Smartphones – Evening Report

Global smart tech, ethics and cyber humanism

David Robie — Tue, 02 Jul 2019 09:16:02 +0000

Report by Dr David Robie – Café Pacific. –

Dr Mohamed El-Guindy … time for universities to step up or face an Orwellian future.
Image: David Robie/PMC

By DAVID ROBIE in Bangkok

A LEADING cyber security expert has called on universities to play a more active role in implementing ethics and legal frameworks for communications smart technology to save society from an Orwellian future.

Dr Mohamed El-Guindy, an Egyptian consultant to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC-ROMENA), says communication research programmes should promote “ethically aligned” design.

In an era of “accelerated addictiveness” to smartphone and other digital technologies, he told media researchers, policy advisers and journalists at the recent 27th Asian Media Information and Communication (AMIC) conference in Bangkok, Thailand, that it was vital for democracy that universities stepped up.

He also said families and parents needed to be more critically active by balancing screen time and promoting “real social interaction”.

Addressing the “persuasive technologies” industry, Dr El-Guindy spoke about being “hooked”, the “scrolling dopamine loop” and the “digital skinner box” models and how they had made smartphones fill psychological needs.

“Our social fabric is being torn apart,” he said. “As we expect more from technology, we expect less from each other as people.

“We have suffered a loss of ability to focus without distraction. The result is mental health issues, less empathy and more confusion.”

‘Misinformation, lies’
Dr El-Guindy said societies were engulfed in “misinformation, propaganda and lies”.

He quoted from educator and media theorist Neil Postman’s book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, originally published in 1985 and drawn from a talk reflecting on George Orwell’s 1984.

“Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in [Aldous] Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to ignore the technologies that undo their capacity to think.”

In a separate address, Dr El-Guindy and other presenters spoke about facial recognition technologies, voice generators that can put words in people’s mouths and how artificial intelligence is compromising and undermining privacy.

The three-day AMIC conference at Chulalongkorn University featured the theme “Are you human? Communication, Technology and New Humanism”.

Manila-based AMIC is the major global organisation focused on Asian media policy and research and publishes two leading journals, the Asian Journal of Communication and Media Asia.

AMIC board chair Professor Crispin Maslog challenged the more than 200 participants to take a more “humanist” approach to communication research and policy building.

“We stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another,” he said. “In its scale, scope and complexity, the transformation will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before.

“As the millennials would say, OMG!”

Climate change guide
Among four new international books about communication research and technology, prolific Filipino author and communications expert Dr Maslog launched his 36th title, Science Writing and Climate Change.

Developed as a guide for journalists in the Asia-Pacific region, it has been co-authored with New Zealand’s Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie and regional editor Joel Adriano of SciDev.Net, a leading online publication with a focus of science and development.

Among several UNESCO delegates and speakers at the conference, Dorothy Gordon, of the governing board of the UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education, called on participants to lobby through their national commissions and global agencies if they wanted action.

“Asia has the potential to be in control, it can make changes for tech for peace,” she said. “UNESCO is made up of member states. If you want something to happen, you need to lobby your own country first to take up the issue.”

Malaysia’s Dr Azman Azwan Azmawati, an associate professor at the Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) in Penang and president of the Asian Congress for Media and Communication (ACMC), called for more critical research on patriarchal systems.

“It is crucial for more study of patriarchal systems because of their negative impact on women and stereotyping of women,” she said. “The patriarchal system hinders women from reaching their potential.”

Power imbalance
Much more research was needed to focus on the imbalance of power – ‘deconstructing the power of the powerful over the powerless.

“Cultural norms and mindsets must be re-examined, critiqued, reevaluated and rethought.”

Professor Mark Pearson of Australia’s Griffith University spoke of human rights advocacy journalism in a global justice context.

“Global justice can be a legitimate ethical objective of advocacy journalism, requiring factuality as a platform,” he said.

“It is achievable in some cases through a wise and intentional position of ‘advocacy journalism’ which sits comfortably with the professional values of the livelihood of journalists.”

He cited several examples of advocacy journalism in Australia and New Zealand, including Greenpeace investigative journalist Phil Vine.

Dr Pearson, author of The Journalist’s Guide to Media Law, also spoke about “mindful journalism”, a form of journalism with “wisdom and compassion” drawing from elements of secular Buddhist approaches to meditation and ethics.

He dedicated a separate paper on the topic to the memory of Dr Shelton Gunaratne, who died in March this year after being awarded the 2016 AMIC Asia Communication Award for his “ground-breaking scholarship and intellectual contribution to Asian media and communication research”.

High tech ‘slavery’
Professor Jack Linchuan Qiu, author of Goodbye iSlave and director of the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s C-Centre for Chinese Media and Comparative Communication Research, gave an inspired address on the impact of modern day “slavery” in the high tech industries.

Taiwan’s Professor Georgette Wang of the National Chengchi University engaged with the debate about Asian research methodologies, saying that perhaps the right questions were not being asked.

She said there was an absence of “East-West dialogue” over research methodologies and there needed to be more engagement. Blaming globalisation, she said that while the “periphery” had gained greater presence in the international arena, it had also “brought the profile of theories and questions originating in the West to greater prominence”.

Instead of rejecting Western research models in an Asian context, more effort was needed to “develop a new paradigm” drawing on both East-West traditions.

Full story and images on Asia Pacific Report

[embedded content]
David Robie’s Radio 95bFM Southern Cross commentary about the conference.

This article was first published on Café Pacific.

Dear editor, why smartphones are ruining our nakamal storytelling

Asia Pacific Report — Sat, 18 May 2019 04:15:53 +0000

Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk

A Vanuatu Daily Post newspaper reader has protested over Facebook addiction, describing it as ruining the lives of teenagers and youth who spend most of their time on smartphones.

The reader says that Facebook and other social media are undermining the constitution and its preamble that calls for the cherishing of cultural diversity and tradition.

The “concerned citizen” calls on internet providers, Malvatumauri (Council of Chiefs) and communities to “train and teach” social media users to make the “right choices in life” and to restore storytelling in nakamals (meeting places for drinking of kava). The letter said:

READ MORE: The Nakamal Diaries

Dear Editor,

As a native Ni-Vanuatu citizen, I wish to appeal to the government and Malvatumauri Council of Chiefs to take up an active participative (sic) regular awareness over the use of social media, particularly Facebook.

-Partners-

As stated by one of our former Ministers, “Ol generation blo today, hemi ol generation blo lukluk down”!

Today as you can see around our different societies in Vanuatu, teenagers and youth spend most of their valuable time with their smartphones to access Facebook, playing games, and accesing other social media apps.

The present era of technology has changed the attitude and behavior of Vanuatu teenagers and youth compared to the past, and it results to (sic) many social problems in our societies.

These behaviors defeat the purpose of our preamble, that is cherish our cultural diversity and traditional Melanesian values and Christian principles. Our cultural norms such as sitting with our parents for family talk, and listening to cultural and historical stories and a frequent “Storian tuketa” in our various nakamal time has been replaced by the high use of smartphones and social media.

Given that, I am suggesting that our government should work closely with the internet providers, Malvatumauri and the communities to train and teach its users, especially teenagers and youth, to understand the causes and effect, in order to make right choices in life and also to reduce disrespectful attitudes.

A Concerned Citizen
Vanuatu Daily Post

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

USP students raise Pacific climate change awareness using cellphones

Pacific Media Centre — Thu, 19 Apr 2018 00:01:27 +0000

Bearing Witness talks to ePOP climate change video makers. Video: Pacific Media Centre

By Hele Ikimotu with visuals by Blessen Tom in Suva

Ten students from the University of the South Pacific have captured the effects of climate change on their smartphone devices.

The task was organised through an eParticipatory Observers Project (ePOP) workshop last month by members of the ePOP network based in France.

The ePOP project was established by RFI Planète Radio, along with the IRD (National French Research Institute for Sustainable Development). The project aims to raise awareness about climate change through videos produced by young people.

The workshop at USP was over four days, with the first part of the workshop developing the students’ filming and editing skills. The students then applied these skills to produce videos about communities affected by climate change.

USP journalism student Koroi Tadulala … passion for climate change reporting. Image: Blessen Tom/Bearing Witness

Bigger platform
Koroi Tadulala, a third year Fiji journalism student took part in the ePOP project both last year and this year.

-Partners-

“I joined ePOP because I’ve always been keen about climate change and the environment. I had been writing climate change stories since I started first year.

“Ever since then, I’ve been following up stories on climate change and then ePOP came around. I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to put my skills to use and address this issue on a bigger platform.”

The Fijian student bears a close connection to the effects of climate change as his own village is affected by sea level rise.

He said it made him want to be an activist in spreading “the word of climate change”.

“As part of the ePOP project, we go to the grassroots level and sit down with a lot of community members and ask them to share their stories with us,” he said.

Tadulala said it was a great opportunity to produce and share the stories to a wider audience.

‘Amazing’ response
“We brought out some of the stories that we didn’t really know about and now people are reacting to it. It’s amazing to see how people take it in.”

Tadulala created a video story on the effect of the 2016 Cyclone Winston on food security and a story on how the Fiji village of Nabudakra thinks they should strengthen their faith with God to reduce the impact of cyclones.

He said a project like ePOP catered to the digital era and encouraged young people to engage with issues around climate change.

“We create short videos from two to three minutes long so it enables them to go through the whole video without being bored.

“We decided to put this out on social media, especially because most of the people are using social media networks and it’s only smart to use that platform to put out the word of climate change.”

USP law student Mia Kami … need for youth engagement regarding climate change. Image: Blessen Tom/Bearing Witness

Filmmaking interest
Mia Kami, a law student at USP, also took part in the ePOP workshop out of an interest for filmmaking.

The student, of Tongan descent, said the ePOP team had shared that awareness of climate change issues faced by the Pacific was not as strong in Europe.

“Their [ePOP’s] goal was to spread awareness of climate change in Europe, so the videos that we did were based on climate change.

“I think because it was from a student in the Pacific, it would be a lot more heartfelt so people would understand it more from a Pacific point of view,” said Kami.

Kami and a few other students went to a fish market and interviewed vendors to get their perspective on how climate change affected fisheries.

She said she was surprised at what their idea of climate change was and how it affected them.

“The first lady we interviewed, her definition of climate change was that it’s bad weather.

Water pollution
“She believes that the bad weather is making the fishermen stop fishing, so they don’t fish and she doesn’t get to buy fish from them so she can sell. So that’s how she said that climate change affected her.”

Speaking of another vendor she interviewed, Kami said the vendor did not think overfishing was an issue and felt that it was water pollution.

“I feel like a lot of the media coverage that we do based on climate change, it doesn’t reach as far as their areas because a lot of the vendors are based in rural areas.

“I feel like the proper research on it doesn’t reach that grassroots level so I think if people took climate change into the more grassroots level, it would give them a totally different perspective.”

Kami enjoyed the ePOP project and the process of producing the video story. She said it was important for young people to make themselves aware of climate change.

“It’s our future. I think it’s important that we make an attempt to lessen the damage that we’re going to face in the future,” she said.

“What we can do now is so essential. If we know more about it, it makes so much of a difference. It all starts with ourselves.”

Hele Ikimotu and Blessen Tom are in Fiji as part of the Pacific Media Centre’s Bearing Witness 2018 climate change project. They are collaborating with the University of the South Pacific.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

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