re:publica 18 - Media & Journalism re:publica

Feranak Amidi

In today’s world social media platforms have become priceless news-gathering assets for journalists and news organizations. But when these platforms are male dominated there is a danger of marginalizing the female audience and muting their voices.  
On Afghan, Iranian and Uzbek social media platforms women tend be more passive. The female engagement on BBC‌ Pashto’s Facebook posts is as low as 3%. This is not because women are not present on that platform but mainly because they don’t feel safe to express their opinion and engage in debates.
In order to have a more gender equal output of news content on social media we need to be able to tap into the pool of our female audience and in order to do that we need to make women feel safe on these platforms to talk to us and talk to each other.
In my talk I‌ will look at some of the reasons why women are passive on social media platforms in Iran and Afghanistan, what challenges this can cause for us as journalists, how we can make these platforms more appealing for women and how we can then use these platforms as news-gathering resources to create more gender balanced news content.
I will look at my own personal experience and how I was able to create a safe platform for Farsi speaking women on Instagram by following a set of social media ‘Best Practices’. I will talk about how I use Instagram as my main news-gathering tool to reach out to women and how secret closed groups on Facebook are giving us an opportunity to hear from our female Afghan audience.
 

Arikia Millikan

After 10 years of working in the corporate media industry in NYC, I have seen the destruction of the Internet Nothing. I've battled it and mostly I've lost. I've seen thousands of pages of journalistic content taken down, sometimes because of blatant censorship; other times for no better reason than a corporate whim or a site redesign. In this talk, I will discuss how history is being erased every day, often without a second thought.
As journalists, we often pour the stories we have fought for the right to tell onto unstable platforms and centralized social networks, assuming those networks will be there forever. But do you really know who owns your content once you hit publish? Is it really yours anymore, or does it become the property of the publication—or the tech platform? How can you be sure it will be there in the future?
This is a wake-up call about online content ownership and what can happen when we place unwarranted trust in organizations that have the ability to alter, sell, or delete our content. But there are ways to stop The Internet Nothing! I will conclude by discussing some of the theoretical requirements that would enable online content to withstand destructive forces and pass the test of time.
 

Simon Jockers

Die statistischen Ämter sammeln ständig Daten über deine Umwelt: Schulabschlüsse, Arbeitslose, Recycling und Massentierhaltung. Zahlen über das alles und noch viel mehr gibt es in der amtlichen Statistik.
Diese Statistiken sind wichtige Werkzeuge – für NGOs und politisch Aktive genauso wie für Journalist*innen. Doch die meisten Menschen können mit diesen Statistiken nichts anfangen, denn sie werden von Bürokraten für Bürokraten gemacht.
Aber das muss nicht sein, denn wir hacken das statistische Bundesamt! Wir zeigen euch, wie ihr an die Daten kommt, die ihr braucht.
Mit unserem Projekt Datengui.de machen wir die amtliche Statistik zugänglich für alle. Datengui.de ist ein alternatives Datenportal, das die Zahlen der amtlichen Statistik visualisiert, in Kontext setzt und erklärt – mit interaktiven Grafiken zu deiner Stadt und Datensätzen, die du einfach herunterladen und weiterverwenden kannst.
In unserer Präsentation zeigen wir, wie wir die Daten aus der amtlichen Statistik saugen und für euch so aufbereiten, dass ihr sie verstehen und weiterbenutzten könnt.

Surya Mattu

In today’s digital world social, economic, and racial injustice lurks in the shadows of the unseen Facebook post, the hidden algorithm used to sort employment resumes, and the risk assessment tool used in criminal sentencing.  These systems tend to be opaque and beyond scrutiny. Access is usually restricted to large companies and governing bodies whose interests are often unaligned with large parts of their customer base and citizens. Much of the criticism of the technology industry tends to be hypothetical or speculative because it can be very difficult to measure the ways in which people are being harmed. The methods of personalization that have transformed how we use the internet have also obfuscated the disparate impact that takes place there. This makes it significantly harder for those interested in regulation to collect the evidence necessary to hold tech companies accountable. It is possible to collect some of this information by harnessing the network and communications infrastructure that the internet is made up of. The data traveling through these systems tell compelling stories if you know how to look for them. They also often reflect systemic biases and prejudices prevalent in society.

Charlie Winter, Nicole Celikkesen

This session, which is based on a longitudinal archive of primary source materials collected since early 2014, will set out the current state of play regarding the Islamic State.
First of all, by reverse engineering documents and publications leaked from the organisation in Iraq, Winter will set out the tactical and strategic rationale behind the group's propaganda operations, demonstrating how an obsessive desire for information and narrative supremacy has coursed through it and its predecessors' veins for a matter of decades.
After this, Winter will identify and discuss the three core objectives of its communication operations today - that is: (1) to present an alternative narrative to current members and would-be recruits; (2) to counter the global "fake news" agenda, which it considers to be a deliberate intellectual offensive against Sunni Muslims; and (3) to launch Islamic State "information bombs" in the form of offensive psychological attacks against populations and governments outside of Syria and Iraq.
The third section will consider how things have changed since 2014. Using data to track its evolution, Winter will demonstrate how the group's "virtual caliphate" has altered since its heyday a few years ago. He will also take this as an opportunity speculate as to its operational trajectory in the coming months and years, taking note of its new stated priority: to incite, instruct and instigate acts of violence outside of its immediate sphere of operations in Syria and Iraq. 
Throughout the session, which will be highly visual, Winter will engage with some of the toughest questions associated with terrorist use of the Internet, ranging from the merits (and demerits) of censorship to the implications of encryption technology. 

Katrin Rönicke, Susanne Klingner

Ein Unternehmen zu Gründen - dieser Entschluss ist oft der erste, folgenschwere Schritt in die deutsche Bürokratie. Und das ausgerechnet mit Podcasts! Einem als "Nischen-Medium" verschrienem Produkt. Doch wenn man etwas sehr liebt, ist es einen Versuch wert!
Wir klopften an Unternehmenstüren, um Sponsoren zu finden, baten Hörerinnen und Hörer um Geld, entwickelten neue Formate und fragten uns bei all dem: Sind wir eigentlich irre, es mit einem Medium zu probieren, das in Deutschland trotz des Hypes wirtschaftlich noch ganz am Anfang steht?
Wir berichten über all das, was wir in 12 Monaten gelernt haben: welche Strategien erfolgreich waren und welche schlicht nicht funktionieren, welche Experimente die Hörerschaft liebt und welche direkt zum „Unsubscribe“-Klick führen. Wir erzählen von enthusiastischen Ideenrunden genauso wie von Gesprächen, in denen erst einmal am Handy demonstriert werden muss, was überhaupt so ein Podcast ist.