Truth & Democracy: '300 grammes' - The Daphne Foundation

I remember seeing a documentary, hearing on the radio and reading in the FT about the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was a journalist in Malta. I was shocked that this could happen in Malta. The British, naval - colonial connections, its being in Europe and the EU. The lesson being of course, that we must take nothing for granted and exercise constant vigilence to protect law and justice. 

'Courage' is often described as a personal and professional quality for nurses.

For journalists as the news  reveals each and every day - it is the first.

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Daphne	'The bomb was packed into a steel container, placed beneath my mother's car seat, and detonated remotely just down the road from our home in Bidnija. It contained around 300 grammes of military-grade explosive. I didn't know the weight until this trial. But I already knew what it destroyed.'
Caruana Galizia daughter sister wife mother grandmother friend neighbour colleague citizen ...	'There was something else I didn't know before this trial. The two medics who conducted my mother's autopsy said they found her heart was, incredibly, "intact" - and that it weighed 300 grammes. The same weight used to kill her was the weight of what endured.'

Paul Caruana Galizia. Opinion: Corruption - What Malta owes my murdered mother, FTWeekend. 14-15 June 2025, p.10.

https://www.ft.com/content/3f5012a6-a358-48a9-a72f-9d2ae530878b

See also: The Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation

Acknowledgement and thanks to Paul Caruna Galizia.

'Fake news' - nothing new under the Sun

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HUMANISTIC --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

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	PD Reporter with "fake news" from an 1894 illustration by Frederick Burr Opper

Kruck, D. A 'ROYAL' BIT OF FAKE NEWS. Gibbons Stamp Monthly, August 2021, pp.28-30.

Image source:
https://aleteia.org/2018/02/09/fake-news-post-truth-and-technology-in-the-19th-century/

Ability Today's Accessible Online Dip. in Journalism - Launches Next Course

Hello  Ability Today's ADJ Launches Next Diploma Course I hope this email finds you well. We're really excited to announce the doors for our Academy for Disabled Journalists (ADJ) Diploma Course in partnership with the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) are now open for disabled individuals for the third year. This initiative aims to break down barriers in the media industry and make journalism more inclusive. We are offering accessible online classes, featuring a wide range of topics such as reporting, writing, editing, and multimedia journalism, all while accommodating the unique needs and challenges faced by disabled students. WE NEED YOUR HELP TO SPREAD OUR MESSAGE TO AS MANY DISABLED INDIVIDUALS AS POSSIBLE. Please access our press release by clicking the button below 👇🏼

Get the press release here

Would you please share this with your network to help us reach as many potential students who we can support on their journey into journalism? We also welcome any further involvement you may wish to have in this program, such as offering mentorship, resources, or scholarships. Should you have any questions or require additional information, please don't hesitate to contact me directly at grant AT abilitytoday.com. Here is a link to our academy page with a short promotional video and further details: abilitytoday.com/diploma-in-journalism/ twitter.com/ADJnews/status/ Best Grant

5th Multidisciplinary International Symposium on Disinformation in Open Online Media

Call for Contributions

The Multidisciplinary International Symposium on Disinformation in Open Online Media (MISDOOM) is returning for its 5th edition on 21 and 22 November 2023. This time, the conference will be hosted by the National Research Center for Mathematics and Computer Science (CWI) at Amsterdam Science Park (Netherlands). MISDOOM values multidisciplinary research and is designed to be inclusive of different academic disciplines and practices.

The symposium provides a platform for researchers, industry professionals, and practitioners from various disciplines such as communication science, computer science, computational social science, political science, psychology, journalism, and media studies to come together and share their knowledge and insights on online disinformation.

... details continued ...

My source - ERCIM NEWS posted previously:

https://hodges-model.blogspot.com/2023/07/ercim-news-134-xai.html

Previous posts: information disorder, misinformation

Book: i "Making Research Matter - Steps to Impact for Health and Care Researchers" Open Access

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i m p a c t	impact
impact	"Making Research Matter"*

My source:

https://twitter.com/TaraJLamont/status/1448999679899865088?s=20

Thanks also to @policypress 

*An ever greater need for political impact!

[c/o HIFA] Lancet Planetary Health: An argument for the naturalistic study of collective intelligence

Citation, extracts and a comment from me below. Full text here: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00077-2/

CITATION: An argument for the naturalistic study of collective intelligence Jonathan Nattel, David Akullian
Comment| volume 5, issue 5, e247-e248, may 01, 2021
Published:May, 2021 DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(21)00077-2 

SELECTED EXTRACTS 

Over the past decade, corporate-owned digital media—minimally regulated, geared towards profit, and willing to engage a broad range of psychological techniques to command an expansive swath of human attention5—have increasingly caused information to flow around, rather than through, the structures of professional journalism as it makes its way from politicians to the public at large.

The circumvention of professional journalism as a means for filtering, organising, and distributing information has led to multiple distortions of collective perception, including the decontextualisation of information, propagation of false information, and the manipulation of public opinion by agents with a broad variety of interests. 

 the overall result has been an increase in polarisation, fragmented collective perceptions of reality, and the ensuing failures of collective discourse and decision making. All in all, ideal conditions for the emergence of populist, fascist, or dictatorial leadership. 

A study of how information is channelled within a society to support collective wellbeing and decision making might allow us to ask crucial questions, such as when a new technology for communication arrives, in what way is it healthy? In what way is it unhealthy? And in what ways must it be contained?... Given the critical juncture at which humanity currently finds itself, the timing of such a project could hardly be more crucial.

 --

Comment (NPW): 'The circumvention of professional journalism... has led to multiple distortions'. The same could be said for the circumvention of processes required for reliable and actionalble healthcare information to be made available to end users (whether the public, health workers, or policymakers). 

Neil Pakenham-Walsh, 

HIFA Coordinator, neil AT hifa.org www.hifa.org

HIFA: Healthcare Information For All: www.hifa.org 

I  have related concepts from this short work to Hodges' model, followed by a reference that reflects the naturalistic scale of the study suggested here:

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[ Multi- ] Context - Situated [ model ] HEALTH WORKERS individual perception & intelligence - literacy Individual values Individual sense making	WELL-BEING of NATURAL WORLD HEALTH WORKERS Physical PROCESSES: Time [Is there an 'Over-arching theory of health communication'?] Channels of information - tech / forms
WELL-BEING of SOCIETY Intergenerational coherence (*amid change*) PUBLIC Social processes: Diffusion, Sharing SOCIO-tech? societies: channels of information? collective perception & intelligence (wisdom of crowds?)	Channels of information - control Journalism Populist, fascist, or dictatorial leadership POLICYMAKERS Digital & other divides? Political processes Electoral Politics

 

 

Jones, P. (1996) An overarching theory of health communication? Health Informatics Journal,2,1,28-34.

Seeing red ... the colour of social progress and justice ...?

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	Toya Sarno Jordan / Reuters

Photograph: Toya Sarno Jordan / Reuters - Seeing red A member of a feminist collective paints the helmet of a riot police officer during a protest against gender and police violence in Mexico City. More than 1,000 Mexican women were murdered because of their gender last year, and there was also a rise in sexual harassment and assault by police.

World News, The Daily Telegraph [UK], 13 November 2020, p.17.

http://www.toyasarnojordan.com/

Photo: https://uk.reuters.com/news/picture/top-photos-of-the-day-idUKRTX898PP

COVID-19: Is there a need to separate Science and Politics?

individual

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Individual accountability	"I’ve great respect for scientists who appear at the daily UK briefings but it’s unfair to ask them to appear with ministers."
The public understanding of science.	"After today’s charade we must separate science from politics & have scientists engage with science journalists." Martin McKee

The (re-)integration of truth?

My source:
https://twitter.com/martinmckee/status/1264675733395460096?s=20

Data visualisation: Contributions to evidence-based decision-making

A SciDev.Net Learning Report

"Data visualisation – the visual representation of data in charts and graphs – has grown in popularity in recent years. Media outlets and research communication organisations alike have invested in the production of data visualisation, committing to the belief that visualisation is an effective form of communication.

In this report, Chapter 1 contextualises the rise of data visualisation and its purported potential to stimulate a 'data revolution' in development. The specific contributions of data visualisation to research communication goals are discussed in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 explores instances in which data visualisation is an appropriate form of research communication, recognising that it is not a ‘magic bullet’ solution to the need for more evidence informed decision-making, but should instead be used selectively. Chapter 4 discusses ways to enhance the effectiveness of data visualisation. Lastly, Chapter 5, provides concluding remarks and highlights areas in which further research and discussion are required so data visualisations can be used to the greatest effect in the research communication sector.

While a number of claims have been made around the potential of data visualisation as a communication tool, there has been a relative lack of informed discussion around the role that data visualisation can play in the research communication sector.

This report builds on our experiences of producing data visualisations and in data journalism more broadly, and brings together the lessons we have learned with insights from the broader sector of research communication. What follows will help researchers, research communication managers and journalists to make more informed decisions about when to invest in data visualisations in order to meet research communication goals."


...

My source: SciDev.net on twitter