Society and Culture

the fusion and fission of cultures i.e. local perceptions of a foreign film, lessons from overcoming language barriers, cultural implication of immigration in the EU

Introduction

While walking through the old town of Geneva, Switzerland on my first day in this unfamiliar city, I came across a building with an unexpectedly familiar label: Alabama. As an American, I immediately questioned why a room in the Geneva City Hall was named after one of our 50 states. After reading the plaque posted on the wall, I realized that the Alabama Room was the site of two of the most influential events in the history of international law.

The room was named after The Alabama Arbitration, an international dispute over England’s role in prolonging the American Civil War by supplying the Confederacy with warships. The agreement signed in this room in 1872 resulted in Britain paying the United States millions in damages, representing one of the world’s first cases of international arbitration.

The reason this site was chosen for the negotiations was because of an event that took place in the same room just 8 years earlier. Delegates from 12 nations gathered in this room in 1864 to sign the first Geneva Convention, protecting wounded soldiers and medical personnel on the battlefield. The agreement not only represented the first treaty of international humanitarian law, but also inspired a legacy of global cooperation around expanding universal human rights through international law.

These watershed events, and many that followed, helped establish Geneva as the global “Capital of Peace”. However, today Geneva’s reputation hangs in the balance. The declining effectiveness of bilateral and multilateral diplomacy, disputes over Swiss neutrality, and a changing world order threaten Geneva’s ability to broker peace amidst increasingly violent conflict in the world.

Despite these challenges, Geneva remains a relevant and vitally necessary hub for diplomacy. As a student, I have seen firsthand the commitment of Geneva’s international community to preserve the city’s reputation of peacekeeping.

Geneva as the “Peace Capital”

The city of Geneva has both a historical and a symbolic significance in the world of diplomacy. In 1863, a committee was formed in Geneva with the goal of caring for those wounded in battle, which would go on to become the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The following year the ICRC helped coordinate the first Geneva Convention, and over the next 50 years the Red Cross expanded its global reach by establishing National Societies to implement its mission around the world.

At the end of the First World War, the Treaty of Versailles established the League of Nations with the goal of preventing another world war through diplomacy and collective security. Given its central location and already impressive reputation for peace and neutrality, Geneva was chosen to host the headquarters of this intergovernmental organization in 1920. However, the League of Nations eventually failed to prevent the outbreak of World War II.

The end of the Second World War saw the birth of the United Nations (UN) in 1945. The UN, built on the League of Nations model, today unites 193 member states around three central aims: peace and security, human rights, and development. While its main headquarters is in New York City, the UN maintains its operational headquarters in Geneva.

Today Geneva is home to 40 international organizations, including the UN and other affiliated agencies like the World Trade Organization (WTO) and World Health Organization (WHO). The city also hosts more than 400 non-governmental organizations (NGOs), such as Doctors Without Borders and CARE International. Finally, more than 180 states are represented by a Permanent Mission in Geneva.

Beyond Geneva’s history of hosting institutions and agreements fostering peace, the city has long upheld the traditional Swiss principle of neutrality. In 1815, the Congress of Vienna brought international recognition to Switzerland’s policies of abstaining from participation in armed conflict, foreign military aid, and military alliances. While it has since taken steps that call into question its continued commitment to neutrality, Switzerland still boasts an unparalleled reputation of impartiality.

Geneva as a Reflection of the World’s Crises

Given its presence on the international diplomatic stage, Geneva is a city that revolves around the world’s most pressing conflicts and tensions. The meetings that take place and the decisions that are made in Geneva have direct implications for the lives of people all over the world. Recently, Geneva has been at the center of some of the most urgent dialogues between states on issues like trade, human rights, and national security.

Amidst global uncertainty over US President Donald Trump’s tariff proposals, American and Chinese delegations met in Geneva in May to negotiate a compromise. These preliminary negotiations have since resulted in a substantial reduction of initial American and Chinese reciprocal import tariffs.

Geneva is also at the center of the ongoing crises in the Palestinian Territories. At the 59th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva last month, the latest findings of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory were presented to the world. Their latest report spotlights the destruction of schools and religious and cultural sites in Gaza and other restrictive Israeli actions in the West Bank.

Most recently, Geneva hosted discussions in June between several European nations and Iran concerning the latter’s involvement in the conflict with Israel and the future of the Iranian nuclear program. Clearly, Geneva remains relevant to both multilateral diplomacy and international human rights protection.

Geneva as a Relic of the Past

Despite the demonstrated relevance of Geneva in international affairs, many argue that the city’s success in providing an effective platform for multilateral diplomacy has significantly diminished over the last two decades. Executive Director of the Geneva Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue David Harland is at the forefront of this school of thought. Harland argues that diplomatic solutions to global security crises have declined since 2010, marked especially by the gridlock of the UN Security Council and the dismantling of existing international agreements. He places much of the blame on the West for adopting a foreign policy of “not speaking to those you don’t like” and insisting that others conform to certain democratic norms as a prerequisite for engaging in diplomacy.

The United States plays a part in Geneva’s fading legitimacy as a global peacemaker. Over the past decade, the United States has withdrawn itself from several key intergovernmental bodies. Under both terms of President Donald Trump, the US withdrew from the World Health Organization, the UN Human Rights Council, and the Paris Climate Accord. Additionally, the US withdrew from the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization in 2017 and has disabled the WTO’s dispute settlement system by declining to appoint a member to the Appellate Body since 2019.

In recent years, the Swiss government has also taken several actions that have impacted its reputation as a neutral arbiter. In February of 2024, Switzerland decided to implement EU sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. As a result, Russia now claims that Geneva no longer represents a neutral negotiating site. Additionally, the Swiss government temporarily withheld funding to the UN agency for Palestinian Refugees and banned Hamas from negotiating in Switzerland. These actions demonstrate Switzerland’s recent attempts to balance its own security needs and its desire to avoid creating a safe haven for terrorist organizations with its historic role of political impartiality. However, such decisions may also create barriers to Geneva’s ability to foster diplomatic solutions for two of today’s most dire conflicts.

Geneva as an Intellectual Melting Pot

Reflecting on my time as a student in Geneva, it is impossible to ignore the immense diversity of backgrounds, experiences, and worldviews presented to me on a daily basis. The population of Geneva is incredibly diverse, with around 41% of people coming from a non-Swiss origin or nationality. The academic environment I experienced was similarly diverse, with around 39% of students (representing 161 countries) and 47% of professors (representing 33 countries) at the University of Geneva coming from a non-Swiss origin or nationality as of 2022. Clearly, students and educators from all over the world remain attracted to the opportunities for cross-cultural dialogue offered in Geneva.

My curriculum abroad gave me the opportunity to have discussions with my peers on the most pressing issues impacting our respective countries. I was constantly confronted with perspectives that challenged my understanding of the world and some of my most deeply rooted opinions of my own country of origin. I often approached these conversations in the classroom as if I myself were a diplomat representing my country.

I also had the opportunity to learn from professors at the top of their respective fields in an international environment. For the first time, I was exposed to an academic perspective of the United States as a “them” rather than a “we”. This perspective instilled in me an understanding that what Americans reduce to politics, is often seen by the rest of the world as policy. In my classroom discussions, there was rarely a mention of “democratic” or “republican” foreign policies, but rather “American” foreign policies. This is not to say that the international community is naive to the political divisions present in the United States. Instead, it is a testament to the fact that the actions taken by the United States (regardless of the people in power) have lasting impacts on foreign perceptions of American ideals.

It is no secret that the United States has recently taken steps towards isolationism and has distanced itself from some traditional allies. This trend is nowhere more evident than in the relationship between the US and Europe, which is now as fragile as ever. Tensions between the US and European allies over issues like trade and the conflict in Ukraine have created unprecedented rifts in relationships that trace back even before the formation of NATO in 1949.

Despite tensions between governments, the conversations I had with my European peers were grounded in respectful curiosity rather than hostility. Europeans know what the US government thinks, but they are curious about what Americans think. They regularly ask how aligned the American public is with the actions of its government. What strikes me the most is the patience of Europeans to continue to engage in dialogue with Americans. While some are more outspoken and critical of the United States than others, there is almost always a level of decency and respect that many Americans do not seem to reciprocate. Ultimately, my experience has illustrated that the relationship between the United States and Europe is resilient and there is hope for a future of mutual cooperation.

Geneva as an Imperfect Utopia

While the multicultural learning environment I was exposed to has challenged my perspectives in many ways, it has also shown me that there is a consensus among Geneva’s international students and educators. The academic community is largely united in its belief that Geneva has a crucial role to play in ensuring international security going forward. There is hope among academics that the next generation of leaders will work to restore trust in international peacemaking institutions. It takes diversity to recognize the importance of cooperation, and Geneva’s diversity is both what created its reputation for peace and what will save it.

Geneva still represents a utopian vision of a peaceful future. However, peace is not meant to be perfect, either in process or in outcome. Peace requires making concessions, recognizing faults, and putting aside disagreement or even hatred. These behaviors are extremely challenging for people, and they are even more challenging for nations of people. It is much easier to avoid confrontation than to pursue peace. Unfortunately, leaders continue to settle for what’s easy. The greatest threat to peace is people refusing to engage with those they disagree with. Ultimately, my experience in Geneva has shown me that peace is developed just as much in the classroom, dorm room, and dining room as it is in the Alabama Room.

Image source: openverse

August 8, 2025 299 comments

East Asia Featured Racism Society and Culture

Living on the Margins: Japan’s Responsibility to Address the Plights of Stateless Koreans

written by Matthew Inui

Japan is widely considered one of the most racially homogeneous nations in the world, with more than 95 percent of the population reported as ethnically Japanese. However, one minority has lived in Japan for over a century now yet continues to face systemic discrimination: Koreans.

The roots of this discrimination can be traced back to Japan’s colonial history. After Japan formally annexed Korea in 1910, thousands of Koreans migrated to Japan to fill labor shortages and escape poverty. Initially, these migrants were considered citizens, but this changed after Japan relinquished its colonial possessions (including Korea) in 1952. Ethnic Koreans residing in Japan were then reclassified as foreign aliens, giving rise to the term “Zainichi Korean,” which literally translates to “Koreans residing in Japan.” Over the following decades, Zainichi Koreans faced a series of discriminatory laws covering everything from employment to education. While the Zainichi identity movement in the 1970s led to the repeal of many of these laws, indirect discrimination persists to this day.

Today, over 400,000 ethnic Koreans live in Japan, with about 330,000 of them classified as “Special Permanent Residents”—a status that renders them non-citizens. While Koreans technically face no formal barriers to naturalization, cultural and systemic obstacles remain in place. For example, there is intense pressure within the Zainichi community to reject citizenship because naturalization is viewed as ethnic betrayal. The Japanese government has also enacted informal barriers to Korean naturalization. Until the 1980s, applicants were required to adopt a Japanese-sounding name. Although such requirements have since been dropped, many Koreans still have to change their names because of restrictions on the use of certain Chinese characters in official documents. This discourages many Koreans from pursuing naturalization, especially if they wish to keep their Korean name. Other Koreans have their applications denied completely because of their affiliation with groups such as the Korean Residents Union (also known as Mindan), a community organization with strong ties to North Korea. Especially since North Korea abducted at least 17 Japanese individuals in the 70s and 80s, Mindan members have been viewed with increased scrutiny, complicating the citizenship application process.

Further, Japan has some of the strictest citizenship requirements of any country in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Specifically, Japan’s reliance on a blood lineage system means that citizenship is only available to those with direct Japanese ancestry, while dual citizenship is subject to extreme limitations. As a result, marriage or naturalization are the only paths to citizenship, leaving many Zainichi Koreans (many of whom were born and raised in Japan) as non-citizens.

Despite these stringent regulations, Japan limits voting rights to Japanese citizens, effectively disenfranchising 330,000 Zainichi Koreans. While the Japanese Supreme Court granted the national government authority to extend voting rights to non-citizens in local elections, opposition from the ruling LDP party has blocked any such legislation. Because of this mass disenfranchisement, Zainichi Koreans have no official state support. Despite being ethnically Koreans, Zainichi Koreans are not Korean citizens and are thus not afforded protection by the Korean government. However, Zainichi Koreans also lack representation in the Japanese government, leaving them vulnerable to discrimination.

One of the clearest examples of anti-Korean discrimination can be seen in employment. Foreigners are barred from holding many public positions, even inherently apolitical ones such as serving in the Civil Rights Commission or as Child Welfare Volunteers. In the few positions open to foreigners, ethnic Koreans are largely overlooked for promotions, further contributing to the lack of Korean representation in government. The public sector also sees such discrimination against ethnic Koreans. A 2016 survey found that 25 percent of job-seeking foreigners were denied employment because of their nationality. As a result, Zainichi Koreans often experience higher rates of unemployment and tend to work in less stable positions than native Japanese.

Education presents another significant barrier for Koreans. Most Zainichi children attend Korean schools run by Korean community organizations such as Soren and Mindan. However, because these schools are not recognized by the government, students must undergo extra examinations to prove academic competence when applying to universities. Moreover, foreign schools are ineligible to receive funding from the national treasury. Although many receive support from local governments, Korean schools are frequently funded at lower rates than Japanese schools. In fact, since Osaka Prefecture cut funding for foreign schools in 2011, local funding has decreased by nearly 40 percent, with only 10 of 27 prefectures still subsidizing foreign schools. This underfunding places Zanichi children at a systemic education disadvantage.

Despite such pervasive discrimination, Japan has resisted calls to strengthen its exceptionally weak anti-discrimination laws. The Japanese government often points to Article 14 of the Japanese Constitution, which prohibits racial discrimination in political, economic, and social situations, as sufficient protection. However, according to a report submitted to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Article 14 has largely been ineffective in addressing discrimination against Korean residents. Notably, although Article 14 mentions race, it lacks protections against discrimination based on color, descent, national origin, and ethnic origin. Many organizations have called upon the government to adopt a more comprehensive definition of discrimination in line with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), but there has been no move to amend the constitution.

The Japanese government is also severely limited in terms of its enforcement of Article 14. Although there is a Human Rights Bureau (HRB) within the Ministry of Justice, it does not meet the standards of the Principles relating to the Status of National Institutions (Paris Principles), specifically regarding independence from other government institutions. Because the Bureau is staffed entirely by Japanese nationals, many have also questioned the Bureau’s ability to adequately address issues facing non-citizens like the Zainichi Koreans. Because the HRB frequently rejects complaints without giving reason to the public or the petitioner, many foreigners do not trust the HRB’s willingness to address their needs. Even when the HRB decides in favor of the petitioner, the decision carries no legal weight and sanctions cannot be brought against individuals who violate HRB decisions.

Japan also lags behind international standards in addressing indirect discrimination. Article 1 of the ICERD prohibits any government actions that limit fundamental freedoms, even unintentionally. Yet Japan has failed to align its legislation with ICERD principles. Although members of the Democratic and Social Democratic Party introduced racial discrimination legislation in 2015, the ruling LDP effectively killed the bill. In 2016, the Act on the Promotion of Efforts to Eliminate Unfair Discriminatory Speech and Behavior against Persons Originating from Outside Japan was passed and was an important acknowledgment of Japan’s hate speech problem. However, the law does not explicitly prohibit hate speech, and since the bill’s passage, several xenophobic groups have been allowed to organize, largely without punishment.

Compounding these issues is Japan’s failure to adequately study discrimination against foreigners, completing its first and only review of discrimination in 2016. Even in internationally mandated reports such as Japan’s reports to the United Nations Human Rights Committee (HRC) on its obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Japan has avoided recognizing Zainichi Koreans as a minority group, focusing its reporting only on minorities who are Japanese nationals. This contradicts HRC guidelines, which state that minority rights cannot be restricted to citizens alone. By denying Zainchi Koreans recognition as a minority, Japan not only inadequately examines the issues facing the Korean minority, but effectively denies them the protections afforded minority groups under international law.

As one of the most developed countries in the world, Japan is often seen as a leader in human rights. Historically, Japan has been a frequent critic of North Korea and China’s human rights record. Even as far back as 1919, Japan became the first country to promote antiracism with its contributions to the Paris Peace Conference. Yet, domestically, Japan continues to perpetuate discrimination against Zainchi Koreans, undermining its credibility as a human rights leader abroad. International human rights law is clear: Japan has a responsibility to protect the voiceless minority within its borders. Only by addressing these systemic barriers can Japan truly embody the principles of justice and equality it espouses on the world stage.

Image Source: Unsplash

December 29, 2024 324 comments

Featured Japan Racism Society and Culture

Living on the Margins: Japan’s Responsibility to Address the Plights of Stateless Koreans

written by Matthew Inui

December 26, 2024 311 comments

Featured Print Article Society and Culture Women's Rights

The State of Women’s Soccer in the World

written by Andreas Papoutsis

Andreas Papoutsis’ article is additionally featured in The Generation’s Spring 2022 Digital Print Edition: Women. Coming June 1st 2022.

There is still much more work ahead to achieve gender equality in the world of soccer. In the United States alone, more than 70% of professional soccer athletes are men, one of several indications that suggest participation among amateurs and youth can be hardly close to even among genders.¹ For women looking to enter the sport, whether it be in the grand pursuit of a professional career or merely for leisurely purposes, a stark difference in pay rates for men’s and women’s national teams is a head scratcher considering the sport’s reputation as a game that welcomes egalitarianism.

The debate for equal pay reared its head most forcefully in the United States, with stars such as Megan Rapinoe advocating on behalf of female athletes everywhere, only to be met with harsh criticism from certain factions of the American public. After years of activism and drawn-out legal proceedings, courts in the United States ruled that the national soccer federation must pay both teams, regardless of gender, equally for representing their country in international competition.

Where does the United States stand in terms of progress on the matter? The agreement to offer equal pay to female athletes made the United States just the eighth country to enact such a policy, joining Ireland, Australia, the Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, England, and Brazil. FIFA officially recognizes 168 different women’s soccer federations, meaning only 3.5% of female professionals representing their countries earn the same pay as men. In fact, FIFA recognizes 211 men’s soccer federations, meaning entire regions only have infrastructure and pathways to international athletic competition and recognition for men.

Of the other seven countries that beat the United States in the race to offer female athletes equal pay, many of them have been known to afford women more equality in several aspects of life beyond soccer. In the U.S. News and World Report rankings of the best countries for women to live in, Norway checks in at third, the Netherlands at fifth, New Zealand at eighth, Australia at 10th, Ireland at 13th, England at 14th, and Brazil in 42nd, whereas the United States checks in at 18th.² With that being said, there seems to be a pretty direct correlation in determining which countries are most likely to offer equal pay to female soccer players, which is bad news for the current state of affairs since many of the world’s countries lag distantly behind in women’s rights. Since living standards for women typically correlate with a country having more infrastructure for women’s athletics, it is therefore all the more concerning that the United States, which is in the top 10% in terms of the rankings, falls so far behind in providing women with access to the same sporting opportunities it provides its men. In other countries where women experience even more unfavorable standards of living, their access to sports like soccer is restricted to an exponentially larger degree. The gross lack of sports infrastructure for women across the world is also a direct harm to women’s standard of living. A Rasmussen poll found that 82% of American parents viewed sports as important to the development of their children.³ Without equal access to opportunities across sports, many young girls are robbed of crucial development opportunities that are abundantly afforded to their male counterparts.

Outside of the global north, women’s access to the sport is often far more reduced. In 2013, Uganda’s government pulled its U-20 women’s soccer team from world cup qualification matches because of a supposed lack of funds.⁴ If the men’s team were in a position to contend for a spot in the World Cup, it is difficult to imagine that the government wouldn’t have done more on their behalf. In Iran, women face substantial barriers in accessing the sport where Muslim clerics have often dictated that women should not even be allowed to attend games, making it substantially more difficult for the sport to grow among the female population. Only recently have women been allowed into stadiums, while women competing for the national team often face hostility and discrimination that transcends the issue of equal pay.⁵ Khalida Popal, a woman who sought to create women’s soccer leagues in Afghanistan, was forced to seek asylum in Denmark after receiving countless extremist threats.⁶ In Brazil, it wasn’t until 1979 that women’s soccer was even legally sanctioned; cultural narratives up until that point suggested the sport was incompatible with “female nature”.⁷ In countless other countries across the world, women face extensive cultural (and oftentimes legal) barriers to access a sport that derives its beauty from being accessible to humans from all walks of life.

On the domestic level, pay discrepancies can be even more severe. Even in the United States, a sizable amount of professional female soccer players are paid no higher the poverty line. The minimum six-month salary for a woman competing professionally in the NASL is $6,842 whereas the poverty line in the United States is demarcated at $11,880 per individual. A blue-collar worker earning minimum wage would generate more than some female professional soccer players. Such low salaries understandably reduce interest in the sport and foment a discriminatory environment for prospective female athletes. For context, the minimum salary in Major League Baseball is $500,000 per year. The lack of fair pay at the club level only amplifies the harsh effects of financial discrimination seen at the international level. For the women have been able to break through such pervasive cultural and legal barriers to earn selections to their national teams (assuming their country sanctions one), and represent their nations in the World Cup Finals, they too find themselves at a great pay disadvantage to their male counterparts. In the men’s World Cup, competing teams fight for their share of a prize pot of roughly $400 million, while the women’s teams are forced to scrap for a pot of just $30 million.⁸

In the United States, however, the women’s national soccer team generated more revenue than their male counterparts, strengthening their argument for equal pay from both an ethical and economic perspective. In 2016, US Women’s soccer generated revenue of $50.8 million in comparison to $49.9 million produced by their male counterparts. If anything, it’s confounding that they aren’t paid more than their male counterparts.⁹ The counterargument to the equal pay initiative suggests that women athletes should earn pay equivalent to the size of the fiscal market associated with their sport, and since female sports don’t generate nearly the same revenue as male sports, they should not be paid equally. The 2018 men’s World Cup Final brought in over 1.1 billion television viewers.¹⁰The women’s World Cup final, by comparison, drew in a total of 263.6 million viewers. While the women’s numbers might fall short in comparison, they are by no means anything to scoff at. Over the course of the entire women’s World Cup, roughly 414 million viewers tuned in. The UCLA-Gonzaga Final Four thriller, by comparison, saw about 15 million viewers. It speaks to the immense growth of women’s sports and the cultural revolution that has taken place, albeit too slowly in most places and at a snail’s pace in other areas.

The economic argument, however, must be interpreted in context. Men’s sports typically do, on average, generate far higher viewership than women’s sports. But women’s sports also suffer from a lack of exposure to several media markets. When UCLA women’s basketball squared off against UConn in the first ever women’s basketball game broadcast on ABC, they broke the record for the most-viewed regular season women’s college basketball game of all time. The match brought in 839,000 viewers, which was 302,000 more than the amount who tuned in for a top ten men’s matchup between Villanova and Baylor the following day. Villanova and Baylor are two of the most venerated programs currently in men’s college basketball; to eclipse their viewership ratings by a wide margin speaks to the potential women’s sports possesses. Hence the economic argument should be understood in the context of inequitable exposure to media markets. When women’s sports are broadcasted on television and advertised across different mediums, they generally have no problem in attracting fans or viewers.

I would suggest that the ethical argument trumps the economic argument anyway.

Representing your country should not be viewed differently on the basis of gender. It takes immense sacrifice on the part of female athletes to represent their nations at the highest levels of the sport, and the message sent by paying them woefully less than their male counterparts is deeply damaging to young girls and young women seeking to pursue a career or even a hobby in soccer.

What can be done to remedy the problem? That would require a complex solution, since the issue of gender inequality is one that transcends soccer and intersects nearly every fabric of society. But the easiest first step that can be taken is for other soccer federations to follow the lead of countries like Australia and guarantee equal pay to female athletes who represent their country at international soccer competitions. FIFA should also step in and incentivize federations to make equal pay a hallmark of their governing structure. One such way to do so could involve penalizing countries that are clearly apathetic to the notion of gender equality, whether that be through financial penalties or outright bans from male competitions until some verifiable progress is shown that a given national federation is taking steps to ensure a more equal landscape for a sport that prides itself on equality. If a country’s soccer federation refuses to pay women equally for their service in competition, perhaps their men’s teams should not be afforded access to the glory of competition either.

The beauty of the sport lies in its ability to not discriminate across socioeconomic spectrums. That same equality should be demonstrated across genders.

Endnotes

1.“Professional Soccer Player Demographics and Statistics in the US,” Zippia. https://www.zippia.com/professional-soccer-player-jobs/demographics

2.“Best Countries for Women,” U.S. News and World Report. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/best-countries-for-women

3.“Americans Say Sports Are Important For Kids,” Rasmussen Reports. July 20, 2017. https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/lifestyle/sports/july_2017/americans_say_sports_are_important_for_kids

4.Oryada, Andrew. “Uganda Withdraws Team From U-20s Women’s World Cup Qualifiers,” Uganda Radio Network. November 27, 2013. https://ugandaradionetwork.com/a/story.php?s=58478

5.Merhi, Karim Abou. “Women allowed to attend soccer game at Tehran stadium, a first in nearly 3 years,” The Times of Israel. January 27, 2022.

6.Lourim, Jake. “How Close Is The Rest Of The World To Catching The U.S.?” FiveThirtyEight. June 11, 2019. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-close-is-the-rest-of-the-world-to-catching-the-u-s/

7.Ackerman, Xanthe & Asquith, Christina. “Soccer is Still Out of Reach for Half the World’s Women,” Time Magazine. July 8, 2015. https://time.com/3949377/world-cup-women-global-equality/

8.Weber, Joe. “The Status of Equal Pay for Women Soccer Players Worldwide,” Girls Soccer Network. September 22, 2021. https://girlssoccernetwork.com/the-status-of-equal-pay-for-women-soccer/

9.Hess, Abigal Johnson. “US women’s soccer games now generate more revenue than men’s – but the player still earn less,” CNBC. June 19, 2019.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/19/us-womens-soccer-games-now-generate-more-revenue-than-mens.html

10.Glass, Alana. “FIFA Women’s World Cup Breaks Viewership Records,” Forbes. October 21, 2019. https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanaglass/2019/10/21/fifa-womens-world-cup-breaks-viewership-records/?sh=40e6191a1884

May 31, 2022 414 comments

Education Featured Human Rights Print Article Society and Culture Women's Rights

Global Gender Inequality and Disparity in Education

written by Shannon Courtney

Shannon Courtney’s article is additionally featured in The Generation’s Spring 2022 Digital Print Edition:Women. Coming June 1st 2022.

Education provides individuals with the tools, skills, and knowledge needed to succeed in a complex and interconnected world. Throughout history, girls have struggled to receive equal access to schools to further their educational goals. Although there have been recent international initiatives and treaties to combat this challenge, there is still a persistent struggle in many countries to provide girls with universal access to education and close the gender enrollment gap. Educating girls contributes to women’s empowerment globally and positively affects the family and communal structures of society through health status, education, and overall socioeconomic prosperity.

Where Gender Inequality in Education Stands in the Present

In 2007, the Global Education Monitoring Report identified gender equity and women’s empowerment as “requiring greater international attention in order to create sustainable development and increase global growth.”¹ In 2013, the United Nations created the Sustainable Development Goals to achieve societal and global progress through commitments such as cutting poverty, empowering women in education and the workplace, reducing infant mortality, and improving health institutions worldwide. This initiative declares that “every human being, including every child, is entitled to receive an education.”² However, despite the strong legal initiatives and advancements for access to educational institutions for women and girls, societal structures and systems continue to perpetuate disparities and boundaries between women and men. Studies show that although international social and economic policies have prioritized increasing women’s education, they “ignore the harsh impact of structural adjustment especially on poor households where female education may not be of a high priority.”³ The ‘global feminization of poverty’ refers to women disproportionately living in poverty throughout the world without adequate healthcare, food, water, housing, and education. Furthermore, women are denied fundamental rights and access to education, civil rights, and money in developing nations. In 2015, girls’ proportion of children out of school was 52%, specifically in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and the Arab Nations.⁴ Also, two-thirds of global illiterate adults–773 million people–are women, and around 129 million girls are not in school.⁵ Educational inequality for women drastically impedes social and economic prosperity and development within society.

Why Does the Education Gap Exist?

Although the Sustainable Development Goals assert that educational access is a basic human right for all children worldwide, the current legal pathways to education ignore the social factors such as gender bias, poverty, and violence that enable the global education gap. Gender bias within primary agents of socialization — parents, school, and social institutions — also reinforces messages that affect girls’ perception of their societal roles, labor engagement disparities, and occupational segregation. Education is a vital social institution and equips individuals with skills and tools to carry out different functional roles in society. For example, through socialization, children model their parents’ behavior, actions, and beliefs to develop their education and career goals. More specifically, girls tend to model their mothers and boys tend to do the same with their fathers as they attain their ideas, beliefs, and aspirations.⁶ Thus, if children, especially girls, are being disincentivized by their primary agent of socialization to not attend school or lack educated role models, it can cause a cyclical process of unequal access to formal education.

Poverty is also a significant factor indicating accessibility to educational institutions for women and girls. For example, the education expenditure in Somalia was .99% in 2017, where only 23% of girls compared to 42% of boys were enrolled in school.⁷ In comparison, the United States has an education expenditure of 5% of the GDP at $700 billion.⁸ Since there is a lack of universally free public education globally, girls may not have equitable access to educational resources compared to boys even within the same household. Moreover, the spread of Covid-19 has had substantial adverse effects on the educational, social, and behavioral development of children. Although it roughly affects more than 90% of the world’s student population, remote learning is scarce in communities facing extreme poverty, failed states, and refugee camps. For example, less than 1/2 of primary and secondary schools in SubSaharan Africa had access to “electricity, the Internet, computers and basic handwashing facilities, key basic services and facilities necessary to ensure a safe and effective learning environment.”⁹

Gender-based violence also impedes girls’ completion of formal education. According to the Global Women’s Institute at George Washington University, an estimated 60 million girls are “sexually assaulted on their way to or at school every year.”¹⁰ This particularly impacts the Sub-Saharan region of Africa which accounts for 50% of the global percentage of children out of school and results in a higher probability of sexual assault than literacy completion for girls.¹¹ For example, in Nigeria, 42% of the primary school age population were out of school.¹² Moreover, 43% of girls in Nigeria are married before 18 years old and 60% have experienced physical, emotional, and sexual violence under 18 years old.¹³ This produces drastic consequences for girls’ mental and physical well-being as well as lower attendance and higher dropout rates. According to the data, this can result in higher probability of sexual assault or child marriage than primary school completion for girls. Moreover, violence against women can cost up to 3.7% of countries’ GDP, “more than double what most governments spend on education.”¹⁴

How Women’s Education Affects the Individual, Household, and Society

When women achieve educational equality and close the gender enrollment gap in school, it empowers them, creates a fair and just community, and increases societal and economic productivity. On an individual level, education allows women to “be confident, independent, earn self-respect in the society, and unleash their full potential.”¹⁵ Education provides women with social interaction, knowledge, and tools to combat daily challenges, accomplish their professional aspirations, and acquire leadership in the community. A society’s investment in women’s education tends to have positive effects not only for the individual woman but for her family. Educated women tend to marry at a later age, which helps decrease the number of child marriages and health issues within a society. Increasing women’s health education benefits children through improved hygiene, immunization, nutrition, and lower infant and maternal mortality rates.¹⁶ Furthermore, when women have more access to resources such as money and knowledge, they are more likely to spend money on food, health, shelter, and education for their children.¹⁷

Investing in women’s education helps lift entire communities and countries out of poverty through increased workforce participation, higher incomes, and savings. Globally, despite constituting half of the world’s population, women make up only 10-12% of the entire formal workforce.¹⁸ For example, women in Latin America and East Asia consist of 53% and 59% of the labor force participation rate; this is strikingly higher than regions in South Asia and the Middle East with rates of 24 and 20%, respectively.¹⁹ However, through increased education, women are more likely to participate in the workforce, dramatically increasing a society’s economic productivity because women make up half the world’s population. When women’s income increases by 10%, and there is a 35% increase in GDP per capita of any country for every additional year of education for women.²⁰ Thus, educating women improves the quality of the individual women’s lives, family, community, and societal structures.

Solutions to Combat Gender Inequality in Education Throughout the World

Although the right to education is ingrained in global government institutions, economics, social, and cultural factors prevent girls accessing education. Therefore, the best solution to increasing women’s education worldwide is to provide social funding, scholarships, and mentorship programs that change the economic barriers of poverty for women to accomplish their professional and educational aspirations. In many societies stricken with absolute poverty, girls do not usually attend school because their families have to pay for them. Instead, parents would rather pay for their son’s education to attend school and have the daughter stay home and help with the household operations, which develops a cyclical womb-to-kitchen pipeline. Thus, scholarship programs would be a beneficial tool for girls to access school affordably and break the cultural expectation of traditional gender roles. For example, a scholarship program in Cambodia that helps girls afford to attend secondary school has increased girls’ school enrollment and attendance by 30%.²¹ In Ghana, a three-year senior high school education roughly costs 70% of the GDP per capita of the country.²² In an experimental study to assess the impact of free secondary education, winners of scholarships were 60% more likely to complete secondary education, receive 1.25 more years of education than non-winners, and 30% enrolled in tertiary education.²³ Although these various social welfare and scholarship programs address the economic barriers, it is crucial that initiatives to combat global educational inequality address the root cultural challenges as well. A consequence of implementing these solutions is that the scholarship program thrives on the support of the community or society on educating girls. If a particular society believes women should stay in the domestic sphere rather than being educated, it can make it difficult to change the social norms and stereotypes of women and receive funding. Therefore mentorship programs with educated women supporting and guiding younger girls within their community could help them feel empowered and encouraged to follow their dreams. For example, Project Kuongoza empowers women and girls across Sub-Saharan Africa and MESA “with STEM, ICT skills and enable them to compete successfully in the global information economy.”²⁴ The program offers a yearly fellowship program that pairs young girls aged 15-25 with professional women in STEM to help cultivate digital literacy and access untapped labor markets where women are historically underrepresented.

Women make up half of the world’s population; however, they are robbed of fundamental human rights such as the right to receive education worldwide. Educating girls and women worldwide help solve global issues such as poverty, health, malnutrition, and social and economic development. When women lack educational access and socioeconomic opportunities, it impedes society’s economic growth, further subjugating women to an inferior quality of life. Therefore, a political commitment by countries is essential to raise awareness regarding the importance of women’s education for themselves, the household, and the greater society and create programs to combat educational inequality. Increasing girls’ access to educational opportunities through mentor and scholarship programs will help increase the overall international development of countries.

Endnotes

Leah Jackson. “Educate the women and you change the world: Investing in the education of women is the best investment in a country’s growth and development.” Forum on Public Policy, 2009. Accessed on January 20, 2022, https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ870099
Tabreek Somani. “Importance of educating girls for the overall development of society: A global perspective.” Journal of Educational Research and Practice, 2017. Accessed on January 20, 2022, https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/jerap/vol7/iss1/10/
Shailaja Fennell and Madeleine Arnot. “Gender education and equality in a global context:Conceptual frameworks and policy perspectives.” Routledge, 2007. Accessed on January 15, 2022, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203939598
Tabreek Somani.. “Importance of educating girls for the overall development of society: A global perspective.” Journal of Educational Research and Practice, 2017. Accessed on January 20, 2022, https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/jerap/vol7/iss1/10/
World Bank. “Girls’ Education.” 2021. Accessed on January 21, 2022. https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/girlseducation#1
Buchmann, C., DiPrete, T., & McDaniel, A. “Gender inequalities in education.” Annual Review of Sociology, 2008. https://www.jstor.org/stable/29737793
UNDP Country Office for Somalia. “Gender in Somalia” August 27, 2014. Accessed February 19, 2022. https://www.undp.org/content/dam/somalia/docs/Project_Documents/Womens_Empowerment/Gender%20in%20Somalia%20FINAL1.pdf
Mack DeGeurin. “The US spends more on education than any other country, but students lag behind academically. Here’s how much other countries spend and how well their students perform.” Insider, 2019. Accessed on January 25, 2022, https://www.insider.com/how-much-countries
United Nations Sustainable Development. “Goal 4.” Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2021. Accessed on March 1, 2022, https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal4
The Global Women’s Institute. “School-Based Interventions to Prevent Violence Against Women & Girls.” The George Washington University. Accessed on January 21, 2022, https://globalwomensinstitute.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs1356/f/downloads/Evidence%20Brief-%20School-Based%20Interventions%20to%20Prevent%20Violence%20Against%20Women%20and%20Girls.pdf
UNESCO Institute for Statistics. “Reaching out-of-school children is crucial for development.” UNESCO, 2012. Accessed on January 25, 2022, https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000216519
Ibid.
Girls Not Brides. “Nigeria” Accessed on February 10, 2022, https://atlas.girlsnotbrides.org/map/nigeria/
Caren Grown & Diana J. Arango. “Taking the fight against gender-based violence to schools” World Bank, 2020. Accessed on January 21, 2022, https://blogs.worldbank.org/voices/taking-fight-against-gender-based-violence-schools
Tabreek Somani. “Importance of educating girls for the overall development of society: A global perspective.” Journal of Educational Research and Practice, 2017. Accessed on January 20, 2022, https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/jerap/vol7/iss1/10/
Leah Jackson. “Educate the women and you change the world: Investing in the education of women is the best investment in a country’s growth and development.” Forum on Public Policy, 2009. Accessed on January 20, 2022, https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ870099
Ibid.
Tabreek Somani. “Importance of educating girls for the overall development of society: A global perspective.” Journal of Educational Research and Practice, 2017. Accessed on January 20, 2022, https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/jerap/vol7/iss1/10/
World Bank. “Labor force participation rate, female (% of female population ages 15+).” 2021. Accessed on January 25, 2022, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.ZS
Tabreek Somani. “Importance of educating girls for the overall development of society: A global perspective.” Journal of Educational Research and Practice, 2017. Accessed on January 20, 2022, https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/jerap/vol7/iss1/10/
Leah Jackson. “Educate the women and you change the world: Investing in the education of women is the best investment in a country’s growth and development.” Forum on Public Policy, 2009. Accessed on January 20, 2022, https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ870099
Esther Duflo, Pascaline Dupas, and Michael Kremer. “The Impact of Free Secondary Education: Experimental Evidence from Ghana.” SSRN Electronic Journal, 2021. Accessed on January 22, 2022, https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3874078
Ibid.
STEMi Makers Africa. “Project Kuongoza” Accessed on February 19, 2022, https://stemiafrica.org/project-kuongoza/

May 17, 2022 431 comments

Internet Interview Racism Society and Culture Technology

UN Special Rapporteur Tendayi Achiume on Racial Discrimination in Emerging Digital Technologies: Annabelle Werner and Elizabeth Onibokun

written by thegeneration

E. Tendayi Achiume is a Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Promise Institute for Human Rights at University of California, Los Angeles. She serves as the United Nations special rapporteur on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.

As we enter into the one year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have learned just how much of our society can be conducted in virtual landscapes. We keep up with our friends through endless scrolling on international social media platforms, we coordinate “zoom” calls with our colleagues across different time zones, and our children log into their classrooms from behind a screen: our virtual society is essentially intrinsic to our physical one. Yet, one could argue that the relationship between society and digital technology has always been heavily intertwined since the latter’s development, and in fact, the societal problems we see in our physical world are also manifested in and perpetuated by our online one.

In our interview with UN Special Rapeturer Tendayi Achiume, we were able to discuss such relationships between societal inequality and technology in covered in her 2020 thematic report on “Racial discrimination and emerging digital technologies: a human rights analysis”. Ultimately, we learned how different forms of racial discriminination appear “in the design and use of ‘‘ digital tools. In our brief interview, we not only gained an appreciation of the urgency and timeliness of Professor Achiume’s findings, but also began to understand the gravity of our virtual situation: not even our most advanced, “objective”, digital inventions can overcome historical legacies of social injustice.

Definitions and Examples of Techno-chauvinism and Technological Determinism

When discussing how societal problems are manifested in technology, Professor Achiume argues that we must be cognizant of the ills of techno-chauvinism. Techno-chauvinism is the idea that technology is the solution to everything, when in reality, some forms of digital technology can create more (or simply different) problems than before. If we make presumptions that technology will blanketly fix the issues that we cannot, Achiume claims that we will fail to critically investigate the ways that technology “reproduces human biases and perpetuates structural inequalities”. After all, the structures, designs, and functions of social media platforms and AI algorithms are shaped by the beliefs of those who create them.

The UN special rapporteur found that emerging digital technologies can directly perpetuate racial discrimintion. In the report, she discusses “digital redlining”, or “the creation and maintenance of technology practices that further entrench discriminatory practices against already marginalized groups’”. In Section III B 32, Achiume describes how Facebook used to have a function that would allow one to “narrow audiences” by providing the ability to filter Facebook users by “ethnic affinities” under a demographics category of its ad-targeting tool. Facebook by itself controls about a quarter of the market share for digital advertisements in the U.S., so this tool had a significant impact and resulted in the prevention of Black people from viewing housing advertisements. If we were to accept principles of techno-chauvinism and assume that technological tools will be ubiquitously advantageous, we would fail to see how problems of racial bias were created by this new tool. Techno-chauvinism shields digitals tools from critique and blinds us from seeing how racial discrimiantion can be ingrained in the structures of our social, political, and economic interactions online, including how these virtual inequalities can be actualized into very real harm in our physical lives.

It is also important to discuss the spaces in which these global networks are created. Digital technologies and social media platforms are mainly produced in a few, concentrated environments in the Global North, which directly or indirectly affect the product. Sillicon Valley, for example, is experiencing what has been called a “diversity crisis” and has had “a history of problems of discrimination, exclusion, and sexual harassment”. These findings prompt the question: Who is creating AI technology? And who is it being created for?

In an investigation of the effects of this lack of diversity, Achiume includes a 2019 study that reviewed 99 developers from around the world. It found that, “‘many of these algorithms were 10 to 100 times more likely to inaccurately identify a photograph of a black or East Asian face, compared with a white one. In searching a database to find a given face, most of them picked incorrect images among black women at significantly higher rates than they did among other demographics’”.

We can see how even the seemingly “neutral” AI systems are shaped by the lack of representation in the environments that they are created. The inequalities at various intersections of our social identities, such as race and gender, are then present in the technologies we produce. Thus, we cannot simply code away racial bias because technology can never be a completely “neutral” instrument: it is ultimately influenced by what it’s creators perceive, or rather, what they do not perceive. In fact, this problematic assumption that technology is objectively neutral, is codified in the term “technological determinism”.

Technological determinism, defined and discussed by Achiume, is the assumption that technology is somehow isolated and not influenced by social, political, or economic structures. This perspective is false. Our digital landscapes determine “everyday outcomes in employment, education, health care and criminal justice”, and will continue to facilitate harm unless we are able to isolate how society’s injustice manifests itself in our digital tools; a process that is only possible through the rejection of technological determinism.

Limitations of “Colorblindness”

The term “colorblind” is sprinkled liberally throughout texts, articles, and journals and while it traditionally had a positive connotation, Professor Achiume cautions against its use. She highlights the insidious effects of “colorblindness,” particularly when dealing with a world increasingly defined by technology and its perceived objectiveness. Achiume recognizes the fact that the idea of a colorblind world seems appealing. Who wouldn’t want to live in a world where a person is not judged by something as inconsequential as skin color?

But, the sad fact is that, “we live in a society which has been constructed on a racial basis.” Approaching issues such as racial discrimination in technology and AI programs without acknowledging the inherit systemic obstacles in this world does no one any favors. Achiume brings up the current COVID-19 pandemic and how black and brown communities have been disproportionately affected, in part, due to factors such as exclusion from healthcare systems and the overrepresentation of people of color in the social services. By stating that “the colorblind approach is not enough” she is calling for approaches that examine the racial and ethnic impact of policymaking that appear to be neutral. She asserts that it should not be about a blindness to difference but rather an engagement with how differences makes certain communities more vulnerable to exploitation, discrimination, and exclusion. In fact, she insightfully states that we don’t yet live in a world where taking a colorblind approach can lead us to justice but that it often sustains systems of injustice.

Importance of Public Awareness

To further expand on this theme of objectivity, Achiume coined the brilliant term “the veneer of neutrality” and this applies especially to the current design and use of emerging digital technologies. There is the widely-held belief that technology is completely impartial but it is in everyone’s best interests to shed these notions. There are people behind the creation of these programs who, whether consciously or subconsciously, perpetuate harmful stereotypes or prejudices.

One of the most terrifying manifestations of this is predictive policing, a phenomena seen around the world and contributes directly to over-policing of black and brown communities. Achiume highlights the transnational nature of these programs and that is not an issue seen only in the United States. For example, in the United Kingdom there is a predictive policing database intended to create profiles of those most likely to commit crime. A staggering number of 78% of black youth is represented despite the fact that when looking at the actual rates of violence, black youth are implicated only 20% of the time. She insists that one of the most urgent courses of action is public awareness, especially in terms of surveillance and predictive policing that exists around the world.

Even in Los Angeles, where many of us call home, the extent to which police surveillance exists is incredibly high. Professor Achiume spotlights the coalition Stop LAPD Spying whose name perfectly reflects their mission statement. They work hard to release reports that reflect the high levels of racialized surveillance of the LA Police Department. The large gap of awareness in the public is a huge wall to climb and Achiume believes this is why the devastating murder of George Floyd ignited the world in the way it did. Public awareness is truly the first step towards seeing action and one of the goals of her report is to raise the all-important point that this issue needs to be on national agendas. In a perfectly worded conclusion she declares that “you don’t get change if you have societies that are unaware of the depth and the nature of a problem. These new forms of surveillance disproportionately affect black and brown communities, whom are more subject to over-policing and discrimination than their white counterparts which is reflected in the makeup of prison populations that unfairly represent minorities to an absurd degree. Relating back to Professor Achiume, the LAPD’s police surveillance tactics are said to be completely objective but as discussed with the aforementioned veneer of neutrality, technology can never be truly “neutral”. Hence the need for caution, awareness, and action.

Reflection

As the world continues to grow more globalized, criticizing the unintended consequences of emerging technology can lead to the implementation of systems that are actually effective and useful. We must recognize how the location of the center of development for digital technologies in the Global North has resulted in both direct and indirect perpetuations of racial bias on the design and use of the tools produced. Unabated trust in our new virtual world, with no caution to how it could reflect racial bias in our physical one, will simply perpetuate such harm.

Dismantling principles such as techno-chauvinism, technological determinism, and colorblindness will help us understand how these tools discriminate along racial and gendered lines, such as heightened surveillance of certain communities. The growth of technology can be a wonderful thing but it also has the potential to be incredibly dangerous. In an increasingly interconnected world, nothing is truly as isolated as it seems. An innovation in Silicon Valley can have reverberations throughout the world. It is best that with the knowledge provided we work hard to create digital technologies that don’t perpetuate the problems and prejudices we face in the real world.

March 11, 2021 427 comments

Economics Europe Globalization Society and Culture The International Economy

So you want to be European? A challenge to the perceived success of the European model over the U.S. model in leftist discourse.

written by Katherine Jones

Imagine life in Switzerland: an idyllic alpine country in which gun ownership is legalized, immigration and multilateralism are frowned upon, healthcare is privatized and costly, and military service is compulsory. Staunchly independent and conservative, Switzerland is a right wing paradise. Yet, it is often liberal politicians and voters that yearn for a more European America, citing the success of “democratic socialism” in European societies. However, given the example of Switzerland, albeit extreme, the notion that Europe is necessarily “socialist,” and the success of existing “socialist” policies, should be challenged.

Bernie Sanders, former presidential candidate and arguably the most celebrated socialist in America, stated that the future of American democratic socialism “should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway.” The Danish Prime Minister retorted that Denmark “is far from a planned a socialist economy,” and “it is a market economy.” The dissonance here relates to two different definitions of the word socialism. Socialism can connote a system of increased government administration of public goods, rather than private sector administration of public goods, as well as a robust social safety net. Infrequently, socialism can be used to refer to communism, a system of complete government control over the economy. This article will contend with the former, focusing on socialism as European government intervention in the market and social services.

When it comes to economic policy, the Nordic countries of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, actually have greater economic freedom than the United States and are in this respect even more market driven or “capitalist” economies. A study by JP Morgan Chase, using data from the World Bank, found that on average these nations have a greater degree of business freedom. Greater business freedom means these economies protect property rights more aggressively, exercise less control over private enterprise, allow for greater concentration in the banking sector, and distribute a smaller share of total earnings to workers than the U.S.. As well, the Nordics have minimal corporate taxation and no wealth taxes. The U.S. in comparison boasted the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world, 40%, prior to the 2017 Trump tax cut, at which point the corporate tax rate was slashed to 21%, still above the European average. The reputation of high taxes in Nordic countries comes from the high value added taxes (VAT), similar to sales taxes, which are in their nature, regressive taxes. VATs disproportionately impact the lower and middle classes because these groups spend a higher proportion of their income than the upper class does. Thereby, it is the lower and middle classes which finance the generous social safety nets present in these countries. The essential takeaway here is that operation of the economy is extremely market friendly, and social benefits are being paid for not by the wealthy or corporations, but by their beneficiaries.

Yet these bountiful social safety nets, rather than actual economic policy, are generally what politicians and everyday people mean when they refer to European socialism. It is undeniable that in the Nordic countries, as well as Europe more generally, there are greater government transfers as a share of GDP. This takes the form of free or low-cost college, healthcare, child care and favorable unemployment benefits. However, these policies come at a cost. Not only are they financed primarily by the middle class as aforementioned, but these social programs are sometimes inefficient or even ineffective in comparison to alternatives.

For example, the European healthcare system, enviable for it’s widespread accessibility, is unfortunately often not the same quality or even necessarily always more cost effective than the U.S.. The healthcare policies in Europe range from country to country, from nationalized systems to health care mandates similar to the Affordable Care Act (ACA). However, the perception of healthcare as “free” is a fallacy across the board. In Sweden, where healthcare is significantly nationalized, average out-of -pocket cost is 15%, the U.S. average in contrast is 11%. In other European nations, such as the Netherlands, which have mandates similar to the ACA, they end up paying less than nationalized systems, 11% out of pocket as well. Moreover, the problem with single payer healthcare, especially in larger and more diverse economies, is that the health systems do not reach a satisfactory quality, so citizens end up bearing a double burden of paying for the nationalized system through taxation and private healthcare when they get sick. In France for instance, 95% of the population has private insurance to help pay the deductibles and copayments of the public system. In the UK, 11% of citizens have private insurance in addition to public insurance in order to gain faster access to specialists and elective procedures such as hip replacements. Commendably, nearly all European countries provide some form of universal basic coverage, yet to say a “medicare for all” system reflects the European model is inaccurate.

European universities present a similar story. While they are more authentically “free” than healthcare, they sometimes can not provide the same quality of education or versatility of degree as an American university. American universities’ high tuition (though arguably exorbitant), allows them the financial resources to attract the best faculty, research, technology, and top students from around the globe. Eight of the ten best universities in the world according to 2021 U.S. News’ edition of Best Global Universities, are in the United States. The London-based Times Higher Education, placed 16 of the World’s top 25 universities in America and the Shanghai-based Academic Ranking of World Universities placed 18 of the top 25 universities in America. The high costs of healthcare and education in the United States, while admittedly having distinct disadvantages, make U.S. institutions world class.

And can the United States afford these costs? Yes. The American middle class is comparatively richer than the European middle class. Even after the significant costs paid in the United States for healthcare, education, child care, etc. the average disposable income of Americans is much higher than Europeans. In fact, the United States has the highest average disposable income of any OECD country. The United States is also among the most highly ranked when it comes to housing and employment opportunities, not to mention more consistent and robust GDP growth, while Europe lags with stalling competitiveness.

Europe could possibly improve GDP growth and international competitiveness through decreasing state spending and encouraging the private sector; the direct antithesis to their “socialist” reputation. Sweden has successfully done this before. In the period the 1970s to the 1990s, Sweden had a much more “socialized” economy. During these years the country’s growth lagged far behind most other OECD countries. In 1990 and 1991, Sweden introduced tax cuts and business incentives to boast the economy, which was highly effective and allowed for the regionally impressive growth and economic strength that is present today. However in this period inequality in Sweden also rose significantly, the highest percentage growth in inequality in the world at the time, yet it was matched by a boast in the overall economy. This is not to say that cutting social programs and taxes will always increase productivity and growth, or that the increase in growth will be distributed fairly, but simply that there is a trade off with growth and productivity on one side and government social benefits on the other. Each country must decide where they feel comfortable within this trade off and what sacrifices they are willing to make. It seems that Americans want the lifestyle of southern Europe, the social benefits of northern Europe, at the level of prosperity of the United States, which is unrealistic.

However even if the U.S. wanted to accept the bargain of low growth for benefits, many European countries are able to maintain these systems based on historical and institutional reasons that would not apply to the United States. Europeans are capable of having expensive social programs in part because of their reliance on American defense spending. As of 2017, the United States contributes a greater proportion of GDP to NATO than any other country at 3.3%. 23 of the 28 countries in NATO fail to meet even the 2% of GDP goal. Many former presidents inducing George W. Bush and Barack Obama took issue with this, with Obama stating “Free riders aggravate me.” As well the comparatively smaller size of European countries allows for more centralized and efficient government distribution of benefits. Not to mention some countries, like Norway, have become very wealthy through natural resource extraction.

All of this is not to reflect a personal political agenda, in fact quite the opposite. I do not advocate for cutting social safety nets, but it must be acknowledged that these safety nets, aside from their many quality of life benefits, often fuel costly and inefficient bureaucracies and hurt international competitiveness. It is even more important to remember that the U.S. is not, and never will be, Europe. We shouldn’t strive to blindly emulate an imperfect system especially in a country facing such different conditions.

Additional Discussion….

A quick digression to social and political issues; it is often argued that Europe’s political spectrum is shifted further to the left than the U.S.. However, on social issues such as the legalization of gay marriage many European nations lagged behind the U.S.. Germany didn’t legalize gay marriage until 2017, and gay marriage is still illegal in large European countries such as Italy and Greece. Abortion similarly is not universally accessible in Europe, and some countries have only just recently legalized it. Ireland, a county with a strong religious tradition, most notably legalized abortion in 2018.

Politically, Europe has suffered from the same issues with right wing populism and xenophobia as the U.S.. From the infamous Brexit protest vote, to the rise of right wing governments in Austria, Italy, and other large countries, attitudes in Europe have been increasingly conservative. The illusion that the far left holds control in Europe may be attributable to many countries’ parliamentary systems giving fringe political parties a voice. Overall, Europe has a diverse array of political landscapes from country to country and region to region. Just like the U.S., Europe as a monolith cannot be characterized as necessarily liberal or conservative.

February 17, 2021 1,094 comments

Featured Middle East Populism Society and Culture Youth

A Generation Retrospective: The Arab Spring

written by Grayson Peters

The Generation first launched in January 2010, over a decade ago. Over the past ten years, our articles have followed world events from the outbreak of the Occupy Wall Street protests and the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, to the Mexican War on Drugs, Edward Snowden’s leaks about NSA surveillance, the outbreak of Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement, the Syrian Civil War and refugee crisis, and the advent of the Trump era.

But the Arab Spring holds a special place in The Generation’s memory.

We had just started writing when mass protests threatened the regime of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. Before regime change occurred, we argued, in keeping with the naiveté of the era, that “a plan to oust leader Muammar Gaddafi while preventing a potential coup by terrorist organizations seems a step in the right direction.” When Gaddafi was killed by opposition forces, we optimistically described the event as Libya “enter[ing] a new era,” greeted by the Libyan people in a “spirit of celebration.” We, like many other international observers during the Arab Spring, were caught up in the giddiness and seemingly endless potential of the moment.

We were even more enthused by the parallel outbreak of mass demonstrations in Mubarak’s Egypt. In 2011, we published personal narratives from an Egyptian-American immigrant student whose family proudly took part in the protests and a fourth-year student studying abroad at the American University in Cairo amidst the unrest who contemplated the potential boons and dangers of the regime transition after Mubarak’s ouster.

By 2012, we reflected more cautiously on Egypt’s unclear future. We noted that the underlying socio-economic causes of the initial unrest had been left unresolved by the change in leadership and that the ruling Military Council continued to resist a complete transition to civilian self-rule. Egypt’s street children, who had turned to the streets with their countrymen in protest of their poverty and marginalization, still suffered repression, denial of government services, and exclusion from the public sphere. Still, hope remained that Egypt’s newfound revolutionary “pride, as well as the memory of apathy, [would] sustain Egypt through a long, complicated and sometimes controversial transitional process.”

Since 2011, neither Libya nor Egypt has democratized, as many hoped that they would. Libya today is paralyzed by civil war. In Egypt, Abdel al-Sisi, who removed his predecessor Mohammad Morsi as president of Egypt by military coup in 2013, remains atop an authoritarian regime. The initial exuberance of the protesters and sympathetic Western observers has faded into cynicism.

What happened?

In Libya, Gaddafi was successfully pushed out of power by mass unrest and violence, but not by a unified political movement that could step into the power vacuum and restore a semblance of order. Armed militias, weak state institutions, and a fractured national identity did not bode well for a peaceful and orderly transition to democracy. This was especially true given the fraught political situation at the time — Gaddafi was not removed peacefully, but instead through a bloody civil war in which opposition forces received NATO backing. In the absence of a single post-Gaddafi movement or group with a wide-ranging mandate, the General National Council, the Libyan transitional government which lasted for only two years, failed to sufficiently legitimize itself and tamp down on disorder. Today, Libya is a war-torn proxy battleground for regional powers including the United State, Turkey, Russia, the UAE and Qatar, each intervening to protect their own economic and strategic interests.

Egypt’s revolution died in 2013, when Sisi’s military coup ousted Morsi and thwarted the country’s ongoing democratic transition. Morsi, Mubarak’s successor, was confronted in 2013 with mass protests accusing him of authoritarianism and Islamism, contrary to the Egyptian peoples’ desire for secular democracy. After Morsi failed to quell these protests, Sisi stepped in, removed Morsi from power, and suspended the Egyptian constitution. Why did this happen? Despite the population’s aspirations for Western-style democracy, Egypt lacked a political tradition of democracy, which severely hampered its ability to realize democratic government. Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood dominated electoral politics, which caused non-Islamists to distrust the vote. The Egyptian state was so accustomed to authoritarian governance that each successive regime similarly repressed its opposition by, for example, brutalizing peaceful protesters, harassing the media, and purging judges. Ultimately, many Egyptians became disillusioned with the promise of democracy, finding themselves angered by a political process which went through the shallow motions of democratic elections and politics but was deeply tainted by authoritarian political culture. Today, Sisi continues to rule as Egypt’s dictator.

Our writers were not wrong when they described and embodied the Arab Spring’s hope for peaceful revolution across the Middle East. Unfortunately, they had simply not yet seen events play out. Despite the initial success of the Arab revolutions, most were crushed by dictators or, after toppling one autocratic regime, saw the rise of a new autocrat or the outbreak of ruinous civil disorder. Only one country, Tunisia, managed to steer a course from dictatorship to healthy democracy.

Despite its unrealized promise, the Arab Spring was a defining moment in modern political history. Thousands of young people rose up spontaneously to demand an end to corruption and dictatorship, putting their bodies on the line in the hope of a better tomorrow. And as they marched for their rights, we were inspired by their passion and conviction.

In many ways, The Generation found its voice covering the Arab Spring. We saw firsthand that when young people speak, the world listens. And even though the world remains beset with problems, we maintain that writing about those problems is an act of optimism. Our generation isn’t resigned to the world as it is. We’re eager to make a better world real.

November 22, 2020 43 comments

Featured Freedom of Speech Globalization Human Rights Internet Journalism Society and Culture Technology

Social Media, Protest, and the Freedom of Speech

written by Annabelle Werner

This article is the fourth of five pieces from our summer series for 2020. The theme this summer is “Challenging Narratives.” In the coming days and weeks, The Generation will publish more articles where our writers challenge various notions to provide new and different perspectives on the debates and events shaping your world.

State violence, racial protest, and debates on the freedom of speech are not novel phenomena, but with the advent of social media and its global proliferation, 2020 especially has witnessed a fundamental change in how citizens criticize their government and conduct political protest. In
order for citizens to actualize their fundamental rights in the 21st century, one must navigate the complex relationship between free speech, democratic institutions, and the broadcasting power of social networks. From the Arab Spring a decade ago to the Belarusian election and George Floyd protests of this summer, social media platforms have democratized the ability to rapidly spread information about injustice to millions. Yet as these platforms become increasingly inseparable from our lives, online spaces have become battlegrounds between governments and protesters, and between information and misinformation. Now, the private companies who created these virtual domains must take on a balancing act that was previously reserved for states: protecting the freedom of speech while maintaining public safety. The complication with this role shift is that as international corporations, they must balance many countries’ cultural norms regarding the freedom of speech. To what extent will individual domestic laws be able to influence private, global platforms? In addition, social media companies have the task of remaining politically neutral while protecting election security. They are responsible for codifying checks on their own industry which inherently profits off of scandalous, viral information. The U.S. has seen the influence of online conspiracy theories increase from the 2016 election until now, demonstrating that what goes on in online chat rooms can have effects in the physical world. Conspiracy theories, inflammatory accusations by state leaders, hate speech, and calls for revolutions all violate some sort of public order in physical space, so how will social media platforms design cyber policies that will actualize people’s right to speech while protecting public order? Overall, because social platforms have become whistles for injustice and democratic tools for political organizing, social media companies must develop social media policy that helps users to actualize these freedoms online while fighting against misinformation and hatred that could pose as threats to our democracies.

Social media has catalyzed social and political movements since the Arab Spring in 2011. A viral video filmed by a common bystander ignited this powerful and paradigm altering movement. Mohamed Bouazizi was a 26-year-old fruit vendor who lit himself on fire in front of a government building after refusing to pay a police bribe. He had been unable to find work as a lawyer due to his involvement in the opposition Progressive Democratic Party, and he publicly committed suicide in protest of police harassment and President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s regime. Bouazizi’s death and his funeral were both filmed and sparked mass protests across Tunisia; President Ben Ali fled the country after a 23 year long reign four days after Bouazizi’s funeral. Like dominos, protests erupted across Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Syria, and Yemen, all objecting to autocratic regimes. Social media created the ability for common citizens, especially young people, to collect and share evidence of state brutality. This technology has served as a system for fact checking government propaganda and has allowed opposition movements of repressive regimes to quickly galvanize and organize people in real life. While the results of the Arab Spring did not result in the “political reform and social justice” that was hoped for (Tunisia was the only nation that gained substantial changes in the form of a new constitution), technology was intrinsic to sparking these revolutionary movements and defining a new, 21st century method of actualizing one’s right to speak and assemble.

More recent examples of how social media has empowered everyday people and helped corroborate state brutality can be found in Lebanon and Belarus. In Lebanon, the government’s handling of the harrowing August 4th explosion in Beirut’s port, in addition to existing outrage over the governmental fiscal policy decisions during the nation’s grim economic recession, has ignited protest around the country. Videos of the explosion were disseminated widely across global news, and soon after, videos of excessive uses of force such as the use of tear gas on peaceful protesters began circulating on social media. According to Human Rights Watch, researchers “observed security forces fire a tear gas canister directly at a protester’s head, in violation of international standards, severely injuring him.” A video of the aftermath of that event where the man is being treated for his injuries was posted on Twitter and currently has 119,000 views. In Belarus, protests have broken out after attacks on members of the opposition party and the corruption of the sitting president. Aisha Jung, Amnesty International’s Senior Campaigner on Belarus, said:

“The people who have gathered to denounce the elimination of opposition presidential candidates from the election list have every right to take to the streets…Protesters claim that the sole reason Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s political opponents have been purged from the campaign is so that he can seek a sixth consecutive term as President, effectively unopposed.”

Peaceful protestors are now camped out in front of the Minsk parliament building in what is known as Independence Square. Anyone in the world with access to Twitter can be witness to these powerful moments; they can see the overwhelming crowd from a bird’s eye view and hear the ringing echo of thousands of voices bounce off the buildings. Yet, one can also find graphic videos of unnecessary and excessive force on peaceful Belarusian protesters in the media. These videos and images serve as evidence of state violence, dispel propaganda, and have captured the world’s attention.

One final example of social media’s role in galvanizing protests includes the recent demonstrations for racial justice across the United States which may be the largest social movement in U.S. history. Everyday people of all races and backgrounds, in addition to celebrities, sports teams, and corporations, have been contributing their support for the Black Lives Matter Global Network. The protests were ignited by the George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police on May 25th. 17-year-old Darnella Frazier captured the shocking image of the killing, which showed one officer kneeling on Floyd’s neck as he begged for his life while three other police officers looked distantly on. In America, protests over police brutality and racism have been catalyzed in the past by similar videos taken by bystanders. The Rodney King Riots of 1992 erupted after four Los Angeles policemen were acquitted for a brutal beating of Rodney King, a violent act caught on camera that made national and global news. Since then, technology has become heavily integrated into our lives and vastly accessible to many, so now more than ever the everyday citizen has the ability to record chaotic and events that could later be used to inform others or corroborate eyewitness accounts.

In an analysis of these events, one can view social media and technology as a widely accessible, democratic outlet where nearly anyone can exercise their human right to the freedom of expression. The people can share their voices, experiences, and opinions in ways that can check political regimes. But social media platforms are also private companies that, especially after the 2016 U.S. election, are reviewing their policies and investigating how they will balance the. universal right to free speech and the need to maintain public safety as well as stopping the spread of maliciously false information that could lead to real life disasters and threaten civic
institutions.

In 2016, a bizarre example of how fake social media accounts and conspiracy theories could develop real consequences arose. Crazed rumors about presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s connection to a child sex trafficking ring hidden in a Washington D.C. pizza parlor spread on social media. Bot accounts, which are accounts that “automatically create tweets without direct human oversight”, helped to share and promote information on what became known as “Pizzagate” along with radical online “personalities” like conservative radio host Alex Jones. Edgar Welch, a believer of such theories, showed up to the supposed center of this satanic ring, Comet Ping Pong Pizza, with a “Colt AR-15 assault rifle, a .38-caliber Colt revolver and a folding knife, [and] fired his gun two or three times.” No one was injured, but this strange incident serves as an example of how fake media accounts created for the purposes of smearing a political figure online can have real and violent consequences. More recently, a group founded on similar beliefs to “Pizzagate” called QAnon has amassed followers on mainstream platforms. The Washington Post defines QAnon’s beliefs as

“… a concoction of allegations against Democratic politicians, celebrities and supposed members of a ‘deep state’ government bureaucracy, against whom Trump is seen as waging a valiant battle. Purported pedophilia rings are central to the conspiracy theory, along with Satanism and secret judicial proceedings’. QAnon believers await the ‘Great Awakening,’ or the moment the general public realizes the conspiracy exists, and the ‘Storm,’ when thousands of wrongdoers face justice.”

Despite being labeled a domestic terror threat by the FBI, Facebook only began removing QAnon platforms in August of 2020; this included 790 groups and 440 pages. Conspiracy theorists with fringe opinions spread false information to promote their own interests, interests defined by a system where the more followers one has, the more money one stands to make from advertising deals. For example, Alex Jones was “permanently suspended” from Twitter in 2018 on the grounds that his tweets violated Twitter’s community guidelines against abusive behavior which states “you may not engage in the targeted harassment of someone, or incite other people to do so. We consider abusive behavior an attempt to harass, intimidate, or silence someone else’s voice.” Recently in 2020, Alex Jones and his “InfoWars” app were banned from the Google Play store after spreading false information about the coronavirus; Jones also “lost an appeal in a defamation case about his claims related to the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting” and racked up nearly $150,000 total in legal fees before the trial. Yet, cases where platforms that are actually taken down are the exception, and usually after significant harm has done. The spread of maliciously false information has terrible consequences in reality, especially during a pandemic that requires a collective effort and understanding which is constantly undermined by this misinformation complex.

The benefit of social media is that a single person has the potential to reach millions of people at once, but that also serves as a complication in the balancing act between protecting one’s right to self-expression and ensuring public safety. In America, hateful or inflammatory speech is usually thought of as “lawful but awful” and protected as long as it is not meant to incite imminent violence. But social media platforms span across many nations, all with differing regulations regarding one’s speech. An NPR podcast about free speech and social media discussed how hate speech is not protected in Europe and the EU has developed a solution of writing their guidelines into the terms of service that is signed by users of their regions; they warn platforms of passing restrictive laws against them if these rules are not factored in, while the Trump administration is also threatening legislative action if platforms do not conform to their own standards. This creates a tension unique to an international platform that has to balance the various cultural norms regarding free speech laws.

Another debate influencing free speech online is the one of the major components of Trump’s platform known as “Fake News” which is the idea that traditional media coverage and social media algorithms discriminate against conservative viewpoints. Despite this pervasive allegation from the Right, there has been no evidence to substantiate this claim. In one study, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and the National University of Singapore debunked this assertion of online conservative bias in their work “The Ideological Landscape of Twitter: Comparing the Production versus Consumption of Information on the Platform” where they found that “while partisan opinion leaders are certainly polarized, centrist or non-political voices are much more likely to produce the most visible information on the platform”. Online platforms are methods where both politicians and citizens of many countries can actualize their freedom of expression, but the struggle between governments and these private companies over algorithms and guidelines will only continue as these platforms age and grow.

Finally, other corporations are also weighing in on the issue as Coca Cola, Target and other major companies have recently limited or stopped advertising on Facebook in order to push Facebook to codify new rules regarding hate speech. This debate over the role of the platform in protecting the public order has not only been reactivated by false information about the COVID- 19 pandemic, but about the validity of the U.S. 2020 presidential election as well. Twitter has tacked two disclaimers on President Trump’s tweets this past year about voter fraud and the validity of US elections as well as a tweet “implying [that] protesters in Minneapolis could be shot.” A key factor in this debate over expression on online platforms involves the profile of the speaker. Should public figures with the ability to reach so many, compounded by the legitimacy of their position, have different standards of what they can say on social media than the average person?

Social media has equipped the everyday person with the ability to document injustice and corroborate their experience with evidence. It has catalyzed protests against racial injustice and state brutality in the United States, facilitating one of the largest social movements the world has seen. It has been utilized to ignite revolutions and check autocratic regimes. But social media platforms must practice a balancing act. They must protect the public against false information spread with malicious intent – like defamatory rumors about a political figure spread by an opposition party or hostile government – while also confronting structural incentives that encourage peddlers of misinformation to make millions by circulating hateful conspiracy theories. But who has the right to determine what is a lawful expression of one’s opinion and what are lies intended to incite violence? We know that social media has the power to stir revolutions and instigate social movements. Which movements should be allowed to grow at the risk of violating public order? We also know that social media has the power to make fringe opinions or conspiracies appear to be mainstream understandings. How will companies protect free expression and public safety? Should widely followed accounts of public figures be held to different standards of the acceptability of what they share? Ultimately, this election year will help define this gray area as private social media platforms write new cyber policies to govern virtual communities that have become inseparable from how we exercise our right to expression and protest in our physical ones.

October 27, 2020 392 comments

National Security Russia Society and Culture Technology United States

A Discussion With Dr. Fiona Hill on the Role Social Media Plays in Russian Meddling in U.S. Democracy

written by Zachary Durkee

Dr. Fiona Hill is a former official at the U.S. National Security Council specializing in Russian and European affairs. She was a lead witness in the November 2019 House hearings regarding the impeachment of President Trump. She currently serves as a senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution.

On October 6th, I and Taylor Fairless had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Fiona Hill. My angle of the interview focused on engaging her expertise to explore the role that social media plays in Russian meddling in the U.S. electoral process. My question centered on the challenge of how the United States can effectively thwart Russian disinformation on social media when many argue that they simply exploit vulnerabilities inherent to the platforms themselves. Dr. Hill agreed with this assessment, which makes it an issue she believes we will be grappling with for “some time to come.”

In a recent article where I questioned if social media can undermine democracy, I broadly noted that these vulnerabilities included their content curation algorithms, targeted digital advertising, and much of the toxic psychology that guides engagement on them. These varying facets enable foreign actors like Russia to engineer content that compounds polarization and saturates feeds with misleading or false information. Facebook estimates that Russian actors managed to generate 80,000 posts that reached nearly 126 million people over the span of two years in the United States.

Information has always been a blessing and curse

Dr. Hill noted that information, regardless of the way it is delivered, has always been susceptible to deception, falsehoods, and lies. She argues that these are issues that are part of human nature. “Humans have always had a propensity for spreading rumors.” In preliterate times, this occurred via word-of-mouth and town criers, then pamphlets, print news, and eventually the digital realm. To her, this dynamic is simply part of a larger information commons, making it unsurprising that the same phenomena that we have seen over the sweep of history are now playing out on Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms.

Dr. Hill believes the main difference is that social media platforms are “speeding up” the personal interactions that we have as human beings. Indeed, much of this information and interaction is distributed through highly sophisticated algorithms and is instantly engaged with by millions of people each day. Furthermore, no single person receives the same information experience. Each person is curated content that reflects what these platforms and actors believe an individual will be receptive to. This is what can make deception, falsehoods, and lies become so effective and formidable in the digital realm.

I stated before that the advent of targeted digital advertising enables actors, malicious or not, to engineer and formulate content that it believes their targeted audience would likely react and engage with. In 2018, the House Intelligence Committee released 3,500 Russian Facebook ads that were designed to target and polarize specific portions of the population. In some cases, Russian-owned pages created and promoted political rallies where they hoped people would violently clash. Russia’s sophisticated and broad utilization of data-centered advertising demonstrates the dystopian implication social media can have on the political process when users are reduced to data points for sale.

The Path Forward

Dr. Hill believes that self-regulation is the most practical way to thwart Russian disinformation on these platforms. She makes it clear to acknowledge the flip-side of social media, stating that the “leveling out and leveling up” of information has enabled more people than ever to have access to critical, informative information. Her reasoning for self-regulation is that a draconian, heavy-handed government approach to regulating these highly complicated platforms runs the risk of squashing free speech. “We thrive on free speech, free engagement, and freedom of assembly,” which increasingly takes place on the internet and these platforms within our societies.

Considering this, disinformation is something we will have to accept and grapple with for some time. “We will have to be creative in how we handle it for the foreseeable future because what is a strength is also often a vulnerability,” Dr. Hill says. She argues that this balancing act will largely rely on self-regulation and creating close working partnerships with the government, the private sector, and the entirety of society. “We ourselves as consumers and users of the platforms […] have to also be aware that part of the responsibility is ours to be more careful of the information that we propagate, verify, and cross-reference.” She concludes: “we have to be active consumers, not just passive recipients of information.”

October 8, 2020 395 comments

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