US. BBC Radio 4 - Lobby Land. BBC Radio 4 - Tales from the Lobby. CitizenLab – civic engagement made easy. Carole Cadwalladr: Facebook's role in Brexit. BBC Radio 4 - The Populist Curtain, Poland and Hungary. The beatroot: Poland: fascist state? Just how bad are things getting for minorities in Poland?
Minorities disagree among themselves. Study finds political protests really can swing elections. Operation Infektion: A three-part video series on Russian disinformation. WATCH: This is a three-part film series. Scroll down and click to play any episode. Russia’s meddling in the United States’ elections is not a hoax. Facebook fights election tampering.
In 2009, when James Mitchell was three years into his career at Facebook and first stepped into a role to help police its content for policy violations, the notion that the fate of democracy itself might eventually hang in the balance would have seemed absurd.
Back then, the world was still getting its head around the idea that Facebook could be a potent tool for political organizing at all—a novel scenario that had been demonstrated the previous year by Barack Obama’s winningly net-savvy campaign for the presidency. Today, Mitchell is the company’s director of risk and response, overseeing “how we make decisions around abusive content, how we keep users safe, how we grow our teams at scale to make a lot of these complex decisions,” he says. The issues his team confronts are often freighted with political import, whether they involve the spreading of hate speech in Myanmar or a fraudulent account posing as senior Senator Jon Tester (D-MT). Remove or reduce? Numbers big and small. A conversation with Jamie Susskind on the tech revolution and the future of politics.
Conflict Armament Research. How AI will change democracy. Democracy is at a crossroads.
With the midterms approaching and the 2020 presidential election looming on the horizon, millions of Americans are set to place their faith in candidates whose rhetoric is democratic but who are open about their intention to compromise the very institutions that curtail the powers of elected leaders. Not just in the United States, but around the world–from Brazil to Hungary–voters are turning to authoritarian leaders promising to unleash the power of the people, but whose definition of “the people” excludes many who are not like them.
Remarkably, however, the ‘illiberal’ turn in the development of democracy is not the greatest challenge facing the idea of government by the people. Increasingly, digital technology is eroding the assumptions and conditions that have underpinned democracy for centuries. By now, fake news and polarization are familiar subjects to those interested in democracy’s health. Growth of Nationalism in Europe. The Growth of Nationalism in Europe!
A nation may be described as a community having a common homeland, a common culture and common traditions. European nationalism, in its modern sense, was born out of the desire of a community to assert its unity and independence. Pussy Riot member in hospital after suspected poisoning, says band – video. The tech giants will never pay their fair share of taxes – unless we make them. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and the accountants of Silicon Valley have proved Arthur C Clarke’s third law to be as true of tax avoidance as it is of tech.
The most recent outrage is Apple’s $252bn offshore cash pile, as exposed by the Paradise Papers investigation. More valuable than the foreign currency reserves of the US or the UK, it represents all the money that the world’s most valuable company has siphoned out of the global financial system for the benefit of its shareholders. Tax avoidance is as essential to the tech giants as their products are to our lives. Until 2015, Amazon paid a pittance on its UK sales by sluicing them through Luxembourg. Lip-syncing Obama: New tools turn audio clips into realistic video. Engineering | News releases | Research | Science | Technology July 11, 2017 University of Washington researchers have developed new algorithms that solve a thorny challenge in the field of computer vision: turning audio clips into a realistic, lip-synced video of the person speaking those words.
As detailed in a paper to be presented Aug. 2 at SIGGRAPH 2017, the team successfully generated highly-realistic video of former president Barack Obama talking about terrorism, fatherhood, job creation and other topics using audio clips of those speeches and existing weekly video addresses that were originally on a different topic. “These type of results have never been shown before,” said Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman, an assistant professor at the UW’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering.
Are dictators on the way out – or on the way up? All around the world, democracy is looking shaky.
While consolidated democracies are struggling to stay healthy, many flawed ones have turned into outright authoritarian regimes – most notably Russia under Vladimir Putin and Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. But the news isn’t all bad: on several continents over the last decade, longstanding dictators have resigned, lost elections, or been deposed.
As the table below indicates, the number of dictators who’ve fallen in recent years for all sorts of reasons is a cause for optimism. Roundabout benefits. 'Traffic lights are so dictatorial' ... but are roundabouts on the way out? You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.
But unlike Joni Mitchell, I’m driving in Newcastle, not Honolulu, and it’s not a parking lot that they’ve paved paradise to put up, but yet another set of traffic lights. Since resuming the school run last month, I’ve noticed that two different roundabouts on our route have vanished, replaced by junctions and traffic lights. My first reaction to the missing roundabouts was: where will the council plant its scrawny tree this Christmas? Home - Resolution Foundation. Cambridge Analytica and SCL – how I peered inside the propaganda machine.
British electoral consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica and its parent company, SCL Group, continue to be dogged by a series of allegations, weeks after a whistle blower told The Observer that data had been harvested from Facebook by an academic research company called Global Science Research, which then licensed SCL to use the data.
How autocrats rig elections to stay in power – and get away with it. If a government wants to be considered a respectable democracy on the world stage, it must pass a litmus test: holding multi-party elections.
But while more elections are being held around the world than ever before, the average quality of democracy around the world has fallen for the last ten years. The reason is that authoritarian leaders have learned how to rig elections. When we started researching this phenomenon, we expected to find the elections these leaders held were vulnerable to manipulation. Looking into flawed elections in countries such as Belarus, Kenya, Thailand, Uganda, Tunisia, and Zimbabwe, we’ve come across all kinds of rigging strategies, from excluding opposition candidates from the ballot to getting the dead to vote. Pressure Groups – A Level Politics. Unit 1: Pressure Groups A Pressure Group is an organised group that does not hold candidates for election, but seeks to influence and change government policy or legislation.
They are also described as ‘interest groups’, ‘lobby groups’ or ‘protest groups’. In Britain, the number of political parties is on the small scale compared to the mass number of pressure groups that run into their thousands. Pressure Groups can be distinguished in a variety of different ways including; local/national/European/transnational groups and temporary/permanent groups, however the most common distinctions are between: Interest and cause groups / Insider and outsider groups Interest groups (sometimes called ‘sectional’, ‘protective’ or ‘functional’ groups) are groups that represent a particular section of society, for example, workers, employers, consumers, an ethnic or religious group. Interest groups have the following features: The Spherical Model. Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump’s great success in exploiting the rise of nationalist Christianity. Russia has re-elected its self-styled leader and saviour, whatever his weaknesses – even his sins. The revelation that the Russian government may have ordered a former spy’s poisoning should provoke international outrage from Vladimir Putin’s fellow Christians, particularly as the holiest Christian festival of Easter approaches.
But then, Putin seems to have his own ideas about acceptable Christian behaviour. Like most people, I watched his recent speech showing Russia’s bigger, badder nuclear arsenal with mixed feelings of surprise and horror. Scary, no matter what the political leanings of a leader. Refugees out of sight, out of mind two years on from EU-Turkey deal.
An agreement between the European Union and Turkey that came into force two years ago on March 20 2016, has reduced the number of migrants arriving on the shores of Greek islands and, however precariously, salvaged the integrity of the Schengen visa system. But while the EU-Turkey Joint Action Plan was justified as a measure that would reduce deaths at sea and protect human dignity, the dramatic increase in the death rate of those crossing the Mediterranean in 2016 and deteriorating conditions for migrants in Turkey and Greece expose a reality at odds with that rhetoric. How Cambridge Analytica’s Facebook targeting model really worked – according to the person who built it. The researcher whose work is at the center of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data analysis and political advertising uproar has revealed that his method worked much like the one Netflix uses to recommend movies.
In an email to me, Cambridge University scholar Aleksandr Kogan explained how his statistical model processed Facebook data for Cambridge Analytica. The accuracy he claims suggests it works about as well as established voter-targeting methods based on demographics like race, age and gender. If confirmed, Kogan’s account would mean the digital modeling Cambridge Analytica used was hardly the virtual crystal ball a few have claimed. Yet the numbers Kogan provides also show what is – and isn’t – actually possible by combining personal data with machine learning for political ends. Costa Rica looks a little less exceptional after its heated election. Carlos Alvarado Quesada has won the Costa Rican presidency with 61 percent of the vote, an overwhelming victory for a progressive candidate who entered election day in a dead heat with his conservative rival.
Alvarado Quesada, a 38-year-old former labor minister under the unpopular outgoing President Luis Guillermo Solis, ran on an “agenda of equality” that included support for same-sex marriage, public education and renewable energy. In Costa Rica, this is a rather classic political platform. But his opponent, Fabricio Alvarado Munoz – an evangelical senator and former Christian musician who opposes gay marriage, secularism and sex education in schools – won the first round of Costa Rica’s election in February. What is the Cambridge Analytica scandal? - video explainer.
Psychographics: the behavioural analysis that helped Cambridge Analytica know voters' minds. The dealings that have been revealed between Cambridge Analytica and Facebook have all the trappings of a Hollywood thriller: a Bond villain-style CEO, a reclusive billionaire, a naïve and conflicted whistle-blower, a hipster data scientist turned politico, an academic with seemingly questionable ethics, and of course a triumphant president and his influential family.
How Trump Conquered Facebook Without Russian Ads. Home - ISD. Crowdstrike - SaaS Endpoint Protection - Threat Intelligence. Corporate America needs to get back to thinking about more than just profits. Bhu Srinivasan: Capitalism isn't an ideology. It's not just you – politics is stressing out America's youth. BBC World Service - The Compass, My Perfect Country. Making My Perfect Country. The Angela Merkel model – or how to succeed in German politics. 2017 Edelman TRUST BAROMETER. Tcij.org. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. The Plaid Avenger. Israel and Palestine. What if opinion polls had been banned during this election? When the prime minister, Theresa May, called a general election back in mid-April it was widely assumed she would easily win a large majority. The Conservative leader was far more popular than her Labour rival Jeremy Corbyn, and had a clear path back into No 10. We know this because the voters themselves told us – through opinion polls.
Six weeks later, the narrative is rather different. The Echelon spy network. What is Echelon? Two Swedish economists foresaw the backlash against globalisation – here’s how to mitigate it. Laura Galante: How to exploit democracy. Propaganda - Wikipedia. Form of communication intended to sway the audience through presenting only one side of the argument In the 20th century, the term propaganda was often associated with a manipulative approach, but historically, propaganda has been a neutral descriptive term.[1][2] DemocracyOS - Change the Tool.
Create your own country. How Teens In The Balkans Are Duping Trump Supporters With Fake News - BuzzFeed News. Why Electronic Voting is a BAD Idea - Computerphile. List of forms of government. Top Ten Reasons Why Kids Under the Age of 18 Should Be Allowed to Vote In Government Elections - TheTopTens® The rise of political bots on social media. International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. The Global Anti-Corruption Coalition. Global Parliament of Mayors. United Nations. UNHCR:Facts and Figures on Refugees.
European Parliament. Exposing the power of corporate lobbying in the EU. FreedomInfo. Bilderberg Meetings. Change.org · The world’s platform for change. Project on Algorithms, Computational Propaganda, and Digital Politics.