Driving Data
Participatory Communication for Development in Ghana’s Education Sector: A Disguise of Paralysis in Democracy
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Francis Gbadago
How realistic and sustainable is development pioneered with little or no target population’s involvement and participation through communication in a democratic society? This paper explores the nature of development communication in two projects in the education sector of Ghana - Community Day Senior High School (SHS) project and Free SHS policy, with focus on engagements during formulation, implementation and evaluation. In the wake of increasing concerns about the efficacy of development policies, programmes and projects in Ghana, some attention has focused on the kind of participatory communication that takes place around the formulation, implementation and evaluation of such projects. Methodologically, the research focuses on government authorities (funding actors), community members – youths (students), traditional and opinion leaders. These respondents were strategically chosen using purposive sampling, allowing interviews and focus groups in data gathering. Data collected and reviewed suggest low participation of some stakeholders with little or no knowledge of the needs and preferences of the intended beneficiaries. The results show a clear departure from a functional democratic practices of involvement, engagement, consultation, and collaborative decision-making processes between development authorities and beneficiaries of policies, programmes and projects, a situation that could best be described as ‘shielded dictatorship’ in a developing nation like Ghana that is considered the trailblazer of democracy in Africa. This situation can seriously jeopardize project and policy successes leading to retarded sustainable development hence the need to ensure a more shared decision-making techniques by adequately involving beneficiaries in management of policies and projects from start to finish.
Acting With and Against Big Data in School and Society: Big Questions of Big Data
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Michael Paulsen, Jesper Tække
As other forms of technology Big Data can be used for both good and bad purposes. In this paper we discuss on a general and mainly theoretical-conceptual level how schools could deal with and respond to Big Data. We do this by firstly characterizing the ontology of the new objects (especially Big Data and machine learning algorithms), so fare as they present themselves today. Theoretically we base this on medium theory (Postman and others) object-oriented-ontology (Bryant and others) and systems theory (Luhmann and others). Secondly, we discuss how one should relate to Big Data, seen from a democratic point of view, following Arendt and her concept of politics (and education). Thirdly we analyze how schools could be able to deal with Big Data in democratic ways. We focus on two aspects: on the one hand, how it has become possible in recent years to use digital media to make access from outside to the classrooms, implying that states and corporations have begun to use this opportunity to surveil, manipulate, nudge, and control teachers and students. On the other hand: we also see how schools have begun to use digital media for different other purposes. Our question is whether this could and should be done in ways that support ‘democratic education’; that is a kind of education, that connects to the idea of Bildung (Klafki and others). The upshot is not final answers but raising and casting light on the big questions of Big Data in relation to the school system.
Predicting Virality: A Diffusion Model
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Daphne Simmonds, Ken Mc Donald
The Internet and social media have resulted in an increasing shift from traditional marketing -- TV, radio, print -- to viral marketing (Jurvetson and Draper 1997) - a phenomenon likened to the infection cycle witnessed in major epidemics (Kaplan and Haenlein 2011). One challenge facing marketers is how to use data from past scenarios to predict expectations of marketing campaigns and thus know how much money they will need to spend in order to attain the necessary effectiveness. A number of virality prediction models exist in the literature; however, many of them fail to use the standard industry measure of viral growth -- the viral coefficient, and to use detailed formulas that include factors relevant to the viral diffusion process. We develop a model based on Jarvis (2017) to address this gap. In addition, we outline steps for researchers and practitioners detailing model development challenges and solution steps.
Wilful Blindness - on the Relationship of Identity, Agency, and Personal Data
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Estella Hebert
This study deals with the phenomenon of online data collection by political and economic actors by analyzing the conditions in which humans share personal data. It is questioned how the self is transformed with regards to the relationship between the person herself and her personal data, assuming that personal data can also be seen as an articulation of self. The results show how data and the meaning ascribed to them can vary over time und thus create distortions and fragmentations in relation to how the self is presented. While data is often ascribed an acclaimed level of truth, a loss of agency for the subjects can be found as the freedom of expression is jeopardized or at least challenged between the risk of self-censorship and the risk of being rendered irrelevant. The paper opens an interdisciplinary perspective between media and communication studies and educational sciences on questions of agency and self. The research discusses these perspectives using empirical examples and relates them to the theoretical framing of modernizing theories.
