ICTlogy

Media and Democracy
Chair: Jo Pierson, VUB

The media are necessary for a good functioning democracy. At the same time the media and certainly also the social media with their massive data collection and use for behaviour predictability, can have negative effects on the democratic processes.

Ulrick Trolle Smed, Member of Cabinet at European Commission

Disinformation campaigns damage democracy as they reduce the ability of citizens to make informed decisions.

Digital platforms are beginning to address the issue of advertising. We have also seen new policies to ensure the integrity of online services.

The area where we can advance more is about empowering consumers. To provide more information to consumers on advertising, to be able to change their preferences, etc.

We also have to be able to empower researchers. That data available can be used for academic purposes in an easy way. Privacy protection and quality research have to go hand in hand.

Platforms should also be more accountable for their actions.

Wout van Wijk (News Media Europe)

Media freedom is the central thing. It has to be defended both from economic and political powers. Media is not an ordinary sector, it deserves especial protection.

The reality is that media are increasingly losing trust and the trust level is already very low.

Ironically, social media has damaged trust in media, but news are being more and more shared through social media.

There is a business, there is people making money putting out false news. And an important problem is that little money is made out of that (for the click) in comparison to the damage being made to media in particular and to democracy in general.

Maintaining pluralism is a means to fight fake news. Resources too. Media literacy is crucial to understand not only what is and what not fake news, but to understand the importance of its impact.

Paying for content —putting more resources that allow for professionalization— is one of the solutions, but not everyone or not all cultures are so prone to paying for content.

Solutions, though, can be replicated elsewhere: we have to be sure that whatever we implement, we do it right.

Ania Helseth (Facebook)

Facebook works to remove fake accounts (one million daily) and fake information. They try to raise awareness on the issue. But Facebook ‘cannot be the judge of the truth’. By raising awareness, it is expected that users themselves will judge and remove bad content or restrain from publishing it.

Facebook has it difficult to totally remove bad content, but can help in reducing its impact.

Facebook also provides data to researchers, to better understand how fake news spread, how to avoid it, etc.

Stefania Milan (Univ Amsterdam)

Social media are increasingly a pathway towards news access. But do not have much data about this.

Media literacy is very low, even within media students! This problem gets worse when socia media intermediate the access to news: people tend not to know the real source of news.

Content curation at social media platforms may not be a good idea: cons could be worse than pros.

We need to find new ways to create algorithmic auditing.

We should be more aware about our information diets. On the one hand, to be aware of our own information diet, but on the other hand on the collective information diet of the population. It is not about discouraging people from social media, but on an informed use.

Mikko Salo (Founder Faktabaari)

Internet is seriously broken and reality in social media is distorted. Information sharing is concentrated in a few platforms, which has an impact on how one gets their information.

Big media will find it easy to find ways to strive, but local media urgently need a new business model, one that is based on trust, or they will disappear.

Most social media platforms actually are not “media” platforms but advertising companies. This contributes to better understand the way the work.

Andrey Keen
How to fix Democracy

Are we treating the mob as elevated citizens? Can we do that? How can we?

How to marry expertise and democracy?

How can we avoid the role of technocracy, the role of the expert?

We thought that the digital revolution would democratise media, would democratise the ability to start a business, that more information in the hands of everyone would work just great. Is that true?

The truth is that we are witnessing the growth of new huge monopolies, that we are not more savvy, that we have a fragmentation of communities, filter bubbles, echo chambers, a culture of narcissism.

What we are witnessing is not the growth of the common good, but the growth of individualism, of using ICTs to create bigger individualities and individual-centered realities.

The core of democracy is not speaking, is listening.

We need to improve Western Democracies, especially after the ‘Russian face’ and ‘Chinese technocracy’. But technology will not solve the problems of democracy.

Citizens’ assemblies are great because they force people to listen.

Citizens’ assemblies are great because they bring in experts, to explain complex issues. Experts matter. We have to find ways to reintroduce the role of the expert.

Analogue is where the added value is when digital has commoditised everything.

We need leaders, we need political leadership, we need unashamed experts, people that can tell the truth, take risks, and explain why we should take them.

What is scarce today is trust.

People have to be accountable. We spoiled the mob by giving them all kind of free stuff, and they became the product.

Identity has to be brought back to the arena. Anonymity brings in all kinds of trouble as people are not accountable. When you are, many evils of disinformation are dismantled. Anonymity is destroying democracy, because people are no more accountable for what they do, undermining civil rights and political freedom.

Discussion

Q: why do we separate the ‘experts’ from ‘the people’? Are not experts part of the people? Isn’t it plain wrong to think that people are not knowledgeable at all? Isn’t it a problem that elites behaved against people’s will? Keen: elites need to be more responsible, elites need to reinvent themselves. But we still need them, or we will fall into anarchism.

Keen: most movements burst out and channel people’s energy, which is good, but they vanish out if there is no organisation behind or created after the movement. We have to gather and bottle enthusiasm and bring it inside political parties — and yes, political parties have to be reinvented too.

Democracy Organisation
Chair: Jacques Bus, DigEnlight

In various places activities are ongoing or have been done to analyse and strengthen
involvement of citizens in political decision making. This session presents some and gives
the lessons learned.

Marc Esteve del Valle (Univ Groningen, NL)
Platform Politics: Party Organization in the Network Society

Based on article Platform politics: Party organisation in the digital age.

Transformation of modern political parties

• Weakening of traditional partisan attachment (ideology)
• Fall of party membership
• Increase volatility of the electorate

The organizational response: Stratarchy (Eldersveld, 1964): different organizations within the party are hierarchically ranked, but can follow their logic, with a certain degree of independence.

The technological response: development of internal computer-mediated communication networks (Margetts, The cyber-party)

Platform politics: new digital intermediaries into the structure of political parties, to facilitate internal communication, engage in political decision-making, organize political action, and transform the overall experience of participation in political parties (Lioy et al., 2019). They vary depending on who owns the platforms: open or closed platforms. Platform politics ranges from traditional mass-politics parties to movement parties.

General observations:

• Lack of internet proficiency (PD)
• Limited participation on the membership base in online votes (M5S)
• Centralization of the voting processes (Podemos)
• Technological challenges (PSOE)

How do we measure the impact of such practices? Are we reaching more people? Are we getting more voters?

Clodagh Harris (UCC, IRL)
Doing democracy differently – lessons from Ireland’s Citizen Assembly

What is a citizens’ assembly? People randomly selected to reflect gender, age, education, socio-economic status. It is a deliberative body to learn, discuss and decide.

We the citizens. Speak up for Ireland, 7 regional meetings, with 100 randomly selected citizens, 1 weekend of deliberation (June 2011). It worked particularly to reform programs.

Convention on the Constitution 2012-2014, 66 citizens, 33 political representatives. They looked at 8 topics relevant at the constitutional level. Met for 9 weekends. Historical outcome making legal same-sex marriage, after a popular referendum that came from the assembly.

Citizens’ Assembly, 2016-2018. 99 citizens, 5 topics (abortion, ageing, climate change, fixed term parliaments, Ireland’s referendum process. 1 referendum to amendment the constitution. Oireachats Joint Committee on Climate Action, all government Climate Action Plan.

Challenges:

• Recruitment and attendance: age, affluence and education correlate positively with participation.
• Government responsiveness.
• Ad hoc process.

Successes

• Referendums as a result.
• Enhanced democratic decision making.
• Input & throughput legitimacy.
• Wider and public knowledge and acceptance.

Cato Léonard (GlassRoots, BE)
G1000 Belgian Citizens’summit

Cato Lonard was the Campaing leader of the G1000 Belgian Citizens’summit

In Elections, everybody votes, but nobody speaks. There is a lack of knowledge amongst citizens on the details.

In Polls, we ask people what they know, but not what they do not know.

Can we use another instrument — citizens’ assemblies— to listen, to learn what we do not know and to speak up? Can we organize the shouting into something productive? Can we achieve consensus through debate?

750 citizens:

Take aways:

• Diversity of participants is key.
• Participation charter: what will be done with the result? How will you measure success?
• Let citizens and stakeholders decide on the subjects to be discussed.
• Have experts to provide insight and specific information.
• Be transparent on the whole process.
• Digital tools are excellent to accompany the process, but cannot replace face to face confrontation between opponents.

Ostbelgien model: several citizens’ assemblies, coordinated by a citizen council, and proposals are sent to the Parliament.

Erika Widegren (Re-Imagine Europe)

ICTs have revolutionized how communications take place.

The whole political system is designed to create a divisive society. There are no incentives to create deliberation spaces or instruments. How can we address this?

Parties are trying to change values of people across the world, not only practices. And this is something that is spreading quickly due to social networking sites.

We have built a system that is giving all the attention to the ones that manage to get it, to the ones that game the system to get it, and it is not the ones that have more deep thoughts or ideas on the common good.

Discussion

Q: how does one recruit people for citizens’ assemblies? Harris: it is made by polling professionals to avoid biases. Léonard: first, you define your target, then you recruit based on demographics, and then you try and “fill in the voids” of the underepresented people, with the help of the organizations that represent them.

Q: do does one remove the incentives of polarizing, if one knows that it will give more votes? Marc Esteve: we have to avoid echo chambers, and we have to raise awareness of the existence of such echo chambers, and we do that by increasing digital and media literacy.

Q: how do you ensure that you do not include a bias when informing/educating participants in citizens’ assemblies? Harris: there always is an advisory group working with experts to make information accessible, as neutral as possible, to provide context to all statements when they are partial, etc.

Q: how do we ensure a healthy debate? Marc Esteve: deliberation requires moderation. Citizen spaces do not need to be “horses without reigns” but should have rules as we find in institutional spaces.

Anna Asimakopoulou, Member EU Parliament.
Democracy and Media in the Digital Era

Disinformation has become a global-highly visible phenomenon in the digital age.

There is a need to improve detection, collaborate to eradicate it, work with the industry and raise awareness about the issue.

The European Union is putting ahead some “defensive” strategies to protect institutions and citizens from disinformation and manipulation.

But something else should be done to improve democracy in its very essence, before the damage is done or is attempted.

Awareness raising campaigns about the importance to vote in the European Parliament elections.

Online platforms should be something more than just a place where to get information. They should be agoras for debate, for deliberation.

There is an increasing number of interesting initiatives about e-democracy and online deliberation.

Discussion

Q: what is the role of digital literacy? Are citizens trained or capable enough to maintain high-level discussions about politics or policies?

Q: what happens when online discussions go wrong and boost populism?

Q: is ‘collective intelligence’ something really useful? Can it be nurtured? Can it interact from the bottom with “upper” institutions?

Anna Asimakopoulou: digital literacy is most probably a highest priority no only for online democracy, but in all areas. There is a fine line between humour and libel, but we sure can agree on what populism is and how to fight it —or, most especially, how not to legitimise it.

When people get involved, when they have the opportunity to engage, then there is a reconciliation between citizens and political institutions.

Roger Soler-i-Martí. Youth and social and political engagement

The Survey on participation and politics 2017 in youth is about how young people get involved and engage in society. The survey has a double edge: democracy in society (involvement, engagement) and the future of society (youth).

• How are youth different?

• What differences and similarities are there between young people?
• What is the impact of the social and political context?
• Where are we headed to? What are the main trends?

Survey: people from 16 years old and up. Face-to-face interview to 1,900 individuals (1,000 16-29 y.o., 900 +29). November 2017.

Why youth are different?

Classical explanations:

• Life-cycle: depending on your age, you have different interests. On the other hand, you learn how to get involved and engage as you get older.
• Generation: having been born at a given time (and/or place) makes you different. E.g. in Western societies kids spend more time at school than their predecessors, and this is a differential fact.

Other explanations:

• The transitions between infancy and youth, and youth and adulthood have changed in recent years, sometimes even with trends that seem to go backwards (e.g. emancipated youth that go back to live with their parents). This affects the life-cycle and the generational logics.
• Changes in subjectivities: the factors that shaped political attitudes are increasingly more individualistic and less institutional or cohort-related.
• Transformations in democracy: the democratic landscape (definitions, beliefs, practices) has changed dramatically in the last years/decades.

Types of youth in participation:

• Multiactivists (17.5%): expressive participation, participation as part of one’s own identity.
• Connected (30.9%): they participate and engage, but are neither affiliated nor they feel engaging is an important part of their identities.
• Associated (12.7%): what is important to this group is being affiliated to an organization and they rarely participate outside of it.
• Passive (39%): very much related to inequalities and social-exclusion factors.

Family and income, the urban/rural factor, or gender are determinants of the different kinds of engagement. In the case of Catalonia, the independentist factor is also of importance.

A simple scheme of participation:

• Can I participate? Social status, resources.
• Do I want to participate? Values, vision of the world, that shape attitudes, opinions.
• Do I have the means? Mobilization agents.

The Catalan independence movement

Pro independence people are more mobilized than non-independentists.

Notwithstanding, there does not seem to be a lot of differences in age when it comes to mobilization. On the other hand, many of them participated less during the hot days of September to November 2017, when the independentist movement reached its maximum. One reason may be that the topic is not very important for youth (compared to others); another reason is that these movements were led by institutions (political parties, big civil society organizations), which are not the main field of action of youth.

Main trends

• Lack of confidence with political parties and institutions in general.
• Implication and engagement without intermediaries.
• Different dimensions of political engagement.
• Preferences for direct democracy.
• Identity as a cognitive shortcut for political engagement less used in youth.
• Normalization of extra-institutional participation.
• Normalization of online participation.
• Partisanism without delegation.

Discussion

Ismael Peña-López: is there a difference in participation between girls and boys and related to the independentist movement? Could it be that the promise of a new republic is not feminist enough? Silvia Claveria (co-author of the research): young women usually participate much less, but the reasons are not clear. On the one hand, women are usually more adverse to risk, and a process of independence is obviously a risky one; on the other hand it is true that women my have not been represented enough by the independentist movement, very institutionalized and male led.

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Branko Milanovic. World inequalities and the European social contract

After 1917 the world had a new way of production that lasted some decades and reached up to 1/3 of the population. And before, there were also different ways of production (e.g. slavery vs. free men, etc.) that lived together. This is not true anymore. Nowadays, capitalism rules alone —China being mostly capitalist in practical effects.

Global inequality has been rising since the early 1800s, stopped after WW1, rose again and stopped to grow once more after WW2. Around year 2000, due to the rise of Asia, global inequality begins to drop drastically. These are three periods: (1) fast growth of inequalities due to the Industrial Revolution, (2) the plateau of high but stable global inequality during the XXth century, (3) the decrease of global inequality due to the raise of Asia.

Europe (includes the US and the “Western” world) is shrinking at the global level: population, share of the global GDP, etc. This, among other things, means that other countries are catching up with European countries and some of their citizens are surpassing Western citizens in purchasing power. This does not mean that Europeans are moving down in absolute terms, but they do in relative terms: high income people from low income countries begin to be richer than low income people from high income countries.

There is an emergence of the global “middle/median class” and a shrinkage of national middle classes.

Migration is not something that will be a season matter. Migration will be with us for some decades. That is why it is so important. It will become structural at least for a very long time, as the tensions.

Another way to look at the tree ages according to inequality:

• Age of empires and class struggles, there is a divergence between countries and between classes.
• Age of the Three Worlds and diminished class conflict, with divergence at the peak.
• Age of convergence and internal cleavages.

We have 10% of the people of the World living the same way they were living 1,000 years ago, in absolute poverty. Yes, we have improved a lot, but we are still leaving a lot of people behind.

It seems that most equalising policy instruments —labor unions, education, taxation to the richest ones— seem to have reached their limit. And not withstanding, capital concentration is growing, especially at capturing its rents, and this is newly creating inequalities.

Can we de-concentrate capital? By what means? Taxing capital, stimulating new enterprises that create de-centralized (new) capital, etc.

The past 25 years in the rich world.

Political/philosophical issues brought up by looking at global, as opposed to only national, inequalities.

What kind of policies, and what can they do?

Discussion

Pere Almeda: is there a way that a global governance can control global finance / global capitalism? Branko Milanovic: On tax evasion that could actually work, also on tax dumping. But maybe not for other matters.

Mireia Borrell: why is it inequality bad? Is it “only” for moral reasons? Economic ones? Branko Milanovic: all of them apply. There is high impact by inequality on growth. See it, for instance, for gender discrimination and how inefficient it is to leave aside women’s talent.

Ismael Peña-López: we are not witnessing a growing de-materialization of capital, especially in the form of digital capital and knowledge. And some think that this democratizes the chance to access capital, as it is less costly an it is not finite (not a good with rivalry issues). There might be a tension between economies of networks and a digital-commons based production. Can the latter be a way to de-centralize capital? Milanovic: on the one hand, if capital ownership does not change, things might not change despite the fact that production technologies may. Besides, the definition of labor is changing a lot, so it really depends on how we define labor and capital and how we tax them. So the answer is not clear and it may vary a lot depending on definitions, ownership, taxation models, etc.

Natàlia Mas: what about fostering cooperatives? Branko Milanovic: a first interesting approach is how to make capital returns remain within the system, and be reinvested, put in innovation, etc. Another thing is how to work on ownership, like giving shares to their workers. This usually works, but it maybe would work better if not only top-workers got them, but all the workforce.

Jordi Angusto: how do we measure inequality better? will the gap between capital returns and labor returns keep on increasing? Branko Milanovic: technological change usually benefits owners of capital; as technological change will remain in the future (or increase), is is likely that capital owners will see their share in the global GDP grow. If we saw a democratisation of capital, that would certainly be the opposite case.

Marta Curto: given the mobility of capital, how do we tax capital? Branko Milanovic: it is very difficult indeed. Globalisation is like a huge tsunami and it is very difficult to tame. Pere Almeda: Maybe the creation of a global financial registry, but it would only be possible to do by a legitimised global organisation, which we have not.

Branko Milanovic: “homoploutia”: high capital and labor income received by the same people. Some people in the top are both capitalists and workers, which is a new thing compared to past times where one would be either one or the other, but never both. Homogamy has increased from 13% to 30% in 50 years. That is, what is the probability of someone at the top to marry someone also at the top. These two aspects make it more difficult to design policies that are effective in redistributing income or reduce inequality.