6 mins read

Posted by Dr G. Uma

Book:Interrogating Womens Leadership and Empowerment

Author: Omita Goyal

Publisher: Sage Publications, 2015

The edited book titled Interrogating Womens Leadership and Empowerment has been published with the objective of tracing the process of womens empowerment and development in India. There are notable contributions at the international and national level by certain organizations, institutions, individuals and governments for womens development and empowerment. It is pertinent to trace everyones efforts and to improve historic understanding to progress as a society.

The term empowerment is a contested one. The interpretation of the term varies according to the contexts and issues. It is mostly used to define and measure womens progress in various fields. Leadership plays a crucial role in the process of empowerment in every field whether political, social and economical.

The term empowerment is a contested one. The interpretation of the term varies according to the contexts and issues. It is mostly used to define and measure womens progress in various fields. Leadership plays a crucial role in the process of empowerment in every field whether political, social and economical. Identifying, building and nurturing leadership potential among women is a noteworthy step in empowering women. This will encourage them to move from panchayats to the parliament. Once we form a critical and equitable representation of women in policy-making institutions, it will subsequently reflect in every field. Feminists researchers like Naila Kabeer, Srilatha Batliwala and Deepa Narayan have defined empowerment and have developed certain methodologies to measure the same. The issues of gender are interdisciplinary in nature. Women face hardships and difficulties irrespective of their social and economic locations. The sufferings and burdens may vary according to caste, class, education and location (rural/urban). Hence different perspectives and methodologies have to be applied and analysed in every field to understand gender issues and to know womens present condition in a particular field. In this context, the author has identified suitable research articles and brought out an edited volume by including articles from various disciplines. She has chosen articles that have strongly applied feminist research methodology.

Also read: Womens EmpowermentThe Missing Piece Of Environmental Policies

Womens movement in India has played a noteworthy role in bringing womens issues to the mainstream. It also facilitated in bringing appropriate laws to improve womens position in the society. Till Chapter 7, the significance of womens leadership in different fields/areas has been dealt with. Chapter 1, by Devaki Jain, deals with womens movement, which encouraged womens leadership and empowerment. In chapter 2, Padmini Swaminathan has brought out the significance of womens leadership in empowering grassroots people through two case studies. According to the author, the policies of the government and other institutions are instrumental in leading to womens empowerment or disempowerment. She has documented two case studies from two southern states. One study draws the conclusion that the mere distribution of welfare measures might not alter social and gender relations. According to the study, engendering development is meant to address range of issues like redistribution of resources, restructuring gender and social relations, restructuring socio-political and bureaucratic institutions. Restructuring gender and socio-political relations is a slow process unless we implement social polices with the aim of restructuring of gender and social relations.

In chapter 2, Padmini Swaminathan has brought out the significance of womens leadership in empowering grassroots people through two case studies. According to the author, the policies of the government and other institutions are instrumental in leading to womens empowerment or disempowerment.

Chapter 3 titled Women Leaders in Every Mohalla Every Village traces the history of SEWA movement and women leaders contribution, the crux of the chapter being Movements grow through their leaders and leaders are shaped by the movements. J. Devika in Chapter 4 analyses womens leadership in the context of 33.3 percent reservation of seats for women in local bodies after the enactment of 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendment Acts. The act opened up opportunities for women to exercise power in the area of development femininity in Kerala. Or else, politics is considered as masculine and patriarchal. The elected representatives in local bodies use gentle power associated with femininity. According to her study, which applies the Gentle Power theory, Dalit and upper-caste women use Gentle Power differently. The study further states that empowerment is not a linear process. There are complexities involved in the process of empowerment. This needs to be considered while applying the theoretical framework of empowerment to do research on womens issues.

Chapter 5 Labouring Intellectuals by Gopal Guru explores the impact of globalization and the introduction of new media services in the lives of dalit women. Oral tradition, that is, sharing pain and pleasure through songs, played a vital role in Dalit intellectualism and personal stamina. After television found its way into Dalit households, they started watching and discussing TV serials rather than expressing their feelings.Pushpa Sundar, in chapter 6 has discussed women in the corporate sector. The article insists the benefits of gender diversity for women empowerment in corporate sector. It has also suggested policies to increase womens percentage in the corporate sector. Karuna Chanana examined an important programme implemented by the UGC for teachers in higher education. The impact of the programme among teachers sense of empowerment was huge. There were two levels of capacity building workshops for women managers in higher education. These were analysed using case studies of the participants.

Karuna Chanana examined an important programme implemented by the UGC for teachers in higher education. The impact of the programme among teachers sense of empowerment was huge. There were two levels of capacity building workshops for women managers in higher education.

Chapter 8 titled Anatomy of Change explores the lives of two extraordinary women from the eastern and western parts of India, who had to struggle to become doctors. The existing scenario in the 19th century, entrenched patriarchy and the realisation of the need for female doctors inspired them to become doctors. In 19th century, women, except those from a few educated families, hesitated to consult male doctors. Hence, they realised the significance of female doctors to address maternal and child health. Chapter 9 by Sudha Pai analyses the life history of women leaders in India. From this chapter, we can conclude that a change in the attitude of people concerning patriarchal norms might bring a large percentage of women in decision-making levels.

Women, arts and literature are significant themes for the chapters 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16. It is important for every person specialising in gender to trace the history of women contributors and their sense of empowerment. These chapters trace the works of author Mahasweta Devi, explored Dalit narratives, trace the history of rebuilding handicrafts in India and examined the contribution of Rukmini Devi Arundale to establish Kalakshetra and institutionalising Bharathanatyam. Mahasweta Devis works brought back the narratives of tribals, which were silenced, neglected and erased from history for centuries. Hence, here Dalits themselves narrated their history.The so-called mainstream literature failed to imbibe Dalit womens experiences. The struggles of the Dalit community, especially women, their experiences, their perceptions, enables the reader to ponder over the issues of Dalit women and how much at all, were they woven into the vision of women empowerment. Kamaladevi Chattopadhyays hard work took handicrafts industry to the next level by recognising and institutionalising it. This chapter described the establishment of institutions like NIFT, INTACH, SEWA and the involvement of women in cinema to recognise Indian handicrafts. Chapter 15, Ascribing Feminist Intent by Deeptha Achar attempts to locate Sheikhs paintings in the political realm. Sheiks paintings required to be understood by linking them with feminism and womens movement in India. Chapter 16 is about independent Hindustani singers and their emergence and struggles.

The struggles of the Dalit community, especially women, their experiences, their perceptions, enables the reader to ponder over the issues of Dalit women and how much at all, were they woven into the vision of women empowerment.

The final four chapters are about womens contribution to institution building. Chapter 17 traces the history of establishing Indraprastha School. Chapter 18 is about governance indicators. Based on the mentioned indicators in the chapter, we could analyse the status of women in society. Chapter 19 traces the history of law-making related to women and gender. Chapter 20 is about women and their struggles in conflict zones, particularly the north-east Indian states. The data to write this chapter has been collected directly from the field. Every person in the conflict zone had their own experiences and they might get affected psychologically for various reasons. The study has prescribed certain policies that would help women overcome their psychological problems.

Also read: On Feminism And Writing: A Path To Self-Realisation And Empowerment?

The book reflects our general understanding of feminism, women empowerment and asserts that the issues of women are intersectional in nature. It had strong theoretical and feminist methodological components. The author has carefully picked articles from contemporary and historical issues. The edited volume could be useful for research scholars, academicians and journalists dealing with gender components. However, the author could have also added a few more articles related to the issues of the LGBTQ+ community. The discipline of Womens Studies became more inclusive in 21st century and it broadened its scope by including development studies, gender studies and sexuality studies. The author must consider bringing one more volume by selecting research articles from the fields of gender and science, sexuality studies, gender and agriculture and the impact of globalization on women. Secondly, the emergence of feminist research methodologies tries to explore gender issues employing standpoints. The author could also consider using the word Gender in the book title itself, if she wishes to bring one more volume.

Dr G.Uma is Assistant Professor in the School of Gender and Development Studies, Indira Gandhi National Open University. Her primary focus areas are Grassroots Governance, Gender and Development with a focus on agriculture, Public Policy and Social Capital. She is a PhD degree holder in Gender and Governance from the Department of Political Science and Development Administration, Gandhigram Rural Institute (Deemed University). Her PhD research outcome focuses on redefining the policy at the micro-level, ensuring the stakeholders to recognize the significance of federating women leaders at the grassroots level to realize the affirmative action given through reservation at the Panchayat level in India. Central European University and University of Cologne awarded scholarship. She has 10 years of work experience in the field of governance and development with a gender perspective.She can be found on Facebook and Twitter.

Read the rest here:

Book Review: Interrogating Womens Leadership And Empowerment By Omita Goyal - Feminism in India

By Annabelle Allen

The RSHM Life Center (Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary), a community center focused on education and social services located in Sleepy Hollow, celebrated its 25th anniversary in June. With the belief that Learning Is For Everyone (LIFE), the center offers programs and services to the lower income immigrant population of Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow. The goal of the center is to focus on the needs of each family and help them improve their lives through empowerment.

The celebration was in proper LIFE Center stylenot with cake, not with balloons but by launching a massive service effort. Since March, the center has distributed over 12,000 meals and 14,000 pounds of groceries/produce to vulnerable families, as well as opening one of the only in person day camps in the region so that parents could return to work. Its not exactly how we expected to spend our anniversary summer, said Sister Susan Gardella, executive director and co-founder of the Life Center

Sister Susan is the driving force behind the centers dedication to the community. Gardella is a part of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary, an international congregation of religious women who have served in the Sleepy Hollow/Tarrytown area for over 100 years. From working with the homeless in Long Island, to family courts in the Bronx, and opening the center in 1995, Gardella has dedicated her life to serving those in need.

She brings unwavering commitment to a world where everyone can have enough, where everyone can get an education, regardless of who they are and their economic status. I think she has been an incredible gift to Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown, said Fiona Matthew, a grant consultant for the LIFE Center and friend of Sister Susans. She is not good at promoting herself. Thats not who she is. She just quietly gets on with things.

Characteristically, Sister Susan credits her staff for the successes of the center. We have people that have been here for 15, 17 years. Theyre certainly not doing it because theyre making a lot of money. They get it. They see it as more than just a job. Its important for me as director to surround myself with people that get it. I think thats what makes the life center special. The staff care as much about the families as I do.

The program started by asking the question: What can we do for you. Gardella, and her co-founder Sister Betty Kolb, invited the mothers in to talk amongst themselves about the issues affecting them. This eventually became the Parents and Tots Program a preschool for toddlers, with a support component for the parent or guardian who accompanies the child. In the program, the children are immersed in English language lessons and begin to separate from their mothers for periods of time, which prepares them for school. While the children are in their group, their parents have an opportunity to study English and participate in discussion groups that allow them to develop as individuals and provides them with a peer network. Twenty-five years later, Parents and Tots remains one of RHSMs more popular programs.

They set up programs that their families need and theyre always talking to the families and finding out what the need is, said Matthew, Then they adjust their programs, and add more programs on. No big fan fair, no patting on the back. I never see them toot their own horn at all.

Now, Sister Susan and the center are working to pull together an in-person summer camp to help parents find relief after months of online schooling and amidst surging unemployment rates. Most camps in the area have gone remote, as COVID-19 remains a risk, but Sister Susan heard a call from families that parents needed to go back to work and restore their finances.

The Hudson Valley has lost 165,400 jobs for the period ending May 2020, according to The Department of Labor. Still, this number does not account for undocumented workers who dont meet the governments official definition of unemployed. Their families have received zero unemployment benefits during this time. Parents are in a bind, said Gardella, and they have to start getting back into the workforce especially for those who might be undocumented.

Opening camp hasnt been easy. The center must adhere by strict state guidelines for in-person camp during the COVID-19 pandemic: no field trips, no swimming pool, and temperatures must be checked every morning. Instead, the center has converted the parking lot into a space for socially distanced games like jenga and connect four. The camp is now entering its third week, allowing many of the parents to return to work.

Cumulatively, Life Center programs are making a profound difference in the community. Of the 27 most recent alumni of its programs (elementary aged children who remained in the Tarrytown/Sleepy Hollow school district), 100% graduated from high school in the Class of 2019. The state-wide graduation rate that year was 39% for English Language Learners and 75% for Latinx students. Twenty-three of those 27 students went on to college. One entered the Culinary Institute of America and three students entered the Marines.

The children that enter the program not being able to speak English, within three or four years are in the accelerated programs at school and achieving off the charts, said Matthew. Its crazy the results [Sister Susan] gets.

Matthew has observed that as kids arrive at the Center, Sister Susan will stand outside the building and greet each one personally, ruffling their hair or telling a joke. Shes a lot of fun, a lot of love, but is very parental and very guiding, says Matthew. I think that they count on her. Shes a beacon to them.

Gardella has been a Catholic Sister for 35 years, committing her life to serving those in need. The decision to become a Catholic Sister is one that is difficult to explain, she says, but similar to making any other big decision in ones life. How do you ever really know? It just feels right. It feels like the thing that makes life worth it, said Gardella. People have these stereotypes from years ago of the sister with the ruler or something like that. Were just regular people.

I think that we are put on this earth and given gifts and talents by whomever we feel in our personal beliefs is our creator, she says. And if we dont use them for good, whats the purpose of them? We have an obligation to do whatever good we can. Each of us can do something.

Go here to see the original:

Heroes: Sister Susan Gardella and the LIFE Center - The Hudson Independent

Once upon a time, the internet was seen a wondrous fount of knowledge and information, empowering users and spreading democracy. This utopian view resonated widely with early adopters in the 1990s, after the end of the Cold War, but it resonated much more broadly around the world in 2011, during the Arab Spring. There were always dark shadows noted by observers, as in Gene Rochlin's 1997 book, "Trapped in the Net," but collectively we've been blindsided and bewildered by how different the online experience has become how much of a marketplace for rumor, fear, conspiracy theoriesand polarized worldviews, all watched over by purportedly neutral platform manipulations bringing us exactly what we're told we want.

Could it be possible to recover that original promise? In a way, that promise was always nave, as illuminated by Paulina Borsook's 2000 book, "Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp Through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High-Tech." As Borsook notes, it took more than half a century of government investment to make the internet's commercial incarnation possible, contrary to Silicon Valley's self-serving mythos. But democratic theory, history, philosophy and psychology is far richer than libertarians suppose, and there is a much more sober, realistic version of that promise one that, for example, scientists collaborating worldwide have experienced for more than a generation now.

Socouldsomething like that become possible for all of us? A new paper in the journal Nature Human Behaviour strongly suggests that it could, and lays out an initial framework for what it might belike, reshaping things from the bottom up: "How behavioural sciences can promote truth, autonomy and democratic discourse online." As the abstractexplains, the problem can be simply put:

The current online ecosystem has been designed predominantly to capture user attention rather than to promote deliberate cognition and autonomous choice; information overload, finely tuned personalization and distorted social cues, in turn, pave the way for manipulation and the spread of false information. How can transparency and autonomy be promoted instead, thus fostering the positive potential of the web?

Framed like that, thisis a scientific problem, susceptible to scientific solutions. Of course, knowing that solutions exist and implementingare two different things: Consider the climate crisis. For a better understanding of how such a future could come to be, and what some specific steps would look like, Salon reached out to lead author Philipp Lorenz-Spreen, a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. Thisinterview has been edited, as is customary, for clarity and length.

What struck me first on seeing your article was that it's not reactive, but ratheraffirms a positive, arguing that behavioral science"can promote truth, autonomy and democratic discourse online." Sobefore talking about the paper itself, I'd like to ask about what informs your positive approach.

I think a bit of forward-looking is probably necessary. We need to be careful we don't get into a whack-a-mole game. So, I was searching for more sustainable solutions, and you get end up getting less reactive and trying to find solutions that come from the bottom up, to think about how to change the system itself.

Were there any previous examples in internet history that were resonant for you?

One of the rare examples of online environments that promote truth one of the shining examples is Wikipedia. This was an inspiration, to think about how different this website looks, compared to Amazon, how it's designed and how things are arranged.

Your paper draws attention to the asymmetry between what platforms know about users and viceversa. How do you characterize that asymmetry, and what negative consequences result that you propose to address?

The asymmetry probably comes out of dependencies we live with in this information-rich world. It gives the human brain too much to process, so we must rely on some kind of curation. That's what the platforms do for us. That's probably why they are successful. Google and Facebook are skyrocketing, successful, because we really, really depend on them to navigate through this information world.

Additionally, "intransparency" contributes to it. We get recommendations that we cannot really follow where they actually come from, what factors contribute to them. Sowe are getting increasingly dependent on intransparent platforms, wherewe have to rely on trust. And the remedy we propose is increased transparency, and givingback a bit of autonomy to the user.

To improve the online environment, you identify available but untapped cues and two kinds of behavioral interventions "nudging" and "boosting" that employ these cues. The cues differ in different contexts, so let's start with the interventions. Folks may have heard of them, but just to be clear, what do each of them do?

They are both classic behavioral interventions, so they're more umbrella terms. They both interact with the decision process. "Nudges" do that mainly or exclusively through the choice architecture. So whenever parts of the choice architecture are emphasized to steer behavior or influence behavior, that's nudging. In our case, we just try to draw the attention of the reader to some pieceof information that might be good for them that will be the broad class of nudging.

Boosting goes a bit further into the educative direction. Soit's not education, but it's pieces of the environment or external tools that help the decision-maker, within the process of making the decision, to acquire some competencies. Often in this context, we refer to digital media literacy as a competencethat a boost would help the user to acquire or develop. That can be done through the environment, by giving useful hints that you can remember, and then you use them even if the hints are missing. Soyou can actually incorporate that boost and take it along with you.Second can be external tools, like rules of thumb that you can actually use to evaluate sources of information.

One aspect of boosting you mention is "self-nudging." Could you explain what that is?

Self-nudging is when you yourself change your environment in a way that nudges you to a certain behavior that you want for yourself.An alarm clock is a self-nudge, a very elementary one. If you want not tobrowse certain apps so often, you might delete them from your phone. Or if we want to eat less sweets, we might not buy them. Sowe ourselves change our choice architectureso we make decisions that we want to make.That's a boost, in a sense, because self-nudging itself is a competence. If you're good at designing your own choice architecture, your own environment, to the choice you want to achieve, that's what we call a competence. That's why we would classify it as a boost.

You discuss what you call"endogenous" or "exogenous" cues as being important in interacting with the internet. Give me some examples.

Endogenous cues are cues that describe the content itself. Sowhen we talk about an online article, that would be the characters thatappearin the article, the relationships that may be the part of the story,stuff like that we would call endogenous cues. Andof course, it can be helpful to evaluate the truthfulness of the story. If the characters do not exist, or the story doesn't have a logic it's evidence it might not be true.

Exogenous cues, on the other side, are context-dependent. So they do not regard the content of the article itself, but for example, the source of the article, who has written the article, which other outlets or sources the article cites. Where did it come from?How did it reach you?Who else has recommended it for you? Thingslike that. So the context around the story itself is an exogenous cue.

In the paper, you focus your attention on exogenous cues. Why is that?

We just experience how difficult judgments are about the content itself. There are extreme cases where you should make a judgment maybe when it's about violence but youalways runinto the danger of either censorship or the accusation of censorship when you're making judgments about content itself. Sowhen you make a judgment about context, I think this is more robust against accusations or dangers of censorship. If you only provide more context, that could allow people to make the judgment themselves, without you or a third-party fact-checker or a platform or anyone else to make that judgment for you. That's going inthe empowerment direction we want to let people make these choice decisions themselves. That's why we focus on exogenous cues.

You examine three different contexts: online articles, algorithmic curation and social media. I'd like to go through each of them with you, to understand the challenges you identify and how to propose to meet them. Let's start with online articles. What are the challenges they present? And what cues are available?

The main challenge we think we are facing here is the overabundance of articles, of content being produced. There's a multitude of sources, a high number of articles reaching us and also the consumption patterns have changed.People do not consume a whole newspaper as one piece, and they do not subscribe to one newspaper for a long time. Some do, but we much more consume them on an article basis. So, we are moving from long-term decisions to rather short-term decisions, and we have this huge information overload at the same time. So that makes it very difficult to make decisions about the trustworthiness or reputation of the source. So that's the challenge with news articles online.

And what kinds of cues are available?

We can check if the publisher has an "About"section on the website, or if it's a known publisher one can check for an external validation by making a Google search and finding reports of the same story. But one can also check if the article cites external evidence, if there are other articles of this article's type, if they are clearly marked and if they come from other publishers and not just themselves. These would be some exogenous cues that one can check on which,by the way, are not always readily accessible,which adds to the challenge of information overload.

So how can nudging and boosting be used to makethings more transparent?

Nudging can be used to draw attention to the external cues, so the sources that an article is citing could be listed on top of the article with a very clear color, or something.Or there can be a warning message if there areno external sources cited. There one can actually be inspired by Wikipedia, whichoften has warning messages with articlesif there are not enough sourcesor if quality is lacking in the sources. That would be a very simple nudge. You can go a bit further when you think about sharing an online article, and then a warning message could require you to click a second time to confirm that youwant to share the article even though it doesn't cite any external sources. Sothe main process of the nudges in this context would be to draw your attention to the external cues.

A boost would be more like a tool:In the article show a decision tree that's a tool that has been used to improvemedical decision-making by having, like, three or four questions that one can go through systematically to evaluate the trustworthiness of an article, for example. It can become like a cognitive tool kit. A person can remember this cognitive process and it will help them anytime they encounter an article, for example.

The second context you discuss is"algorithmic curation," the often opaque process by which things are delivered to us on the internet. What are the challenges that presents and what cues are available?

We talked about transparency here. Usually the problem is that a lot of things end up on my newsfeed and it's often very unclear for what reason, and these algorithms that source the news feed, for example, are hidden. They are not known to the user. It becomes extremely difficult to understand why a specific article is ending up in the newsfeed. We do not know this gets back to asymmetry what they know about many other people who are consuming similar content, for example.That makes it extremely difficult for us to understand this curation.

The biggest challenge in the whole paper is that it's very unclear what cues could be available. But if you think about a less sophisticated algorithm not a machine-learning AI algorithm, but rather a simple, rule-based algorithm that could help provide cues. Because if it's just a linear combination of a few factors that source my content which, for example, could be recency, and how many of my friends have engaged with this article, and apreference that I have, for sportsor something that could be displayed. Sothere would be cues that in principle a platform with a rule-based algorithm could show and help people understand much better why some things came up and others not.

So how can nudging be usedhere?

When we talk about nudging in this situation, we're very close to just information providing. Sothe factors that led to the decision could be displayed more clearly, or displayed at all that would already help. Another nudge that would help would be a clear separation, even a visual separation, between different types of content. Currently in the newsfeed, everything is very blurred so a post frommy friends looks very similar to a commercial, or something from a politicianor political partyor a company. Sothese different entities and players could be much more clearlydifferentiated. That would change the choice architecture, to help us understand, for example, which is a paid ad and which is not. This is not in the best interest of the platform, because making an ad seemingly appear within the posts of my friends makes it much more personal than if I realize that's an ad. But I think we should make that newsfeed more "overviewable."

And how can boosting be used?

If the newsfeed is more transparent,it could also be customizable. Of course, you can customize the feed in a way by following certain people and outlets, but you cannot determine the order or frequency. So that would be possible, to actually change your preferences and say, "I want to see more sports and less politics,"or "More from my friends and less from news."That could allow the user to do self-nudging, so if I want to be more informed I can increase the amount of news I want to get. That gives the user back a bit of agency, at least.

Somoving on, the third category is social media. What are the challenges they present? And what cues are available?

The challenge here is that we certainly have access to a huge number of other people, and we can communicate with them in different forms, but this kind of communication is like nothing we are used to. It's difficult to have a feeling for what the numbers mean, social metrics likes for example, or uploads, downloadsor shares. We only see one number, the number of likes, for example. But there could be much more information available that could help us access the real consensus. We have access to such a large group of people, we can feel that even a very weird conspiracy theory, for example, is actually believed by many others. Two hundred seems like a very big number of other people believing it. So, you might actually think you are right in the middle of the conversation when actually you are on the outskirts of the discussion. That would be the challenge.

So how can nudges and boosts be used here?

A nudge in this context would be quite simple. It would be having just additional social information these are sometimes called social nudges. If we know what others are doing, this is influencing our behavior quite heavily. One example would be to show what the average reading time of other people were on this article, on a newsfeed in social media. That information would give us a hint that something is clickbait, or that most people just stayed on this article for a few seconds or just a minute, and that would help us make a decision to maybe not click on those things. So that's one thing. But also we can provide more information what other people on this network are doing not only aroundmy direct neighborhood, but rather on another side of the network so I can see other opinions, so we can have a feeling what the discussion is actually looks like.

Boosting has a more educated character, it would be more like a tool. One thing that would really help us is adding to social media posts a hint of trustworthiness. Soif sharing is very narrow, often it's a niche topic, not so trustworthy, and if it's broadly distributed, and many people at each point share it, it might be more true. So that's something one could teach people to learn, basically to understand the social spreading pattern. Currently we don't have much accessto this information, but if it were provided we could actually learn such patterns, and see if someone was, for example, replicating posts several times, artificially amplifying the message, or if someone was picking up an old story from someone very far away in the network and trying to push that. So that would be a skill that people could acquire with such a tool. They could see the social spreading pattern whenever they encounter something on social media, so they can actually learn what the patterns mean and get a feeling for social media and social dynamics.

In your conclusion, you write:"In our view, the future task for scientists is to design interventions that meet at least three selection criteria." What are they and why?

First, of course, is the need to be transparent, because we said the core of the problem is he intransparency of the platform. Soif scientists or regulators make new regulations, they have to be fully transparent for people to become trustworthy, I think that's a second point. I was talking about the danger of censorship early on, and so that's what we try to avoid here with transparency and trustworthiness, with cues providing context that cannot be confused with censorship. Because you never know who is in the endimplementing such tools and if they are by definition not able to do censorship, there might not be a danger of that. And the last criteria, specifically, is that it can't be gamed. What we mean here is that social media metrics that we have now are often gamed. Sothe "likes" are a very simple metric that can be gamed by increasing social engagement, by either paying for itor getting other people to click the "like"button, so it appears to be popular, but actually it isn't.

If we come up now with new cuesthat should help people to assess the quality, there need to be protections. So, for example, if you have a very simple metric like the numbers of references that an article cites, that's something that's quite easy to game by just typing them into the article or something like that. Soit has to goa bit deeper. It also has toshow which articles are actually cited, for example, which would make it a bit more difficult to game. But that's something you really have to think about and maybe even run experiments and check if it works and if anyone in the internet comes up with a solution to get around it that's something that happens a lot. That's also in the conclusion: all these things need to be independently tested.

Yes, you say it's important to examine a wide spectrum of interventions. Thisseems like an invitation to furthering empirical process, correct?

Definitely. The whole paper is a call for more research in this direction, more solution-oriented research, how to improve that environment. There's a lot of empirical work to be done. These are just ideas and suggestions. So yes, it's definitely a call for much more empirical work, and also independent from the platforms themselves.

Your focus is on what might be called normal users, notmalicious ones. In fact, you argue that "it is not necessary that all or even the majority of users engage with nudging or boosting interventions." Why are you confident in taking this approach?

We can never assume that everyone would engage with all the tools or interventions we are proposing. It will always be just a fraction. These external interventions are not making any judgments, they are getting people to make decisions for themselves. They of course cannot catchmalicious actors who have an agenda, so they can only help people who by accident fall prey to their tactics. So that's one reason. Another one is of course that we believe that we are very social beings. So, I was talking about Wikipedia as one of the examples of collective intelligence that actually has worked out. So that's what we try to use as a parallel once our online environments are more promotions of quality, in a collective-intelligence way, it will be pushed upward and reach people that would not have engaged with it before.

Finally, what's most important question I didn't ask and what's the answer?

Well, one important question is "Who should do that?' 'Who would be interested?"I think the answer is that maybe the platforms have someinterest in implementing such measures to improve quality,but it's always important to keep in mind that they are commercial entities and that they have a certain goal, which isto maximize user engagement so they can make their ad revenue.

Soit's probably also the responsibility of a democratic society to participate in this process of designing our online world. We have now let the platformsdo that for us for a very long time, for the 10 years or so that they been around. Now we think it's about time that, as a democratic society, we should come up with our own solutions. The option space for doing this is huge. There are a lot of options that we have not even touched or thought about yet.

Read more here:

Remember when the internet was supposed to be transparent and democratic? There's still hope - Salon