than any other age group. According to this study, 42% of people aged 16-24 mentioned feeling lonely often to very often. Something that could potentially be an underlying cause to this feeling is the fear of missing out while scrolling through near perfect images posted on social media (Economist, 2018).

Despite the increasing connectedness, social cohesion has seen a fall. As smartphones are demanding your attention more and more, the urge to dive into a smartphone is growing, meanwhile blocking out your surroundings. Hereafter, the algorithms on your smartphone make a selection of posts especially matching your interests. In the end, this leads to collisions across different views and more dramatically, loneliness. As technology progresses, further exploring the boundaries of what’s possible, a new discussion is necessary. Would it help to ban algorithms that generate exactly what you see? Will this decrease the urge to look on your phone? Will this counteract the increased fragmentation of society?

 

References

Andrew-Gee, E. (2019) Your smartphone is making you stupid, antisocial and unhealthy. So why can’t you put it down. The Globe and Mail.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/your-smartphone-is-making-you-stupid/article37511900/

Bright, J. (2018). Explaining the Emergence of Political Fragmentation on Social Media: The Role of Ideology and Extremism. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 23(1), 17-33.

Price, C. (2018). 9 Ways to Finally Stop Spending So Much Time on Your Phone. Time.
https://time.com/5139859/smartphone-addiction-solutions/

Hosie, R. (2018). Young people feel lonelier than any other age group, study reveals. The Independent.
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/young-people-loneliness-intense-study-a8563056.html

Economist (2018). Loneliness is pervasive and rising, particularly among the young. Economist.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/08/31/loneliness-is-pervasive-and-rising-particularly-among-the-young

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Information asymmetry in politics

6

October

2016

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The theory of asymmetric information was developed in the 1970s and 1980s as a plausible explanation for common phenomena that mainstream economics couldn’t explain. In simple terms, information asymmetry  means that two parties to an economic transaction have different information about the goods or services being exchanged. This creates an imbalance of power. Problems related to information asymmetry are adverse selection and moral hazard. Adverse selection refers to a process in which undesired results occur when one party has more or better information. And moral hazard is a situation where one party has information advantage, they may have the incentives to use that advantage to exploit the other party.

Asymmetric information starts the downward economic spiral. A lack of equal information causes economic imbalances that result in adverse selection and moral hazards. All of these economic weaknesses have the potential to lead to market failure. A market failure is any scenario where an individual or firm’s pursuit of pure self-interest leads to incefficient results.

Information asymmetry is not only present between buyers and sellers of a product, but also at the car garage, the dentists, with a health insurance or in politics. The political candidates running for election are the ones with the better and more information and representative voters are taking the risks.

When elections are called, politicians and their supporters attempt to influence policy by competing directly for the votes of constituents in what are called campaigns. The message of the campaign contains the ideas that the candidate wants to share with the voters. With these messages the candidates try to convince the voters that they are the best and most suitable candidate. The voters would likely want to support politicians who are competent, serve public interest as well as follow the law and social norms. But among the candidates there may be some who are less suitable, even ill-intentioned. The voters can never be perfectly informed about the real abilities and intentions of the political candidates. There will always be some degree of uncertainty with reference to the characteristics of the political candidates. This is information asymmetry.

While exercising power, politicians are increasingly exposed to temptation. One of the greatest temptations is for politicians to use their position in service of their own ambitions instead of the promises they made during the campaign and to use their status and influence to their own personal advantage, or to serve the interests of friends, family, or business partners, while gradually forgetting about public interests.

Possible solutions for adverse selection and moral hazard in economic transactions are inspections, warranties, modify incentives and making the asymmetry smaller by looking information up. But what about politics? The other candidates and the media already try to inform the voters, which is also not always truthfully. Is there a way to reduce the asymmetry? Or should we just trust that the candidates serve the public’s interest?

 

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/asymmetricinformation.asp
http://thismatter.com/money/banking/information-asymmetry.htm

Click to access szanto_toth_2012_inf_asymmetry_corruption_121017.pdf

http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/052115/do-any-markets-not-exhibit-asymmetric-information.asp
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_campaign

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