Uncertainty

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty

Situations often arise wherein a decision must be made when the results of each possible choice are uncertain.

Uncertainty or incertitude refers to situations involving imperfect or unknown information. It applies to predictions of future events, to physical measurements that are already made, or to the unknown, and is particularly relevant for decision-making. Uncertainty arises in partially observable or stochastic environments, as well as due to ignorance, indolence, or both. It arises in any number of fields, including insurance, philosophy, physics, statistics, economics, finance, medicine, psychology, sociology, engineering, metrology, meteorology, ecology and information science.

Concepts

Although the terms are used in various ways among the general public, many specialists in decision theory, statistics and other quantitative fields have defined uncertainty, risk, and their measurement as:

Uncertainty

The lack of certainty, a state of limited knowledge where it is impossible to exactly describe the existing state, a future outcome, or more than one possible outcome.

Measurement

Uncertainty can be measured through a set of possible states or outcomes where probabilities are assigned to each possible state or outcome – this also includes the application of a probability density function to continuous variables.

Second-order uncertainty

In statistics and economics, second-order uncertainty is represented in probability density functions over (first-order) probabilities.

Opinions in subjective logic carry this type of uncertainty.

Risk

Risk is a state of uncertainty, where some possible outcomes have an undesired effect or significant loss. Measurement of risk includes a set of measured uncertainties, where some possible outcomes are losses, and the magnitudes of those losses. This also includes loss functions over continuous variables.

Uncertainty versus variability

There is a difference between uncertainty and variability. Uncertainty is quantified by a probability distribution which depends upon knowledge about the likelihood of what the single, true value of the uncertain quantity is. Variability is quantified by a distribution of frequencies of multiple instances of the quantity, derived from observed data.

Knightian uncertainty

In economics, in 1921 Frank Knight distinguished uncertainty from risk with uncertainty being lack of knowledge which is immeasurable and impossible to calculate. Because of the absence of clearly defined statistics in most economic decisions where people face uncertainty, he believed that we cannot measure probabilities in such cases; this is now referred to as Knightian uncertainty.

Uncertainty must be taken in a sense radically distinct from the familiar notion of risk, from which it has never been properly separated.... The essential fact is that 'risk' means in some cases a quantity susceptible of measurement, while at other times it is something distinctly not of this character; and there are far-reaching and crucial differences in the bearings of the phenomena depending on which of the two is really present and operating.... It will appear that a measurable uncertainty, or 'risk' proper, as we shall use the term, is so far different from an unmeasurable one that it is not in effect an uncertainty at all.

— Frank Knight (1885–1972), Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit (1921), University of Chicago.

There is a fundamental distinction between the reward for taking a known risk and that for assuming a risk whose value itself is not known. It is so fundamental, indeed, that … a known risk will not lead to any reward or special payment at all.

— Frank Knight

Knight pointed out that the unfavorable outcome of known risks can be insured during the decision-making process because it has a clearly defined expected probability distribution. Unknown risks have no known expected probability distribution, which can lead to extremely risky company decisions.

Other taxonomies of uncertainties and decisions include a broader sense of uncertainty and how it should be approached from an ethics perspective:

A taxonomy of uncertainty

There are some things that you know to be true, and others that you know to be false; yet, despite this extensive knowledge that you have, there remain many things whose truth or falsity is not known to you. We say that you are uncertain about them. You are uncertain, to varying degrees, about everything in the future; much of the past is hidden from you; and there is a lot of the present about which you do not have full information. Uncertainty is everywhere and you cannot escape from it.

Dennis Lindley, Understanding Uncertainty (2006)

Risk and uncertainty

For example, if it is unknown whether or not it will rain tomorrow, then there is a state of uncertainty. If probabilities are applied to the possible outcomes using weather forecasts or even just a calibrated probability assessment, the uncertainty has been quantified. Suppose it is quantified as a 90% chance of sunshine. If there is a major, costly, outdoor event planned for tomorrow then there is a risk since there is a 10% chance of rain, and rain would be undesirable. Furthermore, if this is a business event and $100,000 would be lost if it rains, then the risk has been quantified (a 10% chance of losing $100,000). These situations can be made even more realistic by quantifying light rain vs. heavy rain, the cost of delays vs. outright cancellation, etc.

Some may represent the risk in this example as the "expected opportunity loss" (EOL) or the chance of the loss multiplied by the amount of the loss (10% × $100,000 = $10,000). That is useful if the organizer of the event is "risk neutral", which most people are not. Most would be willing to pay a premium to avoid the loss. An insurance company, for example, would compute an EOL as a minimum for any insurance coverage, then add onto that other operating costs and profit. Since many people are willing to buy insurance for many reasons, then clearly the EOL alone is not the perceived value of avoiding the risk.

Quantitative uses of the terms uncertainty and risk are fairly consistent among fields such as probability theory, actuarial science, and information theory. Some also create new terms without substantially changing the definitions of uncertainty or risk. For example, surprisal is a variation on uncertainty sometimes used in information theory. But outside of the more mathematical uses of the term, usage may vary widely. In cognitive psychology, uncertainty can be real, or just a matter of perception, such as expectations, threats, etc.

Vagueness is a form of uncertainty where the analyst is unable to clearly differentiate between two different classes, such as 'person of average height' and 'tall person'. This form of vagueness can be modelled by some variation on Zadeh's fuzzy logic or subjective logic.

Ambiguity is a form of uncertainty where even the possible outcomes have unclear meanings and interpretations. The statement "He returns from the bank" is ambiguous because its interpretation depends on whether the word 'bank' is meant as "the side of a river" or "a financial institution". Ambiguity typically arises in situations where multiple analysts or observers have different interpretations of the same statements.

At the subatomic level, uncertainty may be a fundamental and unavoidable property of the universe. In quantum mechanics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle puts limits on how much an observer can ever know about the position and velocity of a particle. This may not just be ignorance of potentially obtainable facts but that there is no fact to be found. There is some controversy in physics as to whether such uncertainty is an irreducible property of nature or if there are "hidden variables" that would describe the state of a particle even more exactly than Heisenberg's uncertainty principle allows.

Radical uncertainty

The term 'radical uncertainty' was popularised by John Kay and Mervyn King in their book Radical Uncertainty: Decision-Making for an Unknowable Future, published in March 2020. It is distinct from Knightian uncertainty, by whether or not it is 'resolvable'. If uncertainty arises from a lack of knowledge, and that lack of knowledge is resolvable by acquiring knowledge (such as by primary or secondary research) then it is not radical uncertainty. Only when there are no means available to acquire the knowledge which would resolve the uncertainty, is it considered 'radical'.

In measurements

Main article: Measurement uncertainty

See also: Uncertainty quantification and Uncertainty propagation

The most commonly used procedure for calculating measurement uncertainty is described in the "Guide to the Expression of Uncertainty in Measurement" (GUM) published by ISO. A derived work is for example the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Technical Note 1297, "Guidelines for Evaluating and Expressing the Uncertainty of NIST Measurement Results", and the Eurachem/Citac publication "Quantifying Uncertainty in Analytical Measurement". The uncertainty of the result of a measurement generally consists of several components. The components are regarded as random variables, and may be grouped into two categories according to the method used to estimate their numerical values:

• Type A, those evaluated by statistical methods
• Type B, those evaluated by other means, e.g., by assigning a probability distribution

By propagating the variances of the components through a function relating the components to the measurement result, the combined measurement uncertainty is given as the square root of the resulting variance. The simplest form is the standard deviation of a repeated observation.

In metrology, physics, and engineering, the uncertainty or margin of error of a measurement, when explicitly stated, is given by a range of values likely to enclose the true value. This may be denoted by error bars on a graph, or by the following notations:

• measured value ± uncertainty
• measured value ^+uncertainty
  _{−uncertainty}
• measured value (uncertainty)

In the last notation, parentheses are the concise notation for the ± notation. For example, applying 10 1⁄2 meters in a scientific or engineering application, it could be written 10.5 m or 10.50 m, by convention meaning accurate to within one tenth of a meter, or one hundredth. The precision is symmetric around the last digit. In this case it's half a tenth up and half a tenth down, so 10.5 means between 10.45 and 10.55. Thus it is understood that 10.5 means 10.5±0.05, and 10.50 means 10.50±0.005, also written 10.50(5) and 10.500(5) respectively. But if the accuracy is within two tenths, the uncertainty is ± one tenth, and it is required to be explicit: 10.5±0.1 and 10.50±0.01 or 10.5(1) and 10.50(1). The numbers in parentheses apply to the numeral left of themselves, and are not part of that number, but part of a notation of uncertainty. They apply to the least significant digits. For instance, 1.00794(7) stands for 1.00794±0.00007, while 1.00794(72) stands for 1.00794±0.00072. This concise notation is used for example by IUPAC in stating the atomic mass of elements.

The middle notation is used when the error is not symmetrical about the value – for example 3.4+0.3
−0.2. This can occur when using a logarithmic scale, for example.

Uncertainty of a measurement can be determined by repeating a measurement to arrive at an estimate of the standard deviation of the values. Then, any single value has an uncertainty equal to the standard deviation. However, if the values are averaged, then the mean measurement value has a much smaller uncertainty, equal to the standard error of the mean, which is the standard deviation divided by the square root of the number of measurements. This procedure neglects systematic errors, however.

When the uncertainty represents the standard error of the measurement, then about 68.3% of the time, the true value of the measured quantity falls within the stated uncertainty range. For example, it is likely that for 31.7% of the atomic mass values given on the list of elements by atomic mass, the true value lies outside of the stated range. If the width of the interval is doubled, then probably only 4.6% of the true values lie outside the doubled interval, and if the width is tripled, probably only 0.3% lie outside. These values follow from the properties of the normal distribution, and they apply only if the measurement process produces normally distributed errors. In that case, the quoted standard errors are easily converted to 68.3% ("one sigma"), 95.4% ("two sigma"), or 99.7% ("three sigma") confidence intervals.

In this context, uncertainty depends on both the accuracy and precision of the measurement instrument. The lower the accuracy and precision of an instrument, the larger the measurement uncertainty is. Precision is often determined as the standard deviation of the repeated measures of a given value, namely using the same method described above to assess measurement uncertainty. However, this method is correct only when the instrument is accurate. When it is inaccurate, the uncertainty is larger than the standard deviation of the repeated measures, and it appears evident that the uncertainty does not depend only on instrumental precision.

In the media

Uncertainty in science, and science in general, may be interpreted differently in the public sphere than in the scientific community. This is due in part to the diversity of the public audience, and the tendency for scientists to misunderstand lay audiences and therefore not communicate ideas clearly and effectively. One example is explained by the information deficit model. Also, in the public realm, there are often many scientific voices giving input on a single topic. For example, depending on how an issue is reported in the public sphere, discrepancies between outcomes of multiple scientific studies due to methodological differences could be interpreted by the public as a lack of consensus in a situation where a consensus does in fact exist. This interpretation may have even been intentionally promoted, as scientific uncertainty may be managed to reach certain goals. For example, climate change deniers took the advice of Frank Luntz to frame global warming as an issue of scientific uncertainty, which was a precursor to the conflict frame used by journalists when reporting the issue.

"Indeterminacy can be loosely said to apply to situations in which not all the parameters of the system and their interactions are fully known, whereas ignorance refers to situations in which it is not known what is not known." These unknowns, indeterminacy and ignorance, that exist in science are often "transformed" into uncertainty when reported to the public in order to make issues more manageable, since scientific indeterminacy and ignorance are difficult concepts for scientists to convey without losing credibility. Conversely, uncertainty is often interpreted by the public as ignorance. The transformation of indeterminacy and ignorance into uncertainty may be related to the public's misinterpretation of uncertainty as ignorance.

Journalists may inflate uncertainty (making the science seem more uncertain than it really is) or downplay uncertainty (making the science seem more certain than it really is). One way that journalists inflate uncertainty is by describing new research that contradicts past research without providing context for the change. Journalists may give scientists with minority views equal weight as scientists with majority views, without adequately describing or explaining the state of scientific consensus on the issue. In the same vein, journalists may give non-scientists the same amount of attention and importance as scientists.

Journalists may downplay uncertainty by eliminating "scientists' carefully chosen tentative wording, and by losing these caveats the information is skewed and presented as more certain and conclusive than it really is". Also, stories with a single source or without any context of previous research mean that the subject at hand is presented as more definitive and certain than it is in reality. There is often a "product over process" approach to science journalism that aids, too, in the downplaying of uncertainty. Finally, and most notably for this investigation, when science is framed by journalists as a triumphant quest, uncertainty is erroneously framed as "reducible and resolvable".

Some media routines and organizational factors affect the overstatement of uncertainty; other media routines and organizational factors help inflate the certainty of an issue. Because the general public (in the United States) generally trusts scientists, when science stories are covered without alarm-raising cues from special interest organizations (religious groups, environmental organizations, political factions, etc.) they are often covered in a business related sense, in an economic-development frame or a social progress frame. The nature of these frames is to downplay or eliminate uncertainty, so when economic and scientific promise are focused on early in the issue cycle, as has happened with coverage of plant biotechnology and nanotechnology in the United States, the matter in question seems more definitive and certain.

Sometimes, stockholders, owners, or advertising will pressure a media organization to promote the business aspects of a scientific issue, and therefore any uncertainty claims which may compromise the business interests are downplayed or eliminated.

Applications

• Uncertainty is designed into games, most notably in gambling, where chance is central to play.
• In scientific modelling, in which the prediction of future events should be understood to have a range of expected values
• In computer science, and in particular data management, uncertain data is commonplace and can be modeled and stored within an uncertain database
• In optimization, uncertainty permits one to describe situations where the user does not have full control on the outcome of the optimization procedure, see scenario optimization and stochastic optimization.
• In weather forecasting, it is now commonplace to include data on the degree of uncertainty in a weather forecast.
• Uncertainty or error is used in science and engineering notation. Numerical values should only have to be expressed in those digits that are physically meaningful, which are referred to as significant figures. Uncertainty is involved in every measurement, such as measuring a distance, a temperature, etc., the degree depending upon the instrument or technique used to make the measurement. Similarly, uncertainty is propagated through calculations so that the calculated value has some degree of uncertainty depending upon the uncertainties of the measured values and the equation used in the calculation.
• In physics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle forms the basis of modern quantum mechanics.
• In metrology, measurement uncertainty is a central concept quantifying the dispersion one may reasonably attribute to a measurement result. Such an uncertainty can also be referred to as a measurement error.
• In daily life, measurement uncertainty is often implicit ("He is 6 feet tall" give or take a few inches), while for any serious use an explicit statement of the measurement uncertainty is necessary. The expected measurement uncertainty of many measuring instruments (scales, oscilloscopes, force gages, rulers, thermometers, etc.) is often stated in the manufacturers' specifications.
• In engineering, uncertainty can be used in the context of validation and verification of material modeling.
• Uncertainty has been a common theme in art, both as a thematic device (see, for example, the indecision of Hamlet), and as a quandary for the artist (such as Martin Creed's difficulty with deciding what artworks to make).
• Uncertainty is an important factor in economics. According to economist Frank Knight, it is different from risk, where there is a specific probability assigned to each outcome (as when flipping a fair coin). Knightian uncertainty involves a situation that has unknown probabilities.
• Investing in financial markets such as the stock market involves Knightian uncertainty when the probability of a rare but catastrophic event is unknown.

Philosophy

Main article: Philosophical skepticism

In Western philosophy the first philosopher to embrace uncertainty was Pyrrho resulting in the Hellenistic philosophies of Pyrrhonism and Academic Skepticism, the first schools of philosophical skepticism. Aporia and acatalepsy represent key concepts in ancient Greek philosophy regarding uncertainty.

William MacAskill, a philosopher at Oxford University, has also discussed the concept of Moral Uncertainty. Moral Uncertainty is "uncertainty about how to act given lack of certainty in any one moral theory, as well as the study of how we ought to act given this uncertainty."

Artificial intelligence

Many reasoning systems provide capabilities for reasoning under uncertainty. This is important when building situated reasoning agents which must deal with uncertain representations of the world. There are several common approaches to handling uncertainty. These include the use of certainty factors, probabilistic methods such as Bayesian inference or Dempster–Shafer theory, multi-valued ('fuzzy') logic and various connectionist approaches.

Internet meme

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_meme

 

Internet
An Opte Project visualization of routing paths through a portion of the Internet An Internet meme, or meme (/miːm/, MEEM), is a cultural item (such as an idea, behavior, or style) that spreads across the Internet, primarily through social media platforms. Internet memes manifest in a variety of formats, including images, videos, GIFs, and other viral content. Key characteristics of memes include their tendency to be parodied, their use of intertextuality, their viral dissemination, and their continual evolution. The term "meme" was originally introduced by Richard Dawkins in 1972 to describe the concept of cultural transmission.

The term "Internet meme" was coined by Mike Godwin in 1993 in reference to the way memes proliferated through early online communities, including message boards, Usenet groups, and email. The emergence of social media platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram further diversified memes and accelerated their spread. Newer meme genres include "dank" and surrealist memes, as well as short-form videos popularized by platforms like Vine and TikTok.

Memes are now recognized as a significant aspect of Internet culture and are the subject of academic research. They appear across a broad spectrum of contexts, including marketing, economics, finance, politics, social movements, religion, and healthcare. While memes are often viewed as falling under fair use protection, their incorporation of material from pre-existing works can sometimes result in copyright disputes.

Characteristics

Internet memes derive from the original concept of "memes" as units of cultural transmission, passed from person to person. In the digital realm, this transmission occurs primarily through online platforms, such as social media. Although related, internet memes differ from traditional memes in that they often represent fleeting trends, whereas the success of traditional memes is measured by their endurance over time. Additionally, internet memes tend to be less abstract in nature compared to their traditional counterparts. They are highly versatile in form and purpose, serving as tools for light entertainment, self-expression, social commentary, and even political discourse.

Two fundamental characteristics of internet memes are creative reproduction and intertextuality. Creative reproduction refers to the adaptation and transformation of a meme through imitation or parody, either by reproducing the meme in a new context ("mimicry") or by remixing the original material ("remix"). In mimicry, the meme is recreated in a different setting, as seen when different individuals replicate the viral video "Charlie Bit My Finger." Remix, on the other hand, involves technological manipulation, such as altering an image with Photoshop, while retaining elements of the original meme.

Intertextuality in memes involves the blending of different cultural references or contexts. An example of this is the combination of U.S. politician Mitt Romney’s phrase “binders full of women” from the 2012 U.S. presidential debate with a scene from the Korean pop song “Gangnam Style.” In this case, the phrase "my binders full of women exploded" is superimposed on a frame from Psy’s music video, creating a new meaning by merging political and cultural references from distinct contexts.

Internet memes can also function as in-jokes within specific online communities, where they convey insider knowledge that may be incomprehensible to outsiders. This fosters a sense of collective identity within the group. Conversely, some memes achieve widespread cultural relevance, being understood and appreciated by broader audiences outside of the originating subculture.

A study by Michele Knobel and Colin Lankshear examined how Richard Dawkins' three characteristics of successful traditional memes—fidelity, fecundity, and longevity—apply to internet memes. It was found that fidelity in the context of internet memes is better described as replicability, as memes are frequently modified through remixing while still maintaining their core message. Fecundity, or the ability of a meme to spread, is promoted by factors such as humor (such as the comically translated video game line "All your base are belong to us"), intertextuality (as in the various pop culture-referencing renditions of the "Star Wars Kid" viral video), and juxtaposition of seemingly incongruous elements (exemplified in the Bert is Evil meme). Finally, longevity is essential for a meme’s continued circulation and evolution over time.

Evolution and propagation

Internet memes propagate in a similar pattern to infectious disease, as shown by this SIR model. The pattern, as depicted in red, shows an initial spike in popularity followed by a gradual taper to obscurity.

Internet memes can either remain consistent or evolve over time. This evolution may involve changes in meaning while retaining the meme’s structure, or vice versa, with such transformations occurring either by chance or through deliberate efforts like parody. A study by Miltner examined the lolcats meme, tracing its development from an in-joke within computer and gaming communities on the website 4chan to a broader source of humor and emotional support. As the meme entered mainstream culture, it lost favor with its original creators. Miltner explained that as content moves through different communities, it is reinterpreted to suit the specific needs and desires of those communities, often diverging from the creator’s original intent. Modifications to memes can lead them to transcend social and cultural boundaries.

Memes spread virally, in a manner similar to the SIR (Susceptible-Infectious-Recovered) model used to describe the transmission of diseases. Once a meme has reached a critical number of individuals, its continued spread becomes inevitable. Research by Coscia examined the factors contributing to a meme’s propagation and longevity, concluding that while memes compete for attention—often resulting in shorter lifespans—they can also collaborate, enhancing their chances of survival. A meme that experiences an exceptionally high peak in popularity is unlikely to endure unless it is uniquely distinct. Conversely, a meme without such a peak, but that coexists with others, tends to have greater longevity. In 2013, Dominic Basulto, writing for The Washington Post, argued that the widespread use of memes, particularly by the marketing and advertising industries, has led to a decline in their original cultural value. Once considered valuable cultural artifacts meant to endure, memes now often convey trivial rather than meaningful ideas.

History

Origins and early memes

A lolcat image macro, a meme style especially popular in the mid-and-late 2000s

The word meme was coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene as an attempt to explain how aspects of culture replicate, mutate, and evolve (memetics). Emoticons are among the earliest examples of internet memes, specifically the smiley emoticon ":-)", introduced by Scott Fahlman in 1982. The concept of memes in an online context was formally proposed by Mike Godwin in the June 1993 issue of Wired. In 2013, Dawkins characterized an Internet meme as being a meme deliberately altered by human creativity—distinguished from biological genes and his own pre-Internet concept of a meme, which involved mutation by random change and spreading through accurate replication as in Darwinian selection. Dawkins explained that Internet memes are thus a "hijacking of the original idea", evolving the very concept of a meme in this new direction. Nevertheless, by 2013, Limor Shifman solidified the relationship of memes to internet culture and reworked Dawkins' concept for online contexts. Such an association has been shown to be empirically valuable as internet memes carry an additional property that Dawkins' "memes" do not: internet memes leave a footprint in the media through which they propagate (for example, social networks) that renders them traceable and analyzable.

However, before internet memes were considered truly academic, they were initially a colloquial reference to humorous visual communication online in the mid-late 1990s among internet denizens; examples of these early internet memes include the Dancing Baby and Hampster Dance. Memes of this time were primarily spread via messageboards, Usenet groups, and email, and generally lasted for a longer time than modern memes.

An example of the Doge meme, popular in 2013 and similar in style to earlier lolcats

As the Internet protocols evolved, so did memes. Lolcats originated from imageboard website 4chan, becoming the prototype of the "image macro" format (an image overlaid by large text). Other early forms of image-based memes included demotivators (parodized motivational posters), photoshopped images, comics (such as rage comics), and anime fan art, sometimes made by doujin circles in various countries. After the release of YouTube in 2005, video-based memes such as Rickrolling and viral videos such as "Gangnam Style" and the Harlem shake emerged. The appearance of social media websites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram provided additional mediums for the spread of memes, and the creation of meme-generating websites made their production more accessible.

Modern memes

"Dank memes" are a more recent phenomenon, the phrase reaching mainstream prominence around 2014 and referring to deliberately zany or odd memes with features such as oversaturated colours, compression artifacts, crude humour, and overly loud sounds (termed "ear rape"). The term "dank", which refers to cold, damp places, has been adapted as a way to describe memes as "new" or "cool". The term may also be used to describe memes that have become overused and stale to the point of paradoxically becoming humorous again. The phenomenon of dank memes sprouted a subculture called the "meme market", satirising Wall Street and applying the associated jargon (such as "stocks") to internet memes. Originally started on Reddit as /r/MemeEconomy, users jokingly "buy" or "sell" shares in a meme reflecting opinion on its potential popularity.

Example of a "deep-fried" meme, featuring distortion and saturated colours

"Deep-fried" memes refer to those that have been distorted and run through several filters and/or layers of lossy compression. An example of these is the "E" meme, a picture of YouTuber Markiplier photoshopped onto Lord Farquaad from the film Shrek, in turn photoshopped into a scene from businessman Mark Zuckerberg's hearing in Congress and captioned with a lone 'E'. Elizabeth Bruenig of the Washington Post described this as a "digital update to the surreal and absurd genres of art and literature that characterized the tumultuous early 20th century".

The "Thousand Yard Stare Meme", which was popular in 2023

Many modern memes make use of humorously absurd and even surrealist themes. Examples of the former include "they did surgery on a grape", a video depicting a Da Vinci Surgical System performing test surgery on a grape, and the "moth meme", a close-up picture of a moth with captions humorously conveying the insect's love of lamps. Surreal memes incorporate layers of irony to make them unique and nonsensical, often as a means of escapism from mainstream meme culture.

After the success of the application Vine, a format of memes emerged in the form of short videos and scripted sketches. An example is the "What's Nine Plus Ten?" meme, a Vine video depicting a child humorously providing an incorrect answer to a math problem. After the shutdown of Vine in 2017, the de facto replacement became Chinese social network TikTok, which similarly utilises the short video format. The platform has become immensely popular, and is the source of memes such as the "Renegade" dance.

In 2022, the term brain rot became used to reflect a shift in how memes, particularly TikTok videos, were being interacted with. The term describes content lacking in quality and meaning, often associated with slang and trends popular among Generation Alpha, such as "skibidi", "rizz", "gyatt", and "fanum tax". The name comes from the perceived negative psychological and cognitive effects caused by exposure to such content.

By context

Marketing

The practice of using memes to market products or services has been termed "memetic marketing". Internet memes allow brands to circumvent the conception of advertisements as irksome, making them less overt and more tailored to the likes of their target audience. Marketing personnel may choose to utilise an existing meme, or create a new meme from scratch. Fashion house Gucci employed the former strategy, launching a series of Instagram ads that reimagined popular memes featuring its watch collection. The image macro "The Most Interesting Man in the World" is an example of the latter, a meme generated from an advertising campaign for the Dos Equis beer brand. Products may also gain popularity through internet memes without intention by the producer themselves; for instance, the film Snakes on a Plane became a cult classic after creation of the website SnakesOnABlog.com by law student Brian Finkelstein.

Use of memes by brands, while often advantageous, has been subject to criticism for seemingly forced, unoriginal, or unfunny usage of memes, which can negatively impact a brand's image. For example, the fast food company Wendy's began a social media-based approach to marketing that was initially met with success (resulting in an almost 50% profit growth that year), but received criticism after sharing a controversial Pepe meme that was negatively perceived by consumers.

Economics & finance

Further information: Meme stocks

Meme stocks are a phenomenon where stock values for a company rise significantly in a short period due to a surge in interest online and subsequent buying by investors. Video game retailer GameStop is recognised as the first meme stock. r/WallStreetBets, a subreddit where participants discuss stock trading, and Robinhood Markets, a financial services company, became notable in 2021 for their involvement in the popularisation of meme stocks. "YOLO investors" are a phenomenon that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic, who are less risk averse in their investments compared to their traditional counterparts.

Additionally, memes have developed an association with cryptocurrency with the development of meme currencies such as Dogecoin, Shiba Inu Coin, and Pepe Coin. Meme cryptocurrencies have suggested comparisons between meme value and monetary markets.

Politics

Photomontage of a shark to swallow former managing director of the IMF and former vice president of the Spanish government Rodrigo Rato with his spouse targeted by a meme in 2015.

Internet memes are a medium for fast communication to large online audiences, which has led to their use by those seeking to express a political opinion or actively campaign for (or against) a political entity. In some ways, they can be seen as a modern form of the political cartoon, offering a way to democratize political commentary.

Among the earliest political memes were those arising from the viral Dean scream, an excerpt from a speech delivered by Vermont governor Howard Dean. Over time, Internet memes have become an increasingly important element in political campaigns, as online communities contribute to broader discourse through the use of memes. For example, Ted Cruz's 2016 Republican presidential bid was damaged by Internet memes that jokingly speculated he was the Zodiac Killer.

Research has shown the use of memes during elections has a role to play in informing the public on political themes. A study explored this in relation to the 2017 UK general election, and concluded that memes acted as a widely shared conduit for basic political information to audiences who would usually not seek it out. They also found that memes may play some role in increasing voter turnout.

Some political campaigns have begun to explicitly taken advantage of the increasing influence of memes; as part of the 2020 US presidential campaign, Michael Bloomberg sponsored a number of Instagram accounts (with over 60 million followers collectively) to post memes related to the Bloomberg campaign. The campaign was faulted for treating memes as a commodity that can be bought.

Beyond their use in elections, Internet memes can become symbols for various political ideologies. A salient example is Pepe the Frog, which has been used as a symbol for the alt-right political movement, as well as for pro-democracy ideologies in the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests.

Social movements

A person performing the Ice Bucket Challenge

Internet memes can be powerful tools in social movements, constructing collective identity and providing platform for discourse. During the 2010 It Gets Better Project for LGBTQ+ empowerment, memes were used to uplift LGBTQ+ youth while negotiating the community's collective identity. In 2014, the viral Ice Bucket Challenge raised money and awareness for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis/Motor Neurone Disease (ALS/MND). Furthermore, internet memes proved an important medium in the discourse surrounding the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement.

Religion

Internet memes have also been used in the context of religion. They create a participatory culture that enable individuals to collectively make meaning of religious beliefs, reflecting a form of lived religion. Aguilar et al. of Texas A&M University identified six common genres of religious memes: non-religious image macros with religious themes, image macros featuring religious figures, memes reacting to religion-related news, memes deifying non-religious figures such as celebrities, spoofs of religious images, and video-based memes.

Healthcare

Social media platforms can increase the speed of dissemination of evidence-based health practices. A study by Reynolds and Boyd found the majority of participants (who were healthcare staff) felt that memes could be an appropriate means of improving healthcare worker's knowledge of and compliance with infection prevention practices. Internet memes were also used in Nigeria to raise awareness of the COVID-19 pandemic, with healthcare professionals using the medium to disseminate information on the virus and its vaccine.

Copyright

Since many memes are derived from pre-existing works, it has been contended that memes violate the copyright of the original authors. However, some view memes as falling under the ambit of fair use in the United States. This dilemma has caused conflict between meme producers and copyright owners: for example, Getty Images' demand for payment from the blog Get Digital for publishing the "Socially Awkward Penguin" meme without permission.

United States

Under United States copyright law, copyright protection subsists in "original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device". It is disputed whether the use of memes constitutes copyright infringement.

This image macro is in the public domain in the United States as the background was taken by the Department of Agriculture.

Fair use is a defence under U.S. copyright law which protects work made using other copyrighted works. Section 107 of the 1976 Copyright Act outlines four factors for analysis of fair use:

1. The purpose and character of the use,
2. The nature of the copyrighted work,
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used, and
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The first factor implies the secondary use of a copyrighted work should be "transformative" (that is, giving novel meaning or expression to the original work); many memes fulfil this criterion, placing pieces of media in a new context to serve a different purpose to that of the original author. The second factor favours copied works drawing from factual sources, which may be problematic for memes derived from fictional works (such as films). Many of these memes, however, only use small portions of such works (such as still images), favouring an argument of fair use per the third factor. With regards to the fourth factor, most memes are non-commercial in nature and thus would not have adverse effects on the potential market for the copyright work. Given these factors, and the overall reliance of memes on appropriation of other sources, it has been argued that they deserve protection from copyright infringement suits.

Non-fungible tokens

Some individuals who are subjects of memes (and thus the copyright holders) have made money through sale of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in auctions. Ben Lashes, a manager of numerous memes, stated their sales as NFTs made over US$2 million and established memes as serious forms of art. One example is Disaster Girl, based on a photo of Zoe Roth at age 4 taken in Mebane, North Carolina, in January 2005. After this photo became famous and was used hundreds of times without permission, Roth decided to sell the original copy as an NFT for US$539,973 (equivalent to $607,146 in 2023), with agreement for a further 10 percent share of any future sales.

Don't be evil

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil

"Don't be evil" is Google's former motto, and a phrase used in Google's corporate code of conduct.

Following Google's corporate restructuring under the conglomerate Alphabet Inc. in October 2015, Alphabet took "Do the right thing" as its motto, also forming the opening of its corporate code of conduct. The original motto was retained in Google's code of conduct, now a subsidiary of Alphabet. Between April 21st and May 4th of 2018, the motto was removed from the code of conduct's preface and retained in its last sentence.

History

The motto was first suggested either by Google employee Paul Buchheit at a meeting about corporate values that took place either in early 2000 or 2001 or, according to another account, by Google engineer Amit Patel in 1999. Buchheit, the creator of Gmail, said he "wanted something that, once you put it in there, would be hard to take out", adding that the slogan was "also a bit of a jab at a lot of the other companies, especially our competitors, who at the time, in our opinion, were kind of exploiting the users to some extent".

While the official corporate philosophy of Google does not contain the words "Don't be evil", they were included in the prospectus (on Form S-1) of Google's 2004 IPO (a letter from Google's founders, later called the "'Don't Be Evil' manifesto"): "Don't be evil. We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served—as shareholders and in all other ways—by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains." The motto is sometimes incorrectly stated as Do no evil.

By early 2018, the motto was still cited in the preface to Google's Code of Conduct:

"Don't be evil." Googlers generally apply those words to how we serve our users. But "Don't be evil" is much more than that...

The Google Code of Conduct is one of the ways we put "Don't be evil" into practice...

Between 21 April and 4 May 2018, Google removed the motto from the preface, leaving a mention in the final line: "And remember... don't be evil, and if you see something that you think isn't right – speak up!"

Interpretations

In their 2004 founders' letter prior to their initial public offering, Larry Page and Sergey Brin argued that their "Don't be evil" culture prohibited conflicts of interest, and required objectivity and an absence of bias:

Google users trust our systems to help them with important decisions: medical, financial and many others. Our search results are the best we know how to produce. They are unbiased and objective, and we do not accept payment for them or for inclusion or more frequent updating. We also display advertising, which we work hard to make relevant, and we label it clearly. This is similar to a well-run newspaper, where the advertisements are clear and the articles are not influenced by the advertisers’ payments. We believe it is important for everyone to have access to the best information and research, not only to the information people pay for you to see.

In 2009, Chris Hoofnagle, director of University of California, Berkeley Law's information privacy programs, stated that Google's original intention expressed by the "don't be evil" motto was linked to the company's separation of search results from advertising. However, he observed that clearly separating search results from sponsored links is required by law, thus, Google's practice had since become mainstream and was no longer remarkable or good. Hoofnagle argued that Google should abandon the motto because:

The evil talk is not only an albatross for Google, it obscures the substantial consumer benefits from Google’s advertising model. Because we have forgotten the original context of Google’s evil representations, the company should remind the public of the company’s contribution to a revolution in search advertising, and highlight some overlooked benefits of their model.

In a 2013 NPR interview, Eric Schmidt revealed that when Larry Page and Sergey Brin recommended the motto as a guiding principle for Google, he "thought this was the stupidest rule ever", but then changed his opinion after a meeting where an engineer successfully referred to the motto when expressing concerns about a planned advertising product, which was eventually cancelled. Journalists have raised questions about the actual definition of what Google considered "evil". On the user-facing 'What We Believe' page, Google appeared to replace the original motto altogether (a carefully reworded version stood as of April 10th, 2015, "You can make money without doing evil", which varied significantly from the absolute imperative of DON'T be evil).

Use in criticism of Google

Critics of Google frequently spin the motto in a negative way, such as InfoWorld's 2014 article "Google? Evil? You have no idea". Google's 2012 announcement to "begin tracking users universally across all its services" (via "Google Plus" accounts) prompted early privacy and anti-trust concerns referencing the motto, like "Google's Broken Promise: The End of 'Don't Be Evil'" on Gizmodo. In the same year, major social networks even co-developed a Don't be evil browser bookmarklet (specifically to expose alleged SERP manipulation promoting Google-owned content over that of others).

On May 16th, 2013 Margaret Hodge MP, the chair of the United Kingdom Public Accounts Committee, accused Google of being "calculated and unethical" over its use of highly contrived and artificial distinctions to avoid paying billions of pounds in corporation tax owed by its UK operations. The company was accused by the committee, which represents the interests of all UK taxpayers, of being "evil" for not paying its "fair amount of tax". She told Matt Brittin, head of Google UK, "I think that you do evil". In 2015, the UK Government introduced a new law intended to penalise Google and other large multinational corporations' artificial tax avoidance.

Google's alleged uses of multi-platform mass surveillance, search engine results and other technologies to politically censor content visibility, manipulate public opinion, sway elections and develop weapons triggered new protests under the former motto. "Google is evil" according to the conservative "Internet Accountability Project", citing Google swinging as many as 2.6 million votes to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US election.

In 2015, The Commercial Appeal reported that "critics say Google's recent moves belie search giant's motto".

Lawsuit

On 29 November 2021, three former Google employees filed a lawsuit alleging that Google's motto "Don't be evil" amounts to a contractual obligation that the tech giant violated, that Google broke their own moral code by firing them as retaliation for their efforts against "evil", in what the trio thought were in accordance with the principle, in drawing attention to and organizing employees against controversial projects, such as work for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) during the Trump administration which, as they claimed, amounted to "doing evil", and as such deserve monetary damages.

The plaintiffs' lawyer, Laurie Burgess, says Google employees can be fired for not abiding by the motto.

There are all sorts of contract terms that a jury is required to interpret: "don't be evil" is not so "out there" as to be unenforceable. "Since Google's contract tells employees that they can be fired for failing to abide by the motto, 'don't be evil,' it must have meaning." - plaintiffs' lawyer, Laurie Burgess

The trio circulated a petition calling on Google to publicly commit to not working with the CBP. The three workers (along with a fourth) were later fired in 2019 on a denied accusation of "clear and repeated violations" of the company's data security policies.

The National Labor Relations Board wrote, in May 2021, that Google "arguably violated" federal labor law by "unlawfully discharging" the workers.

The trio condemned Google for their behavior in 2021:

Google realized that "don't be evil" was both costing it money and driving workers to organize. Rather than admit that their stance had changed and lose the accompanying benefits to the company image, Google fired employees who were living the motto.

Women in climate change

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_climate_change

Women world leaders at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference.

The contributions of women in climate change have received increasing attention in the early 21st century. Feedback from women and the issues faced by women have been described as "imperative" by the United Nations and "critical" by the Population Reference Bureau. A report by the World Health Organization concluded that incorporating gender-based analysis would "provide more effective climate change mitigation and adaptation."

Many studies have documented the gender gap in science and investigated why women are not included or represented, particularly at higher levels of research. Despite significant progress, female scientists continue to endure discrimination, unequal pay, and funding inequities, according to a special report published in the journal Nature in 2013. It also states that 70 percent of men and women around the world regard science as a male endeavor. Women encounter hurdles due to their family obligations, and they are underrepresented in publications and citations.

Overview

Mary Robinson

Christiana Figueres

Women have made major contributions to climate change research and policy and to broader analysis of global environmental issues. They include many women scientists as well as policy makers and activists. Women researchers have made significant contributions to major scientific assessments such as those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and are reasonably well represented on key global change committees of the International Council for Science (ICSU) and US National Academy of Sciences. Women have played important leadership roles in international climate policy. For example, Christiana Figueres leads the international climate negotiations as the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and former Irish President Mary Robinson is the UN Special Envoy on Climate Change. Susan Solomon chaired the climate science working group 1 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment in 2007.

Underrepresentation of women in science

Main article: Women in STEM fields

Women are generally underrepresented in science and have faced many barriers to their success and recognition. Following the scientific revolution in the 17th century European women became involved in observational science, including astronomy, natural history and weather observations although many universities would not admit women until the late 19th century.

The latest report from the US National Science Foundation shows that while women are now earning half of the undergraduate degrees in science and engineering, most of these are in the biosciences (especially pre-med) compared to physics, computer sciences and engineering (20%). In terms of doctorates, women are also only 20% of the engineering and physics PhDs. Although the proportion of women full professors in the US has doubled since 1993 women occupy less than 1/4 of senior faculty positions in science and engineering and women earn less than men at the same level.

It has been noted that women of color, indigenous women and women from the global south are even more likely to be overlooked, to be poorly represented in the academy and leadership. This is associated with a legacy of discrimination, lack of educational opportunities, language barriers, and a lack of effort to identify and cite them.

Women in climate change disciplines

Women are underrepresented in key disciplines for the study of climate change. For example, women are a minority in the earth sciences where surveys reveal that less than 20% of meteorologists and geoscientists are women. A recent analysis of US atmospheric science doctoral programs reveals that women were 17% of tenure track and tenured faculty, with even smaller proportions at higher rank, and 53% of departments had two or fewer women faculty. Women are slightly better represented in the ecological sciences. One study reports that women are 55% of graduate students in ecology but only 1/3 of tenured faculty are women and that 3/4 of the articles in the flagship international journal - Ecology - are written by men. Women received proportionally less research funding and were less likely to be cited by their colleagues. Women members of the Ecological Society of America increased from 23% in 1992 to 37% in 2010.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization publishes data on women in science worldwide. Overall women are better represented as a share of total scientific researchers in Latin America, Oceania and Europe (30%+) and least in Asia (19%).

Arguments for women in science and climate change

It is argued that when women are overlooked as scholars and decision makers the world fails to take advantage of its full human capacity, which is needed for issues as urgent as climate change. Women may also take more collaborative approaches, especially in negotiations, and may pay more attention to disadvantaged groups and to the natural environment.

Gender has become an issue because of women's essential roles in managing resources such as water, forests and energy and as women lead fights for environmental protection.

A general concern has been expressed about the need to highlight the work of women and to include more women in major committees in order to provide gender balance, social justice, and inspiration to young women to enter careers in science. This reflects more general arguments about the barriers to women's advancement and the need for women to "Lean in" to leadership positions.

Another argument focuses on the effects climate change on reproductive health. It was not until recently that these issues were discovered and brought to light however, they are currently affecting many women all around the world and in turn will eventually have population effects. The pollutants and toxic chemicals that in air, food, and ecosystems are causing lots of health issues. Developing countries are currently suffering the most as they tend to be the waste dump sites from more developed countries as they are seen as more disposable. Not only can these pollutants cause infertility, they can create issues with formation of babies and the overall weight and health as well as cause miscarriages. Not only is our future generation suffering the consequences the mothers of these children are suffering health issues. This is another important reason why women should be brought into the climate change discussion.

Susan Solomon

Women and international climate policy

The outcome document of the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development - the Future we Want - recognized the need to remove barriers to the full and equal participation of women in decision making and management and the need to increase women in leadership positions. A report prepared by UN Women, the Mary Robinson Foundation - Climate Justice, the Global Gender and Climate Alliance and the UNFCCC recognizes the structural inequalities that impede the representation of women in climate science, negotiations and policies and recommends greater gender balance in the UNFCCC and national delegations. The report argues that the "challenges of climate change cannot be solved without empowering women" and that women have been marginalized in international negotiations. It reports data that show weak representation of women in the institutions of the UNFCCC including the Adaptation Committee (25%), the GEF Council (19%) and the Expert Group (15%) and that overall women constitute less than 20% of delegation heads and less than 30% of delegation members at UNFCCC conferences.

The Manthropocene

A call for international science to pay greater attention to the inclusion of women scholars was made by Kate Raworth and then in her article "Must the Anthropocene be the Manthropocene?" She pointed out that the working group of 36 scientists and scholars who convened in Berlin in 2014 to begin assessing evidence humanity was entering a new epoch, the Anthropocene, was composed almost entirely of men. She stated: "Leading scientists may have the intellect to recognize that our planetary era is dominated by human activity, but they still seem oblivious to the fact that their own intellectual deliberations are bizarrely dominated by white northern male voices".

Women working in climate change

There are a variety of ways to identify women who have made major contributions to climate change. The first is the list of authors of the high level international assessments for the UN and other organizations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The second is to examine women who have been invited to join the editorial boards of climate change refereed journals. A third is to look at the membership of the global change committees of the International Council for Science (ICSU). And a fourth is to recognize women that are members of their National Academy of Sciences who work on climate change. Many of them are IPCC or other report authors, and also members of ICSU committees, members of their National Academy and other marks of accomplishment.

Seven cities around the world have appointed women as Chief Heat Officers (CHOs) to take action against extreme heat due to climate change.

In February 2024, the EIB Group established the Women Climate Leaders Network, bringing together 47 women leaders from the commercial sector from all 27 EU Member States, to collaborate on innovative business models and strategies to facilitate the low-carbon and green transition.

Women are statistically more likely to live in conditions of poverty in today's world. Women tend to work within the household cooking, cleaning, and taking care of children. Women have a lack of access to resources as well as environmental services in comparison to the rest of the population. Despite these setbacks, there has been a push for women to get more involved in climate change activism. Many Indigenous communities have put more of an emphasis on passing environmental knowledge down through generations. This provides knowledge of the past and how to effectively go forward with more sustainable practices. There is a push to understand how genders are differently affected by climate change and use the various perspectives that are not always seen to initiate change. Overall there is a general push to push for more genders to be involved in bigger climate issues to see how best to attack issues.

Women in climate change have taken on many roles to help the fight against climate change in the field today. For example, Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim is an Indigenous activist that is working in Chad. She is working to spread the word of the people actively fighting climate change today in Chad and educate people about their conditions. She is trying to spread the knowledge of indigenous people as their in-depth knowledge of the environment can help us adapt to the changes. She has won many awards for her work and has been working within the UN on indigenous issues as well as indigenous advocacy. Katharine Wilkinson is an educator around the country. She is working to educate people on climate change and the impacts that it is having on the Earth. She aims to create an encouraging positive environment for women to work within the climate movement. Katharine Wilkinson has worked on a book called the All We Can Save Project that brings together the voices of 60 women that are doing work within climate change on the ground today. She aims to bring in more voices of women in order to open up the climate change discussion to different perspectives as well as show the readers the ways that we can help to combat climate change together.

Ecofeminism

Ecofeminism is a branch of feminism that sees environmentalism and the relationship between women and the earth as interlinked. According to Françoise d'Eaubonne in her book Le Féminisme ou la Mort (1974), ecofeminism relates the oppression and domination of all marginalized groups (women, people of color, children, the poor) to the oppression and domination of nature (animals, land, water, air, etc.).

Ecofeminism first came to be in the 1970s when there were major changes in policy in terms of sustainability and gender inequality. Ecofeminism work originates in peace movements, women’s health care, and women labor movements. Ecofeminists aim to show connection with nonhuman life. The Ecofeminists argue that patriarchy gives the view that men are ‘developed' and women and other underrepresented groups are ‘underdeveloped’ which normalizes the oppression of these ’underdeveloped’ groups. Ecofeminism aims to open up the woman view of the interconnected sense of self that women hold versus males that tend to be more disconnected. Adding women’s views within the work of climate change brings a different perspective that lacks within the current male dominated discussion of climate change.

Ecofeminism also aims to break stereotypes of women and the effects that climate change has on them. Women are devalued in our current society for their knowledge whereas men are praised for their intellect and reasoning. Women are greatly affected by climate change with things such as health and reproductive issues that come from the many hazardous pollutants within the environment. With this they have no voice within climate change discussions as they are seen as lesser. Ecofeminism works to provide a safe space for women to come together, share their stories, and work towards a more just green future for women.

The Greta Thunberg effect

Currently, young girls are taking more action at a younger age which is known as the "Greta Thunberg effect." Greta Thunberg is a nineteen-year-old environmental activist, who is well known for her work on fighting climate change, and is seen as a role model for younger girls. These new generations of girls are being called "eco-warriors", they are taking actions for the environment in various ways. In Kazakhstan, a group of young girls named Team Coco have come together to fight the ecological problems that pollute their nation, in order to accomplish this they have created an app known as TECO which is an "augmented reality game that merges educational and entertainment tools to help players change their behavior and become more eco-conscious". More girls have been taking action against climate change by using technology, and in turn help encourage other political leaders to take action for climate change and business corporations to reduce the carbon foot print they leave behind.

Alter-globalization

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alter-globalization

Alter-globalization slogans during the protests in Le Havre against the 37th G8 summit in Deauville, France

Alter-globalization (also known as alter-globo, alternative globalization or alter-mundialization—from the French alter-mondialisation) is a social movement whose proponents support global cooperation and interaction, but oppose what they describe as the negative effects of economic globalization, considering it to often work to the detriment of, or to not adequately promote, human values such as environmental and climate protection, economic justice, labor protection, protection of indigenous cultures, peace and civil liberties. The movement is related to the global justice movement.

The name may have been derived from a popular slogan of the movement, namely "another world is possible", which came out of the World Social Forum. The alter-globalization movement is a cooperative movement designed to "protest the direction and perceived negative economic, political, social, cultural and ecological consequences of neoliberal globalization". Many alter-globalists seek to avoid the "disestablishment of local economies and disastrous humanitarian consequences". Most members of this movement shun the label "anti-globalization" as pejorative and incorrect since they actively support human activity on a global scale and do not oppose economic globalization per se.

Proponents view the movement as an alternative to what they term "neoliberal globalization" in which international institutions (the World Trade Organization, World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the like) and major corporations devote themselves to enriching the developed world while giving little or no attention to what critics say are the detrimental effects of their actions on the people and environments of less developed countries, countries whose governments are often too weak or too corrupt to resist or regulate them. This is not to be confused with proletarian internationalism as put forth by communists in that alter-globalists do not necessarily oppose the free market, but a subset of free-market practices characterized by certain business attitudes and political policies that they say often lead to violations of human rights.

History

The 1970s saw resistance to global expansion by both government and non-government parties. U.S. Senator Frank Church was concerned with the role multinational corporations were beginning to play in global trade, and created a subcommittee that reviewed corporate practices to see if they were advancing U.S. interests or not (i.e. exporting jobs that could be kept within the United States). The results prompted some countries in the Global South (ranging from Tanzania to the Philippines) to call for rules and collective action that would raise or stabilize raw material prices, and increase Southern exports.

The World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference of 1999 brought significant attention to the outcry against neoliberal economic integration through media coverage, support groups, and activists. Though this opposition first became highly popularized in the 1999 Seattle WTO protests, it can be traced back prior to the 1980s when the Washington Consensus became a dominant development in thinking and policy-making.

Issues and activities

Alter-globalization activists fight for better treatment of developing countries and their economies, workers' rights, fair trade, and equal human rights. They oppose the exploitation of labor, outsourcing of jobs to foreign nations (though some argue this is a nationalistic rather than alter-globalist motive), pollution of local environments, and harm to foreign cultures to which jobs are outsourced.

Aspects of the movement include:

1. Attempts at an alter-globalization movement to reform policies and processes of the WTO include: "alternative principles of public accountability, the rights of people and the protection of the environment" through the theoretical framework of Robert Cox.
2. Labor movement and trade union initiatives have begun to respond to economic and political globalisation by extending their cooperation and initiatives to the transnational level.
3. Fair trade initiatives, corporate codes of conduct, and social clauses as well as a return to local markets instead of relying too heavily on global markets.
4. "Alter-globalization activists have promoted alternative water governance models through North-South red-green alliances between organized labor, environmental groups, women's groups, and indigenous groups" (spoken in response to the increase in privatization of the global water supply).
5. "The first current of the alter-globalization movement considers that instead of getting involved in a global movement and international forums, the path to social change lies through giving life to horizontal, participatory, convivial and sustainable values in daily practices, personal life and local spaces. Many urban activists cite the way that, for example, the Zapatistas in Mexico and other Latin American indigenous movements now focus on developing communities' local autonomy via participatory self-government, autonomous education systems and improving the quality of life. They appreciate too, the convivial aspect of local initiatives and their promise of small but real alternatives to corporate globalization and mass consumption."

Groups and conferences

Opening walk of 2002 World Social Forum, held by participants in the movement

Advocates of alter-globalization have set up an online global news network, the Independent Media Center, to report on developments pertinent to the movement. Groups in favor of alter-globalization include ATTAC, an international trade reform network headquartered in France.

The largest forum for alter-globalization activity is the annual World Social Forum, organized as a democratic space reflecting the movement's values.