“A bipartisan group of US senators have announced a new bill that would require social media companies to share platform data with independent researchers.”
“This collection, edited by Sophie Vériter, Monica Kaminska, Dennis Broeders and Joachim Koops, includes six papers exploring and investigating European responses to COVID-related disinformation, specifically the responses of France, Sweden, Germany, the United Kingdom, Serbia, and Hungary.”
“The culture that characterises mature information societies is now evolving from being a culture of signs and signification into a culture of proxies and interaction. Through a definition and discussion of proxies and degenerate proxies, this paper analyses the factors behind this evolution and the potential implications for such a major societal transformation.”
“Stuart Russell warns of the dangers of developing autonomous weapon systems – arguing for a system of global control. Weapons that locate, select, and engage human targets without human supervision are already available for use in warfare,. Some argue that AI will reduce collateral damage and civilian casualties. Others believe it could kill on a scale not seen since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “
“Meta (formerly Facebook, renamed to put a fine point on its metaverse ambitions) has opened the virtual reality platform to anyone in the U.S. and Canada who’s over 18 and has a Quest 2 headset made by Oculus, the VR device company Meta acquired for $2.3 billion in 2014.”
“Reflecting the global surge of upskilling people for the increasingly digital normal, Asian countries are exploring new avenues of equipping their citizens with essential skills. Singapore, for example, is using computer games to train its naval officers while Thailand is tapping YouTube to help prepare its citizens.”
“We examine if and how news coverage influences governments’ humanitarian aid allocations, from the perspective of the senior bureaucrats involved in such decision-making.”
“The world is facing a race between controlling new and more infectious variants of coronavirus and implementing vaccinations: How can health authorities and governments most effectively communicate the need to engage more strongly in protective behavior to avoid a collapse of the healthcare system until vaccination programs are effective? Here, we use epidemiological modeling to develop a new visual communication aid, a hopeful message of `buying time’, which reflects the pandemic trade-offs currently facing governments, authorities, and citizens.”
“We ask how pandemic fatigue developed over the course of the pandemic and whether it fueled populist sentiments.”
“In our digital world, a single view can have a significant impact”
“Facebook’s monthly users grew from a million in 2004 to over a billion by 2012, all while adding new features to engage users better. Imagine if digital public services had the same ability to cope with this level of growth.”
“In the 21st century, the enhancement of technology, as well as the complexity of geopolitics and international world order, further test the ability of aspiring diplomats.”