Availability / Big Data / Big Data Analytics / Data and Development / Mapping / Open Data / Reliability of Sources / Transparency — Comments Off on “Open Development Cambodia” Interview with Executive Director Thy Try
29
Oct 14

“Open Development Cambodia” Interview with Executive Director Thy Try

Johannes Kast presents an open data mapping platform in Cambodia and interviews the executive director

ODC

ODC Logo

Open Development Cambodia is a novel, non-commercial open data platform designed to collect data and make it available, e.g. through interactive maps, in order to address environmental, economic and social issues through the unbiased lens of raw information. They also provide important, up-to-date information on natural ressources, laws & regulations, company profiles and more.

It’s the first of its kind in South East Asia and both the software that is used and the methodology are open source, transparent and freely accessible to everyone. Especially in recent years, Cambodia is undergoing constant, fast-pace changes, so the mapping software provides a useful illustration.

The ODC Team

The ODC Team

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Mapping / Social Media — 3 comments
28
Oct 14

Twitter and the MDGs

To test the hypothesis whether social media in the form of blog posts and twitter have any influence on the discourses of international development, Tobias Denskus and Daniel E. Esser collected tweets and blogposts related to the Millennium Development Goals during a period in 2010. By analysing tweets and blog posts around the UN High-level plenary meeting of the General Assembly on the Millennium Development Goals held in 2010 the authors gained insights in how social media is used in relation to high level conferences. Their conclusion, as presented in an article in the Third World Quarterly[1], is that the social media sphere failed to bring forward alternative agendas
and priorities, and rather reinforced the current ideas around international development. Their analysis of tweets also showed that a majority of tweeters were closely related to organisations part of the MDG work, such as Save the Children or Amnesty International. Denskus and Esser used the service www.topsy.com for their analysis and performed searches on the hashtag (#) MDG for every hour during the High-level conference. Three years after said conference, on September 25th 2013, the President of the UN General Assembly held a follow-up meeting to take stock of the situation with the MDG:s. Using a similar method to Denskus and Esser, I intended to test whether Continue reading →

Big Data / Big Data Analytics / Data and Development / Reliability of Sources / Uncategorized — 5 comments
27
Oct 14

Is Google predicting the f(l)uture

Charlotta Duse about

Google Flu Trends

By analyzing the big data from our google searches, the Google Flu Trends claims to provide ”near real-time estimates of flu activity for a number of countries and regions around the world”.

The idea of the GFT is that if people feel sick, they will search for medication, expected symptom etc. on Google, and the company will be able to analyze this user data and see how and where the flu is spreading. Kenneth Cukier and Viktor Mayer-Schonberger calls the system ”more useful and [a more] timely indicator than government statistics with their natural reporting lags. Public health officials were armed with valuable information” (2013:pos45).

But voices are also raised for the contrary, voices saying that GFT failed its purpose various times. Some even calls it ”a prime example of what can go wrong when you read too much into your Big Data”. 

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Accountability / Social Media — 1 comment
26
Oct 14

(Sl)activism – Progress or Stagnation?

Johannes Kast reflects on the meaning of slacktivism in the context of social progress.

“The compensation effect” or “moral self-Licensing” is what psychologists call the ‘ethical credit’ people often reward themselves when having done a good deed. This might be as a result to signing a petition, buying eco-friendly products or doing any other perceived good deed. Further research shows that often times good behaviour now can quickly result in bad behaviour later. Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong found out that people generally act less altruistic and are more likely to steel or cheat after purchasing green products. Anna C. Merritt, Daniel A. Effron and Benoît Monin came to a similar conclusion in their paper: “Moral Self-Licensing: When Being Good Frees Us to Be Bad”.

Slacktivism essentially means engaging in or supporting activism with a minimal amount of effort. This for itself is certainly a welcoming trend, as sharing information creates awareness and giving ethical choices to people with little to no added effort makes them more likely to engage in them. A recent example is the Amazon smile campaign, where part of the price is donated to a pre-selected organisation of your choice. However, when Amazon is taking the burden of charity from the supporter the effect might be bad for aid organisations while very profitable for Amazon. The same was found about liking an organisation on Facebook. It turns out that liking an organisation might actually mean giving them less.

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Data and Development / Representativeness / Social Media / Transparency — 8 comments
26
Oct 14

Social Media in the HK “Umbrella Revolution” a double edged sword? (Slideshow)

Do not miss the slideshow with commentary from our own reporter in Hong Kong – Johannes Kast.

Blockade of Hong Kong "Occupy Central"

Blockade of Hong Kong “Occupy Central”

This autumn, all eyes were on Hong Kong – a Chinese city with its own political and economical system after the “one country, two systems” principle was introduced following the reunification between Hong Kong and the People’s Republic of China. This september, after some initial mass protests that got out of control, students and activists blocked the main roads in Hong Kong’s central governmental and financial district on September 29th demanding full suffrage on choosing their cities leader. Since then – with varying numbers of support – the protesters have set up peaceful blockades both in Hong Kong central and in Mong Kok on the mainland, while having to defend themselves against attacks from police armed with tear gas and batons, triad interferences and sometimes even civilian anti-protest groups.

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Big Data / Data and Development / Transparency — 2 comments
22
Oct 14

T&C

Charlotta Duse on the perils of accepting online T&Cs without first reading what they include.

I believe I am not the only one who have pressed the ”I accept”-button when finding a public Wi-Fi connection without really reading the agreement. So when I saw an article in the newspaper about this the other day, I could not resist to read it. The very click-friendly title was ”Prepared to give away your child for free wifi?”.

The article describes how many people accept the Terms and Conditions for using free wi-fi without even reading them first (at least I hope nobody read them and then accepted). This was proven when this company established an open wi-fi connection at various places in London for people to use, under the conditions that they gave away their firstborn child, their favorite pet and all their available data to the company in question. People connected and 32 megabyte (emails, contacts, searches etc) of data was collected in just 30 minutes. Not all connections were manual. The company says that ”In just a half-hour period, 250 devices connected to the hotspot. Most of these were probably automatic connections, without their owner even realizing it”.

A part from that this was an experiment made by a company who wants to sell us their service and protect us from open, and potentially harmfull, wi-fi, it raised some interesting questions.

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Accountability / Data and Development / Social Media — 4 comments
20
Oct 14

#ChicagoGirl – ”From my laptop, I am running a revolution in Syria”

An excellent example of the use of social media in development – commentary by Charlotta Duse.

http://www.chicagogirlfilm.com/

http://www.chicagogirlfilm.com/

This is a very recommendable documentary about social media citizens journalists and activists in Syria and America, documenting the conflict in Syria (I have only found it with subtitles in Swedish). Although the interviews are a few years old, the content is still very actual.

Sharing via new media

By sharing videos, photos and stories from inside of Syria on social networks the young people we meet in this documentary are trying to shape the world’s view of the events in a country hard for the traditional media to portrait. Via Twitter, Facebook, Youtube etc. these persons have started their own citizens media agency with the goal to spread words and pictures of what is going on in Syria, this by risking their own lives. An added value to the sharing is of course also that people, in Syria or outside of the country, sympathizing with the activists feel a greater security seeing that more people feel the same way as they do – this is social medias gift of joining people together (Kluitenberg. 2003:2). But this of course requires the recourses to find and see the videos by the likeminded, as well as by global audience. 

The geographical distance is no problem – the ubiquity of information is nowadays a fact (Archetti.2011:182). This is one of the many potentials of digital networking and new media: a way of promoting and democratizing knowledge and communication everywhere. But you need to know where to look for it, what is shown to a majority of people is another issue. One can of course question the change a video on youtube makes, if nobody sees it. 

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