Speaking Moylanguage #9: The Emerging Tech Edition
AI and communications, key concepts for the info environment, digital political ethics, machine translation, AI and work, staying current on research
Thank you for subscribing and welcome to the ninth edition of Speaking Moylanguage! If you are enjoying the series and finding it useful, I would really appreciate if you would recommend it to a friend.
This edition focuses on emerging technology - how it will influence us as communicators, campaigners and citizens at large.
This month I feel very fortunate in my collaborator and contributor. Dr Anamaria Dutceac Segesten has a list of projects, titles and research interests as long as your arm - she is Reader in Strategic Communication and Senior Lecturer in European Studies in Lund University, Associate Editor for the Journal of Information Technology and Politics and co-coordinates Lund University’s artificial intelligence (AI) research network.
I have huge respect for her depth and breath of knowledge - and she is without a doubt one of the best people to have on hand to bounce ideas off, to brainstorm with and to get feedback from!
A quick overview for the uninitiated:
The newsletter is divided into three sections - stories, ideas and skills.
The content is mostly shared in Google Doc format, with comments enabled.
Please leave comments, share more content, elaborate and ask questions - I do reply, read and appreciate them!
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1. Stories
Three Ways AI Changes the Communication Profession
Dr Anamaria Dutceac Segesten explores artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact on communicators. First she looks at what exactly AI is and how it works, then diving into a selection of transformations currently underway and exploring how they might develop in the future.
Ten Key Concepts in the New Information Environment
There are a lot of new concepts flying around about the new information environment. In this piece I have outlined some important concepts to help understand how modern information flows work. The criteria upon which I have chosen these concepts are:
They are affecting or are open issues in the current information environment.
They stand to grow in their impact.
They have broad implications at a societal level.
2. Ideas
Ethics in Digital Political Campaigning
In the run up to the 2020 elections four top US universities (Johns Hopkins, Georgetown University, Fordham University and the University of North Carolina) published a comprehensive report recommending how candidates, platforms and regulators can promote and protect fair elections. I read through Digital Political Ethics: Aligning Principles with Practice - in this piece I share a few notes from reading the report.
Machine Translation: Opportunities and Limits
Machine translation (MT) is the automated translation of content into another language without human intervention. MT has been around for decades, but has increasingly grown in popularity these days. In this piece, I explore some of the developments in MT, its pros and cons and some best practices in when and how to use it.
3. Skills
Free Course on “AI, Business and the Future of Work”
This month a free online course on AI, developed by Dr Anamaria Dutceac Segesten, has been launched!
With vast challenges and opportunities ahead, shaping the future of work and organisations will most likely depend on the way we choose to act today and in the coming years. But where should we start looking? Sign up to delve deeper into exciting and vital knowledge on this topic!
Keeping Your Team Current on Research and Tech
Staying up to date with the latest research and thinking is tough - especially when we’re often lost in the day-to-day. In this piece suggest some ways you might organise a team to:
follow important developments
prioritise this as a task
absorb the knowledge into the team
Some recommendations
Renee DiResta and Beth Goldberg’s piece on “Prebunking Health Misinformation Tropes Can Stop Their Spread”.
Sphera is launching the second round of its pan-European contest for the production of 12 podcast series in 6 European languages.
Kristen Hare wrote an interesting a piece on lessons about media membership.
Ben Whitelaw - of Everything in Moderation fame - posted a thread on Reddit’s subreddit revolution.
Jeremy Kahn’s revealing article on executives’ admission personal data harvesting and use.
How Tiktok’s algorithm works - a 13 min video from the Wall Street Journal.