Polis-EBU Research Fellow Kamila Varadzinová has recently arrived at the LSE from Czech Radio  for her month long fellowship, during which she will research the creation and implications of voting advice applications (VAAs). The information she gathers and her resultant report will provide the basis for the creation of the first voting advice application in the Czech Republic.  In the following blog post, Kamila will outline the debate surrounding voting advice applications and their design.

Blog post by Kamila Varadzinová

The use of VAAs is increasing throughout Europe

Do Voting Advice Applications increase a voter‘s understanding of political parties’ positions?

The popularity of VAAs in recent years has been consistently high in Europe. In the last Bundestag elections, a new record was created when the voting advice application Wahl-o-mat was used by more than a million German voters. The attractiveness of using VAAs for voters is apparent; they get a comparison of their preferences with the preferences of all political parties. The advice of a VAA, in indicating what party is ideologically closest to a voter’s, has value. This is all done without much effort on the part of voters and through an entertaining medium. Due to the increasing popularity of VAAs and their potential to impact  a voter’s choice of candidate, public discussion as well as criticism of their use is growing.

Do Voting Advice Applications lead to  populism?

Some who argue against the use of VAAs say that they reduce complex political issues and change them to simple yes/no answers. However, it has also been argued that the aim of VAAs is not to help voters to understand complex political issues and that VAAs do not help voters form an opinion. Rather, VAAs assume that a voter has already formed an opinion. The goal of VAAs is thus more modest – to indicate the party that the voter most agrees with.

What do voters take into account when choosing a candidate?

Although parties’ manifestos are important to voters, the decision of whom to vote for is influenced by many other factors. Voters can be persuaded because of a leader’s charisma, the religious orientation of parties or populist bribes. In addition, there can be a psychological dimension as individuals could feel that by using a VAA they are letting a questionnaire choose the party they should vote for.

Are VAAs easily manipulated? 

For some, the most important argument against the use of Voting Advice Applications is the impact they have on a voter’s choices and whether voters may be manipulated by them.  The advice voters get may vary across the VAA they choose to use. Van Praag (2007) examines different Dutch VAAs for one election and found “that only 43% of users received the same advice from different VAAs”. Given that VAAs compare preferences to party manifestos, the selection of the information to include and compare has a significant impact on the resulting advice of these applications. Walgrave et al. (2008) explain that the reason for the discrepancy of advice given across VAAs is the choice of the particular statements and information used to determine policy positions. If you choose different issues, you can get different recommendations. Moreover, Walgrave et al. (2008) argue that some issue choices can favour one party and disadvantage another as particular parties may occupy certain issues. The result is that advice given by Voting Advice Applications is also limited to the given number of issues that the application designers have chosen to highlight. The key question for VAAs then becomes the way of selecting issues so that they are representative.

How to design a reliable VAA?

The quality and fairness of VAAs may be different as the selection of issues can be done by single analyst or by a group of professionals. For example, Dutch Kieskompas use a method to set the positions of the parties, consisting of the combination of expert’s assessments (this includes political lobbyists, government officials and scientists), research on party manifestos and the involvement of the parties themselves. What should always be transparent is how the VAA was designed and on what principles, and who paid for its development. During my fellowship at Polis one of my key tasks will be to compare different VAA design principles and get recommendations for the design of the Czech VAA.

Blog post by Kamila Varadzinová

Sources:

Van Praag, P.,  De Stemwijzer. (2007). “ hulpmiddel voor de kiezers of instrument van manipulatie?” Paper presented at Politicologenetmaal, Antwerpen, 31 May-1 June 2007.

Walgrave, S.,  M. Nuytemans and K. Pepernams. (2008). “Voting Advice Applications between charlatanism and political science: the effect of statement selection”. Paper presented at the conference ‘Voting Advice Applications (VAAs): between charlatanism and political science’, University of Antwerp, May 2008.

Wall, M., M. Sudulich, R. Costello and E. Leon. (2009) “Picking Your Party Online – An investigation of Ireland’s first online voting advice application.” Information Polity, 14 (3). pp. 203-218.

Image source: League of Women Voters of California

This post was originally published on the BBC Academy website at the following link.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/blogcollegeofjournalism/posts/smsldn-James-Harding-on-how-social-media-has-changed-the-BBCs-world

By Charles Miller, editor of the College of Journalism blog

James Harding with Charlie Beckett

Is there something special about the BBC’s relationship to social media? That was the question at the heart of the conversation between James Harding, the BBC’s director of news and current affairs, and Charlie Beckett, director of Polis at the LSE, which launched last week’s Social Media Summit #smsldn (run by the BBC College of Journalism and the New York Times).

Their discussion was put in context by the BBC’s Pooneh Ghoddoosi. In her introduction she remembered how far things have changed from the days when she worked as a stringer for the New York Times in Iran, having to persuade travellers to take rolls of undeveloped film out of the country and hope that one day she’d spot the results in a newspaper.

For the BBC, the first glimmerings of that change came in 1997, said Beckett, when the then director general of the BBC, John Birt, went out on a limb by insisting that the BBC should have a web presence.

In its complicated way, the BBC has made the untraditional part of its tradition. As Harding boasted, the corporation has been “the most innovative force in news in this country”. Today, more people follow @BBCBreaking on Twitter than watch the News at Ten.

And the tradition of innovation is alive and well. On the day Harding spoke the BBC was using WhatsApp as part of its coverage of the Indian election. Why? Well, it helps change the nature of coverage, offering “a much greater flavour”, said Harding.

On the domestic front, the licence fee brings its own imperatives: “we’re committed to universality” and that means staying with the audience. The BBC needs to be “innovative from the get-go” – and today “social media is THE way of getting to everyone”.

But does the BBC have to on everything, asked Beckett?

“There is a danger of spreading ourselves too thin,” Harding admitted, but “the resources question is overstated.” That’s because of changes in how content is distributed. The trend is away from the old, expensive industrial model in which the BBC broadcast its output in a single direction. Today the news business is “less like a concert and more like a music festival”. One consequence: “It’s not clear all the time who’s in charge.”

Of course that means the BBC is making use of commercial organisations – the social media businesses – that it doesn’t control, Beckett pointed out.

Nothing is more important to the BBC than the audience’s trust in its output, said Harding. And there are choices among social media: if one platform decided it wasn’t interested in news it wouldn’t matter. Overall, with so many new opportunities for different kinds of story-telling, “it’s the most exciting time to be a journalist since the advent of television.”

New services like BuzzFeed and Vice do stories differently from the BBC, said Beckett.

Yes, and we take them “extremely seriously”, said Harding: “We have a great deal to learn from our competitors.” The BBC is experimenting with its own new formats, such as Instafax on Instagram, while BBC Trending taps into social media as a source of news.

Using social media as a source of information raises the issue of verification. Harding said it’s not a question he takes lightly: “We should tip our hats to people who kill things that are wrong.” But there is a kind of self-correcting mechanism at work too: “The world has turned into a giant fact-checking machine.” That’s healthy for journalism.

What’s more, social media allows journalists to lift the curtain a little, and give a greater sense of what goes on in the making of news output. In that sense it “debunks the ‘voice of god’” in BBC content.

But even with all the new tones of voice that are now possible on new platforms, Harding has a simple rule: “Don’t say anything on social media that you wouldn’t be happy to say on air.”

Videos of the sessions at #smsldn will appear on our YouTube channel in the near future.

#smsldn

#smsldn London Social Media Summit

Social media skills

James Harding with Charlie Beckett at the SMSLDN conference

Photos and article: BBC Academy, Charles Miller

In this lecture, Diane Coyle considers how the BBC can meet the challenge of providing a universal service while media channels proliferate and its audience becomes more and more diverse. She will also examine the BBC’s relationship with the state and ask how its independence is best protected.

Diane Coyle, image from BBC Trust

About Diane:

Born and raised in the North West, Diane was educated at Oxford and Harvard, where she did a PhD in economics. She has worked as an economist and journalist. Economics editor for The Independent for eight years, she left in 2001 to set up her own consultancy specialising in the economics of new technologies. Diane was a member of the Competition Commission from 2001 to 2009, which has given her extensive experience in understanding how markets work and how to make competition serve consumers. She has also written many popular books on economics.

In 2009, Diane was awarded the OBE for services to economics. She lives in London and is married to BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones. A BBC Trustee since November 2006, Diane was appointed as Vice Chair from May 2011 and Acting Chair in May 2014.

Lecture details:

Date: Monday 23^rd June 2014

Venue: Sheikh Zayed Theatre, LSE New Academic Building

Time: 6.30pm to 7.30pm

This is a Polis and British Government@LSE public event and is free and open to all with no ticket required. If you have any questions, please email polis@lse.ac.uk.

The Future of the BBC, thoughts from Polis

The future of the BBC and its role in British society has been up for debate in the lead up to the 2016 BBC Charter Renewal.  Polis Director Charlie Beckett was one of the media and journalism experts invited to give evidence to the Select Committee on the future of the BBC. Below are a summary of his main thoughts, taken from a previous blog post which is accessible here: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/polis/2014/01/08/the-future-of-the-bbc-my-submission-to-the-dcms-select-committee-for-charter-renewal/.

This is my personal submission to the House of Commons Department of Culture, Media and Sports’ Select Committee inquiry into the future of the BBC in the lead up to BBC Charter Renewal in 2016.

It draws partly on my experience as a journalist (including at the BBC from 89-99 and ITN 99-2006) but mostly on my last eight years leading research and debate at the LSE with academics, media practitioners, policy-makers and politicians looking at the changing nature of journalism in particular, and media in general. Most recently I have been working on research on public service media across Europe and new business and production models in the UK and internationally.

Summary of main points:

• The BBC has a critical role globally and at national and local levels – these are different but should be complementary
• Like all media organisations the BBC has to respond to new technological, social, economic and political realities by changing its organisation and activities
• The idea of ‘public service’ has enduring value but must be reviewed in the light of new contexts
• The BBC must prioritise its services to reduce in some areas and possibly develop new roles: universality does not mean ‘doing everything all the time’
• The BBC must become a much more citizen-centred service, facilitated by the new technologies of personalisation
• The BBC must become a much more networked producer by recognising its role in supporting wider creative industries and building social capital by acting as a commissioner and curator
• The BBC must retain its core editorial values but be more critical of those in power and orthodox opinion and more risk-taking with a stronger emphasis on distinctive quality
• By being more networked and citizen-centred the BBC will become more accountable, efficient and creative, but its governance and management should also be reformed. The BBC must also become much more diverse and challenge its own cultural biases
• The BBC must reduce its overall capacity through a combination of commissioning, collaboration and prioritisation, but should retain the licence fee while preparing for potential new forms of financing

The following post is a summary of Alexander Hebels’ winning entry for the 2014 Polis Social Media Prize.

Exploring the relationship among the presentation of self, trust, and images via the Snapchat picture messaging application

By Alexander Hebels

Images are everywhere. We send and view images everyday. We chuckle at how terribly accurate Internet gifs and memes apply to our lives, and get sad when people don’t like our profile pictures on Facebook (‘look at me at this cool music festival with my crew’) or don’t double-tap our Instagrams (yes, your filter was actually too hipster).

Our culture is increasingly visual. But there are reasons for this are about more than the technology. Yes, smartphones and apps give us the power to instantly capture and transmit candid moments. But it’s about us as people. Images – from the Snapchat picture message to the Facebook profile pic – say something about who we are, or who we want people to think we are. Thus, the aim of my research is to understand how individuals present themselves on online platforms. More specifically, I believe there are relevant connections between the way people present themselves online and how users then construct/deconstruct images that will tell us about the reality of our social media led lives.

I want to explore these connections via the Snapchat mobile application, a relatively new picture messaging application that allows users to capture and send Snaps that contain both image and text to other Snapchat subscribers. Snapchat’s exclusive focus on images provides a new and unique experience in which to think about pictures and how/why people are so fixated on visual texts. After all, in November 2013 the WSJ reported that 400 million Snaps are sent each day. That is a lot of selfies. (See other interesting Snapchat stats here).

This is a field in which scholars recognize the implications of website design for understanding people and culture and how the construction of visual/multimodal (the combinations of visual, audio, and written material) texts differs from the way we read and understand written (more linear) texts. You don’t necessarily look at a Facebook page the way you’re reading this blog post.

We now have to be reader-viewers. To know how to read and make sense of written text is no longer enough. We now, more than ever before, have to be equipped to “read” and interpret images. My research will examine how that happens.

My research will also initiate a shift away from SNS (social networking sites) and toward mobile applications which are often seen as faster, more accessible forms of communicating that have become an emotionally important and integral aspect of daily life. People can’t live without their smartphones and without their apps (imagine studying without 2048). Check this out for a cool representation of mobile/app statistics.

Developed only a few years ago, Snapchat has attempted to revolutionize the manner in which mobile phone users think about communication with images. The application of theories involving online identity presentation and visual texts/literacy represents a new area in which user identity can be explored in tandem with evolving technology and a proliferation of social media choices. According to Snapchat, the app “creates a place to be funny, honest or however else you might feel when you take and share a Snap with family and friends. It’s sharing that lives in the moment, unless some­one decides to save it” (Snapchat, 2014). Simply put, it is a place where you can be you.

The idea that Snapchat provides a current and evolving platform for users to express who they really are is something I hope to explore and evaluate in my research. But by pulling from semiotics and ideas on visual texts I hope to augment research on the self-presentation of identity with an awareness of how images are constructed and read, thereby extending research beyond the fact that SNS are used to say something about who we are: how do images say this?; are we aware of the ways in which images construct meaning when we send/receive them?

I want to problematize these ideas on a more commercial level as well. If users on Snapchat, for example, are acutely aware of how people tend to look at and understand images, or that images can often be misinterpreted, or that visual elements like angles and distance all construct and provide meaning, would the Facebook profile picture be more powerful? Could the LinkedIn headshot convey something even more about our professional selves?

These, and other questions, are key drivers behind my research. But first – let me take a selfie.

Alexander Hebels ‘selfie’

Alexander would love to hear your comments or questions about his research on a.hebels@lse.ac.uk.

This post is by Polis Summer School Student Carmen Zheng

Source: the Bureau of Investigative Journalism

Prior to the 1990-91 Gulf War, a journalist coined the term The Powell Doctrine, named after then Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell. Vowing to utilize every resource and tool available against the enemy to minimize United States casualties, The Powell Doctrine has been successful in being the driving force behind the U.S. military’s usage of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV’s), also known as drones. The controversy over UAV’s is that drone strikes result in excessive collateral damage, sometimes killing more innocent civilians than military combatants at once.

Alice Ross from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has been working hard on The Covert Drone War, featured on www.thebureauinvestigates.com, which tracks “CIA drone strikes and other US covert actions in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia” by drawing news from various sources across the globe including BBC, CNN, The New York Times, and The Huffington Post. Amongst the statistics and in-depth analyses of the impact of drones on international terrorism, Alice’s introduction of the Bureau’s Naming the Dead Project is what stood out to me most. As an American, I have done research at my university to see how projects like Naming the Dead are changing the face of wartime journalism.

Naming the Dead is basically a record of the identified people reportedly killed by drone strikes in Pakistan. As I scrolled through the familiar site I had seen in Alice’s PowerPoint slides from Polis Summer School today, I read a deluge of biographies and “Case Studies” of innocent mothers who had been gardening when hit by a drone, to al-Qaeda members that have detonated bombs in New York and Great Britain.

However, I could not help but notice one aspect from the 141 pages of names I did not recognize; even though with names and sources, I felt there was still a barrier between the information I truly sought after and me. This barrier, which both Alice and Dr. Shani Orgad touched upon during their talks today, is something no one, not even large-scale news organizations can break down.

The Naming the Dead Project is beneficial to other news sources and the public in general to garner key information about drone target victims. However, as Alice mentioned, there are challenges: “How reliable are the media reports as sources? How reliable is social media?” Not to mention the inaccessibility of drone sites, which according to our guest speaker, “No journalist from the Western world has actually seen a drone attack in person.”

When I see the statistics from The Bureau’s site, numbers of civilians killed in Pakistan for example range from 416-957, and those that perished from covert operations in Yemen range from 150-386. I know this information is almost impossible to access and I applaud The Bureau for even having numbers, let alone a minimum and the maximum, but I cannot help but worry that news like this frustrates the public. Who can we turn to for accurate information if we’re not sure if 416 died or 957 died? Who was the drone supposed to target when innocent civilians also suffered?

I feel that although websites similar to The Bureau of Investigative Journalism existing specifically to report on innocent civilian casualties exemplifies the dramatic changes in war journalism, they also succeed in making the invisibility of drone warfare visible. This only strengthens the disconnection between drones and citizens, overpowering visions of harnessing any form of successful, mass anti-drone campaign in the future.

Dr. Orgad spoke in the morning lecture of “the cereal test,” where reporters would only publish “sanitized war photos” that would not immediately quell the appetites of those eating cereal while watching the morning news. I understand how blood, gore, and overly graphic imagery can make someone want to look away, but I feel that the struggle with drone reporting is that we look away because from the names and obscure numbers because they are banal and repetitive; we can never get information first-hand about any of this!

Essentially, drone warfare is invisible to the government and us: just like we try to absorb as much information from sites like the Bureau as we can, the CIA is sending their drones off from remote control rooms in places like Nevada, watching their victims die from a digital screen.

War technology has changed the face of war for soldiers and citizens alike, but now drone technology has no face – just like killing someone from thousands of miles away is different from reporting a drone attack thousands of miles away. There can be no mass anti-drone campaign from the nation if UAV warfare continues to be this invisible.

As for my personal opinion, I think we should not forget that our drone targets are not innocent women and children, but they are terrorists from groups like al-Qaeda that are responsible for the September 11^th attacks on the World Trade Center and previous U.S. Embassy bombings. We should not forget these attacks killed thousands of innocent women and children as well. But ultimately, I am just a student writing a simple blog post. Just like drone warfare, my words are invisible.

This article is by Polis Summer School student Carmen Zheng @carmenkzheng

Introduction by Charlie Beckett, Director, Polis, LSE

Photo courtesy of Keith Ivey, accessed on Flickr

Voting Advice Applications are digital devices that try to help citizens think about how they might decide to vote in an election. They might be websites, apps or any other online format that you could access via a desktop, laptop, tablet or mobile connected device. They are a niche digital product but they also represent a bigger question for journalism in the Internet age: how can media organisations use the new technology to help the citizen cope with information overload to make better choices for themselves and for society? VAAs are difficult to get right. There are the technical aspects but there are also editorial problems about balance, accuracy and fairness. Even if they work, will they make a difference? This series of articles will not answer all those questions. But as more people try to use VAAs we hope that this research will give some pointers towards best practice and innovation and help facilitate a debate about their use. The research was carried out by Kamila Varadzinová from Czech Radio as part of a Polis/EBU (European Broadcasting Union) Fellowship. Find out more about the fellowship here.

Voting Advice Applications

Kamila Varadzinová

The proliferation of Voting Advice Applications is a phenomenon that has come about in response to the digital environment and as a way to encourage citizen participation in the political process. Given their increasing prominence, questions have been raised regarding their potential influence on voters. In this series of blog posts I will investigate key questions regarding their purpose, impact and design as part of my research to determine how to best design the Czech Radio VAA to be introduced in the fall in time for the 2014 Czech elections.

Voting Advice Applications tend to be questionnaires that ask a series of questions or present statements on issues that users then have to decide if they agree or disagree with. The result is the user is matched up to a particular political party, or group of parties whose ideas they are mostly ‘aligned with‘.

In this post I will investigate the following questions. Do VAAs influence the opinions of potential voters? Are users satisfied with them? What other effects may they have? These questions have been studied by academics in reference to VAAs across Europe and several conclusions have been made.

What are VAAs and who uses them?

VAAs are online tools that help voters to find easily and quickly which candidate or party provides the ‘best match,’ on the basis of the degree of agreement with a series of issue statements.

As a result they show comparison of voters‘ preferences on major issues with the political parties’ positions on the same issues.

• VAAs are spread massively across the Europe. At least one such tool is used in all but two countries of the EU27 (Garzia and Marshall 2012). In Netherlands, Germany,Switzerland, Finland and Belgium the incorporation of VAAs into the electoral process is almost self-evident and in several instances citizens are offered competing tools during the same election campaign (Bright et al 2014).
• An increasing numbers of citizens have made use of them, especially in multi-party systems (Rosema et al 2014). In the most recent national elections in countries like Switzerland, Finland, and The Netherlands between 30 and 40 per cent of the voters consulted a VAA before they cast their vote (Rosema et al 2014).
• In spite of the great sucess of VAAs, relativly little is yet known about how reliable the results are and how strongly they influence voters‘ desicions.
• Early studies of users showed that the typical VAA user is young, male, urban-based, relatively affluent, interested in politics and to the left of the political spectrum (Wall et al 2009).

Do users change their votes after using VAAs?

The most pressing question has always been whether VAAs have any influence on people’s political decisions or attitudes and if so, to what extent?

The majority of studies so far have used survey data among VAA users to report the influence of the tool on voting behaviour (Pianzola 2014). Depending on the country, one-third to two-thirds of surveyed users report that the tool had influenced their vote choice (Marschall, 2005; Mykkänen and Moring, 2006). A smaller but still substantial amount of voters even changed their party choice after consulting the tool (Marschall, 2005; Mykkänen and Moring, 2006; Walgrave et al., 2008).

However, data gathered through observational studies faces challenges. Firstly, respondents self-select themselves into becoming VAA users out of the total population of voters (self-selection into treatment). They then self-select themselves into becoming a participant in the survey (self-selection into the sample). Vassil (2012) argues that the chances are that those enthusiastic about the opportunities offered by such tools and with a general openness towards new information are first of all prone to use the tool and might also have a higher tendency to answer the survey.

Pianzola (2014), in particular, argues that the results may be distorted and doubts the impact of VAAs on voter decision-making. The distortion of research findings emerges from the fact that research is done mostly on users who sign in actively as participants, and who are probably more enthusiastic about the opportunities offered by such tools and their answers are therefore much more positive (Pianzola 2014). To correct this distortion Pianzola (2014) used corrective methods in the study and handled selection bias in the research of using the VAA smartvote in 2007 Swiss federal elections. The results indicate that smartvote use does indeed have an effect on users vote choice. Since the Swiss VAA smartvote has always indicated a rather strong impact on voters compared to other countries, we can be quite confident that effects on vote choice do in fact exist in Switzerland. However, since the effects found in other countries tend to be rather small and are embedded in different electoral contexts, the question will be whether they can also be maintained after controlling for the inherent selection bias.

The impact that VAAs can have also varies across the type of VAA and the country where it is used. The 2005 Wahl-O-Mat users survey showed that during the 2005 German federal elections 6% of users said that they will change their vote choice as a result of VAA use. In the 2006 Dutch elections, this effect was estimated to be approximately ten per cent. This could be accounted for by users who are unsure of their preferences, or perhaps are first-time voters (Pianzola 2014).

Do potential voters like VAAs?

Most users feel satisfied after using a VAA and feel that they are an easy and entertaining way to obtain more information and knowledge about parties’ positions. For example, the 2010 Vote Match user survey found that 75.3% of users were more aware of the policy differences between the parties after using the quiz (Vote Match 2010).

Sources of user dissatisfaction include the case of cognitive dissonance when users receive information or recommendations that run contrary to their previously held beliefs, such as alignment with a party they feel they would never vote for. Users also may be dissatisfied if they feel that the applications are too simple or that statements are poorly chosen, whereby their opinion on an issue is more nuanced than the question allows. For example, a user could agree to fees for health care but only with a condition that they do not apply to children and seniors (iHNed.cz. 2013).

There also may be disagreement with whole idea behind VAAs (for example, that they provide recommendations based on the pre-electoral positions of parties on different issues that are only promises while the reality after the election may be completely different (iHNed.cz. 2013).

However, it is evident that advice VAAs provide serves to motivate users into looking for further information about party policies (57% of users sought out more information about politics after taking the 2010 Vote Match).Further results show an influence on participation in the election: 1 in 20 people surveyed (4.5%) said that they voted as a direct consequence of using the quiz (Vote Match 2010).

Other effects VAAs may have

Some of the tools also look to involve users in other ways than simply recommending political parties. For example, the VAA Euandi tries to involve a social aspect where users may share their result advice through social networks to create discussions between people with similar political preferences.

The use of VAAs by potential voters may have a variety of effects on voter behaviour: whether people chose to vote, who they vote for and they also may encourage citizens to participate in political discussions. How VAAs are designed thus is incredibly important. This will be the next topic I will discuss.

References:

Bright, Jonathan, Diego Garzia, Joseph Lacey and Alexander H. Tretschel. 2014. Trans-nationalising Europe’s Voting Space, EUDO Working Paper RSCAS 2014/02.

Garzia, Diego. 2010. “The Effects of VAAs on Users’ Voting Behaviour: An Overview”, in Cedroni, L. & Garzia, D. (eds.): Voting Advice Applications in Europe: The state of the art. Napoli: ScriptaWeb, 2010.

Garzia, Diego and Stefan Marshall. 2012. Voting Advice Applications Under Review – The State of the Research. International Journal of Electronic Governance 5(3/4), pp. 203-222.

iHNed.cz. 2013. VAA Volebni Kalkulacka. Retrieved from https://cs-cz.facebook.com/ihned.cz/posts/10151895152052604.

Marschall, Stefan. 2005. “Idee und Wirkung des Wahl-O-Mat.” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 51-52: 41-46.

Mykkänen, J., Moring, T. (2006). Dealigned politics comes of age? The effects of online candidate selector son Finnish voters. Paper presented at the conference of politics on the internet: new forms of media for political action, November 25, Tampere.

Pianzola, Joele. 2014. Selection biases in Voting Advice Application research. Electoral Studies.

Rosema, Martin, Joel Anderson and Stefaan Walgrave. 2014. The design, purpose, and effects of voting advice applications, Martin Rosema , Joel Anderson, Stefaan Walgrave. Electoral studies.

Vassil, Kristjan . 2012. Voting Smarter. The Impact of Voting Advice Applications on Political Behavior. Doctoral Dissertation. European University Institute.

Vote Match. 2010. User Survey. http://unlockdemocracy.org.uk/campaigns/achievements/entry/vote-match-goes-from-strength-to-strength.

Walgrave, S.; van Aelst, P.; Nuytemans, M. (2008). ‘Do the Vote Test’: The Electoral Effects of a Popular Vote Advice Application at the 2004 Belgian Elections. Acta Politica 43: 50-70.

Wall, Matthew, Sudulich, Maria Laura , Costello, Rory and Leon, Enrique. 2009. Picking your party online – an investigation of Ireland’s first online voting advice application. Information Polity, 14 (3). pp. 203-218. ISSN 1570-1255

Fellowship supported by the European Broadcasting Union

Photo courtesy of Keith Ivey, accessed on Flickr

Post edited by Christine Boykiw

This is the second of a series of articles about Voting Advice Applications. Read the first one here.

VAAs are digital devices that try to help citizens think about how they might decide to vote in an election. They might be websites, apps or any other online format that you could access via a desktop, laptop, tablet or mobile connected device. They are a niche digital product but they also represent a bigger question for journalism in the Internet age: how can media organisations use the new technology to help the citizen cope with information overload to make better choices for themselves and for society? VAAs are difficult to get right. There are the technical aspects but there are also editorial problems about balance, accuracy and fairness. Even if they work, will they make a difference?

This series of articles will not answer all those questions. But as more people try to use VAAs we hope that this research will give some pointers towards best practice and innovation and help facilitate a debate about their use. The research was carried out by Kamila Varadzinová from Czech Radio as part of a Polis/EBU (European Broadcasting Union) Fellowship. Find out more about the fellowship here.

Designing a VAA

Kamila Varadzinová

The selection of questions for VAAs is crucial for establishing their reliability and usefulness and is one of the more contentious aspects of the design process. Critics of the applications have often argued that depending on the number and type of questions a potential voter answers, the quality and type of advice can be manipulated. They have also questioned whether specific parties may be advantaged or disadvantaged with the inclusion or exclusion of specific statements.

Evidence indicates that these concerns may be validated, that some parties may have an advantage given the selection of certain issues to be included. However, this does not mean that VAAs are an unworthy endeavour, rather, it shows the importance of the selection process for building reliable VAAs.

During the typical selection process, academics, journalists and members of the public collaborate together and try to select a broad spectrum of statements that cover the most important policy areas.

The following are the main problems that are encountered during the selection process and recommendations I have compiled via research and discussion with experts.

PROBLEM 1. Questions must distinguish between parties

A study by Wagner and Ruusuvirta (2012) showed that in general terms, VAAs reflect party positions well, but that accuracy depends on the number of questions asked.The selection of questions within a given topic is often not broad enough to detect differences of opinions between parties. In many instances, VAAs fail to distinguish differences in party positions on particular issues.One example was the 2008 Austrian Politikkabine, where on the issue of immigration, all parties apart from the FPÖ were shown to have identical policy positions. The only VAA that really managed to separate parties on immigration policy was the VAA Swiss smartvote which asked 11 questions on the topic. Apparently, in large party systems, more questions are needed to effectively distinguish parties from each other.

RECOMMENDATION

The main recommendation for designers of VAAs is that it is useful to have more questions when it comes to the key policy areas in order to get a nuanced picture of both how potential voters and parties view different aspects of an issue and to best match voters with the party that is most similar.

Of course VAAs are limited regarding how many questions can actually be included, but some VAA providers (like Czech Volebni kalkulacka) do offer both short and long versions.

PROBLEM 2. The selection and balance of questions

Statement selection, which is the issues chosen to be presented as part of the application, has an impact on the advice given to users. The statements chosen can benefit particular parties, as shown by research by Lefevere and Walgrave (2014) They conclude that because VAAs tend to be structured on a left-right model of voting, parties with extreme “left-right positions are advantaged when selection includes more left-right statements” (2). They also show that parties for which particular issues are salient are “disadvantaged when more statements on these issues are included” (Lefevere and Walgrave 2014, 2).Moreover they found that including more statements increases a VAA’s accuracy as more statements on the left–right dimension makes VAAs better able to connect voters with parties in a meaningful way.

RECOMMENDATION

A recommendation for this problem could be a pre-test on voters before launching the VAA. In the case that some statements advantage or disadvantage some parties, VAA builders can exclude them.

Studies show that choosing statements is a balancing act without clear guidelines. The challenge for VAA builders is therefore to find a combination of broad and current topics that articulate policy positions and do not advantage one party over another. Users of VAAs must be made aware of the fallibility of these applications; they do not provide a perfect match between parties and users, rather just a comparison of certain issues and certain times.

References:

Lefevere, Jonas and Stefaan Walgrave. 2014. A perfect match? The impact of statement selection on voting advice applications’ ability to match voters and parties, Electoral Studies.

Wagner, Markus and Outi Ruusuvirta. 2012. Matching voters to parties: Voting advice applications and models of party choice, Acta Politica, 47(4): 400-422.

Fellowship supported by the European Broadcasting Union

This is the third of a series of articles about Voting Advice Applications.  Read the first one here and the second here.

 VAAs are digital devices that try to help citizens think about how they might decide to vote in an election. They might be websites, apps or any other online format that you could access via a desktop, laptop, tablet or mobile connected device. They are a niche digital product but they also represent a bigger question for journalism in the Internet age: how can media organisations use the new technology to help the citizen cope with information overload to make better choices for themselves and for society? VAAs are difficult to get right. There are the technical aspects but there are also editorial problems about balance, accuracy and fairness. Even if they work, will they make a difference?

This series of articles will not answer all those questions. But as more people try to use VAAs we hope that this research will give some pointers towards best practice and innovation and help facilitate a debate about their use. The research was carried out by Kamila Varadzinová from Czech Radio as part of a Polis/EBU (European Broadcasting Union) Fellowship. Find out more about the fellowship here.

The Future of VAAs

Kamila Varadzinová

Do voting advice applications have a future? Are they simply a current trend that potential voters will grow out of or will they increase in importance as technology and elections become more intertwined?

Critics of VAAs argue that issues surrounding the reliability and transparency of these tools make them potentially harmful as they may give either invalid advice or manipulate voters into voting a particular way. Additionally, while some surveys made of VAA users indicate that they are found to be useful, it is difficult to say to what extent users would follow the advice or would change their vote based on their VAA result. One may even argue that VAAs could lead to a populist approach to voting as they simplify complex political issues to yes or no answers in some cases.

These reasons could indicate why some media groups have still chosen to stay away from creating their own versions of a VAA as doubts remain as to how you can create a transparent, unbiased and useful tool. However, the future of VAAs may not be so grim as they provide many benefits and open new avenues for voters and parties to get engaged in the process.

While issues remain with the design of VAAs, competition between developers and increasing input from political scientists and members of the public on developing standards of design principles and selecting questions will likely improve their quality.

VAAs generate a huge amount of research data that can be used to see how people vote across different areas compared to political party platforms. Bright et al (2014) find that in five Eastern European countries (Poland, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia) every single user would be better represented by a party outside her country of residence. VAAs could be, in the future, a tool for European election across the countries.

An important aspect of VAAs is how they may encourage potential voters to engage in debate and vote in elections. The 2010 VoteMatch survey indicated that 1 in 20 people surveyed (4.5%) said that they voted as a direct consequence of using the quiz (Vote Match 2010).

Voting advice applications are relatively simple and easy to use and provide an avenue for voters to engage with the political process as well as each other. To some extent, VAA users share their results through social networks and some VAAs, such as Euandi, experiment with this aspect of VAAs by creating discussions between VAA users with the same political preferences via Facebook. The connections VAAs can make between voters and with other technology is a huge area for further development and innovation and we can expect to see them increase in usage and diversity across the EU.

References:

Bright, Jonathan, Diego Garzia, Joseph Lacey and Alexander H. Tretschel. 2014. Trans-nationalising Europe’s Voting Space, EUDO Working Paper RSCAS 2014/02.

Vote Match. 2010. User Survey. http://unlockdemocracy.org.uk/campaigns/achievements/entry/vote-match-goes-from-strength-to-strength.

Fellowship supported by the European Broadcasting Union

Image courtesy of League of Women Voters of California LWVC, accessed on Flickr

Edited by Christine Boykiw

The idea of the Media Agenda Talks is to get leading media practitioners to spend an hour outlining what they see as the key issues in their field as well as aspects of their personal experiences. This year we have a series of interesting speakers from all areas of media and journalism coming weekly to discuss  variety of topics and issues. The events are held almost every Tuesday in the fall, from 500-600pm in the New Theatre, East Building. The events are free and open to all and are first-come first-serve.

2014 Media Agenda Talks Programme

Mainstream Media Is Meaningless Nostalgia

October 7^th, 5:00-6:00pm, New Theatre, East Building

Ben Hammersley, Internet technologist and author

Your perception of The Media is probably entirely wrong. This is ok, because everyone’s is. But we’re all wrong in interesting ways, and in this talk, I’ll discuss why, and why that’s important.

Ben Hammersley is an author, futurist and technologist, specialising in the effects of the internet and the ubiquitous digital network on the world’s political, cultural and social spheres. He enjoys an international career as a trends and digital guru, explaining complex technological and sociological topics to lay audiences, and as a high-level advisor on these matters to governments and business. Ben is the author of five books, including the acclaimed 64 Things You Need To Know Now For Then, which is a guide to the new concepts of the modern world. He is contributing editor of WIRED Magazine.

October 14^th, 5:00-6:00pm, New Theatre, East Building

Nick Davies, Author of Hack Attack, Investigative journalist

Chair: Dr Damian Tambini

Nick Davies is a freelance journalist, working regularly as special correspondent for the Guardian. In the last few years, he was centrally involved in the publication of secret US logs and cables obtained by Wikileaks and in exposing the phone-hacking scandal in Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper empire. His book ‘Hack Attack’, which exposes Rupert Murdoch’s use of power as well as the crime in his newsrooms, was published in the summer of 2014 in the UK, US, Canada and Australia.

Global News Media: The Next Horizon

October 23^rd, 6:30-8:00pm, Sheikh Zayed Theatre, NAB

Andrew Miller, CEO of the Guardian Media Group

Twenty years after the first digital newspaper editions appeared, news publishers are becoming more global, while their readership and route to market has become more fragmented. Publishers are experimenting with different digital formats and new distribution models. Some famous titles have disappeared. Others have become successful multi-media franchises – among them The Guardian. Andrew Miller, Chief Executive Officer of Guardian Media Group (GMG), will address the challenges facing the news-media amid continued technological upheaval, changing consumption habits and the emergence of new competitors. After a year in which The Guardian won a Pulitzer Prize and GMG declared record profits, Miller will outline how newspapers must make smart investments, control costs and innovate to survive in a fast-changing media environment.

Andrew Miller was appointed chief executive officer of Guardian Media Group (GMG) in July 2010, having joined the Group in August 2009 as chief financial officer. Prior to GMG, Andrew was chief financial officer of Trader Media Group (TMG) for six years. Andrew has previously worked at PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay division, Bass PLC and Procter & Gamble. He is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland, having gained his accountancy qualification with Price Waterhouse.

The Dark Net: what happens under the conditions of anonymity?

October 28^th, 5:00-6:00pm, New Theatre, East Building

Jamie Bartlett, Director of The Centre for the Analysis of Social Media

Chair: Dr Damian Tambini

Jamie Bartlett will talk about his new book The Dark Net, an exploration of some of the net’s most shocking and unexplored subcultures. This includes the worlds of uncensored drugs markets; internet trolling; neo-Nazis, child pornography, bitcoin and crypto-anarchy. He will examine how people behave under the conditions of real or perceived anonymity online, and what it means for society today.

Jamie Bartlett is the Director of The Centre for the Analysis of Social Media, a collaboration between Demos and the University of Sussex. This work focuses on the ways in which social media and modern communications and technology are changing political and social movements, with a special emphasis on terrorism and radical political movements. Jamie’s recent book ‘The Dark Net’ about internet subcultures was published in August 2014 by William Heinemann. He is also a writer for the Daily Telegraph on technology.

Communicating for Leaders

November 4^th, 5:00-6:00pm, New Theatre, East Building

Zaki Cooper, Group Public Affairs at Standard Chartered Bank

Drawing on the speaker’s experiences in a range of public service and corporate leadership environments, the session will explore case studies of effective leadership communications, examine the evolution of this field and propose some golden rules for leaders who wish to communicate successfully.

Zaki Cooper worked in the Buckingham Palace press office from 2009 until 2012 with a special focus on the Diamond Jubilee. A communications professional, he has worked in a range of corporate and public service environments, including a spell in the Chief Rabbi’s office from 2004 to 2006 and working for T-Mobile and Tesco. He has a BA in Politics and Parliamentary Studies from Leeds University and an M Phil from Cambridge University.

We expected jet packs, but we got 140 characters – the unfulfilled promise of the information revolution

November 18^th, 5:00-6:00pm, New Theatre, East Building

Norman Lewis, writer for Futures Diagnosis and Innovation Specialist, PriceWaterhouseCoopers

Chair: Dr Alison Powell

I aim to explore the gap between the potential of information communication technologies and the narrow narcissistic focus which dominates society’s obsession with the technology today. The contrast between the productive potential of Big Data, cloud computing and billions of connected people across the planet on the one hand, versus our obsession with narrow narcissistic consumption and our lowered expectations about what this technology can deliver, is startling. We may have Big Data but we have small ambitions. We may have ‘smart’ devices in our pockets with more computing power than the Lunar module that put man on the Moon but we have a diminished view of human beings and the knowledge developed to create this in the first place. There is no app for low expectations, only apps’. Discuss….

Dr Norman Lewis is recognised as an expert on future trends and user behaviours with regard to technology innovation and adoption. He has spoken on these topics at events all over the world. Norman is currently a Director at PwC responsible for running their crowd sourced innovation service. He is a co-author of Big Potatoes: the London manifesto for innovation. Prior to joining PwC he was Chief Innovation Officer and Partner at Open-Knowledge – a global consultancy on enterprise social software. He was the Chief Strategy Officer of Wireless Grids Corporation, USA and the Director of Technology Research for Orange UK, formerly the Home Division of France Telecom. He was also previously an Executive Board member of the MIT Communications Futures Programme and a former chairman of the ITU TELECOM Forum Programme Committee.

Data journalism for social change

November 25^th, 5:00-6:00pm, New Theatre, East Building

Monique Villa, CEO Thomson Reuters Foundation

Chair: Dr Damian Tambini

We all need stories to make sense of the world. And very powerful stories sometimes are hidden behind data. When data is crunched to expose realities often ignored by mainstream media, the impact is global. From fighting human trafficking to empowering women, Monique Villa, CEO of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, highlights the potential of data and smart storytelling to create lasting social change.

Monique Villa is CEO of the Thomson Reuters Foundation. She has been ranked among the world’s 100 most influential people in Business Ethics by Ethisphere. Since her appointment in 2008, she has transformed the Foundation, launching a number of groundbreaking programmes that leverage the expertise of Thomson Reuters to trigger change and empower people across the world. Among them, TrustLaw, an award-winning service created in 2010 to spread the practice of pro bono worldwide by connecting the best law firms with NGOs and social enterprises in need of free legal assistance; and Trust Women, a fast growing global movement to put the rule of law behind women’s rights through concrete action. Under Villa, the Foundation’s award-winning editorial team covers issues that mainstream media often forget: from women’s rights abuses to the human impact of climate change.

December 2^nd, 5:00-6:00pm, New Theatre, East Building

Liliane Landor, Controller, Languages, BBC Global News

Liliane Landor is Controller, Languages, Global News – editorially and managerially responsible for all 28 language services on radio, TV and Online and 1400 staff in England and internationally. She started at the BBC as a producer/presenter in the French service. She was appointed Head of BBC WS News and Current Affairs in 2006 responsible for all the daily and weekly journalism of the WS in English. Under her leadership in 2008 her department won 10 Sony Awards – 4 Gold, 2 Silver and 2 Bronze – a singular achievement recognising the breadth and excellence of its journalism. She was born in Lebanon, educated in France and Switzerland. She speaks five languages.

Details of events are subject to change.

For more information contact polis@lse.ac.uk

Are we too attached to technology and our mobile devices? MSc student Jessica Di Paolo reports on the first Media Agenda Talk by internet technologist Ben Hammersley on the future of media in an age of ever-advancing technology.

The statistics are alarming. According to a group of researchers at Harvard, says Ben Hammersley, 95% of people who own a smartphone have felt their phone vibrating in their pocket when it wasn’t. Initially, such a huge percentage would strike one as odd. But if we think about our checking habits and the amount of time that we spend with new technologies, these statistics are less surprising…

Living in a digital world we are able to find everything we need on the web, and this has transformed the way we live our lives and our relationships with each other. From doing ordinary things – such as buying DVDs, books, music – to making the toughest decisions of our lives, we tend to rely on the internet for information and for assistance.

Although I strongly support this culture of digital ubiquity, I have to admit that smartphones are taking over my life in a way that is extremely hard to control. I check my Twitter/Facebook compulsively. When I wake up, the first thing I do is look at my email, check the news, and answer posts on my Facebook wall. Sometimes I feel panic and anxiety if I can’t check my iPhone or I become aggressive if don’t receive answers to important emails.

Digital devices have become incredibly intimate

Ben Hammersley

Hammersley rightly calls the predominance of new technologies the “intimacy of the media” by emphasising how we could not survive without the comfort of our cyber appendages.

I did an experiment last year. The aim was to analyse the social and psychological consequences of living one whole day without any digital devices. After two hours I began to feel phantom vibrations in my bag where my phone usually resides. Stressed and anxious, I kept asking my friends to check my emails and Facebook page because I was feeling left outside the world. In my free time, I didn’t know what to do. I used to watch my favourite TV series on my laptop, read an e-book, listen to the music through Spotify, or talk with friends on Skype. But by recreating my hobbies without the technology, I was surprised by the different activities I could engage in, such as having a coffee with a friend.

Hammersley says the main reason why people spend a huge amount of time on the web is not because of something ‘important’ such as the news but because social and digital platforms give them rewards and satisfaction. I believe this is connected to the concept of intimacy between media and users.

Future implications

According to Mr. Hammersley, “We can’t predict how this media intimacy and pervasiveness will impact on and shape our future.” “We must look at social implications of computing power replacing what only humans could do before.”

I believe that the future of digital media is still quite hard to predict. We can make hypotheses, debate the social impact of emerging Artificial Intelligence and of microchips inside of our brains, but this is all only speculation. In practice, I am convinced that the key is in adapting our lifestyle to the new technologies, following their progress step by step with a critical perspective. However, this doesn’t mean either being ‘victims’ of our iPhones or changing our personality and interests. It means critically assessing the new technologies transformations and being prepared to change.

Next week’s Media Agenda Talk will be a lecture by investigative reporter and author Nick Davies.

This post was written by MSc student Jessica Di Paolo @JessDiPaolo

Photo credit:

Matt M. Accessed on Flickr

Gabriele Barni. Accessed on Flickr

Among a number of political ramifications, the recent UKIP by-election success in Clacton has raised tough questions about the organization of televised debates during the 2015 general election campaign. LSE’s Nick Anstead looks to Germany and Canada for more inclusive models that the UK could follow. This post is a repost of an article that originally appeared on the LSE Media Policy Project blog. You can access the original post here.

UKIP now has representation in Westminster, is consistently polling between 10 and 20 per cent nationally, and is the first party outside the Conservatives and Labour duopoly to win the popular vote in a national election since 1906 (in the 2014 European election). All these factors were likely behind the decision made by a consortium of broadcasters to invite UKIP to participate in one of the three planned televised debates in the run up to next election.

The proposal by the broadcasters is for three debates, each with a distinct format.

1. The first debate would feature the Conservatives, Labour, the Liberal Democrats and UKIP.
2. The second debate would feature only the three established parties.
3. The final debate would involve just the big two, based on the assumption that these parties are likely to provide the Prime Minster after the election.

While the Liberal Democrats have already rejected the proposal (arguing instead for the same format as 2010), it remains unclear exactly how the two major parties will respond.

Discussion of televised debates in the UK has always been heavily focused on the American example. Historically, party leaders have often rejected the idea of debates on the grounds that their focus on the personality of party leaders is incompatible with the UK’s system of parliamentary democracy (Margaret Thatcher, for example, used exactly this argument to reject James Callaghan’s proposal for debates in the run up to the 1979 election). Even when debates finally occurred in 2010, the American experience loomed large in popular commentary, with the Kennedy-Nixon debates of 1960 being frequently offered by way of example.

This emphasis on the US example, however, neglects the fact that many parliamentary democracies around the world, including both neighbours in Europe, and Commonwealth countries (whose systems of democracy are largely derived from the Westminster model) have been holding televised debates for decades. These countries have faced many of the same challenges as any 2015 UK debates would, especially in regards to the question of which parties are invited to participate.

Learning from televised debates in Canada and Germany

Photo credit: Alexander Baxevanis https://www.flickr.com/photos/futureshape/ used under Creative Commons https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Canada, for example, faced a very similar question in 2008, when independent MP Blair Wilson decided to join the Green Party just before the federal elections, becoming the party’s first member of parliament. Since Canada had based inclusion in television debates on representation in the House of Commons plus a consistent 5 per cent level support in opinion polls (which at this time the Greens had), this would make the party eligible for entry into the debates, along with the Conservatives, the Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc Québécois .

At first, some of the major parties looked to veto the inclusion of the Greens, with Conservative Prime Minster Stephen Harper and Jack Layton from the NDP threatening to pull out if the Greens were invited. The consortium of broadcasters, fearful that the row would torpedo the chance of any debates, acquiesced and withdraw the invite to the Green Party leader Elizabeth May. However, this decision was followed by such a large public outcry that broadcasters and politicians were forced to back down, and re-invite May to the debates.

The Canadian approach has much to recommend it, including the relative transparency it creates. This is important because – as the events of 2008 proved – transparency about the rules of inclusion makes it much harder for the larger parties to veto new entrants without suffering a public backlash. Furthermore, the inclusion of the Bloc in nationally televised debates (despite them only fielding candidates in the province of Quebec) offers a distinctive example of how to integrate regional political dynamics into national debates, which might prove increasingly relevant to the UK.

However, the Canadian system is also a very blunt instrument, offering only inclusion and exclusion. In terms of the party system, it only has the potential to expand the cartel, but not break it. Perhaps a better model for the contemporary situation in the UK might be found in Germany, where recent decades have seen a distinction drawn between two types of debate format:

1. The so-called Elefantenrunden (“elephant round”) debates which were first broadcast in 1972. Any party with representatives in the Bundestag was invited to participate, so this model reflected the multiparty nature of German politics (although it should be noted that, due to the 5 per cent threshold in the regional list element of Germany’s electoral system, this is actually quite a significant hurdle).
2. A new format introduced in 2002, termed the TV-Duelle (“TV duel”), which was only open to the leaders of the CDU and SPDas the parties most likely to provide the next Chancellor.

The Elefantenrunden debates disappeared from the schedule in 1984 when Chancellor Helmut Kohl refused to appear in them. However, in 2013 a format very similar to the old Elefantenrunden re-appeared, when each party with members in the Bundestag was invited to send a representative to a debate that was broadcast three days before the country went to the polls.

Emulating the multiple format model employed in Germany makes sense in the UK, for a couple of reasons. First, constitutionally, it reflects the dual function of a Parliamentary election – namely that it produces both executive and legislature. Formally, voters are participating in the selection of the latter by choosing their local MP. However, we know that a number of factors, such as party platform and attitudes to the would-be Premier, play a role in voting decisions in parliamentary democracies. It is fitting that multiple debates formats should reflect this reality.

The second issue relates to the rapidly changing nature of the UK party system, and ensuring that any televised debates are seen as legitimate by the British public. UKIP’s by-election victory has produced a huge shock for the Westminster parties, but it is worth remembering that the Greens also have representation in Westminster, while the SNP – who already have 6 seats in the House of Commons – might continue to grow in strength following the independence referendum. It would therefore be wrong to see the issue of televised debates simply as being a “UKIP problem”. Rather, a format needs to be devised that reflects the complex reality of party politics in Britain today. Political parties and broadcasters could do a lot worse than look to Germany for ideas about how to achieve this.

This post gives the views of the author, and does not represent the position of the LSE Media Policy Project blog, nor of the London School of Economics. The article originally appeared on The Media Policy Project blog and is republished here with permission of the author.

Throughout the term Polis will be inviting a number of media and communications professionals and journalists to come speak to staff and students at lunchtime on Wednesdays. Bring your lunch and join us from 13:00-14:00 weekly as we listen to talks by speakers on topics such as working in political communications and verifying stories in the context of the crisis in the Ukraine.

“Battling for Truth: Russian propaganda, fake news and the war in Ukraine”

Location: NAB 2.06
Date: Wednesday, 29 October
Time: 13:00-14:00

Yevhen Fedchenko will analyse how Russian government-sponsored and government-led propaganda became a powerful weapon in a war with Ukraine. Compared to military warfare impacting mainly East of Ukraine, information warfare and propaganda has great impact beyond the region, spreading to the rest of Ukraine, Russia and the West.

Fake news became cornerstone of disinformation campaign against Ukraine. Due to social media nature, they spread increasingly rapidly, stealing the narrative and destructing the journalism.

StopFake.org volunteer project was launched by students, alumni and faculty of the Mohyla school of journalism to fact-check and debunk fake news. We analyze Russian mainstream media outlets and social media and already debunked more than 300 false and twisted stories, photos, videos.

Yevhen Fedchenko is a co-founder of fact-checking website StopFake.org, Director of the Mohyla School of Journalism and the Head of Ph.D. Program in Mass Comm at National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Kyiv, Ukraine. He spent almost 20 years with media industry, covering international stories for different types of media.

Polis Intern Sakshi Dayal reports on the latest Polis Media Agenda Talk featuring Andrew Miller, CEO of the Guardian Media Group. Read the full text here

When I was young, Sunday mornings meant sitting on my grandfather’s lap, watching him read the newspaper, something generations after me might never witness.

We live in a world full of distractions, never completely investing ourselves in anything, always wondering if there is something we could be doing. We also live in a world that is constantly evolving, socially and technologically.

What newspapers signify to my grandparents, perhaps the Internet will be to those who come after.

In an age where everyone can be a journalist with the click of a button, how can news organizations sustain themselves and those they employ? How can they ensure that people have primary access to their material rather than those of others, and how do they ensure that once they do get people’s attention, they are able to hold it?

Andrew Miller, the chief executive of the Guardian media group said that news organizations will survive only if they adapt themselves to the times, and embrace the technological advancements that are taking place. He also laid stress on the need to ensure “quality journalism for quality readers” to maintain readership.

Miller’s words ring true. The age of paper is over, whether it’s newspaper or books; instead electronic versions are taking over. News organizations must work in synch with constantly evolving technology, making sure their work is available to readers in the form they are now most likely to access and that is digital.

Embracing new technology is, as Miller said, only one aspect that must be mastered by news organizations to survive. Quality of journalism is equally important. In today’s world there are alternatives to everything and a news organization has to deal with not only its competitors in the industry, but also with those outside it who have compelling content and enough access to media to do the work of journalists for them.

In the face of increasing competition from these fronts, the only thing that can give a news organization or a journalist an edge over others is the quality of writing. Adapting to technology and ensuring the right content is available to a person at the right time will attract readers, but a click can only gets people to a page; it’s the content that will make them stay there and afterwards return for more.

This article by Polis intern, Sakshi Dayal.

Polis Media Agenda Talks are every Tuesday at 5pm and are free and open to the public – details here

If you were unable to attend any of the Media Agenda Talks or if you have an interest in any of the topics and issues discussed we have podcasted the majority of the talks. Listen in below!

Week 1- Ben Hammersley

Mainstream Media Is Meaningless Nostalgia

Week 2- Nick Davies

Hack Attack

Week 3- Andrew Miller

Global News Media

Is Ello the new Facebook? Has a new trend towards privacy and secure user data begun or will this new platform go the way of other social media platforms once called ‘facebook destoryers’. Polis Intern and LSE MSc student John Ray looks at Ello and other Facebook competitors in the post as he seeks to answer these questions.

Ello has been heralded as the latest assailant to the social networking throne. The anti-facebook, founded by Paul Budnitz of Kid Robot, was created with the intention to be both a beautiful social network and a “tool for empowerment, not a tool to deceive, coerce and manipulate”. And Budnitz and the rest of the Ello team have kept their word to a certain extent; they’ve recently agreed to become a “public benefit corporation”. This status means that they cannot host advertisements, they cannot sell user’s data to third parties, and, in the event that Ello is sold, the new owners will have to abide by these terms (read the charter here).

This is a novel approach to securing an advertising/data mining-free social sphere on the Internet. Ello, at least legally, no longer exists merely for the benefit of its owners or shareholders.

This new model is also interesting because it’s still a for-profit company. Despite their status, Ello has, per Tech Crunch, received 5.5 million dollars in venture capital funding…funding that appears to expect a return on investment. Indeed, Ello has released a statement in which they announced planned future implementation of paid features, like an app or enhanced privacy.

Could this public benefit model be a way to free consumers from the cost of “selling out” to communicate digitally? How have other platforms addressed these concerns in the past? Let’s consider a few other “facebook destroyers” and their peaks and pitfalls:

Diaspora

image credit: techno buffalo

What was it: Of all the previous projects, Diaspora was (and is) perhaps the most ambitious and ideologically similar to Ello. It was built around the concept of a decentralized social network, where user’s personal information is stored on their machines and access to that information is granted via the equivalent of accepting a friend request. As a contrast, platforms like facebook, twitter, and ello send users through a centralized server, where data can be collected and analyzed.

Where did it go right: Diaspora was a theoretically perfect answer to Facebook’s problems. It was an open-source and crowd funded project that was also decentralized, personalized, and private.

Where did it go wrong: If the theory was perfect, the implementation was a disaster. The platform was not ready to be released when the “alpha” rolled out and the bugs and glitches stood in stark contrast to the smooth beauty of Facebook. Any potential for large-scale success went out the window with the first release.

What happened: Today, signups to the main “diaspora pod” have closed, but smaller offshoots that make use of the software remain popular in Europe. French and German sites are the most active of the open pods and the language that they use is startling similar to the rhetoric employed by Ello. (For more on the Diaspora story, this Motherboard article provides an excellent history)

Pip.io

image credit: cholito.wordpress.com

What Was It: While Diaspora sought to decentralize social networks, Pip.io sought to enrich them. The platform, founded by Leo Shimizu, was designed to improve online conversations by employing targeting to reduce noise. Shimizu expanded upon this, saying that targeting enabled “Implicit vs. explicit broadcasting. Now the power to clean up the noise is in the hands of the poster!”.

Where Did It Go Right: The implication of noise reduction in social networking is that, with the content reduced to the thoughts of the users, topical conversation and genuine social networking will become privileged. Some pip.io users reported that they felt the platform facilitated debate and discussion to a much greater degree than its competitors.

Where Did It Go Wrong: The reduction of mess and clutter seemed like a large-scale solution for a small-scale platform. Pip.io didn’t ideologically orient itself in opposition to its competitors or provide any real riposte to the privacy concerns that dominated the social media sphere in the late 2000s.

What Happened: It’s hard to say, really. It obviously didn’t engender enough recognition to be considered a success, but Pip.io disappeared from the Internet in an instant and now just redirects to www.leoshimizu.com, Leo’s now defunct personal webpage. The creator, who went on to develop a content aggregator and sharer called “Harvest”, wrote a brief eulogy for the site, where he declared that he was suspending the service in order to pursue other projects.

Snapchat

image credit: hola geek

What Is It: As you likely know, Snapchat is an app for you to send self-destructing pictures and videos. The app is incredibly popular among children and teenagers and provides a way to be social without worrying as much about the long-term consequences of your post. Snapchat might not be considered a natural rival to Facebook, but a $3 billion offer from Zuckerberg & Co. at the turn of 2014 suggests that they are taking it seriously as a competitor.

Where Has It Succeeded: Snapchat’s answer to the privacy problem is that all the pictures are removed from the central server when their expiration timer tolls. By having the content self-destruct, concerns about privacy and censorship are vastly lessened. It’s also a fun tool to use, where you can (in theory) be more authentic instead of having to worry about a public image.

Where Has It Gone Wrong: The Snapchat platform is struggling to become more than a mere novelty as it gains market share. The cultural significance of the “selfie” should not be doubted, but it’s not a true many-to-many networking program. Snapchat has tried to go further into this realm, with the implementation of new features like “My Story” that allows you to send your message to all of your followers, but has had mixed success.

What’s Happening: Snapchat is looking for a way to juggle privacy concerns, profit and advertising, and their “cool factor”. The company has begun bringing segmented and native advertising to the app by using image recognition technology to mine the snaps for relevant data.

But it’s the privacy concerns that have been in the news recently as, in a recent hacking scandal, users of “third party snapchat apps” like snapsaved have had their photos leaked and, while not a breach of snapchat itself, it’s not been great PR for the API. Earlier this year almost 5 million users had their display names and phone numbers hacked.

So what do the relative successes and failures of Ello and these previous platforms tell us about Facebook (and its eventual successor)?

First, the demand for an alternate network that is more private and less commercialized tells us that the public, or at least a component of it that thinks critically, is uneasy with Facebook’s use of big data and the permanence of their information. With the rise of “doxxing” and “life ruins”, some are increasingly afraid to reveal their personal information on the Internet. We are in an age where almost all identities are traceable by the determined and users want protection.

Second, they tell us that alternatives must be prepared. The biggest pitfalls of Ello (thus far) and Diaspora were that they became popular ideologically before the product had the capacity to handle the traffic that they necessitated. Diaspora was riddled with bugs that destroyed the user experience and Ello hasn’t been able to handle the upscale in traffic that’s come with the site’s unpredictable demand. Facebook is a simple, global, and attractive platform that almost anyone can use. The more difficult the alternatives are to use, the less chance they have for traction.

Finally, we want to use these tools to communicate with others in the easiest, most fun, and most frictionless way. Concerns of morality, commercialization, and privacy come next. It’s hard to compete with a platform that allows communication with the majority of the Western world’s technologically literate citizens. The site that overtakes Facebook, if any does, will make communication of all types easier, not more complicated.

This post is by Polis Intern and LSE MSc student John Ray 

This is a guest post by LSE student and Bernard Levin Award* Winner Natasha Valladares. Part of her prize was an internship at the Huffington Post. Was it a traffic chasing content sweatshop or the cutting edge of the digital editorial revolution?

The Huffington Post UK claims to represent everything that’s current and progressive about journalism today. But while the internet age has revolutionised the way we handle a lot of our daily tasks, it also divides opinion. After two weeks in the central London hub of the Huffington Post, I would argue that the HuffPost UK makes the most of what online journalism has to offer.

The first thing to strike me was the way technology is used to make the reader experience more relevant. With traditional print journalism, the circulation figures give some idea of whether the content appeals to the readership. With the Huffington Post UK, real time analytics give an indication of precisely which articles readers are connecting with, and whether content like videos and galleries increase reader engagement.

This ability to see what appeals to the readers allows the journalism to focus on its audience, and to create a tailor-made news hub that meets the needs of the readers directly. Journalism is designed to inform, to entertain, to question and to answer.

Internet Boon

With the ability to evaluate previous articles, the Huffington Post’s online format enables it to inform readers as events happen, with no traditional constraints like a deadline for the morning edition. As far as entertainment is concerned, the ability to include videos and interactive quizzes is another boon of the internet era that amps up the reader experience.

When questioning and answering, the comments, or “conversations” as they are more aptly named on the Huffington Post’s site, open up the articles from something static into something much more dynamic. Shared on various platforms such as twitter and Facebook, the conversation grows.

A surprisingly small team runs the whole UK operation, but the office is cohesive with an open-plan layout that allows various sections to share ideas that might inter-relate. I spent time on the Entertainment, News, Student and Lifestyle sections and found that although the content was different, the drive behind presenting it to the public was the same on each desk.

Each section had a real interest in what they were providing and worked to ensure that the content was engaging and up-to-date. International stories were passed back and forth between the foreign editions of the Huffington Post, and revamped to be relevant to the home readership.

Content Culture

A real culture of content creation and content sharing is what underpins the writing at the Huffington Post UK. At the forefront of online journalism, they make full use of what the internet age has offered, and in doing so present content that’s more accessible to the newer generations. When most people now are more likely to be seen clutching a tablet or smartphone on the tube than a book, journalism needs to be technology-ready, and at the HuffPost UK it is.

Ultimately, the internet is responsible for many things, a lot of them negative. Complainants might claim that it’s eliminated human contact and ruined the high street – and they might not be wrong. But the internet age has brought with it innovation to be grateful for, and the changes it’s brought to journalism are definitely something to welcome.

Prefer Print

There are some things I prefer about print journalism; I still like to buy a physical newspaper and enjoy the (thankfully witty and not search-engine-optimised) headlines. But I also like to get a regular influx of stories on my phone. The paper I read in the morning might give me a full story on something topical, but I still like to keep informed throughout the day with online journalism.

Whatever your personal stance, the reality is that online journalism is here and here to stay, so ‘like’ it or ‘unlike’ it, I’m personally looking forward to further investment in reader engagement and the bright future of dynamic online journalism.

This post is by LSE student and Bernard Levin Award winner Natasha Valladares.

* The Bernard Levin Award celebrates a distinguished graduate of the London School of Economics, Bernard Levin, one of the greatest and most admired journalists the School has produced. The award began in 2007. It was developed by Sir John Burgh, David Kingsley O.B.E and Elizabeth Anderson, working with other interested friends of Bernard, LSE Alumni and the LSE Students Union.

Students were invited to submit a 1000 word piece in the style of Bernard Levin, the judges have met and the reception is to award the winner and highly commended entries as well as to celebrate the hard work of all those who entered and the range of talent at LSE. The winner will receive £500, a two week internship with the Huffington Post, dinner and tickets to the theatre for two, a copy of Bernard’s work and a framed certificate. Highly commended entries will each receive a copy of Bernard Levin’s work and a framed certificate, as well as an opportunity to visit BBC offices in Salford.

Polis Intern and LSE MSc student Jessica Di Paolo reports on the latest Polis Media Agenda Talk featuring Jamie Bartlett, author of the book Dark Net and Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media.

“Participation is both a form of violence and a form of pleasure. More than a desire, participation is an urge, a form of coercion imposed by the system. Participation in the network is a template for being social, for belonging. It is perceived as socially rewarding. It gives the illusion of making us more social.” (“Electronic Mediations, Volume 41 : Off the Network : Disrupting the Digital World” Mejias, Ulises Ali).

Internet trolls, drugs markets, pro-suicide forums, pro-anorexia communities. These are only a few of the stories hidden behind the dark net. When thinking about the digital world, we tend to consider just some aspects of this dark side; limited participatory culture, the illusion of being part of a public sphere, self-obsession, and the insatiable desire of being rewarded and recognised in cyberspace.

But, as Jamie Bartlett rightly points out, “There is more than this on the net. We never know what really is going on online. Is it really as bad or as terrifying as some people believe? And more importantly, who are the people that actually create these innovative and sometimes disturbing communities?”

Why is it called the dark net ?

“It is not necessarily because everything in the net is dark, but because it’s obscure, it’s not very well known, and we need to explore it carefully. I tried to understand what people operating in the dark net wanted to do. So I moderated an internet trolling group, followed nationalist Facebook movements, used bitcoins, spent time on pro-anorexia and pro-suicide forums, brought drugs from the Silk Road 2.0, attended an Internet sex show.”

Jamie Bartlett’s presentation on his new book “The Dark Net” had two completely different effects on me. On the one hand, I was fascinated by the power of being anonymous online. Under the conditions of freedom and anonymity, we have the chance to express ourselves, to be involved and conduct debates without fear of judgement. We are free to be someone else. On the other hand, this massive anonymous participation is leading to the creation of troubling phenomena such as pro-anorexia websites or pro-suicide forums. What surprised me the most was how social platforms are exploited in order to reproduce certain extreme behaviours. Terms like “friending”, “liking”, “social”, “join”, are used as a kind of “friendly violence” which pushes users to join a website only because all of their friends are doing it.

“Thinspiration” on Instagram

“Thinspiration” is just one example of the dark side of the net. Check out on Instagram and you will find lots of pictures posted by girls who want to be “skinny and perfect”. Quotes like “Do it for the thigh gap”, “Weight loss inspiration,” “Starve to death,” “Do not reward yourself with food, you are not a dog,” encourage women who suffer from this illness “to make anorexia a life-style choice,” says Bartlett.

In a virtual community anonymity plays a central role. Vulnerable young girls find in a picture or in a forum the support they don’t have in their daily life. It’s interesting that the forum’s popularity stems from a very caring and supportive atmosphere between the forum’s members. They are always there; the Internet will always welcome you, no matters who you are. And thanks to the anonymity, you can be honest, because you won’t be judged.

Should these forums/communities be monitored? Who is responsible for the spread of these disturbing platforms? To solve the problem, Instagram adopted policing measures such as pop-up disclaimer for #ana and #mia with a link to the American National Eating Disorders website. But they didn’t have success.

Individual responsibility online is necessary

I think that there should be an increase of individual responsibility online. Starting from schools, experts should explain to students how to deal with Web issues, such as the concept of privacy online, anonymity, and pornography. And, more importantly, I believe that through workshops and seminars which clarify both negative and positive aspects of the net, people could learn to separate their real life from the cyber community. But still, blaming the media for creating the “dark side” of the net is limited and disingenuous.

This article by Polis intern, Jessica Di Paolo

Polis Media Agenda Talks are every Tuesday at 5pm and are free and open to the public – details here

Related links:

Who are the people who clean up after internet trolls?

Polis Intern and LSE MSc student Jin Yan reports on the latest Polis Media Agenda Talk featuring Jamie Bartlett, author of the book Dark Net and Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media.

In his talk, Bartlett addressed three difficult moral questions raised by the anonymous, untraceable ‘dark net’: online drug markets, online political extremists and pro-anorexia fora. Should internet regulation touch upon these hidden online communities or should we leave them free?

“I’m not trying to judge, and it’s just a series of portray of how people live behind the internet”, said Bartlett. From his experience talking with activists from online communities such as pro-suicide and pro-anorexia, with their strange ‘twisted’ cultural norms he discovered that it is not so easy to condemn as people might imagine. You can argue, for example, that the predictability of online drug delivery compared to street purchases might help users manage their addiction. Nevertheless, he also thought that proper regulations though how these might work in practice is also hard to imagine.

The dilemma of online regulation relates to the Internet’s pervasive nature. The internet is a global phenomenon; however, law is usually a territorial phenomenon in a confined geographical space. Take the example of online drug market. The sellers are located in different countries, and the website router may not have a fixed site. Who is the subject to the regulation? How would you do that and under whose responsibility? Or should we call for international cooperation?

Another dilemma concerns online anonymity. The Internet allows people to live behind a mask. Who is to blame, and is that the same person behind the same “mask”?

How should you judge whether a secret network should be make legal or illegal asked Bartlett when “the same anonymity that allows the Assassination Market to operate also keeps human-rights campaigners and activists alive”?

This article by Polis intern, Jin Yan

Polis Media Agenda Talks are every Tuesday at 5pm and are free and open to the public – details here

Polis Interns and LSE MSc students Bani Bains and Pressiana Naydenova report on the first Polis Lunchtime Talk featuring Yevhen Fedchenko, cofounder of the StopFake news website.

In many ways Yevhen Fedchenko’s talk on Russian government–sponsored propaganda about Ukraine felt like an exposé. It was essentially a critique of both the readiness with which some Western media accepted pre-packaged information on critical situations, and their internal infiltration by Russian propagandists.

Fake news and counter platforms

In March 2014, Fedchenko, the Director of Mohyla School of Journalism in Kiev, decided that it was high time to counteract the disinformation campaign that Russian media had launched on Ukraine. This is why, after he discussed the issue with students and colleagues, the idea for the fact-checking website StopFake.org was born. A voluntary collaboration between academics, students and activists, the project aimed to fact-check and debunk fake news in Russian media outlets, especially in relation to the recent events in his country.

Fedchenko pointed out that while the official Russian position maintains that there is no anti-Ukrainian agenda in its discourse, there are four main channels through which Russia shapes perceptions of the Ukrainian issue in international media. These are Russia’s English Language Broadcasters, Intellectual Influencers like academia, celebrities, PR firms and Cultural Diplomacy Campaigns.

Have the Russian Propaganda Tanks Rolled into the UK?

Fedchenko began by identifying RT (Russia Today) as “the voice of Russia” in the West, a voice, that many uncritically accept as a second opinion or alternative to an Anglo -Saxon dominated media. This becomes ever more relevant with the launch of RT’s new English Channel in London as recently as 30^th October, 2014. He also emphasized the role of Ruptly in providing disinformation. Ruptly is a media organization that claims to have no ideological bias, but even a quick look at its website’s headlines shows their pro Russian stance. The Comment sections on their website, for instance, show examples of hate speech which Mr. Fedchenko believes are produced by trolls hired by Russia.

The Death of Journalism?

Another example of deception is the use of old pictures from various conflicts like those in Syria, Iraq and Russia, which are easily passed off on the internet as authentic images from eastern Ukraine. Mr. Fedchenko called this the ‘death of journalism’, the creation of a stage where readers and viewers are easily convinced by digital effects. This paints a scenario in which a deficiency of truth could have long-term implications for the reputation and future of journalism. If there is so much deliberate falsehood why believe anything?

Furthermore, Fedchenko compiled a list of famous academics and journalists, who in his opinion are purveyors of Russian propaganda. The list was diverse including academics such as Professor Stephen Cohen, an American scholar of Russian studies teaching at New York University and Princeton but also including Mike Tyson, the infamous former boxing heavyweight champion of the world who recently joined the Writer’s Union of Russia. However, these examples raise the question: is everyone interested in Russian culture deserving of being labelled Russian propagandist?

An uncertain future

The volume of propaganda now spread in the networked media spaces today leaves much to reflect on, and the existence of StopFake.org shows the complexity of the situation. After the website published its first blog post, it had more than 800 enquiries per second, which reflects the importance of the issue for consumers who want to see through propaganda.

Thisfact-checking website provides a grass-root mechanism with which citizens can seek accountability from mass media. This is inspiring in terms of wider democratic participation in the information gathering and dissemination processes. Yet it also presents a challenge to mainstream media’s status as the primary watchdog of the governmental activity. It remains to be seen to what extent projects like WikiLeaks and StopFake will multiply across national borders in future and what implications their presence will have for the legitimacy of both, mass media and governments.

This article is by Pressiana Naydenova and Bani Bains.

Polis Lunchtime Talks are every Wednesday at 1pm and are free and open to the public – details here

Are we too attached to technology and our mobile devices? MSc student Jessica Di Paolo reports on the first Media Agenda Talk by internet technologist Ben Hammersley on the future of media in an age of ever-advancing technology.

The statistics are alarming. According to a group of researchers at Harvard, says Ben Hammersley, 95% of people who own a smartphone have felt their phone vibrating in their pocket when it wasn’t. Initially, such a huge percentage would strike one as odd. But if we think about our checking habits and the amount of time that we spend with new technologies, these statistics are less surprising…

Living in a digital world we are able to find everything we need on the web, and this has transformed the way we live our lives and our relationships with each other. From doing ordinary things – such as buying DVDs, books, music – to making the toughest decisions of our lives, we tend to rely on the internet for information and for assistance.

Although I strongly support this culture of digital ubiquity, I have to admit that smartphones are taking over my life in a way that is extremely hard to control. I check my Twitter/Facebook compulsively. When I wake up, the first thing I do is look at my email, check the news, and answer posts on my Facebook wall. Sometimes I feel panic and anxiety if I can’t check my iPhone or I become aggressive if don’t receive answers to important emails.

Digital devices have become incredibly intimate

Ben Hammersley

Hammersley rightly calls the predominance of new technologies the “intimacy of the media” by emphasising how we could not survive without the comfort of our cyber appendages.

I did an experiment last year. The aim was to analyse the social and psychological consequences of living one whole day without any digital devices. After two hours I began to feel phantom vibrations in my bag where my phone usually resides. Stressed and anxious, I kept asking my friends to check my emails and Facebook page because I was feeling left outside the world. In my free time, I didn’t know what to do. I used to watch my favourite TV series on my laptop, read an e-book, listen to the music through Spotify, or talk with friends on Skype. But by recreating my hobbies without the technology, I was surprised by the different activities I could engage in, such as having a coffee with a friend.

Hammersley says the main reason why people spend a huge amount of time on the web is not because of something ‘important’ such as the news but because social and digital platforms give them rewards and satisfaction. I believe this is connected to the concept of intimacy between media and users.

Future implications

According to Mr. Hammersley, “We can’t predict how this media intimacy and pervasiveness will impact on and shape our future.” “We must look at social implications of computing power replacing what only humans could do before.”

I believe that the future of digital media is still quite hard to predict. We can make hypotheses, debate the social impact of emerging Artificial Intelligence and of microchips inside of our brains, but this is all only speculation. In practice, I am convinced that the key is in adapting our lifestyle to the new technologies, following their progress step by step with a critical perspective. However, this doesn’t mean either being ‘victims’ of our iPhones or changing our personality and interests. It means critically assessing the new technologies transformations and being prepared to change.

Next week’s Media Agenda Talk will be a lecture by investigative reporter and author Nick Davies.

This post was written by MSc student Jessica Di Paolo @JessDiPaolo

Photo credit:

Matt M. Accessed on Flickr

Gabriele Barni. Accessed on Flickr