Re: Rebuilding Local News

Also, here are three articles presenting ideas which differ from, some rebutting, ideas which I have shared:


  1.  https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/11/06/documents_shed_new_light_on_feds_collusion_with_private_actors_to_police_speech_on_social_media_990672.html
  2.  https://www.newsguardtech.com/misinformation-monitor/october-2023/
  3.  https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/news/common-abuses-mastodon-primer

I recently shared information about the GDELT project<https://www.gdeltproject.org/> as a solution for measuring news content at scale, this being useful for scientifically improving real-world content-distribution algorithms, towards mitigating complex-systemic feedback loops which might elevate individuals' and groups' fears and anxieties. Public opinion data would also be a component of these scientific measurements and analyses [1][2][3].

Hyperlink #1<https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/11/06/documents_shed_new_light_on_feds_collusion_with_private_actors_to_police_speech_on_social_media_990672.html>, above, expresses some concerns including about the Stanford Internet Observatory<https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/io>, a similar solution.

In the past, the prevalence of sockpuppets, bots, and cyborgs on social media was a more pressing concern and I opined that account verification (which at the time for only for celebrities), digital-signatures, and, perhaps into the future, digital IDs could be components of solutions. An analogy was that of a town hall meeting, where orators stand as they speak and are non-anonymous to other assembled participants. However, in the United States of America, notable citizens and journalists have historically used pseudonyms [4]. In theory, digital-signatures-based solutions could be designed which include overtly pseudonymous accounts with which to securely digitally-sign content on behalf of one or more contributors.

Rebutting the idea that verified accounts would entirely curtail misinformation and disinformation, hyperlink #2<https://www.newsguardtech.com/misinformation-monitor/october-2023/>, above, claims that verified accounts on X are producing 74% of the platform's most viral false or unsubstantiated claims pertaining to the Israel-Hamas War. This article also raises concerns with respect to X's Community Notes<https://help.twitter.com/en/using-x/community-notes> features.

In the past, I have also brainstormed about decentralized social media solutions, e.g., Mastodon, and about more intricate peer-to-peer systems, including systems with varieties of user roles, e.g., for moderation and administrative duties. Hyperlink #3<https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/news/common-abuses-mastodon-primer>, above, raises some concerns with respect to decentralized social media.

Hopefully, these comparative ideas and viewpoints are both useful and interesting to the group towards brainstorming solutions to rebuild<https://www.rebuildlocalnews.org/> local news<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_news>.


Best regards,
Adam

[1] https://www.chapman.edu/wilkinson/research-centers/babbie-center/survey-american-fears.aspx
[2] https://democracy.psu.edu/research/mood-of-the-nation-poll/
[3] https://www.apmresearchlab.org/motn/hope-worry-2022
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pseudonyms_used_in_the_American_Constitutional_debates

________________________________
From: Adam Sobieski <adamsobieski@hotmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, November 15, 2023 4:00 AM
To: Felipe Ribeiro <operarioribeiro@gmail.com>
Cc: Emily Ryan <emily.ryan@civicactions.com>; public-civics@w3.org <public-civics@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Rebuilding Local News

Thank you, Felipe. It alleviates my worries that these civics, media, and technology topics have already been and are being considered by others including in the contexts of media ethics.

With respect to utilizing advancements to natural-language processing and AI to measure news content:

https://jigsaw.google.com/

Jigsaw is a unit within Google that explores threats to open societies and builds technology that inspires scalable solutions.

https://www.gdeltproject.org/

Supported by Google Jigsaw, the GDELT Project monitors the world's broadcast, print, and web news from nearly every corner of every country in over 100 languages and identifies the people, locations, organizations, themes, sources, emotions, counts, quotes, images and events driving our global society every second of every day, creating a free open platform for computing on the entire world.

The GDELT Project came from a desire to better understand global human society and especially the connection between communicative discourse and physical societal-scale behavior. The vision of the GDELT Project is to codify the entire planet into a computable format using all available open information sources that provides a new platform for understanding the global world.

The GDELT project desires to better understand dynamics beyond the ones I broached (negativity, sensationalism, consumer demand, resultant production, content-distribution algorithms, feedback loops, anxiety, mood). The GDELT project came from a desire to better understand dynamics between communicative discourse and physical societal-scale behavior.


Best regards,
Adam

P.S.: See also: https://iptc.org/ .

________________________________
From: Felipe Ribeiro <operarioribeiro@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, November 14, 2023 1:06 AM
To: Adam Sobieski <adamsobieski@hotmail.com>
Cc: Emily Ryan <emily.ryan@civicactions.com>; public-civics@w3.org <public-civics@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Rebuilding Local News

Center for Media Engagement Media Ethics Initiative<https://mediaengagement.org/media-ethics>
International Journal for Ethics & Society (IJES) Professional Ethics Codes for Global Media<http://ijethics.com/article-1-42-en.pdf>
London School of Economy  (LSE) Media Policy Project (MPP)<http://www.lse.ac.uk/media-and-communications/media-policy-project>
Civic Charter for Peoples Participation<https://icscentre.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Civic_Charter_-_The_Global_Framework_for_Peoples_Participation.pdf>
Media Ethics Initiative Art, Aesthetics, & Ethics Case Studies<https://mediaethicsinitiative.org/aesthetics-ethics-case-studies/>
Media Literacy for Citizenship (EAVI)<https://eavi.eu/>
New Media Rights (NMR) Legal and Guides for Creators and Organizations<https://www.newmediarights.org/legal_how_to_guides_for_citizen_media_creators_online_publishing>
Peace in Media Index<https://www.paznamidia.com.br/ivm/>
Free Media World Forum (FMML)<http://www.fmml.net/>
Article 19 Social Media Councils Consultation<https://www.article19.org/resources/social-media-councils-consultation/>
W3C Media Resources Ontology Recommendation<https://www.w3.org/TR/mediaont-10/>