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Elections and projections - physical and figurative

Eons ago I got quite fascinated by how elections and election integrity can be boosted by ambient interventions. Not a new idea by any means but dating back to fantastic experiments by newspapers and other publishers in the late 19th and early 20th century. See the NYT initiative below that in addition to projecting results onto facades also used an elaborate searchlight system to literally broadcast updated results into the broader world.

See https://www.nytimes.com/1905/11/07/archives/the-times-election-searchlight-code.html

Fast forward to today and - surprise - it is a new crop of online betting platforms that plaster cities with digital screens to show real-time betting odds for political contests. For example nicely illustrated here

They might have simply been lucky, or biased

or in this article here (pictures are presumable copyrighted so I do not reproduce them here)

Physical projection fusing with the figurative type of (future) projections. An interesting evolution of ambient electoral transparency, yet also with troubling side-effects as I outline elsewhere

Ambient disinformation

The potential of communicating via the built environment has for centuries been abused for sinister purposes, think paramount propaganda billboards of all sorts. So no surprise that contemporary disinformation agents avail themselves of these tools as well. But what is kind of astounding is the subtlety that they apply. Austria just exposed a Russian-engineered disinformation campaign that:

used pro-Ukrainian slogans on stickers and graffiti

designed in distinctive fascist aesthetics and style

and places these in low-key manner outside media outlets.

The neatly documented campaign pursued the ambition to associate Ukraine supporters with Nazi-attributes, playing into the Kremlin narrative that it is about a fight against a fascist government.

So no more big billboards à la cultural revolution or Politbuero, but the incredibly subtle visual cues and prompts, registering perhaps subconsciously and repetitively in the brains of the media people on their way to and from work every day. Wow, dark ambient arts, or sinister nudging - but unfortunately at a very sophisticated and low-cost level.

Source: Der Standard, AUT

#ambient accountability #built environment #psychogeography #nudge

The big disconnect - with real time public count-down

Lithuania has just made a big infrastructural leap, switching its electricity grid from synching with Russia to synching with Western Europe. A transformational move that the public was kept up-to-date on in real-time on this public screen, aptly located outside the museum of energy.

#performance

Train times and residents' rights in troubling times - an ambient campaign in Chicago

The specter of mass deportations of undocumented immigrants has prompted the city of Chicago to launch an ambient know-your-rights campaign on its public transport system.

In-station screens that usually display train timetables are now also showing QR-codes for click through to information in several languages on how to respond to stops by immigration agents.

The campaign is displayed on 400 screens for trains and buses in the Chicago metropolitan area.

#rights

Street grids shape political connections and mobilization opportunities

Engineering urban layouts to control unruly residents and shape political dynamics has long been a concern in urban planning and development, practiced perhaps most notoriously by the likes of Haussmann in Paris or Moses in New York.

And with advanced remote sensing technologies and granular survey methods we are getting ever deeper and more informed insights into the dynamics at play. Here an excerpt from a fascinating new paper on the built environment and political engagement in urban Ghana: "more gridded, orderly neighborhoods reduce the social interactions residents have with neighbors, lower embeddedness in political problem solving networks, and depress electoral turnout. Rather than making residents more legible to state officials, gridded streets make the local state and political realm less legible to residents by reducing opportunities to forge politically-valuable social ties in a context of clientelist politics."

The full paper is here: Nathan, Noah L., 2024, “Do Grids Demobilize? How Street Networks, Social Networks, and Political Networks Intersect,” forthcoming, American Journal of Political Science

#built environment

sky painting for sustainability

Remember, if in my age bracket, these annoying, yet quaint little planes flying along a beach with a little banner that usually read "eat more ice-cream" or some other commercial message? I was also fortunate to watch in person at Ars Electronica 2012 the first larger scale use of drones to paint patterns into the sky. Yet, here for the current state of the art and culmination of these efforts the amazing aerial spectacle accompanying the 2023 UNGA meetings and demanding more action to protect the Amazon. Check it out! Ambient messaging just does not get much bigger and more dynamic - the sky really is the limit.

image: AFP

#ambient accountability #performance

Ambient whistleblowing - a midsummer experience?

As seen last week on our midsummer car trip: Swedish authorities are concerned about illicit trades - perhaps particularly now that the Swedish kronor is taking a dip. So the customs agency is populating highway rest-stops in Southern Sweden with highly visible exhortations to blow the whistle on smuggling, right where suspicious cargo might pass through or be exchanged. Effective for gathering more tips? Or more of a placative deterrence to would-be smugglers that they should not feel safe...? Would be great to see evidence of how this plays out...

Intervening where “hot states” happen - changing norms around bribery in Tanzanian hospitals

Just out, a very interesting working paper that describes how posters were used in Tanzanian hospitals in an attempt to change norms around gift-giving and bribery. So did it make a difference to display this....

... in a hospital waiting room - alas what social psychologists would call a hot state moment when people face immense situational pressures - make a difference?

In a nutshell: there is cautious optimism that it may work, when done in a very astute, contextualized manner.

Check out the working paper for a very interesting intervention and approach, and also some critical words of cautions on how to best deploy research and action resources on such matters.

Baez Camargo, Claudia. 2022. “Developing anti-corruption interventions addressing social norms: Lessons from a field pilot in Tanzania.” Working Paper 40, Basel Institute on Governance. Available at: https://baselgovernance.org/publications/wp-40

Dashboard climate drama

Neither on the surface novel, nor visually very engaging, but probably a very necessary first step: close to real-time carbon footprint of Sweden, displayed on billboards in Stockholm that have gone up in June 2022. The kicker: the data is not government-reported and stale, but rather fresh and independent, as it is collected by some climate intelligence start-ups through AI infused remote sensing techniques. Lots of room for more imagination in dashboard design and overall presentation/placement, but quite impressive what seems to be going on under the hood, if all what is claimed is really powering this.

#climate #Transparency #openclimate #ambient accountability

Ambient foreign intervention

This blog usually focusses on positive examples of how the built environment can be used for democratic empowerment. But from time to time - for example here - more sinister uses are also profiled when they demonstrate the power of ambient communication. Here come a string of particularly intriguing, disconcerting examples from Iran. In July a cyberattack believe to have been executed by foreign powers paralyzed the train network. Yet, it also sought to stir further upheaval by hijacking station billboards and displaying a phone number for the country’s Supreme Leader’s office so that people could call to complain.

And in October another attack crippled petrol stations across the country, this time accompanied by an even more audacious ambient hacking campaign that included displaying the same number prefaced with “cyberattack” on the displays of petrol pumps when car owners inserted a government-issued payment card. On top, digital billboards were also hijacked at around the same time to pose the question "Khamenei! Where is our gasoline?“

source: Babak Taghvaee

So it is not only the tools and practices of cyberwarfare that are evolving rapidly and into ever more worrisome directions. Now they come wrapped in public propaganda tactics that repurpose ambient communication infrastructures to maximize impact. Cyber warfare meets ambient information warfare - a dystopian prospect?

Outsize confront-versation

From using entire building fronts as public canvass for live election results to enveloping to giant-casting advocacy messages onto the very edifices that house the culprits light projections are a wonderful light-touch, wide-scope tool for ambient accountability and have been referenced several times on this blog.

Now comes a particularly interesting example from the COP26 climate summit: Activists projecting their messages onto the conference hall and the “official” light projecteur messaging back through his or her own projection. Move over tiny twitter feud here comes the epic battle of the giant projectors.

https://twitter.com/GEddolls/status/1458366926938386438?s=20

image c Graeme Eddolls

#ambient accountability

A Cape Town Campaign

So the city of Cape Town gave itself a Organisational Development and Transformation Plan in 2016. The title is quite a mouthful already and it carries on in the text, which sets out a big vision for creating a culture of accountability and integrity and a “well governed, corruption free administration.” Four years later it still looks like there is some way to go on this and the city seems to be following up with a campaign that is interesting from an ambient accountability perspective.

#general message #ambient accountability

Ambient accountability - a journey from Copenhagen to Abu Dhabi

just for the fun of it, some snippets of ambient accountability along the way. First up, security check at Copenhagen Airport and a very big and visible invite to give feedback, right after passing through the scanner. In truly Scandinavian style you need a mobile phone though to do this.

Next, how was your flight? This popped up on the Etihad in-seat screen, so really right in the passenger face. Only problem, this happened before take-off (and not any more after landing) alas some kind of speculative, predictive feedback expected?

Taking a taxi from the Abu Dhabi airport to the city - a sticker on the inside of the car with detailed information on prices and rules - literally a very transparent appearance and quite the norm in many cities - check out the Florence and Medellin or the particularly enchanting hand-written example from Goa

And finally on the way back home, a short lay-over in Amsterdam - and a really playful way of giving passengers a bit of a glimpse of the intestines of the big organism airport a glass inlay in the floor that grants a view of the luggage conveyor belts below - and you can watch suitcases zip by

In a nutshell, an everyday experience with ambient accountability, some mechanisms quite useful, yet others rather carelessly done and not so great and then the creative ones that could inspire some serious experimentations...

#ambient accountability #Know your rights #rights #performance #feedback #remedy

The EU as champion for ambient consumer rights - from air to rail

We know that the EU does at times assume a pioneering role when it comes to ambient accountability in the form of giving consumers easy access to information about their rights exactly when and where they need. For example, the European Commission requires airports across Europe to prominently display passenger rights inside the terminal and close to the airline desks. These information boards look like this (airport Riga)

They are pretty important as many passengers whose flights are delayed or cancelled are often unaware of the type and level of compensation they are entitled to and often get talked by airline representatives into accepting inferior reimbursements.

Now, the European Parliament is at it again. It wants passenger rights to be printed directly onto rail tickets, in order to make it easier for riders to understand what they are entitled to and claim reimbursements in case of delayed or cancelled trains. This is at draft stage now and might still undergo changes in the long-winded discussion with the Commission and member states, but a good start and a good idea it certainly is.

Ambient interventions in health: How the nimble poster can help tackle a top global health crisis

Azithromycin, an antibiotic, image CC BY-SA 3.0 by Giorgiogp2

Over-generous prescribing of antibiotics is one of the main drivers of the emergence of so called drug resistant super-bugs that portend a global health crisis in the making. How to wean doctors off the convenient habit of doling out strong antibiotics for even minor ailments? As a fascinating randomized controlled trial shows, simple posters can make a huge difference. Poster-sized commitment letters featuring the pictures of clinicians and their stated commitment to stick to strict prescription regimes were prominently displayed in examination rooms. The result: dramatically lower rates of unnecessary use of antibiotics. A powerful empirical validation for ambient interventions. Posters prominently displayed right where the conduct to be regulated happens can be very effective. Yet, also a reminder that the design details matter significantly. Posters that simply showed admonishments to go easy on antibiotics did not have any effect as a previous experiment had shown. Only combining the ambient effect with a personalised public commitment by the medical staff involved made the difference.

Meeker, D., Knight, T. K., Friedberg, M. W., Linder, J. A., Goldstein, N. J., Fox, C. R., ... & Doctor, J. N. (2014). Nudging guideline-concordant antibiotic prescribing: a randomized clinical trial. JAMA internal medicine, 174(3), 425-431.

Kicking up some dust!

Dustzone is a wonderful project by Dietmar Offenhuber in Stuttgart, the city in Germany most in the news for routinely exceeding air quality limits. Small particles, one of the major type of pollutants settle on the built environment giving it a “patina” that the artist removes selectively with his stencils, a method often called reverse graffiti. It vividly and disturbingly shows us the crust of particles that has accumulated and makes tangible the amount of what are otherwise very abstract small particles that residents inhale and it does so at some of the pollution hotspots.

Plus, over time, it visually tracks the accumulation of these particles as the cleaned spots gradually go back to grey and dark when gathering further particles. Ambient accountability at its best. All pictures c D. Offenhuber

#performance

Feed(feed-back)back in action

Continuing the ambient holiday season’s playground theme, here some pics from a Berlin playground that we literally stumbled across with the kids when taking the cycle route less traveled to the local swimming pool.

This playground has been nicely refurbished about a year ago and someone had the great idea to put some of the suggestions collected during the preceding consultation period up on large banners on the side of a building that encases parts of the playground.

A really neat example of my obsession with feeding feed-back back (e.g see the general idea or a fascinating application in Lithuania), here in the form of actual focus group quotes and quantitative survey summary.

Plus a very personal note a the end where some of the involved kids signed their names.

A nice marker of community involvement and a city administration that listens to and talks with residents, but also an important baseline for accountability where everyone can see if and how suggestions were taken up and turned into reality. Very interestingly not all ideas mentioned on the placards have been realized, suggesting that this is not simply a cherry-picking exercise of self-praise by officials. And given my recent observation that lots of ambient feedback mechanisms are skewed towards tracking blue collar job performance it is worthwhile noting that this playground is situated in a not very privileged, mixed immigrant neighborhood, adding another function: the positive encouragement of and the demonstration of the efficacy of civic engagement.

#feedfeedbackback

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