The Community Journalism Deliverable - Workspace

Internet of Humans Interviews
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The Community Journalism Digest: An ambitious framework, where social and human values and technological design co-shape the internet.

  • Wellbeing and welfare
  • Distributed Work & Business
  • Green Transition
  • Resilience
  • Economies
  • Time perspective

Community conversations about the next generation internet and what it means for it to truly support the transition to a better future of people and planet.

Environmental sustainability is vital and well researched but social and human sustainability should also be included; the project, in fact, remains very techcentered and misses social and human sustainability and rights outside of the digital realm.”*

How do we structure and weave all of this together into a coherent digest/book?

There are several perspectives/premises that are more or less institutionally legitimised.

  • The one closest to the feedback we have gotten is one that puts human wellbeing at the centre and views everything through the lens of its effect on wellbeing.

  • Another starting point (towards we were pushed earlier in the project) takes specific technologies as points of departure for discussion.

  • A third departs from “hot topics” that are at the top of the current political agenda (they are unstable and change from month to month or after big occurrences such as covid this year). E.g What has Covid taught us about a Next Generation Internet that serves people, communities and planet in the near future?.

  • Then there are ones that can come out of conversations instigated on the platform
*e.g Matt’s critique of the rush towards more and faster when it comes to connectivity and data.*here I would need input from the ethnography team to get to the content as the ethnography codes are many and the corpus huge

The objective: Gather thoughts, and propose solutions

Many of the conversations either point to how people currently are using, affected by, critiquing or building tech right now. Our work is to compile and make sense of this, then come up with proposals for solutions and recommendations for policies that support those solutions


As part of this mission we are going to do active outreach to identify people who are already making progress in the solutions/recommendations - oriented thinking or building. This can help us to find new connections between different issues and solutions that people are exploring. Why? Well because a lot of the time what the people working on to solve one issue, can have positive effects on other issues. Take community gardening as an example from a different domain. The protagonist of such a project may be doing it for one reason (greening the city), but someone else looking at another issue might pick up on the fact that it is getting elderly people in the neighbourhood to exercise more, meet others etc. And connect it as a public health solution. For the protagonists this could mean they get more support from unexpected sources.

Proposals already developed by the NGI Forward project

Possible Frameworks for structuring the content/discussion?

Why do this? Because in a discussion about any complex topic, our underlying perspective shapes where we decide to direct our gaze, and how we understand what we think we see. A lot of the time these underlying assumptions or premises are like invisible sunglasses with tinted lenses - depending on the colour of the lens of the sunglasses you happen to be wearing, the same things will look different. And if you are discussing the colour of an object with someone else who is wearing different coloured lenses


Below is a list that I aggregated top of mind, perhaps there are others that ought to be included? Feel free to add them to this wiki


here @matthias EarthOS /autarchy framework could also be interesting to add? What do you think?

Wellbeing of people - centric

This is a visualisation of the data collected on Wellbeing indicators developed by COE through a consultation with citizens in 200 cities all over the continent (background info)


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Technology- centric

This was derived from the list of topics that we received at the beginning of the project.


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Ecosystems-centric

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Social-Ecological Wiring - Iceberg

Iceberg

How we go about producing the community journalism digest

  1. Cluster the materials we already have on the platform around a small number of headers/ key questions or topics they point to - this requires us to chose which

  2. AMAs (the threads and the summaries)

  3. Produce Interviews and or surveys with people that fit into the commission’s categories of who they want us to include.

  4. Get Copywriter to produce short texts that weave together the different pieces of content that we have clustered under the different headers.

  5. Stick it all into a book (give it to a graphic designer to do the layout and add some illustrations.

We have been asked to include content that explores the following themes:

  • digital labour: “digital labour” is not a code currently, but we have a lot around work and interesting discussions about imagining the future and imagining alternatives around that. We also have codes specifically about content moderation and compensating moderators

  • health: health is a core code with several related codes like healthcare , mental health and public health

  • alternatives to surveillance capitalism and sharing economy: We have a lot going on around “alternatives to surveillance capitalism and sharing economy”. See our NGI Code Review Wiki for a nice detailed overview, e.g: t’s clear even at this level that the use of personal data sets up a trade-off for a lot of participants. In decision-making about sharing or protecting personal data , community members are considering larger context around its use and assessing the impact of the trade-off. cost is also a key consideration. Personal data also connects strongly, if we move south, to agency , in a highly illustrative cluster with control and user experience . We see, again, trade-offs set up – between user control and user experience , raising questions about what one gets when one gives up personal data , and how much control is possible. Community members also raise questions about the effort and cost of controlling personal data in the current environment, when responsibility is highly individualised ( individualising responsibility is a salient code at a lower level of co-occurrences). ALSO open source also strongly connects with privacy , an extremely central node in the conversation. privacy connects back to personal data , and we see an illustrative network of privacy concerns articulated by the community: around smart cities and human rights , covid-19 and contact tracing , and as aforementioned, trade-off and decision-making . A salient theme is the question of how to weigh up privacy trade-offs, in order to make optimal decisions about one’s own data privacy. What does it cost ? There is uncertainty around how extensive surveillance is, and a distrust of the information that one is given about these technologies, which makes making quality decisions about these issues difficult for community members. We also talk about these themes in our preliminary findings: Some operators are turning to technological solutions like apps to monitor their facilities and regulate members’ access control . This raises some questions about privacy but operators seem to find access control apps to be the most practical option for the moment.

  • citizen science: While we don’t have the specific code “citizen science” we do have a similar code, open science which is all about making science and scientific findings accessible. alongside that he have the code conducting scientific research which is about the process of acquiring and disseminating scientific data.

  • collective data rights: Collective data rights is not a code on its own, but we do have several codes that describe aspects of this/ co-occur to represent this idea, such as data rights , collective intelligence , data protection , commons , which is defined as “and or resources belonging to or affecting the whole of a community, in this case referring to the Internet”. We also have a lot of codes around tech governance and and digital advocacy organisations.

  • data trust: We have the code data Trust

  • human values: We don’t have the specific code “human values”, but we have related codes such as values , shared values , encoding values and rethinking values

  • Profit and power - Analysis of which forces are (potentially) against recommendations for how to instill/adapt ngi around european values and ideas, which are (potentially) in favor, and what could be done to overcome the resistance of the former and to enlist the support of the latter, respectively. Including an analysis of which actual forces that shaped how the internet is today, how they did it and for what reasons. We want to involve/have views represented from: international relations, global governance, law, economics of regulation) in the development of the future policy framework

  • Social Aspects of sustainability I SDGs - * including the issue of value capture and future of work (e.g. data as labour)* as well as fundamental rights and social sustainability, as well as polarisation, not only in terms of market power, but also in terms of North- South, rich-poor, haves and have-nots

  • “Reconciliation of data governance with user control over data” - not sure I understand what they want with this or what materials Amelia is referring to here

  • On embedding European Values in NGI - what those values are and what that means in practice*

  • Code as Law - * in particular in the development of project such as GAIA-X* also privacy, internet regulation, internet governance. We want to involve/have views represented from: *more academic communities *

  • Analyse that true European values are, beyond the rhetoric of political discourses, and discuss how to embed them in the future Internet. In other words, the political and ethical values need to be better defined, since everybody pretends to be human-centric, democratic, inclusive and open.

  • Fully unpack the policy tensions between resilience, sustainability and growth when formulating policy recommendations.

Who’s views we are formally required to include in the publication (in addition to everyone who is already contributing in the community):

  • Involve the regulatory governance community and other relevant academic communities (international relations, global governance, law, economics of regulation) in the development of the future policy framework.

  • In the same vein, more academic communities should be involved: privacy, internet regulation, internet governance.

  • Expand the project scope to China, Japan, Korea and developing countries, to better map the needs and emerging ideas/discourses in those areas.

  • Departing from the mainstream topics could be achieved by including non-English languages such as Asian languages or Arabic, or Spanish and Portuguese in order to search the Latin American web and media where many progressive forces are in action.

  • Coordinate language and discourse across deliverables by adopting a common conceptual framework, to be adopted in the second half of the project.

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Upcoming content

We are going to do active outreach to identify people who are already making progress in the solutions/recommendations - oriented thinking or building. This can help us to find new matches between different issues and solutions that people are exploring. Why? Well because a lot of the time what the people working on to solve one issue, can have positive effects on other issues. Take community gardening as an example from a different domain. The protagonist of such a project may be doing it for one reason (greening the city), but someone else looking at another issue might pick up on the fact that it is getting elderly people in the neighbourhood to exercise more, meet others etc. And connect it as a public health solution. For the protagonists this could mean they get more support from unexpected sources.

People proposed for next batch of articles: Feel free to add your own to this wiki!

Interviewee Who they are/why relevant
Claudia Quelle PhD researcher Privacy and Data Protection, University of Tilburg
Raquel Jorge Ricart Fulbright Fellow GWU, technology and digital policy, and its implications on strategic risk management as well as security and foreign policy
Samuel Stolton Digital Journalist Euractiv
Andrew Puddephatt Executive Chair Global Partners Digital
Andrés Ortega Klein Senior Research Fellow at the Elcano Royal Institute
Jennifer Lyn Morone Artist, Data is Slavery, The Girl Who Became an Incorporation
Nicole Immorlica theoretical computer scientist at Microsoft Research
Jaron Lanier computer philosophy writer, computer scientist, visual artist
Stefania Milan Associate Professor of New Media and Digital Culture: digital technology and participation, and activism and social movements in particular, cyberspace governance, and data epistemologies. Principal Investigator of the DATACTIVE project
Kristina Irion Assistant Professor at the Institute for Information Law (IViR) at the University of Amsterdam
Daniel Leufer Europe policy analyst accessnow, mozilla fellow,creator of http://aimyths.org, PhD in philosophy
Anouk Ruhaak research and develop data governance models as a Mozilla Fellow embedded with AlgorithmWatch.
Timnit Gebru Former Google AI researcher
Cory Doctorow writer

Here is an excel sheet with the contact info: Interviews - Google Tabellen

And here’s a doodle with @inge’s calendar (note: for US-based interviewees it can be done earlier or later if needed): Expired Group Poll - Create a New Poll or Contact the Owner

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Am also thinking about a piece on time perspective and how it influences how we think about talk about digital technologies and infrastructures?

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A list of featured content selected by the Edgeryders team

Perhaps others have additions they think we should include? Any input is welcomed and much appreciated :slight_smile:

AI and justice: (tagging done)

Summary Article from Editor (which then got picked up by EU Parliament): 5 New Principles for Justice in the age of AI (and other networked technologies)?
Summary of the chapters in this part of the “book” : Summaries of 10 stories on topics relevant to AI & Justice workshop

We need photos and short bios for each person featured here:

Fellows’ contributions:

Best posts by members: (tagging done)

Inge Snip, Community Journalist

Interviews: (tagging done)

Festival: (mainly the after event summaries)

Co-working:

Other:

AMA:

Posts That were made by the edgeryders team that are very relevant for the topic but not part of the NGI community journalism delivery:

Problem: Just Interview, by fellow without editing:

Other team posts (as a resource and for a future book):**

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hi @Leonie and @katejsim :slight_smile: The above gives context to some questions I will be asking you over the coming week.

It may also be of interest to members of the community who have made thoughtful contributions to this discussion to see where all of this is going @MariaEuler? I would love to have a list of the handles of everyone who has contributed to the IOH category so we can invite them to be named and thanked coauthors/contributers in the book itself
 Perhaps they might even be interested in being involved in the editorial process already at the phase where we are structuring it?

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Ok, will see about the list. Lets see if graphryder can guide me there :slight_smile:

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I don’t know of any proposals that came out of NGI. There was an attempt (led by Oliver) but it wasn’t actually submitted.

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pehaps also people from sextech and femtech companies - there is the woman who organises the annual sex tech event, as well as ida tin who founded clue

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Proposed Structure for the Anthology

Our Perspective

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Next Generation Internet Polities, Economies and Technologies (Base of iceberg)

  • In this community journalism anthology our point of departure is the individual human experience as a basis for understanding what the next generation internet should do for humans and the implications of this on policy and investments at a European Scale.
  • We depart from 60 articles that either spark or summarise a discussion around topics self selected by the participants who engage.
  • Participation is open to anyone and takes place on an open online platform as well as in outreach events such as workshops, webinars or “Ask me anything” sessions.

Topics

1. Alternative Economic Development:

Social Aspects of sustainability I SDGs - * including the issue of value capture and future of work (e.g. data as labour) as well as fundamental rights and social sustainability, as well as polarisation, not only in terms of market power, but also in terms of North- South, rich-poor, haves and have-nots*

Our entry points: Economies , Profit and Power , Policy tensions between resilience, sustainability and growth

Ethno results

  • alternatives to surveillance capitalism and sharing economy:
    We have a lot going on around “alternatives to surveillance capitalism and sharing economy”. See our NGI Code Review Wiki for a nice detailed overview, e.g: t’s clear even at this level that the use of personal data sets up a trade-off for a lot of participants. In decision-making about sharing or protecting personal data , community members are considering larger context around its use and assessing the impact of the trade-off. cost is also a key consideration. Personal data also connects strongly, if we move south, to agency , in a highly illustrative cluster with control and user experience . We see, again, trade-offs set up – between user control and user experience , raising questions about what one gets when one gives up personal data , and how much control is possible. Community members also raise questions about the effort and cost of controlling personal data in the current environment, when responsibility is highly individualised ( individualising responsibility is a salient code at a lower level of co-occurrences). ALSO open source also strongly connects with privacy , an extremely central node in the conversation. privacy connects back to personal data , and we see an illustrative network of privacy concerns articulated by the community: around smart cities and human rights , covid-19 and contact tracing , and as aforementioned, trade-off and decision-making . A salient theme is the question of how to weigh up privacy trade-offs, in order to make optimal decisions about one’s own data privacy. What does it cost ? There is uncertainty around how extensive surveillance is, and a distrust of the information that one is given about these technologies, which makes making quality decisions about these issues difficult for community members. We also talk about these themes in our preliminary findings: Some operators are turning to technological solutions like apps to monitor their facilities and regulate members’ access control . This raises some questions about privacy but operators seem to find access control apps to be the most practical option for the moment.

Selected “best of” posts: Topics tagged alternative-economic-development

Regional policies in the EU: from convergence to exploration? + How participatory regional policies could contribute to the emergence of post-carbon economic models , What we can learn from Messina’s economic model?, The Catalan Integral Cooperative: another alien economy on Earth? - #11 by nadia , On Modern Monetary Theory, sci-fi and where to look for the violence

2. Polities & Constituencies

Profit and power - Analysis of which forces are (potentially) against recommendations for how to instill/adapt ngi around european values and ideas, which are (potentially) in favor, and what could be done to overcome the resistance of the former and to enlist the support of the latter, respectively. Including an analysis of which actual forces that shaped how the internet is today, how they did it and for what reasons. We want to involve/have views represented from: international relations, global governance, law, economics of regulation) in the development of the future policy framework

collective data rights
data trust

“Reconciliation of data governance with user control over data” - not sure I understand what they want with this or what materials Amelia is referring to here*

Our entry points: Where does power lie, e.g standards bodies, platforms, but also specific actors (alt reality networks- see report on data & society) 4chan and distributed social movements, blue church/ red church, labour movement)

Ethno findings:

  • Analysis of which forces are (potentially) against recommendations for how to instill/adapt ngi around european values and ideas, which are (potentially) in favor, and what could be done to overcome the resistance of the former and to enlist the support of the latter, respectively. Including an analysis of which actual forces that shaped how the internet is today, how they did it and for what reasons . We want to involve/have views represented from: international relations, global governance, law, economics of regulation) in the development of the future policy framework

Selected Best of Posts: Topics tagged new-polities-and-constituencies

: Distributed systems promise great possibilities - and challenges., Escaping failed institutions through evasive entrepreneurship, What does it take to build a successful movement for citizens to gain control over when, how and to what use automated systems are introduced and used in society?, https://edgeryders.eu/t/how-eu-and-national-policies-are-stifling-the-ability-of-european-companies-to-successfully-compete-with-chinese-and-us-tech-companies-and-the-values-they-espouse/11035, https://edgeryders.eu/t/the-algorithmic-is-political-an-interview-with-dr-annette-zimmermann/13438 , https://edgeryders.eu/t/are-you-a-participationist/8856,

3. Individual, family & community wellbeing:

fundamental rights and social sustainability
Our entry points: start from where things are desired, work or break at a granular level

Ethno results:

health is a core code with several related codes like healthcare , mental health and public health

Selected Best of Posts: https://edgeryders.eu/tag/wellbeing-granular

https://edgeryders.eu/t/freelancing-remote-work-technology-and-childcare/14530, pick up pieces from the opencare ethno & conclusions
 e.g , https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/haechi/2017_003.html#abstract

4. Work, livelihoods and business

digital labour
Polarisation between rich and poor, issues of value capture and future of work (e.G data as labour)

Our point of entry: Remote and distributed work, freelancing, questions around how worker protection have to evolve in a scenario where economic activity is either less or more centralised than before - and where in some cases these are happening in parallel,

Ethno results:

https://edgeryders.eu/t/what-is-to-be-done-about-the-ad-based-internet-economy/9821, https://edgeryders.eu/t/covid-presents-opportunity-to-breathe-life-back-into-rural-communities/14033, evasive entrepreneurship

Selected “best of” posts: https://edgeryders.eu/tag/work-livelihood-business

5. Recovery and regeneration

Wellbeing, Welfare, Deep Green, Green Transition, social sustainability, polarisation in terms of market power, polarisation between haves and have nots, North south, rich-poor, haves and have nots

Ethno results:

Selected “best of” posts: https://edgeryders.eu/tag/recovery-and-regeneration

6. Freedom and control

Code as Law - in particular in the development of project such as GAIA-X also privacy, internet regulation, internet governance. We want to involve/have views represented from: more academic communities

“Reconciliation of data governance with user control over data” - not sure I understand what they want with this or what materials Amelia is referring to here

Individuals:
Reconciliation of data governance with user control over data.

Ethno results:

Selected “best of” posts: https://edgeryders.eu/tag/freedom-and-control

7. Limits and growth

Ethno results:

Selected “best of” posts: https://edgeryders.eu/tag/limits-and-growth

8. Safety and security

Ethno results:

Selected “best of” posts: https://edgeryders.eu/tag/safety-and-security

9. Windows of perception:

Analyse what true European values are beyond the rhetoric of political discourses and discuss how to embed them in the future internet. In other words, the political and ethical values need to be better defined, since everybody pretends to be human-centric, democratic, inclusive and open.

We cover contemporary Ideologies, Ethics, Values and Norms as well as explanation models e.g conspiracy theories and misinformation/psyops: e.g discussions about ethics in citizen/open science

Ethno results:

We don’t have the specific code “human values”, but we have related codes such as values , shared values , encoding values and rethinking values

Selected “best of” posts: https://edgeryders.eu/tag/windows-of-perception

10. Equipping individuals and communities to cope, and thrive.

Ethno results:

Selected “best of” posts:


Tip of iceberg

The report produced by Nesta (but with modifications to connect it properly with base): https://edgeryders.eu/uploads/short-url/7o9Gz3BT3BDMtTQp4yCpyidki2g.pdf

Selected best of posts: https://edgeryders.eu/tag/thrivability

What do you guys think?

Anything you think ought to be added/reworded/expanded +++?
esp @katejsim @Leonie @johncoate @alberto @unclecj @hugi @marina @erik_lonroth

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I like that by doing it this way we keep it focused on the core value of what Edgeryders brings to the consortium: thoughtful, informed views and statements from people who the commission would likely not otherwise hear from, but should. And so I see taking the material from the conversations as a strength.

Working off the NESTA model also good. Reinforces democracy and sustainability.

I would include the ‘social media is broken’ conversation
good example of a contributor who is, or was, trying to make something that has NGI type values built into it. Seems like the kind of stuff the EC should be looking for.

And I get the iceberg analogy
works pretty well.

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Hi @johncoate! One of the interviews I am hoping to have is with Jaron Lanier - who might be able to shed a light on why social media is broken as well :slight_smile: Not sure if he’ll say yes tho, so if you have any thoughts on who could be an alternate to him please do add to the list here

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Jaron may be very difficult to reach - How about Cory Doctorow @inge?

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@nadia added him to the list, we should have his contacts :wink:
@bojanbobic - can you let me know when you are starting to reach out to people?

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ah I see contact info is missing, can you add the email addresses / best way to contact them on the list? I can then do it myself, takes too long otherwise
Also that doodle was where?

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Ideally social media link and email so I can also nudge them

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In the excel sheet at the bottom of the wiki is all the info (twitter, website, linkedin, email) if one is missing it’s because they do not have the social media (or it is inactive) or they have not shared email contacts online.

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Ah yes you had emailed everything, copying it here so we have everything in one place:

List of possible interviewees: Interviews - Google Tabellen I tried to be gender sensitive, there are three people on it from the US, but their background, skills and views could be extremely valuable to include. Of course this list is not set in stone and changes are welcome

Doodle: Expired Group Poll - Create a New Poll or Contact the Owner

Timeline:

  • Monday 7th of December interviews start

  • Friday 18th of December interviews finished, transcripts uploaded and highlighted

  • January 20th 2021 article finished and uploaded

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interesting article https://www.disruptingjapan.com/this-startup-is-building-the-first-open-source-driverless-car

cc @inge

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@johncoate and @MariaEuler could you help go through part of the list of posts that Maria compiled, and tag each one with the label/chapter under which you think it best fits?

The tags to use:

Alternative-economic-development
New-Polities-and-Constituencies
Wellbeing-granular
Work-livelihood-business
Recovery-and-regeneration
Freedom-and-control
Limits-and-growth
Safety-and-security
Windows-of-perception
Thrivability

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Something else that could be really helpful is if @katejsim and @Leonie could look at the codebook and cluster any relevant ethnocodes around the book topic chapter headings described below:

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