Global Journalism Day 2014 at Örebro University

   

Walid Al-Saqaf, the Director of the Master of Global Journalism at Örebro University and the head of the Organizing Committee, Örebro University

    Global Journalism Day 2014 ‘Transparency, Surveillance and Trust in Technology’ – was most probably the biggest event at Örebro University this spring and definitely the most remarkable for Media and Communication department. Students, professors, professionals - more than a hundred guests registered, high key-note speakers from Google and UNESCO, open discussions and round tables – this is all about GJDay 2014 (#GJDay14). Moreover, it marked the 10-year anniversary of the International Master Programme ‘Global Journalism’, which started in 2004.
    To have a brief overview about the event - check the podcast (6,5 min) about it from my colleague Elin Häggberg, the Chief of the Radio Campus.

     For those who are interested in all those topics mentioned in the headline – I really recommend to watch the presentation by Nicklas Lundblad (30 min, in English, video below). Surely, it will be interesting not only for journalists. Well, if you have no time to watch – read a summary below. Enjoy!

Nicklas Lundblad, the Director of Public Policy and Government Relations at Google for Europe and the EU

    The main question of Nicklas’ presentation was “Who watches the watchers?”

 His presentation consists of 1 question, 4 answers, 3 complexities, 2 challenges.

    Although, the question above is very old one, it has a new complexity in our age. Nicklas makes a premise that surveillance is legitimate. According to him, one part of the protection of social organizations is some kind legitimate surveillance.

     The speaker gives four answers for the main question. The first one is by an Ancient Greek philosopher Plato: through education, we can create a better kind of human that does not need to be watched. But are the guardians better?

    A Roman poet Juvenalis was disagree with this position. He argued that guardians are not better than other humans, because they can be corrupted. He gives the second variant of the answer to the same question. It just cannot be done, because there should be guardians of the guardians and the guardians of the guardians of the guardians…etc.
     According to Nicklas’ presentation, a Nobel Laureate, an economist and mathematician Leonid Hurwicz offered the third answer. Any population has “intervenors” – people, who genuinely want to do what is right. Hurwicz offers the idea that a small amount of right-minded watchers can enforce the rules against the enforcers. In an open democracy, where information is available on equal basis, the electorate will be able to vote those corrupted guardians out. Therefore, intervenors will act with altruism and accountability in front of the electorate.

     Another idea about how to organize the surveillance is offered by Jeremy Bebtham and his concept of the special construction of the prison – famous Panopticon. The panopticon provides the advantage of allowing a single guard to watch the prisoners. The idea behind is that people need to be watched otherwise they don’t behave well. The solution is to take this model of the prison and implement it in the society. But is that transparency? “No”, argues Nickals. The fourth answer Nicklas found in the book, which he recommended to read, “The Transparent Society” by David Brin (1998). And the answer is – equiveillance, where everybody surveils everybody equally. So, Brin suggests that everybody watches the watchers, because everyone is a watcher.

     But Nicklas argues that none of these answers is sufficient or necessary and none of them gives the whole picture. The reason for that is that we’re facing a number of new complexities in the information society. And these complexities change the nature of the question and make it more difficult to answer.

1.           Data growth. Does anybody really know how much data we have today? And what about tomorrow? What is the speed of process of the information growth? Nicklas was talking about the “Heidegger conjecture” – the process of “enframing”. In other words, something that was not available to be stored with help of technology can be framed and stored now.

Technology makes the world available – as data?

It's one of my favourite quotes from this presentation. It does by means of growing use of different sensors. More data and a broader set of data – that complicates the question - “What the watchers can watch?”

2.             Machine intelligence. The second complexity has to do with watchers and how they make sense of this enormous amount of data. Today we can make faster correlations between different data. But not all the correlations are meaningful. A funny example is the website – Spurious Correlations. It gives a simple example that correlation might not be causation. Falsity grows faster than information. This can lead to a logical mistake “post hoc ergo propter hoc” society – in Latin: after this, therefore because of this, or cinac – correlation is not a cause. So, the way the watchers watch not only what they watch (the data set) expands in a way it is less and less reliable as the data sets grow.

3.               Asymmetric threats. Nicklas presented the idea of Nick Bostrom who argues that in modern society individual ability to cause harm is increasing enormously fast. But taking in account a constantly growing data set the detection this harm is harder. It is a problem of a growing haystack and shrinking needle. This leads to the question of efficiency of watching and if the watchers really can watch.

The ability to find something is less and less especially with the ability to hide or encrypt the information. According to Nicklas, the whole world of computer science is devoted to explore steganography. For those interested – check the website Spam mimic.

       Challenges.

     1) Responsible transparency. What the watchers are watching? Do they know? What is the data quality? Who are the watchers? Who actually have the right for that? Can watchers share the information between each other? Whom are watchers watching? Should you be notified at some point? When the watchers can watch? What triggers allow to watch? Why are the watchers watching? – Oversight vs accountability. In addition. There should be documentation and reporting about watching process. There should be an access to how the surveillance is conducted. Check this the project by Google – Google Transparency Report.

       2) Striking the balance. What level of surveillance we believe is right for an open society?

“We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than only freedom can make security more secure”, Karl Popper.

Some of these principals of surveillance are shaped by the series of companies taking part in a project Global Government Surveillance Reform. Nicklas concluded his presentation that an open debate about these question is need.

Videos:

Keynote speech by Nicklas Lundblad, Google.

Panel 1: Digital surveillance and privacy issues in the age of social media.

Panelists: Nicklas Lundblad (Google), Dean Marcinyshyn (GMedia Center), Lena Scherman (SVT). Moderator: Walid Al-Saqaf (Örebro University).

Panel 2: Social media and digital journalism: Conflict or convergence?

Panelists: Ulf Johansson (SVT), Rouba El Helou (Notre Dame University), Henri Heikkinen (Foilchat). Moderator: Mahitab Ez El Din (Örebro University).

Panel 3: Challenges to the global journalist in the digital age.

Panelists: Guy Berger (UNESCO), Peter Berglez (Örebro University), Anna Roxvall (Freelance journalist). Moderator: Roland Stanbridge, MAGJ co-founder.

Round-table discussion: With current MAGJ students (Alla Rybina, Irene Rapado, Luise Röpke, Eden Fitsum) and MAGJ alumna Claudia Pricop.

The Final Speech by Guy Berger (UNESCO).