Current issues

Blockchain in education

28th March 2018 in Blockchain, Culture and Technology, Current issues, Education & Technology, Innovation, New media

Blockchain technology has been all over the news in recent months, mostly focused on Bitcoin and the many debates concerning “cryptocurrency”. In months to come we are likely to see more of a debate also on other uses of Bitcoin, begging the question: What is it? One interesting source I found recently is this one. In a nutshell, a blockchain is a decentralized public ledger that, according to Investopedia, “allows market participants to keep track of digital currency transactions without central recordkeeping”. Coindesk, which calls itself a “global resource on bitcoin and

The fall of great men

30th November 2017 in Current issues, Journalism, Media and Politics, Media Watch, Power, This week

Around the world, an agenda-setting attention is focused on the abuse of power by men in position to treat women unfairly: Code word is sexual harassment. One of the latest installments in the unfolding story is the fall of both Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose, veterans of the US TV and talk show eco system. Watch this video from the New York Times.

The Planet and the Donald

22nd April 2017 in Current issues, Global Development, Global Economy, Media Watch, The Global Economy, Trump Watch, Watching the Donald

A New York Times opinion editorial, April 20th 2017: Will we recover from the Trump presidency? Perhaps not: The thing with climate change is we don´t have much time, and not much is happening — so what happens when what little is happening gets reversed? “President Trump’s environmental onslaught will have immediate, dangerous effects. He has vowed to reopen coal mines and moved to keep the dirtiest power plants open for many years into the future. Dirty air, the kind you get around coal-fired power plants, kills people. It’s much the same as

Terrorism, attention and the media

6th August 2016 in Current issues, Global Development, Global journalism, Journalism, Media and terrorism, Media Watch

What determines news coverage and how does it apply to terrorism? The idea that terrorism is PR and journalism has a dramaturgical quality is an idea with a long history, but also a history made extraordinarily relevant with the attacks in the US on September 11th 2001, resulting in the epic, metaphorical – and also – fall of the Twin Towers on Manhattan, New York. Dramaturgy implies drama, but also staging. This having been said, we are reminded every day that the relationship between the media and terrorist organizations is

Artificial Intelligence; a journalism issue

13th May 2016 in Current issues, Global Development, Global journalism, Journalism's digital future, Media Freedom, Media Watch, New media

•• MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. “In its quest to maintain a United States military advantage, the Pentagon is aggressively turning to Silicon Valley’s hottest technology — artificial intelligence.” This is how an article in the New York Times begins, on May 13th 2016. And there is a lesson here, for those of us with an interest in global journalism. But first – the story continues: “On Wednesday, Secretary of Defence Ashton B. Carter made his fourth trip to the tech industry’s heartland since being named to his post last year. Before that, it

Education´s digital future?

28th April 2016 in Current issues, Education & Technology, Internet

As we are nearing the World Learning Summit June 14th – 16th; a few thoughts on how technology impacts on education and learning. We are all familiar with the debate on Massive Open Online Courses, and the history of MOOCs ascending, subsequent worries, commercialisation issues and more. We are familiar with the accelerating research and exploration on “flipped classroom”, and much more. But it still seems as if the way educational institutions and education research approaches the spectre of new learning forms, lacks a certain scope: What C.Wright Mills once

Donald Trump and the media

27th March 2016 in Current issues, Media Watch, Opinions

Are the media to blame for Trump´s success? Few have any doubt that Donald Trump is good at playing the media. With his extreme points of view, his sense of timing, shooting from the hip and sense of what triggers gut reaction, he hits one home run after the other. If media exposure were the main criterion for explaining Trump, it would be easy: No one else even comes close. But looking more closely, we also find that a lot of the media attention is either negative or extremely negative. So,

Learning and global development

30th September 2015 in Current issues, Education & Technology, Essays, Internet, Journalism's digital future, Media Freedom, This week

Exited to plan for the upcoming BETT conference in Mexico City, where I will be doing two plenary talks to an audience unfamiliar to me: Spanish-speaking teachers and education managers. The notes are here, and by way of a few small points: [dg ids=”898,899″] How can one link the discussion of learning, technology and globalisation to the UN Global Development Goals? How should we think about that? From the rosy red to the realistically reliable – what does the research literature really say about these sorts of things? Is there

The New Internet Elite

13th April 2015 in Books reviewed, Current issues, Internet, Journalism

Andrew Keen: The Internet is Not the Answer Andrew Keen is out with his new book, where much of his previous argumentation is bound together in a voice more persuasive and harsh than before — so, before anything else is said; this is a book to read and think seriously about. Keen, known to many as THE Internet contrarian, argues very convincingly how the Internet creates more problems than it solves, eradicates more jobs than it creates and portends to be a device for more openness and transparency when in