A project from the Edward R. Murrow Center for a Digital World at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, EconoFact seeks to lay out complex domestic policy issues in an easy-to-read memo-style format. Since its launch, the site has published more than 100 pieces of policy analysis that are designed to be evergreen.

The topics that are covered most often include hot button issues like immigration and trade. But the site covers a variety of issues, including college funding and endowments, explained Edward Schumacher-Matos, the site’s publisher and co-executive editor and a visiting professor at the Fletcher School.

We spoke to Schumacher-Matos to learn more about the site and the difficulties of advocating for facts in an anti-truth era.

Q&A

Tell us about EconoFact and how the project got started.

Edward Schumacher-Matos: I was working on a project called Iceberg, a global online publication that features pieces of analysis by experts in different parts of the world. Michael [Klein, professor at the Fletcher School] came in to see me. He was quite disturbed about the election and the tone that had transpired. In talking with colleagues, they were upset that so many basic facts that they know about economic and social policies were not being discussed or used by either candidate. It was a frustrating experience. Trump in particular had little command or even respect for policy. The Hillary campaign misused facts, but Trump was the bigger violator. So we tried to figure out what to do.

With social media you can have your own voice – it’s just a matter of how you organize it and go about trying to promote it. We thought, great, we can do something by launching a site that explains domestic policy. But is this just another site for opinion of which there’s so much? How can we distinguish this and make it different?

I teach opinion writing. When you are trying to argue a point of view, you should be explanatory and put the facts first. There’s this idea of structured journalism that we’ve been playing around with. Could you build a common body of stories that includes all the facts, and each new fact is just a short update? And then you’d link it back to the base. You can break the story into facts and do that as long as we all agree on that common base of knowledge. None of us has been able to make that work. The New York Times, the BBC and Reuters have played around with this. Academic institutions have also tried to do it, but it hasn’t worked. But this is what inspired us, because it forces the facts to be first and the information is delivered in a memo style.

How do you choose the topics you cover?

Schumacher-Matos: We have a weekly editorial meeting. We have an editor, Miriam Wasserman, who works out of Ann Arbor, Michigan. She’s a Fletcher grad. She worked at the Boston Federal Reserve Bank as an editor of their magazine and has held other jobs in journalism. Michael is the executive editor. He’s the real inspiration and editorial leader. I’m more like the publisher. Michael put together the network of economists. On Monday mornings we talk and look at what’s in the news and what we think is going to be in the news.

Edward Schumacher-Matos

Do you go back and update older memos?

Schumacher-Matos: We haven’t had to. But yes, we will, if f it requires updating. In the future we’ll probably have to do more of that.

Who is your target audience?

Schumacher-Matos: Influencers, journalists and policymakers. If we had the money, we would try to break out and try to have a social media engagement strategy. But in the meantime we keep growing organically.

We want to get to what we describe as “an NPR audience” – an informed public audience. NPR’s audience is half Democrats and half Republicans. We do not want to be pigeonholed with just one political tribe – we really want to appeal to all sides and bring down the tone of the debate and talk about the facts. When you’re looking at a problem, what are some of the logical, rational ways of solving it? There may be more than one way, but let’s at least agree on the facts first.

What are some of the challenges in running the project?

Schumacher-Matos: Our biggest challenge is to keep trying to grow the audience. We’re convinced the editorial formula is excellent, and we see the response we get from people when they come into contact with us. Everybody gets it. Everybody’s tired of all the extreme opinions and the shouting. We don’t really have to explain what we’re trying to do.

How do you vet the economists that you work with?

Schumacher-Matos: Michael’s the guy who does that. We want the economists to feel some attachment, some loyalty to the project. I think we’ve done that. Clearly, we can’t pay them. I wish we could. If we had the money we could. We’re trying to raise money.

A graphic from a recent EconoFact story about high school students having trouble attending colleges that are further away.

What kind of impact do you hope to have, and how do you measure that?

Schumacher-Matos: We’re getting picked up more and more by the news media. We’re getting quoted more. That’s growing. You begin seeing who’s seeing it. We’re quoted on the radio a lot too. It’s hard to measure how you are affecting policy. That’s a longer-term measure. We just have to keep at it. We think we are having an impact. We see people in Congress reaching out to us and following up if they want more information. They talk to the economists. We want to reach out more to state governments and regionalmedia as a way to provide information at that level. There’s a lot of information available in New York and Washington, but what about the rest of the country? We also try to make the memos as accessible and readable as possible, so you don’t have to be an expert to understand them.

How do you deal with the issue of trust in a time when so many people are so anti-fact? There are people who think that if something is coming from a news organization or a university, it can’t be trusted. How do you address that?

Schumacher-Matos: We deal with it through our tone and how we write. We allow zero demonizing or criticising of other groups and other points of view. We try to have a very sober, clear and open tone that we hope strikes an empathetic chord that reaches everyone, no matter what your point of view might be. And we do not telegraph that we’re part of one tribe trying to do battle with another tribe. We try to stay away from that. That’s part of the structured memo format and the “facts first” thing. You’ll see no critical adjectives about somebody else or about political leaders. We focus on the facts, not on political fighting or trying to score points.

What are your future plans?

Schumacher-Matos: In addition to looking at publishing and distribution partnerships, finding ways to grow our audience. We need funding to allow us to do that. So far we’ve done very well organically. And we’re looking again at the original Iceberg project. EconoFact focuses on domestic issues, but maybe we can take some of those pieces and repurpose them internationally. Some of them won’t be appropriate but some of them well.

Bianca Fortis is the associate editor at MediaShift, a founding member of the Transborder Media storytelling collective and a social media consultant. Follow her on Twitter @biancafortis.

The post How EconoFact Advocates for Truth in an Anti-Fact Era appeared first on MediaShift.

Why is it so unlikely that the next big innovation in journalism will come from Europe? What are the barriers that curb innovative capacity? In this article, I document specific challenges and common pitfalls that I gleaned from researching news startups in Germany.*

1. Founders underestimate tasks and workload.

Starting a company in journalism means far greater and more diverse work than being a freelance journalist. Founders who assume that owning a business opens up new freedom for journalistic work clearly underestimate the effort involved. Administration, marketing, audience development, technology management, revenue model development – activities formerly undertaken by publishing houses – are now the responsibility of the founders. One entrepreneur interviewed in the study – a former journalist – complained: “Please give us…publishing staff! Now we learned what publishers do and how they give us journalists the support we need.” Many of these non-journalistic activities are necessary even if rapid growth, high profits or a profitable “exit” from the company are not the main objectives of their founders.

2. Founders get caught up in role conflicts.

As soon as the editor-in-chief of a startup – as in one of my cases – sells advertising space at the same time, those in charge find themselves in a paradoxical dual role in which journalistic and economic activities are sometimes conducted in parallel. The problem becomes even more acute in those startups where there is no spatial division between departments in physically separated offices because cooperation is mostly organized virtually. Founders set out with good intentions and consider possible role conflicts. The greater the financial pressure, however, the more difficult it is for them to remain true to their own standards: for example, when they are forced to choose between “accepting a large corporate publishing project or running into personal bankruptcy,” as one entrepreneur I talked to accurately puts it.

Founders often don’t raise enough money for news startups. Photo by the_burtons / Getty Images

3. Founders withdraw from journalism.

Journalistic and economic perspectives come into conflict, especially when new streams of revenue are generated in startups. Because some newcomers in Germany seem to be guided by the “glory days” of journalism, they try to transfer the existing business model of print publishers into digital environments. In what follows, they face the same challenges as established media. To uncover new sources of revenue, startups in Germany are testing community models, licensing and commissioning, e-commerce, consulting services, and training. These are not disruptive business model innovations that might have been expected for ventures in other online sectors.

In addition, some of the new revenue streams are only loosely related to journalism. Why, however, should journalism be produced in a company at all, if profits are achieved in new business areas? Such a mindset carries the risk that founders – in a segment pivot – gradually eliminate the labor-intensive and costly production of journalism.

4. Founders do not think from a user’s perspective.

New journalistic startups in Germany are primarily started from a “creator’s perspective” that aims to transfer certain professional standards into digital media. Founders largely conceptualize their businesses from the viewpoint of a journalist. The interests, problems, and needs of potential users, on the other hand, often play only a minor role. However, if users are systematically taken as a starting point, products and revenue models can be developed to suit individual niches and sub-markets. A problem-centered and user-oriented approach at the same time enables founders to permanently question their products and if necessary, to react to a changing market environment.

This approach has become even more relevant in digital and much more volatile environments: Media management is necessarily becoming a practice of experimentation. One of the entrepreneurs interviewed stated: “You can’t ignore the reader these days…This will rarely work immediately or if it does, then only for a short period. Therefore, always try to stay in touch [with your users].”

5. Startups are under-financed.

Even if there is a lack of viable business models in journalism, starting up is very cheap to begin with. “You don’t need much. All you need is a computer, an internet connection, and a WordPress system,” says one founder. However, the much lower barriers to initiating a media product in the digital world can lead to false incentives. Founders in journalism underestimate the cost drivers in day-to-day business: the difficult acquisition of users and paying customers, continuous observation and communication via an increasing number of new channels such as Facebook, Snapchat, etc. and, above all, the production of high-quality content. This is why startups in German journalism are heavily underfunded.

Subsequently, atypical working relationships arise in some places: Key activities that were previously carried out in the editorial department are now performed by employees who are engaged on a temporary, sometimes voluntary, case-by-case basis. This fundamental dependency on unpaid assistance can contribute to a paradoxical phenomenon: While startups try to counteract the decline of traditional journalism, they actually continue the familiar cost-saving tendencies of established publishing houses and – as an unintended effect – thus even perpetuate this decline.

Entrepreneurs sometimes go down the same path as legacy media in cutting journalism jobs. Photo by jayk7 / Getty Images

6. Teams are too homogeneous.

The teams behind journalism startups are currently too homogeneous. However, innovative teams should be formed to bring together personalities with different backgrounds and complementary expertise. They can tackle the emerging challenges more skillfully and flexibly. Business people could help to raise awareness of the commercial tasks involved in setting up media companies. Programmers and developers could help keep pace with the latest technological solutions, which are now becoming outdated at breakneck speed.

One founder interviewed in the study said: “I don’t really need any journalists. I don’t want to do [the business] with journalists.” Having outsiders in a team can also help to carry over mindsets and practices from other domains that initiate new ways of thinking and novel solutions in journalism.

7. Founders lack relevant contacts and relationships.

Even if complementary skills come together in a startup, founders cannot solve all challenges on their own. From day one, they need support from employees to carry them through the startup phase as well as through later development stages. However, due to the underfunding outlined above, these supporters can rarely be employed on a permanent basis.

The founders in daily journalistic business – as shown above – depend on freelance authors and journalists who work for them, in some cases free of charge. Support from the outside is also needed in design, technology, marketing, sales, legal and tax matters. News startups differ from traditional publishing houses in that they have a network-like, post-industrial form of organization in which numerous activities are disintegrated, i.e. detached from the company and outsourced to a network of partners. The social capital of the founders, their relationships and connections form the basis of this disintegration. If social capital is missing, a journalistic startup is hard to maintain and establish in Germany – no matter how sound the original approach may be.

Conclusion

The objective of my research was to raise awareness of the causes of failure for news startups, help entrepreneurs avoid common mistakes, and help industry experts and investors to realistically estimate the potentials and possibilities of journalistic startups. If the typical flaws gathered here are avoided in the future, we might see news innovation more frequently in Europe.

*Method of the study: I examined 15 ventures from Germany using empirical case study research. I included companies that started independently of established media organizations – i.e. no spin-offs or new business units of traditional publishers or broadcasters – and focused primarily on the production of journalistic content, not its dissemination or distribution.

Christopher Buschow is a postdoctoral research assistant at the Department of Journalism and Communication Research (IJK), Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media (Germany). His research and teaching are focused on Entrepreneurship in Media Industries. You can follow him on Twitter @chrias.

The post 7 Reasons Why News Startups Fail appeared first on MediaShift.

A group of filmmakers in Canada took their project one step further — by adding an interactive game element to their project.

“Thank You For Playing,” produced by the National Film Board of Canada, is part documentary film and part web game. The game simulates how casino games that reward users with positive reinforcement can lead to gambling addiction.

In Canada, revenue from gambling is used for infrastructure, health care, social services — and even preventing and treating gambling addiction. More than 35 percent of those revenues come from individuals with a gambling problem, according to the film.

It’s a paradox that the film’s director, Andréa Cohen-Boulakia, said she found fascinating. The goal of “Thank You For Playing,” which was released in December, is to bring awareness to the public health issue of gambling addiction. The filmmakers initially intended to focus on how the casino industry targets elderly people who often have a lot of free time, money to spend and are no longer active in society.

But after spending months traveling throughout towns and provinces across Canada to do research and interview prospective characters, Cohen-Boulakia found a more compelling story: the risk of gambling addiction as a result of being in a vulnerable emotional state. She saw that, as with any vice, some individuals are more prone to addiction than others. For most gambling addicts, the addiction is the outcome — not the original source of an individual’s problems.

“People talk about this being an emotional disease,” she said. “When you’re in a place where you’re emotionally wounded, you’re much more vulnerable. That’s what this is about.”

The Interactive Game 

The film opens up with a digital version of the shell game: the viewer, now the player, is presented with three icons. The icons are quickly shuffled and the film’s narrator directs the player to watch closely in order to uncover the icon that’s in the shape of a heart.

As the game continues, there are more icons are they are shuffled faster as the game becomes more challenging.

“Now you think you’re in control,” the narrator says. “But the game is programmed to let you win just often enough to condition your behavior. What is happening is called positive reinforcement.”

The viewer can then choose to watch one of three stories, each about a different subject who is recovering from a gambling addiction. Those characters, including one subject whose three-year-old daughter had been diagnosed with leukemia, explain how they saw gambling as an escape from their personal problems. The chapters of the film are interspersed between more opportunities to play the shell game, which continues to increase in difficulty.

The slot machine-like game allows the viewer, who has now become the player, to witness firsthand the adrenaline rush and excitement that come with winning a game — as well as the desire to keep playing. That’s an especially important component to include when the three subjects of the film cannot touch a machine themselves.

Andréa Cohen-Boulakia

Merging the interactive game with the documentary film scenes proved challenging and took more than one try to get right. Cohen-Boulakia described the two pieces as different “stories.”

“We wanted it to be interesting and enriching,” she said. “How can both formats, really different formats, mix together in order to give the audience a better understanding of the issue?”

Both the game and the film had the same goal — to educate. The goal was to have the game not match the experience of the characters in the film, but to create a new parallel and connecting experience. That required a team effort between the programmers and the producers, and it’s the part of the whole project that took the longest to complete, Cohen-Boulakia said.

The Film’s Impact

Cohen-Boulakia said as an educational tool, she hopes the film will bring more awareness about addiction and lead to more open discussions about what leads someone to go down that path.

Ideally, the risk and reward aspect of playing the game can offer insight into how individual might feel while gambling. Knowing early on that someone is susceptible to addiction might prevent the kind of dramatic outcomes in which people later find themselves when they are struggling with addiction. Cohen-Boulakia had even heard stories of addicts committing suicide. 

She said schools can have stronger prevention programs and hopes even kids will watch the film and begin to think about the issue.

“I hope people will be able to look in and ask themselves if they are prone to be dependent or not,” she said. “I hope people will talk more about it.”

Bianca Fortis is the associate editor of MediaShift, a founding member of the Transborder Media storytelling collective and a social media consultant. Follow her on Twitter @biancafortis.

The post How Canadian Filmmakers Combined a Film + Game to Combat Gambling Addiction appeared first on MediaShift.

Michael Edison Hayden was one of the first foreign journalists on the ground after the Nepalese earthquake in 2015. The “ground was still shaking” when he arrived, he said. He’s reported from the disputed territory between India and Pakistan in Kashmir, and gone door-to-door in Phoenix, searching for a mass killer. But, Hayden said, reporting on the far-right white identity movement in the U.S. has been his most traumatic professional experience.

The Newsweek reporter said he has become accustomed to anonymous threats – both veiled and explicit – and has weathered a deluge of menacing messages about his family, including an incident in which his parents’ home address was circulated on far-right chat rooms. Late last year, he saw an anonymous post in an online forum urging someone to throw a molotov cocktail through his parents’ window.

Conversations CPJ had with over a dozen editors, reporters and journalism security experts show that Hayden’s experience is not an outlier. The work takes a concerted emotional toll, and is replete with digital and at times, physical, threats – threats that are especially challenging for freelancers and newsrooms with young or green staff, and without dedicated security and digital experts.

An Expanded Beat

White supremacist movements have always been a force in American political life. But when a number of media-savvy, well-organized leaders of these groups explicitly embraced Donald Trump during the 2016 election, newsrooms began assigning more reporters to the story. The beat took on an added urgency last year, after a man taking part in a protest over the removal of a Confederate statue in Charlottesville, Virginia, drove his car through a crowd of counter protesters, killing a young woman.

“It’s become more necessary to have reporters trained to be able to cover this movement,” Samhita Mukhopadhyay, who has written extensively about online harassment, told CPJ. Mukhopadhyay, the executive editor at Teen Vogue, said she is wary of the impact the beat has on reporters. “I’m always asking, who would be the best person to do something like that with the least amount of hard damage? Who has the experience to do something like that and come out unscathed?” she said. “It’s shocking the rate at which people covering this beat aren’t protecting themselves.”

Mukhopadhyay said she sees parallels between the treatment of reporters covering white nationalism and the broader experience of harassment that female writers face. Covering these activists brings a further risk, since reporters often must make direct contact with members of those movements.

A journalist at a major publication, who requested that their name be withheld, told CPJ that the leader of a white supremacist group they were profiling said he had obtained the address of the journalist’s parents. The journalist told CPJ they believe the leader was suggesting that he could turn “the scrutiny of him into scrutiny of me.” The journalist did not receive any reprisal for the reporting but said the threat remains a source of fear.

Coping with Threats, Fear and Guilt

Hayden had a similar experience when reporting on a prominent neo-Nazi figure, Andrew Auernheimer. After Newsweek published the article, followers of Auernheimer encouraged one another on social media to contact Hayden’s elderly parents, the reporter said. He then began to receive online threats that referred to his parents by name.

The journalist said he reported the threats to law enforcement, which took some measures to protect his family, but the incident affected him. “There’s a tremendous amount of guilt,” Hayden said. “By reporting on this, am I going to get someone in my family killed?”

Many legacy and large digital newsrooms have security staff to help prepare reporters but the pressures of digital journalism – compulsively sharing online and directly engaging with critics and readers – and a proliferation of freelancers can be at odds with what some security experts say are best practices.

Jason Reich

“A lot of young reporters haven’t thought about this until we sat them down,” Jason Reich, the global head of security at BuzzFeed, told CPJ. He said he advises reporters to draw a clear line between their personal and professional online presence. Personal information – Instagram posts from a favorite brunch place, family photos, or pictures of partners – should be kept private.

Amid a deluge of intimidating emails, direct messages and calls, a security team can also help a reporter distinguish between threats that are disturbing but unlikely to cross into physical harm, and those that appear to be more worrying.

Newsrooms should expect to be in touch with law enforcement and prepare accordingly, Reich said, adding, “How many editors know which precinct their offices sit in? I would suggest that newsrooms maintain a relationship with federal and local law enforcement – prepare before your reporters get threatened.”

‘A Unique Kind of Trauma’

A reporter covering the far-right beat can receive dozens – often hundreds – of emails, messages, and at times phone calls after publishing a story that rankles activists online. This can be especially brutal for women and minority writers. Hayden, who is of Arab descent, said he is often called the N-word.

Talia Lavin, who is Jewish, told CPJ that after she wrote a piece for The New Yorker about a neo-Nazi website struggling to find a domain to host it, her address was posted online and she began to receive messages from people fantasizing about hurting her. “They don’t see me as an equal, besides calling me a kike whore, they don’t need to be addressing me as a person,” said Lavin.

Accustomed to such harassment online, Lavin said she didn’t alert her editors, and instead tried to move on. But, she says, newsroom leaders should be aware of what the beat could entail. “They should be sensitive to the psychological impact of these stories,” she told CPJ. “It’s a unique kind of trauma.”

Several of the reporters with whom CPJ spoke said it is difficult to navigate the overlapping digital and physical worlds of these movements and the associated risks. Part of this includes being able to determine when threatening language is deployed with a degree of irony, and when it could be serious.

Some reporters feel as if the threats could leap off the internet at any moment. Jared Holt, a reporter for the progressive website Right Wing Watch, told CPJ that after writing a piece about the how white supremacists, or members of the so-called alt-right, infiltrated YouTube, he got the impression he was being followed outside his workplace. The address was previously circulated among anonymous accounts on Twitter in response to his other articles. But, after his YouTube piece, the online threats ratcheted up. Holt said he started to vary his route home after getting the impression that a man was following him. “Fortunately, these people are a lot nastier on the internet, than they are in real life,” he said.

Inciting Mobs on Twitter and Gab

Part of the problem, reporters told CPJ, is that while many in the far right see the media as a necessary megaphone, a story or reporter’s style can incite a mob on Twitter or the right-wing site Gab, a chat network similar to Twitter. “They are very attuned to how much hurt they can cause,” Jack Smith IV, who primarily covers white nationalism for Mic, told CPJ, adding, “There is nothing like the most sophisticated online hate operation the world has ever seen deciding like you are public enemy number one.”

This was the case with Andy Downing from the Columbus Alive, a local paper with a circulation of 35,000. When he and his colleague Joel Oliphint wrote a profile last year of Andrew Anglin, the owner of the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer who grew up in a Columbus suburb, Anglin posted photos of the reporters and their families, including children, on his site, alongside images of their homes and vehicles. The two received more than a hundred emailed threats, in addition to physical mail, Downing said. Downing added that he told the local police, who started to keep a closer eye on the journalists’ homes.

“I didn’t sleep well, every sound you hear at night, you’re up like a shot,” Downing said.

Before publishing, Downing said he took steps to protect his privacy: he added two-step verification to his devices and set his social media to private. But, Downing said, he didn’t think to tell his family to do the same, and images from those accounts were eventually circulated, alongside property records that can be obtained via public records searches or by paying one of the many online data-brokers that sell such information.

Downing said he would still approach the published Anglin piece the same way but added that he’d think twice before writing a follow-up. “It is an effective deterrent,” he told CPJ. Reich, the security expert at BuzzFeed, said such reactions are understandable, adding, “I’ve seen reporters paralyzed with self-censorship.”

The Risk at Rallies

Journalists covering the movement’s rallies, which sometimes lead to clashes between white nationalists and anti-fascist (antifa) activists, face further risks. The Press Freedom Tracker (a project of which CPJ is a partner) has documented an assault by an antifa activist on a reporter attempting to take photos at a rally in Berkeley in August year. And reporters who have covered the rallies say the white nationalists sometimes use threatening or intimidating behavior. Luke O’Brien, who covers white nationalism for HuffPost, told CPJ, “Editors in Washington, D.C. and New York, they struggle I think to apprehend the degree of instability there is in these situations.”

Counterprotest at White Lives Matter march in Tennessee. Photo by Scott Olson / Getty Images

At a “White Lives Matter” event in Tennessee in the fall of 2017, O’Brien says a mostly uneventful rally quickly became dangerous. After he left the protest in a rental car with some antifa activists, a black GMC began following his car aggressively, swerving across double-yellow lines to stay on his tail, O’Brien said. At one point, one of O’Brien’s passengers pulled out a gun. The reporter, who published an account of the incident, said he was eventually able to lose the tail, but the moment helped him clarify the very real risks of his job.

Despite the dangers, editors and reporters told CPJ that there is increased pressure from newsroom leaders to cover white nationalism, in part, because readers find stories about extremists tantalizing, reporting can be done quickly online, and the coverage generates a lot of clicks. But Mukhopadhyay, the editor at Teen Vogue, says that outlets should resist the impulse to view far-right movements as a revenue strategy. “It downplays the importance of this historic moment, to say, that’s a really good click rate for us,” she told CPJ. “And I would like to think most newsrooms feel that way too.”

Avi Asher-Schapiro is CPJ’s U.S. correspondent. Avi is a former staffer at Vice News, International Business Times, and Tribune Media, and an independent investigative reporter who has published in outlets including The Atlantic, The Intercept, and the New York Times.

A version of this post originally appeared on CPJ’s website. The Committee to Protect Journalists is a New York-based, independent, non-profit organization that works to safeguard press freedom worldwide. You can learn more at CPJ.org or follow the CPJ on Twitter @pressfreedom or on Facebook here.

The post Journalists Covering White Supremacists Must Weigh Risks to Selves and Families appeared first on MediaShift.

A version of this piece originally appeared at The Splice Newsroom.

As newspaper sales stagnated, the Phnom Penh Post began looking for ways to appeal to more young Cambodians.

Koam Chanrasmey, the 28-year-old head of the newspaper’s video department, searched for inspiration. He found it in online clips of newscasters rapping the news in countries like Uganda and Senegal, but felt the approach had to be carefully considered before it could be introduced to conservative Cambodia.

“Rap is not Cambodian culture, it’s African-American culture,” he says. “But we could see the increasing popularity of rap among young people, and felt it was a different way of engaging the young people with reading the news.”

“We took that idea and [decided] let’s see what we can do in Cambodia to fit the Cambodian audience.”

The Phnom Penh Post has distinct English- and Khmer-language editions, with the latter known as Post Khmer. This is also reflected in their respective social media channels. The first clip, rapped entirely in Khmer, was posted on the Post Khmer Facebook in March to a generally warm reception from its followers.

Some anonymous users reacted with negative comments, accusing the rap news presenters of “destroying Cambodian culture.” But Chanrasmey tells Splice that the team values the positive comments, which ranged from “I never thought Cambodians could do this kind of thing” to “I never consume the news except for this; I like listening and dancing to the music.”

The online rap news show had gained about two million total views, with the highest to date surpassing 200,000 for an episode focusing on the bizarre case of an immigration police officer who staged a fall in front of a barely moving car. He was dubbed the ‘Poipet flopper’ by local media and earned the ridicule of Facebook users.

“When we started with the first episode we got 40,000 views and then we kept going up to 100,000 views [per episode],” Chanrasmey says.

But despite also drawing a spike in social media followers, the experiment in news delivery went on hiatus in September. One of five shows produced by the Post video team, the rap news series failed to attract an advertiser, while others have achieved financial viability—the travel, food and ‘Who is Who’ interview segments all have regular or semi-regular sponsors.

Episodes are time-intensive to produce: over the course of a week a composer creates original backing music, editors choose the stories, and the rapper duo creates rhymes to match. By Saturday morning, shooting is underway and editing follows in the afternoon.

Young people cheer at a Hip Hop contest in Phnom Penh. (Photo by Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

Every element is carefully considered, according to Chanrasmey, from the time of posting—“normally we get more views at noon time”—to the thumbnail that accompanies the videos, in an attempt to draw in an audience aged 22 to 35.

“We want to have both female and male [viewers], but we ended up having majority men, like 95% men,” he laments.

The post How One Newspaper Launched an Online Rap Show To Boost Sales appeared first on MediaShift.

The International Women’s Media Foundation in partnership with TrollBusters and Dr. Michelle Ferrier, and supported by Craig Newmark Philanthropies, is conducting a poll that will measure for the first time the scope and impact of online attacks in the United States on individual journalists and news they produce. The data collected in the study will be used to provide recommendations to both media organizations and journalists working in this environment to mitigate the impact of online harassment.

We are asking journalists for their help by participating in the survey. Only journalists can provide valuable feedback on key issues they face in today’s media landscape, be it on the ground or online. We are aiming for at least 1,000 responses, which will be completely anonymous. The survey takes about ten minutes to complete and will provide data that will inform future organizational policies and programs to support journalists to work more safely online. U.S.-based journalists can complete the survey by clicking here.

Misogyny Can Deter Expression

Recent Gallup Poll findings show a downward trend in Americans’ trust in the media over the past few decades, due mostly because of increasing perceptions of bias in news reporting. This distrust and animosity is playing out in the physical and digital world. There is ample anecdotal evidence suggesting that, like sexual harassment in the workplace, female journalists also bear the brunt of online attacks. The survey is intended to provide the first set of empirical data. In the case of women writers, misogynistic attacks can create a chilling effect that silences their voices online and create a deterrent to freedom of expression that ultimately erodes the freedom of the press. The effect is accentuated for minorities and those from the LGBTQI communities.

In the nearly 30 years of its existence, the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) has repeatedly heard of aggressions perpetrated against remarkably brave journalists in all corners of the world. These are often the first women in their newsrooms, the first to push into the ranks of leadership, and the first to be attacked just because of their gender. In the IWMF’s 2015 report “Violence and Harassment against Women in the News Media: A Global Picture,” two-thirds of those surveyed experienced acts of intimidation, threats and abuse, and one-fifth had experienced digital hacking or electronic monitoring.

We Need More Data

We are now seeing an increased demand for attention to digital security to reduce risks; the IWMF regularly hears anecdotes and testimonials of female journalists experiencing online harassment. However, at this point, there are few tools available to help journalists protect themselves online.

The data collected through this study will enable us to truly understand the size and scope of the problem, which is essential to mounting an effective response and supporting female journalists who live with this threat. The study will update the data on the scale and scope of online abuse against journalists. It will enable deeper insights into how online trolling – which is almost always violent or sexualized in nature when directed at women – is aimed at silencing and censoring female journalists.

While some news organizations have policies on digital security, many organizations do not yet have digital security training or policies in place to support the targets of such attacks. In addition, there is little legislation that adequately address digital harassment; in many cases, law enforcement agencies simply issue a report and take no further action. Digital harassment against women journalists in particular has kept some journalists from pursuing a story.

At the 2017 Internet Freedom Festival in Valencia, Spain, the IWMF, The Committee to Protect Journalists, and TrollBusters facilitated an active discussion on the threats and dangers faced online by women journalists. From this, and as a result of interviews with a range of media professionals around the world, the IWMF developed a list of next steps and guidelines for those interested in the issue of journalist’s online safety. We will be continuing the discussion at the upcoming 2018 Internet Freedom Festival, again next week in Valencia.

The impact of online harassment is the same as the impact of physical harassment, namely intimidation inhibits women journalists from doing their jobs. As one attendee stated at the 2017 conference, ending the impunity for crimes against journalists “should be a top priority of civil society, professional organizations, governments and multilateral institutions worldwide.”

What Needs to Happen

The industry can promote as many good practices and sanctions as possible, but journalist safety will not improve without focused attention on the issue from governments demonstrating a real commitment to journalist safety. Specifically, attendees recommended improving monitoring and tracking mechanisms for states’ reporting on journalist safety; pushing for greater transparency in the treatment of and value of the press; and focusing on diplomatic and political attention to the issue.

We need to create a holistic culture of safety, embedded within all levels of news organizations. As one attendee stated, “It’s not enough that a freelancer is aware, it’s not enough that an editor is aware, they both need to be aware. It’s a culture of safety. Every actor, every stakeholder, needs to be in line in making that a priority.”

For the last five years the IWMF has focused extensively on increased training and access to resources for journalists, including digital security training, mental health and trauma training and access to emergency assistance. We encourage news organizations to subsidize or cover hostile environments and first aid training (HEFAT) for all journalists.

There is a need for increased security protocols for journalists working in hostile environments or covering dangerous topics. Most journalists who are killed or injured while reporting are local journalists and may be covering crime, corruption or business practices; media professionals therefore recommend an increase in both physical and digital security training at the local level.

The IWMF encourages all professionals related to the media industry to be actively working to make journalists safer. For example, media organizations should conduct risk assessments (many of which have no cost) before dispatching journalists, whether staffed, freelancers or local; and should have standard processes, training and toolkits. Journalism schools should include safety training, especially digital safety; educate their students to expect and demand safe environments from their employers; and include courses on international laws and human rights standards, as well as national laws and the cultural, ethnic, religious, historical and political relations of the states or regions in which they may be reporting.

The media industry must take more responsibility for those who are involved but not directly related to them, including fixers and drivers. It is these individuals who are the front line in ensuring journalist safety when operating away from their home countries.

To ensure the best implementation of journalist safety measures, we need to collaborate and share results and best industry practices. Journalists need to participate by providing the data that will be used to support them.

Portions of this story were originally published in “New Challenges to Freedom of Expression: Counting Online Abuse of Female Journalists, OSCE.”

Elisa Lees Munoz is Executive Director of the International Women’s Media Foundation.

The post How Digital Harassment of Female Journalists Threatens Freedom of Expression appeared first on MediaShift.

The Mexican government has failed to investigate allegations that government agencies used surveillance software to infect the smartphones of journalists and human rights advocates in the country, according to an official statement from groups affected by the software.

In June 2017, a group of experts revealed evidence of 76 incidents of journalists and human rights defenders being targeted with a surveillance software product called Pegasus, which is manufactured by NSO Group, an Israeli firm. Pegasus allows the attacker to access and monitor the victim’s mobile phone communications and activities. These incidents were documented by Article 19, the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab and Mexico City-based NGOs R3D and SocialTIC.

After the New York Times reported on the findings, President Enrique Peña Nieto asked the Attorney General’s office to respond to the allegations. The groups say that since June 2017, authorities have not sought documentation concerning the use of the software, nor have they investigated its technical deployments or interviewed any government employee who was trained to use the software.

They are now calling for an independent investigation of the findings, arguing that the Attorney General’s office is unable to do this, due to evidence that it was the agency that purchased the malware to begin with. And while the Mexican government has yet to carry out a thorough investigation on its own, it has asked the US government to assist in the process — a request the US officials have rebuffed.

This is the latest update in a series of revelations and investigations into the use of surveillance software in Mexico that date back to 2013. Policymakers advocating for stronger public health policies and experts investigating the disappearances of 43 students in Ayotzinapa also have been among those targeted.

Bahraini human rights leader sentenced to five years in prison over tweets

Nabeel Rajab, the outspoken leader of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, was sentenced to five years in prison on February 21, over a series of tweets that prosecutors claimed were “insulting to national institutions” and “insulting to neighboring countries.” In the tweets, Rajab criticized Saudi Arabia’s position in Yemen’s civil war and also pointed to evidence of torture and ill treatment in Bahrain’s Jaw prison published by Human Rights Watch.

Malaysian cartoonist could face prison over PM clown painting

Malaysian cartoonist Fahmi Reza was prosecuted and found guilty of “uploading false communication” after he posted on Facebook a hand-painted cartoon of Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak wearing clown makeup. In a subsequent post about the case, he wrote:

“Painting the portrait of the PM with an evil clown make-up over his face was an at of protest against this corrupt government that uses the Sedition Act and other draconian laws to silence dissenting voices.”

He has been sentenced to one month in prison and a RM30,000 fine, as per Section 233 of the 1998 Multimedia and Communications Act. His lawyer intends to appeal the case.

Kashmiri digital photo journalist marks 150 days in detention

Kashmiri photojournalist Kamran Yousuf has been behind bars for 150 days, after being arrested in September 2017. He was finally charged on January 18 with being associated with “funding of terror and anti-state activities in the Kashmir Valley.” His charge sheet also claims that he has not met the “moral duty of a journalist” for having neglected to cover any “social/developmental activity by the state government or Government of India.”

Yousuf rose to fame last year after his photos and videos of funeral processions and stone pelting battles went viral on social media, regularly receiving tens of thousands of views and shares. The Press Council of India has expressed concern about his detention. The Kashmir Editors Guild and the Committee to Protect Journalists have called for his release.

Macedonian citizen prosecuted for posting photos of on-duty police officers

Police in Macedonia pressed charges against a person who took photos of on-duty police officers during local elections and then posted them on Facebook. The photographer posted 30 photos, as part of an effort to demonstrate evidence of possible irregularities in the electoral process. The Basic Court of Gevgelija found the person guilty of “abuse of personal data” and issued a sentence of three months in prison. The person, who is unnamed, is appealing the decision.

Balloons that read “Free Deniz” in reference to Deniz Yucel, a German-Turkish journalist imprisoned in Turkey, on February 14, 2018 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Turkish journalists put behind bars, for life

Six Turkish journalists were issued lifetime prison sentences for “attempting to overthrow the constitutional order” on the same day Turkish-German journalist Deniz Yucel was released after spending a year behind bars without charges. Yucel was arrested on suspicion of “inciting the people to racial hatred and enmity” and “spreading the propaganda of a terrorist organization.” His release came shortly after the Turkish Prime Minister’s visit to Germany. There are currently 155 journalists serving jail time in Turkey.

Spanish man faces prison for misogynistic tweets

On February 16, a 22-year-old man in Spain was sentenced to two and a half years in prison by the country’s Supreme Court for publishing tweets in 2015 and 2016 that “incited hate against women.” One of the tweets that authorities singled out read, “And 2015 will end with 56 women murdered, it’s not a good record but was all that could be done, let’s see if in 2016 we can double that figure, thanks.” The man had previously been sentenced to two years imprisonment for those tweets and for others that authorities said “glorified terrorism.” On review, the Supreme Court absolved the terrorism-related conviction, saying the tweets were “generic,” but increased the punishment for the anti-women messages.

Venezuela is collecting more citizens’ data — and storing it for longer than ever

The National Telecommunications Commission of Venezuela has expanded the (already long) list of personal data necessary to access telephone services in the country. It also has lengthened the period of time that operators should retain the data, from three months after a contract expires to five years.

The new rule makes Venezuela one of the countries with the longest data retention periods in Latin America, alongside Colombia. In addition to an identity document, signature, fingerprint, and complete name and address, users must now also disclose their email address, be photographed, and have their fingerprint taken with a biometric device. The commission said telephone operators should digitize the data collected, but did not specify how it should be protected, only that operators and the state’s security apparatus should define the conditions for proper storage and treatment.

New Research

• Dead Reckoning: Navigating Content Moderation After “Fake News” – Data & Society
• La participación en la elaboración de la política nacional de ciberseguridad – Pablo Viollier/Derechos Digitales
• State of Privacy in Lebanon – SMEX/Privacy International
• Unique subscribers and mobile internet users: Understanding the new growth story – GSMA Intelligence

The Netizen Report is produced by Global Voices Advocacy. Afef Abrougui, Ellery Roberts Biddle, Marianne Diaz, L. Finch, Rohith Jyothish, Rezwan Islam, Inji Pennu, Karolle Rabarison, Elizabeth Rivera, Juke Carolina Rumuatand Sarah Myers West contributed to this report.

The post Netizen Report: Mexican NGOs Push for Independent Investigation of Malware Attacks appeared first on MediaShift.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller on Friday charged 13 Russians with meddling in the 2016 presidential election. The Russians’ primary tool for meddling was social media, which they used to promote Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy and denigrate Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

The indictment charges that the Russians violated U.S. laws that forbid foreigners from spending money to influence U.S. elections.

The charges, and the confirmation that the Russians had used social media in an attempt to influence the 2016 election, is likely to fuel the call for government regulation of Twitter, Facebook and other social media outlets. When tweets and posts can hurt democracy, America should do something, right?

Wrong.

Late last year, Congress grilled Twitter, Facebook and Google about their role in allowing foreign interests to place ads and articles intended to divide the electorate and spread false information during the 2016 election.

People in and out of government are calling for federal regulation of social media.

Lay down some rules, the thinking goes, and we would be able to prevent the infestation – now alleged in Friday’s indictment – of bots and fake news from our news feeds and ads. Democracy would be saved – or, at least, foreign interference in our elections kept in check.

However, as someone who has studied and taught the First Amendment for decades, I would argue that if such regulations were enacted, the main victims would be not the purveyors of fake news, but our freedom of expression. In my view, the result would do far more damage to our democracy than any foreign misinformation campaign ever could.

Free speech being attacked from all sides

The First Amendment is under a lot of duress.

Arguably, it’s been that way since the Supreme Court’s “clear and present danger” decision in 1919, which spelled out when limits on free speech could be lawful. It not only held that the government had an obligation to stop someone from “falsely shouting fire in a theater,” but also opened the gates to all manner of government violations of the First Amendment injunction that “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”

These range from the FCC’s “Fairness Doctrine,” which was upheld by the Supreme Court, that required broadcasters to present controversial issues in a balanced way (in the FCC’s view), to the FCC’s warning to radio broadcasters in 1971 not to play songs that glorified drug use, which actually had the effect of limiting the airplay of songs that critiqued drug culture.

Indeed, with the exception of Supreme Court decisions in the Pentagon Papers case in 1971 and the Communications Decency Act in 1997, the American government has systematically increased its control of media.

The situation has gotten much worse over the past year. President Trump has tweeted about withholding the licenses of NBC affiliates and lashed out at other media not to his liking.

Although Trump’s bluster about limiting and punishing media may be easy enough to deride, the fact that he is in the White House – and has the ability to appoint FCC commissioners – means his threats must be taken seriously.

Meanwhile, a theory of philosopher Karl Popper – the “paradox of tolerance” – is being widely cited as a justification for outlawing hate speech, notwithstanding the First Amendment. From his 1945 book “The Open Society and its Enemies,” it says that tolerance defeats itself when it permits intolerant speech.

I studied Popper extensively while researching my first book, an anthology of essays about Popper’s work. There are many aspects of Popper’s philosophy to admire, but I don’t believe the “paradox of tolerance” is among them.

To ban hate speech could turn our tolerant, democratic society into precisely the kind of state that hate speech is calling for: It could open up an opportunity for all sorts of speech to be dubbed “hate speech.”

A slippery slope

When regulating fake news on social media sites, there’s the danger of the same sort of phenomenon taking place. And it’s exactly why the well-meaning hue-and-cry that the government needs to intervene and forbid social media sites from disseminating fake news or allowing accounts that are actually bots is so dangerous.

Fake news is nothing new. Centuries ago, anti-Semitic publications spread rumors that Jews murdered Christian children and drank their blood on holidays.

Over the past two years, social media have increased the amplitude and reach of fake news. But there’s also been the ascension of a political figure – Trump – who has turned the tables by labeling any unwelcome news as “fake.”

Facebook ads linked to a Russian effort to disrupt the American political process are displayed as representatives from Google, Facebook and Twitter testify before the House Intelligence Committee on Nov. 1.
(Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo)

The latter should be more than enough reason to reject calls for government censorship of fake news. After all, who’s to say a government that determines what’s “fake” won’t simply follow Trump’s lead, and suppress critical and truthful content under the guise that it’s fake?

Instead, social media networks could develop and implement algorithms for identifying and removing fake news by marshaling the same engines that spread fake news in the first place. These algorithms would not be administered by the government; rather, Facebook and other social media would be responsible.

Twitter has already made considerable progress flagging and removing accounts that spread Islamic State propaganda. There’s no reason to think that the same process can’t be applied to Russian bots seeking to inflame political discord and therein damage America’s political system.

Such self-regulation is in the best interest of these media companies. It would increase the confidence of their users in what they encounter online. It would also have the added benefit of keeping government regulators at bay.

In the end, the ultimate antidote to fake news and bots is the rationality of the human mind.

As John Milton famously urged in his “Areopagitica,” if you let truth and falsity fight it out in the marketplace of ideas, human rationality will most likely choose the truth. Regulating what can enter that marketplace could impair or destroy this process, by inadvertently keeping truth from public awareness.

Rational thinking’s ability to identify fake news is more than a Miltonian ideal: It’s been demonstrated in a carefully conducted 2015 experiment. When given a small financial incentive, the subjects were able to identify fake news as fake, even if the fake news supported the political views of the subjects.

Indeed, rationality is deeply implicit in democracy itself. You can’t have the latter without the former.

The key in combating fake news and kindred attacks on our body politic is to give our rationality maximum access to all information, including the truth. And in my view, this means resisting any attempts by government to limit the information that reaches us.

Paul Levinson is Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on Nov. 28, 2017. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The post Federal Regulation of Social Media Would Be a Disaster For Free Speech appeared first on MediaShift.

In the wake of public panic surrounding a spike in threats of violence and hate speech online, the European Commission has been preparing new recommendations on how member states should address “illegal online content.”

Although they have not been officially submitted, a leaked draft of the recommendations has begun to circulate and is now accessible on the website of European Digital Rights, a coalition group of civil society and human rights groups dedicated to protecting free speech and privacy online. The draft suggests that the Commission will not propose new regulations, but rather envisions private companies like Facebook and Google taking greater responsibility for these issues voluntarily.

In a brief analysis of the recommendations, EDRi’s Joe McNamee writes: “On the basis of no new analyses, no new data and no new pressing issues to be addressed, the leaked draft Recommendation seeks to fully privatize the task of deciding what is acceptable online or not. The only protection for user rights like freedom of expression is an unenforceable hope that certain ‘adequate safeguards’ will be put in place voluntarily by the companies. The draft reminds readers – twice – that the providers have ‘contractual freedom,’ meaning that any such safeguards will be purely optional.”

The only specific types of online content referenced in the draft are “terrorist material” (no definition offered) and content under copyright. McNamee argues that “the repeated references to measures proposed to address copyright and ‘intellectual property rights’ infringements gives an indication of the real driving force behind for such far-reaching measures.”

Bangladesh orders internet shutdown, then backs down

On February 11, the Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission ordered internet service providers to shut down the internet over a few set time periods during the month of February that correspond with national university placement exams. The impetus for the temporary shutdowns was to stifle the circulation of leaked answers to the exams. The order was swiftly reversed following broad public criticism.

Part of the public university in Bangladesh, Dhaka (fotofritz16/GettyImages Plus)

Malawi suspends mandatory SIM card registration until further notice

The Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority announced in June 2017 that it would become mandatory for mobile phone users to register their SIM cards with network operators, citing registration provisions in the Communications Act of 2016. In late January, authorities doubled down on this promise and set a deadline for SIM registration, threatening that any phone with an unregistered card would have its service shut off on April 1, 2018.

But this week, the measure was suspended, with authorities citing the need for a “civic education” campaign on the matter before resuming registration practices. Azania Post reports that some citizens have shown reluctance to register their SIM cards for fear that the program is “a ploy by government to tap people’s phones.”

Research shows that European telcos behave better at home than in Africa

A new study by the French NGO Internet San Frontieres shows that major European telecommunications providers offering services in Sub-Saharan Africa do not offer the same levels of transparency and consumer protection to African customers as they do to their European markets. The study compares the practices and policies of Orange in Senegal and Safaricom (owned by Vodafone) in Kenya.

Brazil’s largest newspaper ditches Facebook

Folha de Sao Paulo announced that it will no longer post news articles or updates on its Facebook page, which has nearly six million followers. In an editorial-like article, the company said the decision stems primarily from Facebook’s recent decision to reduce the amount of newsfeed content from Facebook pages, instead favoring posts by friends and family. Folha’s executive editor accused Facebook of “…banning professional journalism from its pages in favour of personal content and opening space for ‘fake news’ to proliferate.”

Big advertiser threatens to leave Facebook, calling it a ‘swamp’

The behemoth U.S. company Unilever, which owns major food and toiletry brands including Lipton tea and Dove soap, is threatening to pull its advertising from Facebook. CNN published a pre-released copy of a speech by Unilever marketing executive Keith Weed in which he says that the company “cannot continue to prop up a digital supply chain … which at times is little better than a swamp in terms of its transparency.” CNN says that Weed attributed the move to a “proliferation of objectionable content on social media — and a lack of protections for children — is eroding social trust, harming users and undermining democracies.”

Kenyan soldiers stand guard outside the Kasarani Safaricom Sports Stadium in 2015. (Georgina Goodwin/AFP/Getty Images)

Facebook is violating German consumer laws

A Berlin court ruling (made in January but released to the public in mid-February) found that Facebook’s default settings for privacy and corresponding policies do not meet the basic standards for personal data protection required by German consumer protection laws. The ruling is the result of a lawsuit filed by the federation of German consumer organizations, VZBV. The company has pledged to overhaul its privacy approach in tandem with the release of the EU General Data Protection Regulation.

New Research

• Digital Rights in Sub-Saharan Africa: Analyzing the Practices of Orange in Senegal and Safaricom in Kenya – Internet Sans Frontieres (text in French)
• Approaching Access: A look at consumer personal data requests in Canada – Citizen Lab

The Netizen Report is produced by Global Voices Advocacy. Afef Abrougui, Ellery Roberts Biddle, Rezwan Islam, Karolle Rabarison, Elizabeth Rivera, Taisa Sganzerla, and Sarah Myers West contributed to this report.

The post Netizen Report: In Leaked Docs, European Commission Says Tech Companies Should Self-Regulate on Harmful Speech appeared first on MediaShift.

It’s about time to infuse feminism into data science and visualization. At least, that’s what Emerson data visualization and civic tech professor Catherine D’Ignazio says based on her research into what an intersectional feminist perspective on data could look like.

“We’re in this moment when big data and visualization are being heralded as powerful new ways of producing knowledge about the world,” D’Ignazio said at a recent talk hosted by the Northeastern University Visualization Consortium. “So whenever anything has lots of power and is valued very widely by society, we just want to interrogate that a little more and say ‘Is it being valued equally?’ and ‘Is it benefitting all people equally?’”

She and her research partner found that the field has major problems with inequality, inclusion and quantification. Those who have the resources to collect, store, maintain, analyze and derive insight from large amounts of data are generally corporations, governments and universities. This creates an imbalance between who data is about and who has access to that data.

D’Ignazio says this issue is compounded by the fact that women and people of color are underrepresented in data science and technical fields in general, a trend that is worsening. She also highlights skewed quantity and quality of data that is collected about various groups of people. For instance, there are very detailed datasets on gross domestic product and prostate function, but very poor datasets on hate crimes and the composition breast milk.

“Even when there is institutional and political will to collect data, data on sensitive topics — such as domestic violence, war crimes, sexual assault — is often highly flawed because there is powerful incentives for institutions and individuals not to report, not to collect, not to come forward,” she said.

So how do we take a feminist perspective on the design of visualizations? D’Ignazio cited six points that might bring us there.

1) Examine power and aspire to empowerment

A big part of instilling feminism in data studies is to think critically about who makes visualizations and reflect on what strategies for teaching and engagement could broaden the data community.

“Data viz is uniquely suited, I think, to addressing the intersectional and structural forces that shape our current power imbalances,” D’Ignazio said. “But the key thing is that it has to be in the hands of people who are not blind to those power imbalances. It has to be in the hands of the people who see those and see those worthy of mapping.”

When a group of white male researchers partnered with poor, inner-city black youth in Michigan to work on data visualization, for instance, the result was a revealing map of where commuters run over black children — a topic that may not have been looked at more closely without the collaboration.

“This idea of examining power means basically just tuning your subjects and form of data visualization to explicitly focus on systems of inequality,” D’Ignazio said. “This idea of examining power raises this idea of perspective — so data visualization by whom, for whom, with whose data and with whose values?”

2) Embrace pluralism

“Objectivity is stronger when there are multiple perspectives at the table,” D’Ignazio said to launch this bullet point in her list. Every person’s view is a partial view, so an important first step is to minimize the focus on organized visualizations and welcome multiple perspectives in the design process.

She pointed to the anti-eviction mapping project in San Francisco, an ongoing project mapping the housing crisis in the Bay city. With no singular ‘big viewpoint’ visualization and more than 80 visualizations nested on its homepage, the website is messy. But that is part of the point.

“Their website is not only about the output,” D’Ignazio said, “but it’s also about the collective organizing and the movement building and teaching people along the way in their community about how to collect data, how to produce maps and how to use those maps situated in that context to advocate for tenants’ rights and other things like that.”

A map from the Detroit Geographic Expedition and Institute (Courtesy MIT Center for Civic Media)

3) Consider context

The idea of considering context means to determine data’s context even when it’s not provided — a practice that is important to getting any story right.

“There’s this idea that with enough data, the data can speak for itself,” D’Ignazio explained. “But data doesn’t speak for itself. It can’t. And it’s important that it doesn’t speak for itself, in particular with data that relates to people who are not members of the dominant group.”

For example, data about sexual assault on college campuses collected through the Clery Act, which mandates colleges publicly report annual campus crime statistics, would indicate that Williams College in Massachusetts has rampant sexual assault problems while Boston University has relatively few cases.

Emerson’s Catherine D’Ignazio

“The truth is actually probably closer to the opposite of that statement, but you can’t know that without understanding the context of the data,” D’Ignazio says, explaining that when students investigated the phenomenon they found some schools had higher rates of reported sexual assault because they had more resources devoting to enabling survivors to come forward.

4) Legitimize affect and embodiment

Though traditional wisdom pertaining to data visualization emphasizes simplicity and condemns embellishments, feminist theory and contemporary visualization research shows that this minimalist approach is “basically just wrong,” D’Ignazio said.

“Humans beings are not a pair of disembodied eyes attached to a brain, but we’re actually these bodies and we think and we feel and we like to laugh, we like to be surprised by things, we like to listen to stories, we like to be affected by the world.”

So, by expanding the idea of what counts as data visualization and what senses those visualizations tune into, the data field can have a broader impact with more visceral and memorable messages.

5) Represent uncertainty

The key point D’Ignazio makes here is that the data community needs better methods for showing the limitations of knowledge and representing uncertainty. Relating to feminism, this circles back to the idea that knowledge is partial, so any given visualization does not represent the whole picture.

“Our current conventions of visualization work against showing uncertainty,” she said. “Things like clean lines and shapes reinforce this idea that data visualization is always true.” So, a feminist approach to data visualization looks at ways to make people feel the uncertainty, whether through using sketched lines instead of clean lines or movement and animation to show different scenarios.

6) Make the work visible

Finally, D’Ignazio said that the labor of collecting, cleaning, curating and storing data, as well as analyzing and producing data visualizations, is often rendered invisible. Brainstorming ways to make this labor visible is essential for making it equally accessible to the public.

A feminism-driven approach to data viz is especially important now considering the massive power the field has. Data looks true, it looks whole, it looks scientific and it contributes to an appearance of neutrality, D’Ignazio said. She cited feminist researcher Donna Haraway, who characterized this power as “the god trick,” or seeing everything from no perspective: Data is “the view from nowhere.”

But D’Ignazio cautioned that this view is dangerous: “We have to remember that the view from nowhere is always a view from somewhere, and it’s usually the view from the body that’s regarded as the default.”

Paxtyn Merten is a journalism student at Northeastern University.

The post 6 Things Data Visualization Can Learn From Feminism appeared first on MediaShift.