Local Community Media and New Media Technologies

BY ZIPPORAH ORBISI, CAPM

QUALITY ENGINEER AND CONSULTANT

Local Community Media and New Media Technologies

Since the turn of the millennium, technology has steadily been ushering in a new world order. One where distance is of no consequence and seconds are being commodified as soon as we wake up.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has found its way into our everyday lives, shaping our perspectives  through monitoring what we view, look up, and read online.  It creeps into our homes disguised as a form of mass media that feels very personal and even community-spirited. 

The world wide web articles and information shaping our lives through AI could be written and informed by people thousands of miles away, with no real connection to the media being portrayed, or its effects on your household. And sometimes the human connection is several times removed, because it is AI data mining software created by people that is actually feeding data to another other AI software that is doing the writing on a particular subject that comes to the top of your social media feed or search results.  

Although the effects of this mass media are physically harmless, its long-term effects could prove quite crippling. (Here’s one example). When a person is being fed an angle of  “knowledge” without having all the information or being given all sides of the arguments or truths, it can sway, lead, and separate the masses. The power of such media in the hands (or in the case of AI, algorithms) of distant and often faceless hosts is quite a scary reality.

Conversely, community media—media that is owned and controlled by the community in response to local needs (Langlois & Dubois, 2005, p.7)—helps to create true awareness, togetherness, and communal citizenship on a micro level. 

When you listen to your local radio, the voices that call out your 5 o’clock rush hour traffic information feel like those of your distant family. There is a certain level of  comfort and trust that comes from the voices of the newscasters that you hear on a daily basis, or the authors that you read daily in your local Sentinel. 

Community media is a platform that comes with a responsibility to families, local businesses, and friends. Many of our community media hosts can even be seen  in-person weekly visiting the local Farmers Market or shopping for home supplies at a neighborhood home improvement store, without your local paparazzi (which in today's world, even a 10-year-old with a smartphone qualifies as). 

Nostalgically speaking, I remember my daily excitement to see chief meteorologist Tom Terry come on and forecast my week with a smile. 

Those days have gone for many children due to new media technologies. We have AI home assistants to tell us the weather before we are even fully out of bed now, and phones that usher our way through traffic. 

The convenience of new media technologies pulls at the heartstrings and wallets of humanity.  What we once thought of as distant, futuristic AI technologies is today actually deeply ingrained  into the lives of people living in the Global North, all using the tactic of convenience. 

This tactic is giving way to the new world of mass media, one that doesn't even rely on 24-hour coverage from cable media giants like BBC, CNN, or MSNBC. 

Community media is suffering at the hands of this new technology, and becoming a dying fashion of sorts. 

Although community-based media pales in comparison to new media technologies in terms of reach, because community media  caters to a smaller audience, the platform that it offers  many marginalized and developing communities has a major impact. Community-based media gives way to grassroots start-ups, shines a light on local social and political heroes, and helps to facilitate youth empowerment and education for sustainable growth.

In the field of Development sustainability is key. We cannot truly progress if the goals are not able to be met and amplified by the community itself. Particularly in marginalized and underserved communities, the use of community-based media is a crucial way to advocate for change and engage those who are affected the most.

On C.L.Ai.R.A. and Tech Bias in the United States

Move over Siri and Alexa…C.L.Ai.R.A . has arrived!

Meet C.L.Ai.R.A. - the first Afro-Latina artificial intelligence (AI).

“…C.L.Ai.R.A. is considered to have the sharpest brain in the artificial intelligence world…[and]is an autoregressive language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text,” (Black Enterprise). C.L.Ai.R.A was created by Create Lab Ventures, a tech company that provides underserved communities with the skills, resources, and networks needed to thrive in tech and media.

The hope is that with C.L.Ai.R.A.’s debut in classrooms across the United States, young people of color will be inspired and uplifted.

It is important to note that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a core theme in any STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) curriculum.

According to Pew Research Center, “Black and Hispanic adults [which C.L.Ai.R.A. is supposedly modeled after] are less likely to earn degrees in STEM than other degree fields, and they continue to make up a lower share of STEM graduates relative to their share of the adult population,” and women only account for a small share of degree earners in fields like engineering and computer science “areas where they are significantly underrepresented in the work force.”

So is C.L.Ai.R.A. enough to counter the “histories and ongoing forms of deeply embedded discrimination, bias, racism,” and white insecurity, that infect U.S. institutions and systems, including technology?

In her interview with Counterspin, Ruha Benjamin, the author of Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, makes it clear that technology “is not, in fact, objective in the way we are being socialized to believe.”

Counterspin Interviewer, Janine Jackson, offered this example to better illustrate the lack of objectivity, or rather how the implicit biases of the larger society can affect technological outputs, including AI:

“If police are deployed disproportionately to poor communities of color [because of discrimination and racism], then that’s where they make the most arrests. So if you fill a database with that, and then you say, you know, ‘Alexa, where is the most crime, based on the number of arrests?’ Well, it’s going to circle you right back to the data that you fed it, and it’s only predictive because you make it so.”

The Pew Research Center maintains that “the long-term outlook for diversity in the STEM workforce is closely tied to representation in the STEM educational system,” of which C.L.Ai.R.A. of course would be seen as an asset for representation.

However, according to Massive Science’s report on data from the National Science Foundation:

“The share of STEM-field bachelor’s degrees awarded to Black students peaked in the early 2000s and has been falling ever since — despite increasing federal spending on STEM diversity initiatives….

Precisely what is driving the decline is a matter of some debate. Some experts pointed to persistent income inequality and the disproportionate lack of access to quality schools among Black and other minority communities. Others argued that outreach efforts, peer mentoring, and other programs aimed at fostering interest in the sciences among Black students have dwindled, causing enrollments to plummet. But several education and legal professionals also pointed to a more straightforward and sobering correlation: The steady downturn in STEM degrees among Black students, they say, comes in the wake of a large-scale retreat from specific programs and policies that consider race in admissions, recruitment, and retention in higher education — policies commonly known as affirmative action.”

From a Development standpoint, it is suffice to say that likely all of those factors contribute to the current state of bias that can be found in the U.S. tech world.

It remains to be seen if C.L.Ai.R.A.’s introduction to the STEM educational system will have the positive impact her creators are hoping for, and can help to reverse the downward trend of Black and Hispanic/Latinx people in STEM.

While we can hope it is a step in the right direction, there are still several other factors (e.g. lack of quality schools, etc.) that need to be addressed in order for there to be significant and long-lasting change.