Wonks and War Rooms

Taylor Owen is a professor of public policy at the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill university, and his research focuses mainly on tech regulation. This episode, he and Elizabeth define and categorize types of regulation. They discuss what tech regulation looks like, how lobbying impacts tech regulation, why regulation of tech is difficult, and the balance governments (both in Canada and internationally) must grapple with between regulation options and public good. This episode, recorded in January 2022, does not explore current legislation or the nitty gritty of the regulatory options. However, Elizabeth and Taylor provide the background  for understanding what the options are and why regulation and self-regulation happen.

Additional Resources

• Elizabeth draws on this article to form her list of types of regulation
• Taylor mentions how many of these big tech companies are so many things, making them difficult to regulate. He uses the example of facebook launching a digital currency and Amazon launching health care services.  
• Taylor and Elizabeth discuss Canada’s tech lobby. Here is an article (from former Wonks and War Rooms guest Megan Beretta) that further delves into how tech lobbying shapes federal policy.
• Elizabeth and Taylor address Canada’s online harms bill. This article gives an overview of the status of that bill. This page also gives an overview of the steps the government is taking to address online harms (including the creation of the advisory committee which Taylor was recently appointed to).
• Taylor mentions the EU’s Digital Service Act as a model that focuses on risk assessment. This article gives an overview of that legislation. 
• Want to hear more from Taylor? Check out his podcast Big Tech.

Check out www.polcommtech.ca for annotated transcripts of this episode in English and French.

Check out www.polcommtech.ca for annotated transcripts of this episode in English and French. 

This episode is an audio version of a special live taping of Wonks and War Rooms, in partnership with uOttawa’s Centre for Law, Technology and Society, where Elizabeth is joined by a panel of journalists to tackle a tough topic: online harassment of journalists and what it means for our democracy. 

Rosemary Barton is the Chief Political Correspondent for CBC News; Fatima Syed is a reporter for the Narwhal and host of Canadaland podcast The Backbench; and Mark Blackburn is the social media and online producer at APTN. Elizabeth and the panel look at different types of online negativity, the motivations behind harassment and attacks, and the impacts of weaponizing media. They also talk about different ways of managing online harassment, and how to balance their responsibilities as journalists with protecting themselves as individuals.

Additional Resources

• Off the top, Rosemary and Elizabeth mention the day of the live event was not exactly a slow news day. Here’s why. 
• This topic brings a bunch of terms that get jumbled together: harassment, abuse, toxicity, negativity, incivility, hate speech, intolerance. This Public Policy Forum report provides a framework for thinking about harmful communication online.
• Fatima talks about “chilling effects” that online harassment can have on journalists. Here’s a report from earlier this year about these kinds of impacts, published by The Canadian Journalism Foundation and the Canadian Association of Journalists.
• Also, last fall IPSOS ran the first Canadian survey on online harassment against journalists and media professionals, which showed it is “prevalent and pervasive.” Here are the results.
• Rosemary and Elizabeth discuss trolling and how it has changed over time. This article by Silvio Waisbord looks at the specific impact trolls have on journalism.
• Rosemary mentions that the pandemic has been a turning point for journalism. This special issue of Digital Journalism has a collection of articles on all the ways that COVID-19 has impacted the work of journalists over the past few years.

Check out www.polcommtech.ca for annotated transcripts of this episode in English and French.

Check out www.polcommtech.ca for annotated transcripts of this episode in English and French. 

Riyadh Nazerally is the Director of Communications for the Hon. Marci Ien, Minister for Women and Gender Equality and Youth, and is the former Director of Communications for Capital Pride in Ottawa. This week he and Elizabeth discuss the backfire effect and its three types: familiarity, overkill and worldview. They talk about how to understand and handle the backfire effect when it happens. Riyadh explains how comms and policy teams figure out how much information to send, who to send it to, and when. 

Additional resources:

• Elizabeth uses this article from Lewandowsky and this article from Peter & Koch for  academic definition of backfire effect 
• Early in the episode Riyadh mentions the book Weapons of Math Disruption by Cathy O’Neil — here is a review that summarizes what it’s all about.
• Elizabeth also mentions last week’s rebroadcast episode about Echo Chambers and Filter Bubbles with Adi Rao.
• The term “information overload” is used in this episode. Here is an interesting article with simple tips on how to deal with information overload. 
• Riyadh discusses the benefits of use of infographics to make information more accessible. Linking to the theme of the season, however, this post shows how infographics can easily be used to spread misinformation.
• Riyadh leaves us with this useful tip for communication strategies: “Would your mother understand this and are you pissing off a stakeholder?”

Check out www.polcommtech.ca for annotated transcripts of this episode in English and French.

Check out www.polcommtech.ca for annotated transcripts of this episode in English and French. 

Adi, a lawyer and campaigner, explains how campaigns are often thinking about how they can crack into people's filter bubbles in order to raise awareness and find new supporters. During the  conversation Elizabeth and Adi tease apart the difference between algorithmically driven filter bubbles and echo chambers which come about as a result of individuals choices in their media environment.

Additional Resources:

• Eli Pariser has a helpful Ted Talk about his notion of the Filter Bubble: Beware online “filter bubbles”.
• This academic article by Dubois (yes, your host) and Blank breaks down the theory of echo chambers and talks about how people's media diets might help them avoid echo chambers: The echo chamber is overstated: the moderating effect of political interest and diverse media.
• This Knight Foundation report is a great, accessible, overview of academic research related to echo chambers: Avoiding the Echo Chamber about Echo Chambers.
• Early in the episode Elizabeth mentions homophily which is basically the idea of "birds of a feather flock together." The Wikipedia article on homophily is a great place to start.

Check out www.polcommtech.ca for annotated transcripts of this episode in English and French.

Check out www.polcommtech.ca for annotated transcripts of this episode in English and French. 

Journalists Facing Mean Tweets: What It Means for Our Democracy - Join us Tuesday, March 22 at noon ET for a live virtual event! Register here.

In this special live recording of the podcast, Elizabeth will chat with Rosemary Barton, chief political correspondent for CBC, Fatima Syed, host of The Backbench podcast (Canadaland) and vice-president of the Canadian Association of Journalists, and Mark Blackburn, online producer for APTN.

They will talk about increasingly toxic online spaces and tackle tricky questions: What can we do to cultivate civic engagement between individuals and news media? What counts as incivility and who is a troll? How can we encourage broad civic engagement while discouraging harassment? How do we create safer environments for journalists?

Learn more here and don't forget to register early.

Check out www.polcommtech.ca for annotated transcripts of this episode in English and French. 

Sean Speer is the Editor-At-Large at The Hub, a Senior Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, and previously served as Senior Advisor to Prime Minister Stephen Harper. He and Elizabeth chat about political polarization and dig into the different theories of polarization including elite polarization and mass polarization, as well as ideological versus affective polarization. They discuss the idea of politics as a left-to-right spectrum, polarization causing artificial divides, the rise of populism, and the idea that polarization can be used as a tool for meaningful progress.

Additional Resources

• Interested in learning more about political polarization from an academic perspective? This systematic review by Kubin & von Sikorski is a good place to start.
• Elizabeth mentions two past episodes of Wonks and War Rooms: this episode about issue ownership with Tiffany Gooch and this episode about the high-choice media environment with Jane Lytvynenko.
• Sean speaks about how Canadian campaign finance regimes might contribute to political polarization. This article gives a brief overview of how political parties are financed in Canada.  
• Sean and Elizabeth spend some time discussing the link between populism and polarization. This video shows what the rise of modern populism is all about.

Check out www.polcommtech.ca for annotated transcripts of this episode in English and French.

Check out www.polcommtech.ca for annotated transcripts of this episode in English and French. 

Shuvaloy Majumdar is the Foreign Policy Director and Munk Senior Fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and this week he and Elizabeth tackle propaganda, government communication and mis/disinformation. They discuss the blurry line between government messaging and propaganda, and what they can look like in authoritarian versus democratic regimes. Shuvaloy also speaks to his experiences of government communications as a former policy director to foreign ministers.

Additional Resources 

• Elizabeth draws on this article by Aaron Hyzen for her definition of propaganda.
• Elizabeth mentions this episode from season one about the high choice media environment with Jane Lytvynenko 
• In this episode, which was recorded in early February, Shuvloy uses examples of propaganda from the Russian government. This CBC article discusses some examples of how disinformation and propaganda are being used in the context of the current invasion of Ukraine.
• Elizabeth discusses the concept of computational propaganda towards the end of the episode. This article from Woolley and Howard tackles how political communication is impacted by algorithms and automation.

Check out www.polcommtech.ca for annotated transcripts of this episode in English and French.

Check out www.polcommtech.ca for annotated transcripts of this episode in English and French. 

Claire Wardle is a professor at Brown University and the co-founder of First Draft, a non-profit that focuses on misinformation and the tools needed to fight it. She and Elizabeth chat about information disorder, a term Claire helped coin. The term helps us think about issues related to mis- and dis- information as bigger than being about fact or not. Claire explains how it is actually much more important to think about the information environments people find themselves in, how they might be different from other people’s information environments, and how things like emotion and sense of community come into play.  They also talk about the idea of inoculation against mis- and dis-information.

Additional resources:

• Claire and her colleague Hossein Derakhshan coined the term ‘information disorder’ in this 2017 report where they break down different types, phases and elements of mis- and disinformation.
  
  
• The hypodermic needle theory also comes up, which is an early idea about how media messages affect audiences. This video primer explains what it is (and why it definitely  isn’t accepted anymore).
   
• Claire reminds us that humans are hardwired “to be really bad at this stuff” and talks about the role that emotions play in spreading mis- and disinformation. Claire explains the connection in this First Draft video.
   
• This article by Linda Monsees looks more closely at the emotional reasons that people share mis/disinformation, and some of the weaknesses of relying only on media literacy as a solution.
   
• Elizabeth brings up the idea of inoculation theory as a promising way to deal with mis/disinformation, and Claire introduces the notion of pre-bunking. This First Draft guide explains what pre-bunking is and how it can help fight mis/disinformation.
   
• At the end of the show, Claire also brings up algorithmic amplification, which sometimes gets lost in the mix of conspiracy theories and ‘fake news’ – this CJR post includes examples and a bunch of resources to learn more.

Check out www.polcommtech.ca for annotated transcripts of this episode in English and French. 

To kick-off our season on mis- and dis- info we are rebroadcasting this great conversation with Nasma Ahmed who is the Director of the Digital Justice Lab. In this episode, recorded in 2019, Nasma helps Elizabeth unpack what exactly mis- and dis- information are, why we need to question content we see online, and how a lack of trust in larger political systems plays in. 

Additional Resources:

• First Draft has a number of very useful resources. Find some key definitions in Wardel's Fake news: It's complicated and check out this three part series on The Psychology of Misinformation.
• Marwick and Lewis with Data & Society also have a helpful report: Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online.

Check out www.polcommtech.ca for annotated transcripts of this episode in English and French. 

This season of Wonks and War Rooms is going to focus on mis- and dis- information. We'll talk about information disorder, political polarization, post-truth politics, and more! Tune in to hear from political strategists, journalists, public policy folks, and academics.

Get caught up on past episodes and find fully annotated transcripts in English and French at https://www.polcommtech.com/. 

Check out www.polcommtech.ca for annotated transcripts of this episode in English and French.