[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about how biased communications we are exposed to impinge on our very rights and what we ought to do about it. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
—The Internet has been transformed into a sort of deregulated neoliberal utopia with few winners. (Nick Srnicek)
1. Misinformation has been identified as a major contributor to various contentious contemporary events ranging from elections and referenda to the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Is that all? No. Not only can belief in misinformation lead to poor judgements and decision-making, it also exerts a lingering influence on people’s reasoning after it has been corrected. (Nature)
The media landscape is changing though
2. On the one hand, in the last fifteen years, dissatisfaction with established newspapers and magazines has motivated groups of young and veteran journalists to found new media, from Politico to Vox to The Intercept in the US, all designed to produce a more agile and daring journalism, less burdened by institutional traditions, gigantic coverages, crushing hierarchies, political pressures and/or commercial interests.*
*: The challenge has been to become ‘short-term visionaries’, as journalist Michael Pollan put it; it is to be able to detect early the symptoms of social (and human rights) changes, analyze them judiciously, and anticipate the futures (plural) that may emerge. Imagining these futures is a condition for building them.
3. On the other hand, progressive commentators are increasingly absent from the mainstream media though while conservatives let entire pages filled with appalling mediocrity pass-by on a weekly basis. Where does this absurdity come from if not from the overconsumption of misinformation? [The anti-communist ideology that has dominated the Western world for the past eighty years is being recycled to foment hysteria and hatred]. The duality of criteria for judging what is happening in the world assumes aberrant proportions and is almost automatically exercised to strengthen the apologists for war, stigmatize the left-wing parties and normalize the fascists. (Boaventura de Sousa Santos)
The first thing to remember is that communication is a human right (Aram Aharonian)
4. …And today we intend to fight for its democratization. But bows and arrows against computer missiles, drones and artificial intelligence are not enough. Today we live in a technodigital feudalism, far, far from the freedom and equity promised by the mentors of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).
5. In recent years, the profitability of capitalist production has turned to data as a way to maintain economic growth. Analysts anticipate that, in a few years, computerization will make disappear more than 40% of jobs. (What will a labor force supplanted by mechanisms that do not demand wages do?) The great digital technologies have served for the growth of inequality on a global scale.
6. Also today, there is a growing need for public policies that care-for and promote the common good, people’s rights and widely share knowledge, data security and access of citizens and communities to software-based services and the Internet. But beware: all our internet movements leave an electronic footprint –data– since much of our relationships, transactions and management evolve in telematic forms.
7. Progressive governments never believed in the need for an information policy that would result in a participative citizen information and training. In low-intensity democracies, stability is achieved through disinformation promoted by the monopolized media. The best journalistic content is generally of no consequence, because it is ignored by those in power and the media at their service. It is essential that the redistribution of wealth be at the top of the priorities of a government of and for the people. Is this possible without talking about ‘the redistribution of the word’? Or will we continue to be hostages of the dictatorship of the single discourse of concentrated media, mere appendices of the established power? The debt to popular communication must be settled with one need: courageous and not cosmetic affirmative action: One more challenge for human rights activists.
8. The giants of the digital world abuse their dominant market position and the mega-flow of data that fuels their algorithms as ‘weapons of mathematical destruction’. We think we carry a personal, smart phone. We think the cell phone belongs to us, but there is nothing less personal. The algorithms in our beloved cell phone actually hide a type of society that is that of a ‘certain system of power’ sustained by a neutral(?) algorithmic ideology. So, you must see how, little by little, the cell phone takes over your being: it asks for your fingerprint while it performs, without your asking, your facial recognition linked to your digital mail account, to your credit or debit card –plus you receive notifications and news from institutions and people you did not even know existed.
Bottom line
–It is evident that democracy does not exist in the media.
9. In short, we need public policies that allow freedom of expression not to be reserved only for the bosses. It is necessary to create our own claim holders’ media, not to compete for the opinion of the majority, but to consolidate the popular camp. The most brutal crimes can go unnoticed if the media pound and insist on it. Building from below and from the Left seems to be the only possible emancipatory path. Because the only thing that can be built from above is a bottomless pit. (all the above from A. Aharonian)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
All Readers are available at www.claudioschuftan.com
Postscript/Marginalia
—And there is more: The nightmare of AI-powered Gmail has arrived (John Herrman) One piece of slang that this Reader uses to call on the short attention span of some of you is TLDR, short for ‘too long; didn’t read”. With the explosion of generative AI tools, we are rapidly entering the age of TLDW: “too long, didn’t write.” The AI arms race in every communication tool is on. When we all have tools to create endless streams of content, we will also need tools to filter through endless streams of content. By default, these new tools are homogenization machines, spinning out lookalike content for everyone. (Tom Fishburne)
–According to studies, we become less curious as we grow older. So, here are some tips to cultivate curiosity: 1) Ask questions. 2) Read outside of your field. 3) Be inquisitive about what your friends find interesting and why. 4) Practice saying less. 5) Immerse yourself in a topic. 6) Write. 7) Carry a notebook. 8) Learn about yourself. 9) Slow down. 10) Hang out with a child. (Kyle Westaway)