Author: Khutso Nkadimeng
05 Jun 2020
The power of media and its use is well documented, those who control information and its distribution, control the world. Although large corporations still heavily influence public opinion, access to their information and that of the rest of the world has a new gatekeeper, Google, the world's largest search engine. This reflection will not examine the research methodologies employed in the titled paper. It is a personal take on the conclusion and opinions supported by personal experience.
Dr Ruha Benjamin cautions against the fertilized entrepreneurial spirit when confronted with these technological problems [2]. I hypothesise that fixing the problem of access and connectivity will address the issue of local contribution to different spheres of the internet. It never occurred to me that there may be other factors at play that makes it difficult for me to find my family’s praise poem from a reputable online source and economist Dr Thomas Sowell alludes to it many of his books, culture. “Thus, we suggest that socioeconomic systems that produce high-quality research also tend to produce highly visible online content” [1]. Wealthy countries with high levels of connections tend to have more locally produced content, but a strong publishing industry, traditional or academic plays a big role [1].
So, in the spirit of Dr Benjamin’s appeal to us to join movements, organisations and activists currently addressing technological problems faced by different communities, as students we must play our part in contributing to knowledge and addressing the main problems highlighted by Digital Hegemonies: Connectivity, Weak or non-existent publishing industry and culture, Lack of participation and Search Engines.
Connectivity
The problem of connectivity is the one I firmly believe will be solved by entrepreneurialism. I believe this so much that I attempted to build a wireless mesh network around my community to address the problems of a poor connection and high cost. Once traditional television can be economically rivalled by streaming, there will be huge changes in how information is produced consumed in the country.
Weak or non-existent publishing industry and culture
South African universities are some of the leading research institutions in Africa and we have a relatively free and active press, consequently, a lot of information is being produced. But how much of it is accessible to an average person? How much of it is online and search optimised? There are also crucial pieces of our history dying with our elders, we must find ways to share and critique them.
Lack of participation
When constructing a culture of knowledge production, we must be careful not to build systems with gender, academic, economic or any bias. This is a major reason for the apparent lack of participation in the Global South,
Search Engines
Search engines are the new information pipelines “The importance of these new mediators is observable in the industry of search engine optimization (SEO), which reflects how these tools are now at the core of the media landscape, representing a considerable portion of global advertising markets.”[1]
We must understand how engines work and optimise our information for them. We must also recognise the power they possess and the danger they pose to our society, deciding on which information gets distribute is too much power, even for an algorithm, “since the company’s creation in 1998, Google’s algorithms have tended to favour highly central Web content: Pages linked to by a lot of other pages are prioritized, and those largely ignored are demoted in the rankings. This creates a worrying situation whereby it becomes difficult for those on the information peripheries to break out of their digital marginality.”
1. Andrea Ballatore, Mark Graham & Shilad Sen (2017) Digital Hegemonies: The Localness of Search Engine Results, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 107:5, 1194-1215, DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1308240
2. 1194-1215, DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1308240The Radical AI Podcast (2020) ‘LOVE, CHALLENGE, AND HOPE: BUILDING A MOVEMENT TO DISMANTLE THE NEW JIM CODE WITH RUHA BENJAMIN’. (The Radical AI Podcast).