Opinion NCRC...
From A4
Here’s a selection of topics to be presented this year: “Appreciating the Role of Folk Media in Rural Development,” by Jude Vincent E. Parcon; “Recording Igorot-ness through Igorot-made Music Videos,” by Domingo, de Velez, and Landicho; and “#MarcosPaRin? The Marcos Myth in the 20th Century,” by Areola, Bonifacio, Evora, Maranan, and Maximo. The two-day conference will be bookended by three pre- and postconference workshops. On Nov. 22, “Pagpapahayag” comprises seminars on research dissemination and research presentation, while on Nov. 24, “Paglilikha” is a day-long activity that covers the conceptualization of qualitative and quantitative research. The conference is open to the public for a fee of P300 that gets you a badge, a book of the abstracts, and a certificate of participation. I’m excited to be presenting my PhD dissertation “Kulturang Karera: Communicating Philippine Horseracing Culture” at this year’s NCRC. I’ll be sharing my model framework for studying subcultures and other special interest groups. It will be my first time to present a research paper and I look forward to learning from my colleagues in the discipline. Having a venue to share findings and insights is every research geek’s wet dream. I used to run my fingers over the spines of the theses and dissertations shelved at the UP-CMC Graduate Students lounge, thinking it was a pity that all the interesting knowledge inside them was locked up in their pages, far from the eager eyes of appreciative readers. Now the results of months, even years, of study will now see the light of day and be shared with others who could learn and benefit from them. Although pure research has no need to justify itself with a practical purpose— “knowledge for knowledge’s sake” is my mantra—imagine if a practical use or application were found for the research conducted by patient and dedicated scholars. That would make the research even more rewarding and meaningful. And with the NCRC as a venue to disseminate the work of Filipino communication scholars, the world of research is made much more vibrant and relevant. Dr. Ortuoste is a California-based writer. Follow her on Facebook: Jenny Ortuoste, Twitter: @jennyortuoste, Instagram: @jensdecember, @ artuoste
A BRIEF...
From A4
the other way around. As a result, a summer’s hour ends up being longer than a winter’s hour! This difference explains lines from Medieval poetry that talk about a summer’s hour or a winter’s hour. For example, consider the following lines from the Old English text The Later Genesis: “Oh, he exclaimed, if I could just free myself for one winter’s hour, what could I do with this host of hell!” In the poem, the speaker (who happens to be the Devil shackled in hell) uses the phrase ‘one winter’s hour’ to convey how little time he needs to accomplish his goal. He is not asking for much, just one winter’s hour. To give another (more modern) example, consider the following lines from Mary Elizabeth Robinson’s “To An Infant Sleeping”: “The Summer day of life will lour/ As long, poor Boy, as Winter’s hour.” Here, Robinson uses ‘winter’s hour’ to express the brevity of youth (“The Summer day of life”). Such figures of speech only work because in the old system of keeping time, a winter’s hour can be significantly shorter than a summer’s hour. The invention of clocks that could keep time with great precision put an end to this inconsistency in the length of an hour. Today, one hour is defined as 3,600 seconds. One second, in turn, is precisely defined in terms of fundamental physics. That said, it is still instructive to look back to those time when we had to rely on the celestial motions to mark the passage of our lives. Learning about those times remind us of species’ intimate connections with the cycles of our cosmic neighborhood. Pecier Decierdo is the resident physicist and astronomer of The Mind Museum.
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2017
A5
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FACEBOOK MARKS THE END OF SOCIAL MEDIA’S WILD WEST By Conor Sen THE news that Facebook will turn over details of Russian ad buys to Congress recalls a column written by my colleague Eli Lake early year. He wrote that in forcing National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to resign, President Donald Trump “caved in to his political and bureaucratic opposition.” That February column warned: “Flynn is only the appetizer. Trump is the entree.” In the case of Facebook Inc., the 3,000 advertisement buys turned over to Congress are indeed the appetizer. Regulation carrying the force of law is the inevitable entree. It was only 16 months ago when reports surfaced that Facebook employees were removing stories of interest to conservative users from its trending news section. Facebook responded by automating the section, removing humans from the editorial process. Thus began Facebook’s uneasy journey into self-regulation. Of course, removing humans from the editorial process and allowing unfiltered content to be distributed has its own issues, as Facebook learned during the election last year. Allegations
of “fake news” influencing the 2016 presidential election were widespread after Trump defeated Hillary Clinton. The site was accused of being played by foreign entities promoting false articles. Facebook responded by pledging to take steps to combat fake news. Increasingly, Facebook is finding itself in an impossible position as it tries to remain, in spirit at least, a content-agnostic platform that allows everyone to have a voice. Sometimes the company faces scrutiny when it allows certain content to remain, as in the case of fake news or neo-Nazi propaganda. Other times it faces scrutiny for removing content. Recently Facebook’s algorithmic ad targeting has been faulted as well. ProPublica reported last week the disturbing finding that algorithms allowed the existence of an ad category for anti-Semitic content. The story also noted that algorithms correlated the behavior of anti-Semites with those in a “Second Amendment” category, a finding that upset gun-rights advocates who don’t want to be seen as anti-Semites. What’s apparent in the past 16 months is a Wild West of self-regulation. Time and time again,
Facebook has shown that if confronted with a challenge, the company will listen and often respond. Partisan trending topics, fake news, neoNazis, Russian meddling—if it generates enough outrage, it’ll get addressed eventually. But Facebook’s power and influence seem likely to grow beyond the “self-regulation” phase. That’s why markets are willing to give the company a valuation of $500 billion when its 2017 profits will be in the neighborhood of only $15 billion. (Bloomberg data shows analysts expect Facebook’s revenue to grow to $76 billion in 2020, almost doubling projections for 2017.) The question remains how long self-regulation will be acceptable to the public and Congress. Now Facebook has tipped its hand. Large, multinational corporations don’t turn over documents to Congress out of the goodness of their hearts. Facebook’s statement about why it’s turning over information to Congress goes to great lengths to emphasize it was the company’s own decision, and that the first priority is to protect user privacy. Don’t be fooled. Self-regulation will fail, and real regulation will begin. This is how it starts. Bloomberg
KILLING ME INSIDE
A Rohingya refugee from Myanmar’s Rakhine state holds a baby after arriving at a refugee camp near the Bangladeshi town of Teknaf on Sept. 5, 2017. AFP
By Sam Jahan COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh—The phone rang at 4 a.m. It was Kamal, a Rohingya man whom I met last fall during the Rohingya exodus to Bangladesh who was living near Cox’s Bazar, a fishing port not far from the Myanmar border. “Assalamu Alaykum Kamal bhai, what’s up?” I said in a sleepy voice. “Sir! They are burning everything... killing us randomly. I’m going to Burma to bring my relatives. Please let the world know about this oppression and pray for us!” he said, panting. He seemed to be running. He then hung up. I haven’t heard a word from him since. The phone call left me wide awake. I knew the Myanmar army had been gathering in the Rakhine region for the past few days and that scores of Rohingya were arriv-
ing at the border of Bangladesh, despite repeated denials from border and coast guards. I was supposed to be home for a week of bed rest because of severe back pain. But after Kamal’s phone call, I literally begged my office to let me go to Cox’s Bazar on a reporting mission. I knew enough of the story to realize that something big was brewing. Whenever the Myanmar army conducted operations in the Rahine state, it resulted in scores of Rohingya fleeing and international accusations that the government forces were engaging in ethnic cleansing of the Muslim minority people living in the Buddhist-majority country. I flew to Cox’s with my notebook, tape recorder, camera, tripod and a bag full of painkillers. I headed to a border guard outpost in a frontier area called Ghumdhum to meet with a commander.
The gentleman was very cooperative. He allowed me to film our interview, during which he said that the situation was calm and quiet. As soon as I turned off the record button, as if on cue, hundreds of rounds of gunshots erupted on the other side of the border, nearly a kilometer away. Mortar shells dropped intermittently into the ditches inside the no-man’s land, sending up splashes of 15-20 meters high. I saw thousands of people, who had been hiding in the hills, running for their lives toward the border. I’ve never seen anything so astounding before. I was intimidated, excited, angry and above all very curious. This was happening before my own eyes. The commander ordered his men to be ready for any emergencies and sent dozens of personnel to the border posts and trenches. These men allowed the Rohingya to come closer to the Bangladesh border, though
they didn’t allow them to enter the country. “At least we can let them come closer so that they are safe from the mortars’ range,” the commander said. As I filmed the fleeing refugees in the distance, kicking myself for not having brought a bigger lens, the commander approached me, asking me to reinterview him. He seemed to be emotional and made a bold statement for a government official. “We can see great numbers of refugees coming down from the hills, mostly women and children. We hear heavy firing from a Burmese post, but we cannot see exactly what is happening. The situation seems very tense and we are on the highest alert.” By the next day, the world knew of the atrocities that were reported in the Rohingya villages. Having run away, scores of them were now stranded inside Bangladesh. The next morning I rushed to the same spot. The Bangladesh border officers were guarding at least 500 Rohingyas who managed to cross. I was mesmerized. They were all women, children and old men. Sitting under the scorching sun after being drenched by the monsoon … As with any other humanitarian crisis, there are politics involved. We journalists try to cover what’s happening as best we can. I have returned home now from my mission. But I keep wondering what all of those kids that I wrote about are doing now, whether they’re alive and safe. Collateral damage is inevitable in any conflict, I understand that. But I just can’t get over all the grief that I saw, especially the children suffering. I managed to take care of my physical pain with medicine, but I wonder what painkillers will heal my mind after what I’ve witnessed these days. AFP
LONDON’S UBER BAN IS A BIG BREXIT MISTAKE By Tyler Cowen PRIME Minister Theresa May made a big speech Friday on Brexit negotiations, but the bigger news coming out of London may have been that the transit authority, Transport for London, decided not to renew the license of Uber Technologies Inc. to operate inside city limits. The decision is a clear statement that the future of both London and the UK are less bright than we might have thought even a few days ago. Banning Uber shows that a postBrexit nation won’t be the libertarian paradise that many Brexit advocates have been predicting or at least clamoring for. The notion was that European Union regulation was horribly restrictive, and British business would blossom under a reign of newfound freedom, if only it could be left to its own devices. Although that was never very plausible to begin with, it was a common argument from Brexit supporters such as MP Daniel Hannan. It’s now hard to raise that point with any credibility. The new Britain appears to be a nationalistic, job-protecting, quasimercantilist entity, as evidenced by the desire to preserve the work and pay of London’s traditional cabbies.
That’s hardly the right signal to send to a world considering new trade deals or possibly foreign investment in the UK. Uber, of course, is an American company, and it did sink capital into setting up in London—and its reputational capital is on the line in what is still Europe’s most economically important city. This kind of slap in the face won’t exactly encourage other market entrants, including in the dynamic tech sector that London so desperately seeking. A striking feature of this decision is the use of an outright ban rather than a gentler negotiation. Whether or not you agree with them, there are plausible criticisms of Uber. You might think the drivers need stronger security checks, the company needs to be removed from congested areas, it should pay more for local infrastructure, its drivers face subpar labor standards, and so on. Those worries, to the extent they are true, would suggest some mix of higher regulations and taxes for Uber. Yet the announcement of a pending ban is sending a broader signal to London and indeed British business that due regulatory process might be weak moving forward. It’s enough to make one long for the arduous, multistage regula-
tory decision processes of the EU. The good news is that the announcement did seem to leave open the possibility of revision through the appeals process. The London transit authority cited Uber’s approach to crime reporting and medical certification, as well as a lack of transparency to regulators as reasons for the ban. That suggests a revamped Uber might stand a chance. In the meantime, the service is up and running. But is the best way to deal with business regulation to take dramatic moves that grab headlines and fill my Twitter feed? Or does this tend to politicize and polarize opinion on what should be more narrowly technocratic issues? The Uber ban might seem like a kind of populist measure, but from the consumer side it is likely to harm wealthy Londoners the least, or perhaps even benefit them. I’ve taken many cab rides and Uber rides in London, and in general I find the cabs to be pretty expensive. But they offer better service. You can find one right away, the drivers have a remarkable and indeed fabled knowledge of London roads, they are on the whole good drivers, and the vehicles are large and comfortable. I prefer to take London cabs over London Uber,
even when Uber might be cheaper. Over time, let’s say Uber would continue to encroach upon the cab business. It then becomes harder to hail cabs, as arguably is already the case. Uber fares might be lower, but the average quality of the ride would be lower, too. That’s a better deal for poorer people, and an inferior deal for the well-off. Wealthy people are just fine with paying more and getting the better service. So in essence the Uber ban is locking in a system that harms poorer Londoners the most. Keep in mind the London Tube is not 24/7, and cabs are often more reluctant to pick up customers from dicier neighborhoods. Of course, London cabbies are better off from the ban, and there are anecdotal reports of them celebrating in the streets. That’s sooner a sign of bad public policy than a beneficial act for London users and riders, numbering about 2.5 million for Uber. Although cabbies are likely to see higher incomes, an estimated 40,000 people are driving for Uber in London. They will have a harder time making ends meet. Unfortunately, the UK is in a position where it can’t afford too many more mistakes. It just made one. Bloomberg