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Showing posts from June, 2020

Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan say they are 'disgusted' by Trump's comments - CNN

Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan say they are 'disgusted' by Trump's comments - CNN : "We are deeply shaken and disgusted by President Trump's divisive and incendiary rhetoric at a time when our nation so desperately needs unity," Zuckerberg and Chan wrote. "This is an extraordinarily painful inflection point in our nation's story, particularly for the Black community and our Black colleagues, who have lived with the impacts of systemic racism for generations." The email was provided to CNN Business by Jason Shepherd, a scientist backed by CZI who helped put together the letter to Zuckerberg earlier this month. The email was first reported by Recode.
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Europe’s pandemic politics: How the virus has changed the public’s worldview | European Council on Foreign Relations

Europe’s pandemic politics: How the virus has changed the public’s worldview | European Council on Foreign Relations : European governments and the institutions in Brussels have realised that the coronavirus crisis has created an opening for collective European action. The Franco-German recovery plan presented in May could be the beginning of a vital new stage of the European story. But, for leaders to bring a more powerful and unified Europe into being, they must make the right policy choices and tailor their arguments in a way that connects with – rather than repels – European voters.
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Key market developments in TV and audio-visual

Key market developments in TV and audio-visual. Sector overview The time spent watching broadcast TV continued to decline in 2016, although to a lesser extent than in previous years, decreasing by four minutes since 2015 to an average of 3 hours 32 minutes a day across all individuals aged 4+. Within that overall decline, there is a widening gap between the viewing activities of the youngest and oldest audiences. The steepest decline in average viewing of broadcast TV was among children (4-15) and adults aged 16-24, while average viewing for over-64s increased slightly. Furthermore, new research from Ofcom found that 66% of teens use YouTube to watch TV programmes/films compared to 38% of all adults in 2017. Despite the threat from online services, revenues for the broadcast TV industry increased by 1.0% in real terms to £13.8bn in 2016, with further revenue of £1.7bn generated by online AV services. Within this, net advertising revenue in the traditional TV sector exceeded £4bn
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45% of Twitter accounts posting COVID-19 messages are likely bots, stu

45% of Twitter accounts posting COVID-19 messages are likely bots, stu : a staggering 45% of them were found to originate from accounts that behaved more like a bot than a human. Such behavior included tweeting more than is physically humanly possible and apparently posting a series of tweets from multiple countries within just a few hours of each other—the chances being small that any human could travel that fast. Across the accounts the researchers identified as bots, there were more than 100 false narratives about COVID-19 being proclaimed. These false narratives included conspiracy theories about 5G being linked to COVID-19 and mannequins being used in hospitals in an attempt to fool people into thinking there was a public health crisis. Sowing divisions in America was one of the primary aims of the bot accounts the researchers identified. Kathleen Carley, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University who conducted the study, told NPR that people should remain
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3 ways large media companies are innovating during the COVID-19 pandemic | International Journalists' Network

3 ways large media companies are innovating during the COVID-19 pandemic | International Journalists' Network : Like many news outlets, the Journal has made its COVID-19-related content free. But because the publication normally requires a subscription, "How are people going to know?"�Kwong asked. "So our team helped very quickly build this pretty simple navigation bar at the top that we then work with our publishing desk to keep updated and populated, and work with product teams to make continuous improvements to it."
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Campaign manager Brad Parscale feels president's wrath after sparse crowd shows up for Trump's Tulsa rally, World News | wionews.com

Campaign manager Brad Parscale feels president's wrath after sparse crowd shows up for Trump's Tulsa rally, World News | wionews.com : The Arena holds the capacity of 19,000, and according to Trump's campaign, 12,000 people attended the rally. But the actual figures were only 6,200, as per Tulsa fire department said.
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Operation Mockingbird - Wikipedia

Operation Mockingbird - Wikipedia : After the Watergate scandal in 1972–1974, the U.S. Congress became concerned over possible presidential abuse of the CIA. This concern reached its height when reporter Seymour Hersh published an expos� of CIA domestic surveillance in 1975.[8] Congress authorized a series of Congressional investigations into Agency activities from 1975 to 1976. A wide range of CIA operations were examined in these investigations, including CIA ties with journalists and numerous private voluntary organizations.
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It’s Not Just Parasite: Watch the Other South Korean Film Poised to Make Oscar History | Vanity Fair

It’s Not Just Parasite: Watch the Other South Korean Film Poised to Make Oscar History | Vanity Fair : In April 2014, the MV Sewol—a ferry boat carrying 476 passengers and crew—began slowly sinking in the Yellow Sea. The documentary juxtaposes helicopter footage of the sinking and text messages from passengers trapped inside with recorded phone calls between the government officials who badly botched the rescue. On board, passengers followed instructions to stay in their cabins while the captain and the crew abandoned ship. Ultimately, 304 people died, including 250 teenagers. In
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Potentially Extreme Population Displacement and Concentration in the Tropics Under Non-Extreme Warming | Scientific Reports

Potentially Extreme Population Displacement and Concentration in the Tropics Under Non-Extreme Warming | Scientific Reports : It is now widely understood that ecosystems and, to some extent, human populations respond to changing climates by moving1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25. For example, butterflies3, marine fish4 and plants5 have been shown to move to cooler locations due to recent warming and human populations have moved rapidly in response to the American Dustbowl21, as well as recent persistent warming events in Mexico10, Indonesia17 and Pakistan16. Prior work has identified many local factors that influence how populations may move in response to changes in their local climate26,27, such as the role of local topography or the movements of nearby competitor populations. We build on this understanding and emphasize a constraint from planetary-scale atmospheric dynamics which may also play an important role in determining how ecosystems and human
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Rising Seas Threaten an American Institution: The 30-Year Mortgage - The New York Times

Rising Seas Threaten an American Institution: The 30-Year Mortgage - The New York Times : Home buyers are increasingly using mortgages that make it easier for them to stop making their monthly payments and walk away from the loan if the home floods or becomes unsellable or unlivable. More banks are getting buyers in coastal areas to make bigger down payments — often as much as 40 percent of the purchase price, up from the traditional 20 percent — a sign that lenders have awakened to climate dangers and want to put less of their own money at risk. And in one of the clearest signs that banks are worried about global warming, they are increasingly getting these mortgages off their own books by selling them to government-backed buyers like Fannie Mae, where taxpayers would be on the hook financially if any of the loans fail. “Conventional mortgages have survived many financial crises, but they may not survive the climate crisis,” said Jesse Keenan, an associate professor at Tulane Univ
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E.O. Wilson on altruism and the New Enlightenment

E.O. Wilson on altruism and the New Enlightenment : I think we are ready to create a more human-centered belief system. I realize I sound like an advocate for science and technology, and maybe I am because we are now in a techno-scientific age. I see no way out of the problems that organized religion and tribalism create other than humans just becoming more honest and fully aware of themselves. Right now we’re living in what Carl Sagan correctly termed a demon-haunted world. We have created a Star Wars civilization but we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. That’s dangerous.
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New biography reveals Melania and Ivanka Trump's nicknames - Business Insider

New biography reveals Melania and Ivanka Trump's nicknames - Business Insider : The snarky nicknames shared between President Donald Trump's wife and daughter are the latest details to be revealed by a biography on Melania Trump by Washington Post reporter Mary Jordan, called "The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump." The "tension" between Trump's wife and daughter was reported on in a book preview by The New York Times on Sunday.�
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2012 Is Bullshit; 2020 Is When We’ll Really Be in Trouble - VICE

2012 Is Bullshit; 2020 Is When We’ll Really Be in Trouble - VICE : from people with power, and the number of those people who want the most power. There are too many political entrepreneurs who are all trying to get power, and they get frustrated, which is how revolutions start: when members of the elite try to overturn the political order to better suit themselves.
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This Scientist Predicted 2020 Would Bring Major Upheaval | Time

This Scientist Predicted 2020 Would Bring Major Upheaval | Time : On top of that, Turchin says the COVID-19 pandemic has further worsened the wellbeing of large swaths of the American population—a leading driver of national instability—and could make the public less likely to trust government institutions. As millions of Americans remain jobless, Turchin says there will be other triggers after this. He worries tensions “may escalate all the way to a civil war.” “Unfortunately,” he says, “things are not as bad as they can be.”
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Peter Turchin Long-Term Consequences of Coronavirus - Peter Turchin

Peter Turchin Long-Term Consequences of Coronavirus - Peter Turchin : The shock of Coronavirus has the potential both to create social solidarity within a country, and to break the country apart. In my estimation, two Nordic countries, Norway and Denmark, have the best chance to follow the first route. Twenty years ago, I would have no doubts predicting such a response. But in the last decade there have been signs that the Nordic model may be fraying at the edges. For the United States my forecast is rather gloomy. Our governing elites are selfish, fragmented, and mired in the internecine conflicts. So my expectation is that large swaths of American population would be allowed to lose ground. Government debt will still explode, with most of the money going to keep large companies and banks afloat. Inequality will rise, trust in government decline even more, social unrest and intra-elite conflict will increase. Basically, all negative structural-demographic trends will be accelerated.
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Peter Turchin Ages of Discord - Peter Turchin

Peter Turchin Ages of Discord - Peter Turchin : Seventy percent of Americans (and counting) think so. The inflation-adjusted wage of a US worker today is less than 40 years ago—but there are four times as many multimillionaires
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Peter Turchin The Science behind My Forecast for 2020 - Peter Turchin

Peter Turchin The Science behind My Forecast for 2020 - Peter Turchin : The Fathers and Sons cycle could be related to theories of economic capture. Capture may be a progressive process where successive winners must be more ruthless to vanquish current leaders. The process cpntinues until leaders with no leadership desires and only dominance desires result.
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The Enclosure of Ideas ❧ Current Affairs

The Enclosure of Ideas ❧ Current Affairs : Romeo and Juliet (1595) itself largely derives from Arthur Brooks’ poem “The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet” (1562), which according to an article by Ryan McKittrick was “taken from a French poem by Pierre Boaistuau (1559) that was based on an Italian story by Matteo Bandello (1554), which was itself inspired by Luigi da Porto’s Giulietta e Romeo (circa 1530).”� Not everyone steals quite as effectively as Shakespeare, but everybody steals, and it’s impossible to tell where an idea begins and where it ends. Does an idea only count if it’s published and copyrighted? Should we all slap a ™ on the end of our statements or our text messages, lest a writer friend use it later on in a play? Is it ever remotely meaningful to say that someone “created” a character, an idea, a phrase, or a plot?
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Read: Trump response on why George Floyd protesters are demonstrating - Business Insider

Read: Trump response on why George Floyd protesters are demonstrating - Business Insider : "Protesters for different reasons. You're protesting also because, you know, they just didn't know. I've watch — I watched very closely. Why are you here? They really weren't able to say, but they were there for a reason, perhaps. "But a lot of them really were there because they're following the crowd. A lot of them were there because what we witnessed was a terrible thing. What we saw was a terrible thing. And we've seen it over the years. We haven't, you know, this was one horrible example, but you've seen other terrible examples. You know that better than anybody who would know it. And I know it. I've seen it, too. I've seen it before I was president. I've seen it. I think it's a shame. I think it's a disgrace. And it's got to stop. "At the same time, you also know that we have incredible people in law enforcement that
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The Intellectual We Deserve | Current Affairs

The Intellectual We Deserve | Current Affairs : Tabatha Southey was cruel to call Jordan Peterson “the stupid man’s smart person.” He is the desperate man’s smart person, he feeds on angst and confusion. Who else has a serious alternative? Where are the other professors with accessible and compelling YouTube channels, with books of helpful advice and long Q&A sessions with the public? No wonder Peterson is so popular: he comes along and offers rules and guidance in a world of, well, chaos. Just leave it to Dad, everything will be alright.
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The Intellectual We Deserve | Current Affairs

The Intellectual We Deserve | Current Affairs : [Chaos is] what extends, eternally and without limit, beyond the boundaries of all states, all ideas, and all disciplines… It’s the foreigner, the stranger, the member of another gang, the rustle in the bushes… the hidden anger of your mother… Chaos is symbolically associated with the feminine… Order, by contrast, is explored territory. That’s the hundreds-of-millions-of-years-old hierarchy of place, position, and authority. That’s the structure of society. It’s the structure provided by biology, too…It’s the flag of the nation… It’s the greatness of tradition, the rows of desks in the school classroom, the trains that leave on time… In the domain of order, things behave as God intended.
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Dear Guardian: You've Been Played - Scientific American Blog Network

Dear Guardian: You've Been Played - Scientific American Blog Network : No, my beef is with the Guardian for running the article in the first place. Seriously: why was it even written? Strip away all the purple prose and you've got a guy who's been out of the field for 20 years, but still doing some dabbling on the side, who has an intriguing new idea that a couple of math professors think is promising, so he got invited to give a colloquium at Oxford by his old grad school buddy. Oh, and there's no technical paper yet -- not even a rough draft on the arxiv -- so his ideas can't even be appropriately evaluated by actual working physicists. How, exactly, does that qualify as newsworthy? Was your bullshit detector not working that day?
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Weinstein's theory of everything is probably nothing | New Scientist

Weinstein's theory of everything is probably nothing | New Scientist : At what point during this long and difficult process does it become legitimate to proclaim a breakthrough? It’s a line in shifting sands, but that line has certainly been crossed. Du Sautoy – the University of Oxford’s professor of the public understanding of science, no less – has short-circuited science’s basic checks and balances. Yesterday’s shenanigans were anything but scientific.
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Black Hole Paradoxes Reveal a Link Between Energy and Entropy� | WIRED

Black Hole Paradoxes Reveal a Link Between Energy and Entropy� | WIRED : Entropy, commonly thought of as a measure of disorder, counts the number of ways an object’s internal parts can be rearranged without any change to its overall state. (If a room is messy, or high entropy, for instance, you can move objects around at random and it will stay messy; by contrast, if a room is tidy, or low entropy, moving things around will make it less tidy.) By building a bridge between a black hole’s entropy, which concerns its inner microscopic ingredients, and its geometric surface area, Bekenstein and Hawking’s entropy area law has become one of physicists’ strongest footholds for studying black holes and quantum gravity.
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Happy 30th Birthday, Mark Zuckerberg: You're Officially Too Old

Happy 30th Birthday, Mark Zuckerberg: You're Officially Too Old : "I want to stress the importance of being young and technical," he stated, adding that successful start-ups should only employ young people with technical expertise. (Zuckerberg also apparently missed the class on employment and discrimination law.) "Young people are just smarter," he said, with a straight face, according to VentureBeat. "Why are most chess masters under 30?" he asked. "I don't know...Young people just have simpler lives. We may not own a car. We may not have family."
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Inside Mark Zuckerberg's Lost Notebook | WIRED

Inside Mark Zuckerberg's Lost Notebook | WIRED : “Some of the bad stuff is very bad, and people are understandably very upset about it—if you have nations trying to interfere in elections, if you have the Burmese military trying to spread hate to aid their genocide, how can this be a positive thing? But just as in the previous industrial revolution or other major changes in society that were very disruptive, it's difficult to internalize that, as painful as some of these things are, the positive over the long term can still dramatically outweigh the negative. You handle the negative as well as you can.”
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Inside Mark Zuckerberg's Lost Notebook | WIRED

Inside Mark Zuckerberg's Lost Notebook | WIRED : One word stood out as a yardstick for inclusion in the Feed: “interesting-ness.” It sounded innocent. “Stories need context,” he wrote. “A story isn't just an interesting piece of information. It's an interesting piece of information plus other interesting things about it AND why it's interesting.”
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FBI tapes allege Martin Luther King Jr. watched a rape: report - Business Insider

FBI tapes allege Martin Luther King Jr. watched a rape: report - Business Insider : The FBI secretly recorded King in a yearslong effort to discredit him. The tapes themselves remain under seal in the US National Archives. And Garrow's article was rejected by more prominent news outlets. So the story carries many unanswered questions about the accuracy of the FBI material.
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Surgisphere: mass audit of papers linked to firm behind hydroxychloroquine Lancet study scandal | World news | The Guardian

Surgisphere: mass audit of papers linked to firm behind hydroxychloroquine Lancet study scandal | World news | The Guardian : udited, including one that a�scientific integrity expert�claims contains images that appear to have been digitally manipulated. The audit follows a Guardian investigation that found the company, Surgisphere, used suspect data in major scientific studies that were published and then retracted by world-leading medical journals, including the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine. Further inquiries by the Guardian into Surgisphere and its founder and chief executive, Dr Sapan Desai, have confirmed that: Major institutions including Stanford University, which were described as research partners on the�Surgisphere�website,�said they�were not aware of any formal relationship�with�the company. A study that formed the basis of Desai’s PhD may contain doctored images, according to expert claims, and the global medical publishing company Elsevier is conduc
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Milan F. Živković: Ako imamo posla s ofenzivom protiv novinara vrijeme je da se zapitamo zašto – Bilten

Milan F. Živković: Ako imamo posla s ofenzivom protiv novinara vrijeme je da se zapitamo zašto – Bilten : serija na kojoj radim s Ankicom Jurić Tilić, Hanom Jušić i Daliborom Matanićem je adaptacija romana “Područje bez signala” Roberta Perišića iz 2015. Kroz priču o dvojici slučajnih investitora koji nehotice obnavljaju socijalističku industriju, a zapravo mogućnost života u zabačenom balkanskom gradiću, preispitujemo osobne povijesti, ali i mogućnost detabuizacije kolektivnog naslijeđa socijalističke modernizacije. Što se tiče potpore programa Kreativna Europa iz budžeta Europske unije, radi se o sredstvima za razvoj projekta, što znači da je snimanje još daleko, a uključuje rad na scenariju i niz
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The Two Autopsies Of George Floyd Aren’t As Different As They Seem | FiveThirtyEight

The Two Autopsies Of George Floyd Aren’t As Different As They Seem | FiveThirtyEight : So who is right? Well, both of them, experts who weren’t affiliated with the case said. In fact, according to forensic pathologists and medical experts, the two autopsy reports aren’t actually all that different in their conclusions. “They are just different ways of describing the same thing,” said Dr. Joye Carter, forensic pathologist to the sheriff of San Luis Obispo County, California. What’s more, experts told me, the autopsies of George Floyd help show the complexity of medical examinations, how those examinations work and what they can and cannot tell us.
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Trump campaign demands CNN apologize for poll that shows Biden leading - CNNPolitics

Trump campaign demands CNN apologize for poll that shows Biden leading - CNNPolitics : iling the former vice president by 14 points, 55%-41%, among registered voters. It also finds the President's approval rating at 38% -- his worst mark since January 2019, and roughly on par with approval ratings for one-term Presidents Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush at this point in their reelection years -- and his disapproval rating at 57%
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Hopeful that Minneapolis policing will change? Meet the police union's chief ... | US news | The Guardian

Hopeful that Minneapolis policing will change? Meet the police union's chief ... | US news | The Guardian : ormer mayor said officers believe Kroll will stand up for them no matter what when they see themselves as constantly under attack from the public and politicians. Harteau said the siege mentality within the force is not helped by a public swift to criticise officers when they are wrong but which rarely stands up for them when they are right.
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EU says China behind 'huge wave' of Covid-19 disinformation | World news | The Guardian

EU says China behind 'huge wave' of Covid-19 disinformation | World news | The Guardian : “I believe if we have evidence we should not shy away from naming and shaming,” Vĕra Jourov�, a European commission vice-president, told reporters.�“What we also witnessed is a surge in narratives undermining our democracies and in effect our response to the crisis, for example the claim there are secret US biological laboratories on former Soviet republics has been spread by both pro-Kremlin outlets, as well as Chinese officials and state media.” “I strongly believe that a geopolitically strong EU can only materialise if we are assertive,” Jourov� said, alluding to the aim of the European commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, for the body to have more clout on the world stage.
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‘They set us up’: US police arrested over 10,000 protesters, many non-violent | US news | The Guardian

‘They set us up’: US police arrested over 10,000 protesters, many non-violent | US news | The Guardian : a group of officers and a group of black teenagers. I was the only one arrested in my group of three, I was the only black person,” Anderson said. Reports of excessive police force throughout the protests have emerged around the US. More than 130 reports of journalists being attacked by police have been recorded since 28 May.
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Anger mounts over selective US curfew rules: 'A license to decide who to arrest' | US news | The Guardian

Anger mounts over selective US curfew rules: 'A license to decide who to arrest' | US news | The Guardian : Cities across the US have enacted curfews in an attempt to quell the unrest over the killing of George Floyd in police custody. But the selective enforcement of the curfew orders only underscores the demonstrators’ message about law enforcement abuses, civil liberties experts warn. The vague, broad language in these orders gives law enforcement leeway to pick and choose when to arrest someone for violating curfew, allowing for situations that are ripe for abuse, experts said. In some cities, this has worked in protesters’ favor when police chose not to arrest them. But when police enforce an order in some cases and not others, the order becomes an arbitrary tool of control that often appears to violate protesters’ constitutional rights to assembly and free speech.
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Study on the impact of marketing through social media, online games and mobile applications on children's behaviour

Study on the impact of marketing through social media, online games and mobile applications on children's behaviour Final Report Abstract The European Online Games, Social Media and Mobile Application sector has grown substantially in recent years and children are exposed to increasingly sophisticated marketing techniques online which are often outside the purview of existing regulatory frameworks. This study aims to provide a better understanding of online marketing to children and to inform effective policy measures for the protection of children as consumers. The study uses a range of information sources, including a systematic literature review, a review of legislation and regulatory framework at EU and Member State level, in-depth analysis of games, focus groups with parents and children, a survey with parents, and behavioural experiments on advergames and in-app purchases. The study finds that online marketing practices have an impact on children, and that children have di
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Why TV ads need persuasion rating points | WARC

Why TV ads need persuasion rating points | WARC : “There is a need for a conceptual shift, from managing advertising solely on the basis of exposure rates to taking into account also the brand-preference-shifting power of the advertising units themselves – that is, a shift from gross rating points to persuasion rating points,” the authors wrote.
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Covid-19: How Telcos Can Reset Their Customer Strategy | Bain & Company

Covid-19: How Telcos Can Reset Their Customer Strategy | Bain & Company : The trick to all of this is finding the balance between personalization and scalability. Leading telcos design products and customer-service plans that are tailored to each group and can be viably scaled across the customer base. 3. Redesign decision-making processes to prioritize the impact on customers Truly reorganizing the business around customers and their needs requires rewiring the organization and its decision making. That’s a complex undertaking with dozens of steps telco executives could take. It might seem even more daunting to attempt this amid an all-consuming pandemic and economic crisis.
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If 'Black Lives Matter' to brands, where are your black board members?

If 'Black Lives Matter' to brands, where are your black board members? : hat this social media support for Black Lives Matter is not reflected in the way these companies operate and that, rather than lecturing consumers and society on how we should behave, they might want to put down their smartphones and sort-themselves-the-fuck-out first.
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Apple veterans raising $90 million for Europe's C4 Ventures - Business Insider

Apple veterans raising $90 million for Europe's C4 Ventures - Business Insider : C4 Ventures was set up by longtime former Apple executive Pascal Cagni, and has just launched an €80 million ($90 million) second fund. The VC firm operates from London and Paris, and backs mostly European startups at Series A and as a co-investor in later rounds. Investors have committed €40 million ($45 million) to C4's second fund so far, which has six startups in its portfolio already including UK homeware startup Trouva and French bike-sharing service Zoov. Cagni has recruited Raphael Crouan, a former business development head at Apple who left in 2013, as a London-based business development partner. There are five other former Apple staffers and executives on C4's roster of full-time investors and roving operating partners.
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