Mediaboss Marketing

Police confront a protester against Donald Trump, Los Angeles, November 2016. Photograph: Ringo Chiu/AFP/Getty Images

In 1995, Nicholas Negroponte, an MIT technology specialist, celebrated the emergence of the Daily Me a digital news service tailored to each readers specific interests. With the Daily Me, he suggested, you would no longer rely on newspapers and magazines to curate what you saw, and you could bypass the television networks. Instead, you could design a communications package just for you, with topics and perspectives chosen in advance.

If anything, Negroponte understated what was on the horizon. Its now easy to create your own information cocoon, simply by selecting online stories and sources that interest and please you. Even if you dont, an algorithm might do it for you.

But lets hold the celebration. The Daily Me is an enemy of democracy. Representative government depends on shared experiences, common knowledge and a host of unanticipated, unchosen encounters. All too often, information cocoons become echo chambers, which make mutual understanding impossible and which promote dogmatism, polarisation and the fragmentation of society.

The simplest explanation for the dangers comes from an old finding in social science, which goes by the name of group polarisation. When like-minded people get together, and speak and listen only to one another, they usually end up thinking a more extreme version of what they thought before they started to talk.

If group members begin with a certain point of view on, say, immigration, climate change or international trade, their internal discussions will make them more extreme. The rise of the Daily Me helps to explain apparently intractable political divisions in the UK, the US, France and elsewhere. It also helps account for some of the most intense forms of political enmity, not excluding terrorism.

What can be done? A clue comes froman obscure US constitutional doctrine, where the supreme court has ruled that public streets and parks must be kept open to the public for expressive activity.

In the most prominent case, from 1939, the court stated: Wherever the title of streets and parks may rest, they have immemorially been held in trust for the use of the public and time out of mind, have been used for the purposes of assembly, communicating thought between citizens, and discussing public questions. Such use of the streets and public places has, from ancient times, been a part of the privileges, immunities, rights, and liberties of citizens.

This public forum doctrine, as it is called, is meant to serve three purposes. It increases the likelihood that citizens will encounter diverse points of view including serious complaints and concerns even if they did not choose that encounter. Some of those encounters will affect people, perhaps in enduring ways.

It also ensures that speakers can have access to a wide array of people who walk the streets and use the parks. If they stop and listen, they may well hear peoples arguments about such issues as inequality, education, taxes, pollution and crime; they will also learn about the nature and intensity of views held by their fellow citizens.

Increasingly, technology enables people to create their own communications universes

In addition, the public forum creates an opportunity for shared exposure to diverse speakers with diverse views and complaints. In a city or town, many people will be simultaneously exposed to the same views and complaints: they will see them together at the same time. Anyone who has been to Speakers Corner in Hyde Park in London an area where public speeches and debates have been encouraged since the mid-1800s, when protests and demonstrations took place in the park will understand the important role of public forums in a functioning democracy.

We should not, of course, idealise public forums. In the second half of the 20th century, the media television stations, radio stations, newspapers, magazines carried out all three functions. At their best, they broadened peoples horizons by exposing them to novel topics (a scientific discovery in Berlin, a health crisis in Nigeria) and perspectives (left or right) that could change their views, their days, even their lives.

To be sure, the media could also promote polarisation, especially when they had identifiable political profiles. But even if they did, they often aspired to take readers and viewers out of their comfort zone by trusting them to display two characteristics intensely prized by democracies: humility and curiosity.

Public streets and parks continue to matter, and the same is true for the traditional media. But increasingly, technology enables people to create their own communications universes, limited to topics and perspectives they find congenial. That may seem like freedom, but its a prison.

However, technology is producing escape routes. An iPhone app, Read Across the Aisle, allows people to see, in real time, whether their reading habits are skewing left or right. PolitEcho shows you the political biases of your friends and news feed on Facebook.

Traditional media can also combat polarisation. The New York Times has a new feature, Right and Left: Partisan Writing You Shouldnt Miss, with the aim of exposing people to political ideas from other publications. In a way, this promotes serendipity. It increases the likelihood that people will stumble upon something that challenges their convictions and will be able to understand, and learn from, people they might otherwise demonise.

For providers and consumers of information, and those working at the intersection of democracy and technology, we need far more creative thinking in this vein. The stakes are not low. Ultimately, democracy depends on it.

View post:
Challenge everything you think democracy depends on it - The Guardian

Bridgett Townsend and Jackson Koeppel 11:02 p.m. ET April 27, 2017

Communities should be able to determine their own energy futures, the authors write.(Photo: David Coates / The Detroit News)Buy Photo

In 2011, the city of Highland Parks streetlights were repossessed by DTE Energy and residents were left in the dark. This was not simply an inability to pay the bill, it was the result of archaic legislation designed to serve profits, not people. This also occurred in a city where the active destruction of school systems and emergency management have aggressively stripped citizens of their democratic rights and control over basic services, including public lighting.

Contrary to a recent coverage of Soulardarity, we are appalled by these assaults on local government, and the harm they cause in our communities. We work to ensure that community members have a say in the energy decisions that impact their lives, that all communities should have healthy, safe, and affordable power, and that human lives matter. We exist to create an energy democracy.

Michigan energy companies have raised costs on homes and businesses, and even attempted to stop cities from saving energy and money by raising the operating rates for LED streetlights. Their priorities are clear and they are not alone. Therefore, we cannot lay the blame for the repossession of streetlights in Highland Park at the citys feet.

We dont, however, give those in government a pass. We hold them accountable. True government is a tool, a reflection of the will of the people, an institution through which that will is brought to life. Despite the attempts to strip people of that right through emergency management, communities continue to advocate, resist, and engage in shaping our collective future.

When Highland Parks streetlights were removed, we came together. In a few years, we raised funds for and installed six solar streetlights on Highland Park streets, and organized a bulk purchasing program that bought almost 50 home and alley solar lights. Highland Parkers did not sit in the dark, waiting for better things to come. We built better things. But to be clear: six streetlights do not come near to replacing the 1,100 that were taken. Our years of work and extensive feasibility research have made it clear: To truly restore light to the city in a way that is equitable to all residents, we need our city government.

We are committed to working with the city of Highland Park to create and fund a plan to make the city of Highland Park the first city in this country to adopt solar street lighting technology full-scale, with integrated social services of affordable internet and improved emergency response. We believe in this vision, and the power of grassroots leadership to realize it. Some may find this line of thinking idealistic, perhaps unimaginable. But our work is precisely that to take the unimaginable and find the path to making it real and its working.

Michigan stands at a crossroads. Coal is on the way out, and investor-owned utilities are fighting hard to replace it with pipelines and natural gas plants. This will only lead to more monopoly, poverty, pollution, grid instability, and climate change. A better path is a world where communities control their futures using sun and wind for energy.

Bridgett Townsend is the board president and Jackson Koeppel is executive director of Soulardarity.

Read or Share this story: http://detne.ws/2qcETwC

Visit link:
Building energy democracy - The Detroit News

ANTHONY WALLACE/AFP/Getty Images

Pro-independence lawmakers Baggio Leung (L) and Yau Wai-ching (R) speak to the press outside the High Court in Hong Kong on November 30, 2016. Leung and Yau lost their appeal on November 30 against a ban preventing them from taking up their seats in parliament as Beijing faces accusations of stepping up interference in the city's politics.

Nine more people were arrested on Thursday and charged with participating in unlawful assembly, obstructing police, and inciting disorderly conduct in a public place for their participation in a November protest. Among them were chairman of the League of Social Democrats Avery Ng Man-yuen as well as Derek Lam Shun-hin and Ivan Lam Long-yin from the Demosisto Party.

All eleven have been released on bail, but they face prosecution and possible prison sentences, according to Human Rights Watch.

"The repeated use of vague charges reeks of an orchestrated and retaliatory campaign by the authorities to punish those that advocate for democracy," said Mabel Au, director of Amnesty International Hong Kong.

"The government should be protecting freedom of expression and peaceful assembly but instead it appears intent on intimidating people who are challenging the authorities."

As many as 11,000 demonstrators took to the streets in November after China banned Leung and Yao from LegCo in a judicial review that was Beijing's most significant form of legal intervention since Hong Kong's sovereignty was transferred from the U.K. to the mainland in 1997.

Link:
Hong Kong gets slammed after arresting pro-democracy activists - CNBC

By Andrew MacDougall By Andrew MacDougall April 26

Andrew MacDougall is a columnist for the Ottawa Citizen and a contributor to the Globe and Mail, CBC.ca and Macleans Magazine. He was formerly director of communications forthen-Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

From a Canadian perspective, the most striking thing about J.J. McCulloughs take on Canadas democracy was its uncharitability.

It was uncharitable to Canada, uncharitable to apples-to-apples comparisons, and, most of all, uncharitable to the thousands of Turkish democrats currently clogging President Recep Tayyip Erdogans jails.

Underpinning McCulloughs lack of charity is a lack of clarity about what, exactly, makes up a democracy. A democracy is much more than its legislature; it is its voters, activists, journalists and the freedom for these groups and others to criticize and oppose elected power.

Want proof?

Why else has Erdogan spent so much capital in the wake of last summers aborted coup jailing journalists, judges and activists? In Erdogans parallel fight to crush the Kurds and supporters of Fethullah Gulen, his former comrade in bringing Islam into Turkish public life, Erdogan has also purged much of the military leadership.

The recent referendum in Turkey was meant to draw the ladder up after Erdogan reached the summit of power so that no one could threaten or replace him. This might please the soft Islamist masses Erdogan brought into democratic politics, but it terrifies those who have watched warily as hehas dismantled the secular state built by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. It wasnt, as McCullough suggests, to make government more effective, at least not in any way a Western democrat would understand.

No Canadian prime minister could or would mimic Erdogans self-serving power grab, although McCulloughs essay would lead its readers to think Canadas prime minister is already there.

Yes, the prime minister of a majority government in a Westminster parliament is a powerful figure, too powerful for some. Yes, the prime minister appoints senators to Canadas unelected upper house. But heres the thing, he or she doesnt appoint all of them in one go, they are appointed when vacancies arise, which ensures a polyglot Senate, barring, of course, a particularly long run for a prime minister in the elected lower house, itself the most important metric of democracy.

The same goes for Canadas judiciary. A prime minister appoints judges, usually on the recommendation of the relevant advisory committees, to a number of important benches, including the Supreme Court. Here, the judges will bump into colleagues of different political persuasions, put into function by the prime ministers predecessors in office.

Barking at the prime minister each and every step of the way on these and other appointments is an army of journalists, pressure groups and opposition politicians. This is the oversight McCullough overlooks. If a particularly egregious appointment is made, the Canadian people will certainly hear about it, even if the prime minister, as McCullough notes, has a hand in appointing the higher-ups at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Of course, the ultimate guarantor of Canadian democracy is its people, who vote in wonderful things called free and fair elections every four years (or so). If the voters dont like the actions taken by a prime minister or his or her government including its appointments (just ask former prime minister Stephen Harper aboutMike Duffy) they can show that government the door. Indeed, this is what brought Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party to power after nearly 10 years of Harper and his Conservatives.

And it will be what replaces Trudeau when the time comes.

While the fact that a Canadian prime minister can govern a majority of the legislature with a minority of the popular vote is a curse to some, its a blessing for me. It gives a strong mandate to those in power, and clear accountability when those in power fail to deliver. There is none of the finger-pointing of messy coalition governments like those in Israel, say, or any of the blame-shifting routinely visited upon the U.S. Congress by its occupants. A pox by voters put on both the House of Representatives and the Senate is a large reason why an outsider such as Donald Trump was elected president of the United States.

Put simply, the civil society that a legislature sits atop matters, as much as it matters the intention of the man or the woman at the pinnacle of power.

A country such asCanada, a federation with no history of military insurrection or populist coups, a country not riven with strict religious divides, can tolerate a highly centralized federal government elected freely and fairly through first-past-the-post pluralities that fall short of an overall majority vote.

Turkey, a country with a vastly different history and civil society, cannot. That is why Western democrats are worried. And why Canadas democracy is worth celebrating.

Here is the original post:
Canada's democracy is the worst, except for all others - The ... - Washington Post

Across the world, experts say democratic states are facing their biggest test in years as they attempt to cope with a loss of trust in public institutions and growing disenchantment with the political elite.

From Brexit to the US election and beyond, recent exercises in democracy have been driven by divisive political rhetoric, delivered razor-thin margins of victory, and led to the results being contested not only in the courts but in the streets.

Perhaps the biggest cause of the political turmoil of recent years is the growing contempt that millions of people have for the version of democracy offered up to them by establishment leaders in the West.

Ignored by mainstream political parties and fed up with economic stagnation -- and in some cases fearful of the impact of immigration -- voters in Europe and beyond are lashing out at the polls.

The first big shock to the system came last June, when Britons voted to leave the European Union. Five months later, Americans stunned the world by electing Donald Trump to be President.

But if Brexit and Trump shifted the political landscape towards a more populist future, Puddington believes the roots of the issue go back to the financial crisis of 2008.

The EU's inability to pull the bloc out of its economic slump -- and its failure to deal with the migration crisis -- contributed to the rise of anti-establishment parties across the continent.

"I would say that democracies have had to confront a number of important crises," Puddington said. "And for some of them there is no single answer."

The answer, in many countries, has been a lurch towards far right politicians.

In France, Marine Le Pen, the National Front leader, is aiming to capitalize on the anti-Europe, anti-immigrant vote as she pursues the French presidency on a platform that she hopes will appeal to those who believe they have been left behind by globalization.

If elected, Le Pen has promised to curtail immigration, hold a referendum on whether France should leave the EU, and protect France from the twin evils of "Anglo-Saxon multiculturalism" and politically correct liberalism, although she would face major parliamentary and constitutional hurdles to do so.

The result of the first round amounted to a comprehensive rejection of traditional politics in France. It was the first time since the establishment of the fifth French Republic in 1958 that no candidate from the two main political parties of the left and right has made it into the second round of the presidential vote.

"It is true that the insecurities are on a few different levels," she said. "Politicians have been terrible at managing that change."

The winds of change may be sweeping through France, but the political landscape of many European countries have already been transformed.

Voters in Poland, Hungary and Turkey have thrown their support behind populist governments who have become increasingly authoritarian in recent years.

"Autocrats claim to have solutions -- they may not do, it may all be a fantasy, but they portray themselves as people of action and people with plans," Puddington said. "They present themselves as people who will make their country great, and some [voters] are convinced."

Brexit, like the US election and the Turkish referendum, ended with a result that left the country bitterly divided.

The vote, won by the Leave campaign with a slim margin of 52%-48%, led to protests, a long period of national introspection, and the end of David Cameron's tenure as Prime Minister.

Cameron's successor Theresa May was charged with leading the UK through the aftermath of the referendum and invoking Article 50, the trigger for divorce proceedings with the EU.

But the fallout from the result has continued, with court cases, mass protests and hours of debate in both the House of Commons and House of Lords.

The conduct of the vote was criticized by international monitors, who said that "the legal framework remained inadequate for the holding of a genuinely democratic referendum."

All three results were met with angry demonstrations, calls for the authorities to invalidate the results, and cries of dishonesty, "fake news" and foul play.

"The thing about populist leaders and campaigns is that they can run fast and free with the truth because their rule is to be outside of the establishment," said Gaston. "They don't necessarily need complex policies in the way mainstream parties do. What they need to offer is a feeling of safety.

"They campaign on control and exclusion," she added. "We saw this in the Brexit campaign. It was not a fluke that the campaign message was 'take back control.'"

Taking back control is what Theresa May is attempting to do -- not just in Europe but at home too.

Observers believe the move was designed to allow her party -- currently enjoying a healthy lead in the polls -- to crush the opposition at the ballot box and silence dissenting voices in Parliament as Brexit negotiations pick up speed.

May was outspoken in her criticism of opposition parties in Westminster, claiming they had jeopardized her government's task of negotiating the best deal for Britain with the EU.

"Our opponents believe, because the government's majority is so small, that our resolve will weaken and that they can force us to change course," she said. "They are wrong."

Britain's populist, pro-Brexit press rode in to support May the morning after the announcement. The Daily Mail hailed her call to "Crush the saboteurs," as the paper put it. The Sun declared that the snap poll would "kill off Labour" and "smash rebel Tories too."

Some critics said the election made little sense given the public's apathy for another vote, less than a year after the pain of the Brexit referendum. Others noted May's seeming anger at the fact there was any opposition to her Brexit plans at all, despite the narrow margin of victory for the Leave campaign.

"May talks indefinitely about the country being unified over Brexit now but it's not really the case. It is pretty much the same as it was on the day of the referendum. There was a split down the middle -- some people think it's a good thing, some people think it's a bad thing.

"She's taking this imagined will of the people and acting if she has a monopoly over it and that's a very common tactic used by dictators across the world. Any opposition to her is an opposition to the country. She's doing a very watered down version of that."

In its 2017 report, the group singled out countries like Poland and Hungary, who have used democratic means to achieve undemocratic aims in recent years.

Poland's right wing Law and Justice party has only been in power since 2015, but its leaders have already managed to restrict the right to protest, grant extra surveillance powers to security services, and curtail the powers of the country's constitutional court. It has also proposed tough new legislation on NGOs while cracking down on media.

The developments in Poland have been similar to those in Hungary, where the ruling Fidesz party under Prime Minister Viktor Orban has created what Freedom House has labeled an "illiberal democracy."

Earlier this month Orban caused outrage by attempting to force the Central European University in Budapest -- founded by Hungarian-American billionaire and democracy advocate George Soros -- to move out of the country, which led to mass protests on the streets of the capital.

The university flap heaped more tension onto Hungary's already fractious relationship with its neighbors. The EU and Budapest are currently locked in a dispute over migration quotas and the treatment of refugees inside camps on the Hungarian border.

Orban, in power since 2010, has sailed upon on a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment in Hungary in recent years. He has justified his hardline stance on migrants by labeling them "a Trojan Horse of terrorism."

But Orban is not the only authoritarian leader to have a frosty relationship with the EU.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has clashed with Europe over a number of issues, including a contentious deal designed to prevent Syrian migrants from reaching the continent. More worrying to some, however, is the increasingly autocratic tone emanating from the presidential palace in Ankara.

Erdogan's victory in this month's referendum, which will allow him to assume sweeping new powers, has been fiercely criticized by those who believe he has exploited democratic processes to tighten his authoritarian grip on the country.

Under the revised constitution, Erdogan will be able to abolish the post of Prime Minister and assume broad new powers to rule by decree. The new arrangements give him the power to appoint a cabinet and some senior judges. The power of Parliament to scrutinize legislation is curbed.

Erdogan has already transformed a largely ceremonial office into a strong powerbase, instituting a widespread crackdown on dissent that intensified after a failed coup last year. More than 47,000 people have been arrested since the foiled coup, and nearly 200 journalists are behind bars.

While 49% of voters mourned the loss of the referendum Sunday as the death of democracy in Turkey, one Erdogan supporter had a piece of advice for the President's critics.

"This is a message to the world to shut up," she said. "Turkey is getting stronger."

Graphics by CNN's Henrik Pettersson.

Here is the original post:
Has democracy reached a breaking point? - CNN