Imagine a World Without Free Knowledge/media/connection/exchange* (delete as applicable)
Posted: 18/01/2012 Filed under: Activism, Human rights, Technology | Tags: censorship, internet, law, netfreedom, PIPA, SOPA 2 Comments »
Wikipedia goes dark in protest at SOPA and PIPA
A few years back, before all this internet/smartphone/ubiquitous stuff, I worked for a media development NGO, helping to strengthen public-interest media in the developing world, as a critical part of public debate and social change. One of the ways we used to articulate why it was important to support these independent, public and community media was “imagine a world without media”… Unthinkable.
Now, with the space for individual communication and agency expanding and affecting so many facets of our lives, a flotilla of sites “going dark” is a critical action that demonstrates where we might all end up if this kind of legislation, which seeks to protect archaic modes of production and value creation, at the behest of entrenched lobbies and interests, is not stopped in its tracks. SOPA and PIPA must be stopped.
[And, if laws such as these pass in the US, then these flawed and failed legal standards will then be exported to other nations, with drastic results for free speech, and the creation of value (cultural, economic, and network) worldwide.]
Notes from Wilton Park, or The Internet Is Not A Horse
Posted: 12/01/2012 Filed under: Events, Human rights, Technology, Work | Tags: Cameras Everywhere, democratic governance, information ethics, media literacy, Presentation, report, thinktanks, Wilton Park, WITNESS Leave a comment »I’ve finally got around to posting my notes for a presentation I gave at a convening in May 2011 on Media, Social Media, and Democratic Governance at Wilton Park (here’s a PDF of the conference programme - and here’s some more about the history of Wilton Park). It was a few months before Cameras Everywhere was published, and it was a much-appreciated opportunity to explain some of the thinking behind the report, and to pull out some underlying themes as they related to the people at the convening: a mix of media development, intergovernmental, governmental, donors and citizen/social media specialists. You’ll find the main themes after the jump (and if you want to read the whole thing, and to find out why the internet is not a horse, go here): Read the rest of this entry »
The rise of the fact-checkers (Newsfoo 2011)
Posted: 21/12/2011 Filed under: Events, Human rights, Journalism, Media, Technology, Work | Tags: authenticity, avaaz, comedy, fact-checking, knowledge management, newsfoo, verification, visualisation Leave a comment »This year’s Newsfoo felt to me rather different from the 2010 edition. There seemed to be less discussion of how to sustain or resource news, or about the contexts of news consumption, and more about how to deal with some of the cognitive, knowledge-management and even ethical issues of news journalism. I’ve split my reactions into three posts – this one on initiatives/tools for fact-checking and knowledge management in the news, and two others coming shortly, on drone journalism and video, and on fear, comedy and the news.
Knowledge management, fact-checking in news organisations
Three Newsfoo discussions in particular prompted this post (alongside Baratunde‘s reminder to us all that The Onion has fact-checkers):
- Jonathan Stray asked first how news organisations could implement better knowledge management as they gather and process information – in a sense, a “context layer” for the web. As one person put it in another discussion, “the process of journalism is very lossy”, in that a lot of labour-intensive, useful information gathered in the process of doing journalism never gets used, or stored and made available to others to search or build on.
- Dan Schultz and Sasha Costanza-Chock talked about how to provide a “truth and credibility layer” for news consumers when they interact with journalism: how do you know if a statement reported online is true or not?
- a range of participants came together for a session specifically on fact-checking, looking in part of how Politifact works, and other initiatives (like this) enabling quite granular analysis of political and business discourse and reporting.
Also, a week before Newsfoo, Craig Newmark had posted on how he’s extremely dissatisfied with the state of fact-checking [UPDATE: and a new post from Craig Newmark at Nieman Lab continues to argue that fact-checking and -challenging is a critical part of how news organisations earn, retain and grow trust]. And a week ago, Ethan Zuckerman wrote helpfully about Morningside Analytics’ work on the US online fact-checking ecosystem, and Lucas Graves’ work on the landscape of fact-checking in the US. There’s a lot of discussion about the state of fact-checking generally at the moment, so I won’t retread the discussions had in these sessions at Newsfoo (not least since there was a fair amount of FrieNDA.)
So read on for a list of resources mentioned in these Newsfoo sessions, along with some others I’ve added to round things out a bit – I hope it’s of use. Most of these are US/UK only – who’s doing this in other parts of the world, in other languages? Thoughts? Additions? Let me know through the comments box!
This week, conferences on internet, privacy, security, openness
Posted: 01/11/2011 Filed under: Events, Human rights, Technology | Tags: conference, data, data protection, internet, journalism, londoncyber, mozilla, netfreedom, news, privacy, security Leave a comment »Following on from the Silicon Valley Human Rights Conference last week, discussions looking at various aspects of the web and society are coming thick and fast. Here are two three four just this week:
Today/tomorrow in London it’s the UK Foreign Office’s London Conference on Cyberspace (programme) – which seems heavy on cybersecurity, anti-hacking, and cybercrime, but opened this morning with a long panel on internet freedom featuring, among others, one of my wife’s Article19 colleagues, Barbora Bukovska. I’ll be there on Wednesday, with a particular interest in the session on Safe and Reliable Access.
In Mexico City on Wednesday and Thursday, the Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners are meeting to discuss Privacy: the Global Age (programme PDF). I’m intrigued to see where this goes after following its previous iterations in Madrid and Jerusalem. Visual privacy still seems a little off the agenda, in particular – and with the rise in consumer-driven face-recognition, this seems like a massive missed opportunity. And interested to see also how Stephen Deadman of Vodafone approaches moderating his panel on Mobile Privacy in the light of widespread criticism of Vodafone earlier this year during the Egyptian revolution. Sadly I won’t be in Mexico City alongside another of my wife’s Article 19 colleagues, Dave Banisar (see his global RTI law map) sampling the chapulines… The Public Voice held a related civil society meeting yesterday, and the OECD is holding one on privacy frameworks today.
And then, on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, it’s London’s turn again for the Mozilla Festival. This promises a totally different tone and approach to the previous two – focused more on the possibilities of openness, collaboration, innovation – and should be fascinating. (No time to go to this either, however…) Lots of very interesting people there (more here), and here’s what they’re talking about.
[ADDED] Also NewsXchange is happening in Portugal right now. Always worth following along to get a sense of what is happening across news industries around the world.
(I’ll post up relevant summaries, video etc if and when these appear.)
RightsCon panel today (Workshop 12, on visual content and human rights)
Posted: 26/10/2011 Filed under: Events, Human rights, Technology, Video, Work | Tags: bambuser, oslofreedomforum, panel discussion, rightscon, sanfrancisco, WITNESS, youtube Leave a comment »Today in San Francisco, I’m moderating a panel at the Silicon Valley Human Rights Conference. I’ll be joined by Steve Grove (formerly of YouTube, now of Google+), Sam Gregory of WITNESS, Hans Eriksson of Bambuser, and Thor Halvorssen of the Human Rights Foundation and Oslo Freedom Forum.
You can watch the video live here, or follow the tireless Katherine Maher’s liveblog here. And we’ll try to take questions via Twitter for about 20 minutes after the panel ends at the hashtag #rightscon.
(After the panel, I’ll add any videos or resources we bring up or show into this page.)
Speaking at the Silicon Valley Human Rights Conference
Posted: 11/10/2011 Filed under: Events, Human rights, Technology, Video, Work | Tags: conference, panel discussion, sanfrancisco Leave a comment »In two weeks’ time, I’ll be moderating a workshop at the Silicon Valley Human Rights Conference, on a topic dear to my heart:
Visual content and human rights - Content has changed our world, how do we manage its impact on society, governance, and privacy?
Panelists:
Sam Gregory, Program Director, WITNESS
Thor Halvorssen, Founder, Oslo Freedom Forum
Victoria Grand, Director, Global Communications and Policy, YouTube
Hans Eriksson, CEO, Bambuser
I’ll be drawing in part on Cameras Everywhere, but what topics and issues would you like me to raise with these panelists? Let me know either via a comment below, or tweet me.
Cameras Everywhere – even in the FT…
Posted: 21/09/2011 Filed under: Human rights, Journalism, Media, Technology, Work 1 Comment »Cameras Everywhere noted by my good friend Ravi Mattu in his latest FT column:
When the Egyptian government shut down the internet during the protests in Tahrir Square, it was seen as a form of repression.
Should access to technology now be seen in the same way as access to, say, clean water? And does this mean that the companies behind those technologies have a particular moral obligation to their users?
The authors of Cameras Everywhere, a report published earlier this month by Witness, a non-governmental organisation focused on using video to expose human rights abuse, argue that they do. (Full disclosure: Sameer Padania is the report’s co-author and a friend.) They looked at the role of mobile telephones and social media, as well as technology providers including Google, Twitter and Dailymotion, in documenting human rights abuses.
Thanks, Rav!
View Sameer Padania's profile
