LEGACY PRINT MEDIA HATE THEM! Local tech company discovers one weird trick to gain positive press coverage FAST!

We sit down with journalist Alexander Fanta to talk Google's place in the media landscape, how their funding of local news or grants for "innovation" may well have a more sinister purpose, and how other organisations are already using the unsteady revenue model of legacy print media to warp the media landscape to their liking. 

Links to Alex’s work
https://netzpolitik.org/author/alexander-fanta/ 
https://twitter.com/FantaAlexx
https://www.otto-brenner-stiftung.de/wissenschaftsportal/publikationen/titel/google-the-media-patron/aktion/show/obspaec/Publication/ 

More background: https://www.cjr.org/tow_center/are-google-and-facebook-really-the-future-of-journalism-new-policies-risk-making-it-so.php


Please note - Google is far from alone
Facebook have a similar playbook in the USA, but hide their funding in a ‘feature’ available only to publishers called Facebook News. (Us neither). https://washingtonmonthly.com/2021/04/19/is-facebook-buying-off-the-new-york-times/

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This podcast is part of the Are We Europe Podcast Family, a collective of like-minded European podcasts. You can become a member of Are We Europe at www.areweeurope.com/member

S3E42 Google's Chequebook & The Media [ft. Alexander Fanta]

This week we're all about Tax, and kicking off we speak to Paul Hebden of Tax Justice UK about their recent survey of attitudes to tax in the UK. The results may surprise you. 

Suitably sprung from all the tax talk, the gang go on to talk Tax Day (it seems like it comes earlier each year.) Are the Tories actually doing something progressive about taxation? Why has the Labour response been so weak? And how do we channel public opinion into making a tax system that actually works for everyone?

Check out Tax Justice UK on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TaxJusticeUK
And their report "Tax and Public Opinion": https://www.taxjustice.uk/tax-and-public-opinion.html 

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This podcast is part of the Are We Europe Podcast Family, a collective of like-minded European podcasts. You can become a member of Are We Europe at www.areweeurope/member

S3E41: The Public Wants Tax Justice, So Why Are Labour Dragging Their Feet?

This week the gang are catching up with Ifeoma Ozoma again, to discuss her efforts to introduce legislation in California to address the muzzling of workers who have been pushed out of organisations due to discrimination.  Ifeoma previously spoke with them in Episode 33 regarding her efforts to tackle disinformation on Pinterest's platform, and her decision to speak publicly about discrimination against her and others at the company.

The gang follow this up with a discussion around the power of individuals taking a legal stand against exploitative and discriminatory employers: touching on the recent UK Supreme Court ruling against Uber, the resignation of Matthew Taylor as the government's employment Tsar, and the $200m lobbying efforts that  pushed through (the ridiculous) Proposition 22 in California.

Follow Ifeoma Ozoma on Twitter: https://twitter.com/IfeomaOzoma
Read about the "Silenced No More Act" here: https://sd20.senate.ca.gov/news/2021-02-08-senator-leyva-introduces-%E2%80%9Csilenced-no-more-act%E2%80%9D

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S3E40 Silenced No More in Silicon Valley (feat. Ifeoma Ozoma)

The gang are talking environmental crisis this week, centred around Rowan's interview with Adrienne Buller of Common Wealth.  Her recent paper explored the problems with "ESG" finance, and the issue of relying on private finance more generally to address pressing social and environmental needs.  We then expand on just how much better we need to be doing, and why "WWII levels" of public sector intervention and investment may be very necessary.

Adrienne is on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/adribuller
Check out Adrienne's research: https://www.common-wealth.co.uk/reports/doing-well-by-doing-good-examining-the-rise-of-environmental-social-governance-esg-investing
Adrienne shared some further reading on greenwash for interested listeners:
- https://influencemap.org/report/Climate-Funds-and-Fossil-Fuels-8f2c813ed814fe5b1eef61b48497b592
- https://thefinanceinfo.com/2021/01/17/esg-accounting-needs-to-cut-through-the-greenwash/
- https://cyberbizsource.com/2021/02/22/esg-investment-favours-tax-avoiding-tech-companies/
- https://www.ft.com/content/d8a77b40-990e-4329-8629-a18ddbb39f0c

We've also got a longer version of the interview with Adrienne Buller - touching on bizarre financial instruments, and Benjamin Braun's work on asset management transforming corporate governance (https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/v6gue) - for subscribers on our Patreon www.patreon.com/connectedanddisaffected

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S3E39 Can Capitalism Address Environmental Crisis? (feat Adrienne Buller, Common Wealth)

People are FINALLY paying attention to the potential of health data - it just took a global pandemic to make it happen. It's kind of a no-brainer, when you dig into it, but governments apparently needed a push.

Rowan interviewed Jess Morley, Policy Lead at the Evidence Based Medicine DataLab at the University of Oxford, about her recent paper on online disinformation and how our information environments impact our health. The guiding question was: Why can we quarantine people who are sick and not bits of information that we know are 'sick'?

Read the paper here: https://www.publichealthpost.org/viewpoints/health-threats-in-the-infosphere/
Follow Jess: https://twitter.com/jessRmorley 
And the DataLab: http://www.thedatalab.org/

Happily, there is actually some legislation on the horizon that could mitigate at least some of this problem.

Warren takes us on a deep dive into the EU and UK Government's response to disinformation and online harms, including a full breakdown of the Tory governments recent proposals to regulate online harm - a rare instance of something the podcast can broadly get behind.

Get the full UK paper here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fact-sheet-online-harms-full-government-response

In general, healthcare needs to be modernised - but not in the way that Tories tend to put it. We don't mean more cuts, more manager or more external consultants. We mean making use of the kinds of data that have become core parts of most other sectors. As Jess put it, there is a lot more we could be doing with health data if it wasn't being handled in Excel!

S3E38 Health & Our Infosphere [ft. Jess Morley]

The gang return for the last one of the year, looking back across a year of pandemic, incompetence, and one more Brexit crisis.  Ho Ho Ho.

Rowan discusses how different countries across Europe and the world have responded to COVID, and how Britain compares.  Warren takes us through the 19 U-Turns achieved in 8 months by UK's Tory Government, and the themes sitting behind these.  And Raj brings the family round the bonfire for one last chat about the final failures of Brexit talks, before the UK is plunged into months of additional economic pain and rising prices (at best) for no tangible gain.  Other than impending neoliberal reforms of the UK...

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S3E37 Merry Christmas, Oh Wait, Actually, No Christmas

This week it's an election double-header. First, Warren takes us through a Week In Bullshit on Trumpism: is the USA really so polarised? Will Trump supporters ever swing back to the centre? And how much is the media exaggerating the threat of the populist right?

Moving on, we interview Jon Narcross of the Electoral Reform Society about their work, what a better system of voting might look like, and how change might come about here in the UK.

See the ERS's work here: https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/
If you're a Labour member, check out Labour for a New Democracy here: https://www.labourforanewdemocracy.org.uk/

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S3E36: Is Electoral Reform The Key? with Jon Narcross of the Electoral Reform Society

The gang return this week with a special episode devoted the issue of diversity in economics, specifically Black representation and the fields relative silence in the face of upheavals we've seen this summer

Rowan talks us through some of the survey research around the state of the field, and Warren sits down with Fadekemi Abiru - a female black economist and data scientist working in the UK - to discuss the issues and effects of Black representation in economics, bringing to life her own work informing social policy, and highlighting the great work of the Black Economists Network (TBEN) to expand representation and influence within the field.

Fadekemi shouts out to Raj Chetty's impactful data charts: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2018/01/11/raj-chetty-in-14-charts-big-findings-on-opportunity-and-mobility-we-should-know/
As well as Mariana Mazzucato: https://marianamazzucato.com/

Be sure to follow TBEN:
https://twitter.com/TheBlackEcon_
https://www.instagram.com/theblackecon_/
https://www.tben.co.uk/

Fadekemi writes for...
Stears Business: https://republic.com.ng/author/f-abiru/
Republic: https://republic.com.ng/author/f-abiru/

Articles on Black representation and diversity in economics:
https://qz.com/1492283/economics-has-a-crisis-of-diversity/
https://www.newsweek.com/economists-silence-racism-100-years-making-opinion-1509790
https://twitter.com/itsafronomics/status/1266714711913107456
https://www.niesr.ac.uk/blog/economics-after-slavery-and-george-floyd
https://fortune.com/2020/06/19/black-economists-fixing-systemic-racism-juneteenth/
https://www.res.org.uk/resources-page/economics-has-a-diversity-problem-starting-at-school-and-university-new-discovereconomics-campaign-launched.html

Also check out our podcast with Ifeoma Ozuma about her experience of discrimination, the importance of her work at Pinterest, and why diversity is so important to innovation and progress https://soundcloud.com/connectedanddisaffected/ep33-raj-final

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EP35 Diversity in Economics, A Lack Of (feat. Fadekemi Abiru of The Black Economists Network)

This week the boys are responding to a listener request, and reviewing Starmer's performance so far.  Will he continue Corbynism?  Is he Blair Mk.2?  Is Labour guaranteed to win under his leadership?  Or will he destroy Labour from the inside?

TL;DR - none of these things.

Featuring a potted history of Starmers political background, a Totally Reliable reddit poll run by Rowan, and a combination of our defences and concerns about Starmers leadership.  As well as recognising how, at this point, there are many things we don't know.

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S3E34 The Keir Starmer Review Pod

We've spoken about tech platforms failing to police their content several times before, but every so often we like to highlight successful examples. 

Back at the start of lockdown, we spoke about the amazing work being done at Pinterest to combat anti-vaxx misinformation. But it's since been revealed that the person spearheading all that work - Ifeoma Ozoma - was being underpaid and mistreated to the point that she was forced out of the company.

It is reasonable to talk about the complexity of online content and argue about regulatory oversight, but all too often we ignore the culture inside these companies. 

Toxic culture in Big Tech companies is a genuine inhibitor to solving these problems and we need to pay attention to it because they are the only organisations that are able to solve it.

Follow Ifeoma here: https://twitter.com/IfeomaOzoma

S3E33 Diversity Isn't A Buzzword; It's A Matter Of Public Health (feat. Ifeoma Ozoma)

We're joined by Michael Hobbes, podcasting brother and journalist for the Huffington Post, for a wide ranging episode centred on his recent article 'S**thole' Countries Have Handled The Coronavirus Better Than The United States. Covered: 
- Why are places like Vietnam objectively handling the Corona better than the US and UK?
- Why do people get so racist when reminded about it?
- What is it about modern authoritarians that makes them so bad at public health crises?

Check out Mike's work at https://www.huffpost.com/author/michael-hobbes
and make sure you listen to his awesome podcast "You're Wrong About" wherever you get your podcasts or on https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/youre-wrong-about/id1380008439

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S3E32: "S**thole Countries" are dealing with C-19 surprisingly well... (W/ Michael Hobbes)

It's a social media double-header this week. First, Warren reports back from his adventures in Boomer-populated Facebook political discussion groups and the cesspool of hate he found within.

After that we're joined by postdoc researcher of the University of Copenhagen Sille Obelitz Søe to talk about how just looking for "truth" in online posts isn't enough, how the distinctions between information, disinformation and misinformation make it nearly impossible for algorithms to detect them, and what this will mean for social media in an era of increasing regulation.

Check out Sille's work at https://www.donttakeitpersonal.net/, or on the University of Copenhagen website.

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S3E31: The Not-So-Simple Search For Truth On Social Media

Raj and Rowan have watched internet Coronavirus conspiracy theory movie "Plandemic" and we're here to tell you all about it. 

Join us on a journey through the Coronaverse, taking in HIV vaccines, Ebola, Bill Gates, and why we should be opening the beaches ASAP.

Needless to say this is all nonsense and you should read the following:
https://www.reddit.com/r/CovIdiots/comments/gezery/plandemic_documentary_debunked/
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/fact-checking-judy-mikovits-controversial-virologist-attacking-anthony-fauci-viral

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S3E30: We Watched Plandemic So You Don't Have To

The medical effects of the Coronavirus are already being felt around the world. But the economic effects might be more severe, and felt for long after the medical emergency is over. We take a dive into the effects of the lockdown on the economy, the steps that states are having to take to manage it, and what could be in store for the future. 

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S3E29: Two Pandemics - Examining the economics of Coronavirus

This week we're looking at party politics. Why do so many people feel like parties no longer represent them? Can the current institutions keep up with the modern world, or do we need new ones?

To help answer this we speak to Andrea Venzon and Colombe Cahen-Salvador of NOW!, a new organisation trying to build a global organisation to apply political pressure and achieve change outside of conventional national or party-political structures. Check out their work at www.now.world.

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EP28 Are Political Parties Capable of Tackling Global Problems?

This week is all about health, fake news, and the internet. With the Coronavirus in the headlines we look at how information about the virus has spread and how the Chinese government has reacted. Then it's on to the antivax movement. How has the internet allowed these beliefs to spread? And what are the platforms doing about it.

Shout out to pitchfork economics, a great podcast we've been listening to this week. You can find them on https://pitchforkeconomics.com/ or wherever you get your podcasts.

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S3E27: Coronavirus, Online Health Misinformation and the Antivax Movement

It's an interview double header this week as we tackle the topic of social media and its regulation. First, part 2 of our interview with author Richard Seymour, this time focusing on the atomising and radicalising effect of social media and what we can do about it. Then, we speak to communications expert (and bodybuilder) Marco Ricorda about political advertising, fake news, and regulation.

Follow Marco at twitter.com/marcoRecorder or on his website, https://marcorecorder.com/

You can follow Richard on twitter at twitter.com/leninology. He also blogs at leninology.co.uk

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S3E26: Can Europe get social media campaigning right? Feat. Richard Seymour and Marco Ricorda

We take a deeper look into the election result with Richard Seymour, author and writer of "Why Labour Lost — And Why We Must Press On" for Jacobin. We discuss what happened, what we can do about it, and why sadness and mourning is a necessary step in rebuilding. 

You can follow Richard on twitter at twitter.com/leninology. He also blogs at leninology.co.uk

We then go through the data from the election. Are Northern voters all Tories now? Did Labour lose popularity among the young? And what can we do about it in the future?

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S3E25: 24 Hour Sadcast/Optimismcast feat. Richard Seymour

It's been a depressing week at C&D headquarters. We review the general election: What happened? Why? Is Britain right wing now?

We also discuss what politics looks like outside of election season, and hear from Aline Muylaert of CitizenLab about how they're trying to build citizen engagement in the democratic process. Find out more about Aline's work at www.citizenlab.co .

In an effort to lift everyone's spirits Rowan deploys a long and detailed football analogy for youth politics. 

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S3E24: We Certainly Had An Election feat. Aline Muylaert

Here we go again.

Another election, another chance to weigh up the pros and cons of the major UK parties and bemoan the electoral system for forcing millions of people to settle for their second or third choices.

Join us for a (relatively) even-handed look at the what we're voting on, broken down into the key battlegrounds: Environment, Education, Economy, Health and, yes, Brexit.

For more information on the IFS cost analyses, take a look at this article: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/23/labour-tax-plans-credible-ideology-economy

One last thing: REMEMBER TO VOTE
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