Bijan Kafi

Netzwerkkinder: Politik und Unternehmen werden es richten

2010-09-05T19:20:21Z

Auf dem Global Compact-Netzwerktreffen der GTZ im November 2009 in Berlin hörte ich erstmals von der “Otto Studie 2009” des Hamburger Trendbüros, einer Marktforschungsagentur, zum Thema „ethical consumption”. Es ist zwar schon ein bisschen her, aber das Thema ist und bleibt interessant.

Aus der komplexen und umfangreichen Studie, die sich primär an Unternehmen und deren Marketingabteilungen richtete, ist mir vor allem ein Aspekt in Erinnerung geblieben.

Das Trendbüro-Team hatte untersuchten Bevölkerungsgruppen dreifach eingeteilt: die 16-27jährigen („Netzwerkkinder”), die 28-47jährigen sowie die 48-67jährigen. Im Hinblick auf diese drei Gruppen war die Frage nach ihren Einstellungen zum Thema ethischer Konsum gestellt worden.

Die Resultate der Studie ließe alle Besucher im Raum stutzen.

]]>Die älteste Bevölkerungsgruppe habe das ausgeprägteste ethische Konsumverhalten, vermutlich da diese über relativ üppige finanzielle Mittel verfügt, einen hohen Anteil dieser für persönlichen Konsum verwenden kann und nach einem erfolgreichen Berufsleben möglicherweise den Eindruck gewonnen hat, etwas „zurückgeben” zu wollen. Mit anderen Worten: am Abend eines langen konsumfreundigen Lebens und mit voller Börse denkt es sich leichter an Bio und Co.

Zahlreiche erfahrene Käufer: Mit dem ethischen Konsum haben viele schon vor längerer Zeit begonnen
Hohes Engagement: Das Vertrauen in Politik und Wirtschaft ist sehr gering. Jeder Einzelne soll aktiv werden.

Die mittlere Bevölkerungsgruppe befinde sich demgegenüber in einem Zwischenstadium. Man könne hier bereits deutlich beobachten, dass der Trend zu mehr ethisch bewusstem Konsum geht, jedoch langsam und mit einem deutlich hedonistischen Schwerpunkt. Anders gesagt: Bio nicht, weil es der Umwelt gut tut, sondern weil man sich auch mal was „Besonderes”, also vermeintlich besonders hohe Qualität gönnen will.

Viele neue Käufer: Viele entdecken ethischen Konsum gerade.
Hohes Engagment: Geringes Vertrauen in gemeinsame Lösungen. Jeder Einzelne soll aktiv werden.

Das Trendbüro hatte sich die wirklich überraschenden Erkenntnisse für den Schluss aufgehoben. Die sogenannten „Netzwerkkinder” der Facebook- und YouTube-Generation sei mitnichten besonders ethisch-ökologisch eingestellt. Im Gegenteil. Statt auf eigenen Aktivismus zu setzen, sei diese von der Realität der tatsächlichen Veränderung weit entfernt, vertraue darauf, dass die Regierung es schon richten werde, und verhalte sich generell von allen Gruppen in ihrem Kaufverhalten besonders hedonistisch. Ethisch-ökologische Erwägungen spielten da keine Rolle.

Mäßiges Interesse: Ethischer Konsum ist persönlich eher irrelevant.
Mäßiges Engagement: Verantwortung wird weiterhin delegiert. Politik und Unter nehmen werden es richten.

Allerdings:

Viele Nichtkäufer: Die Zahl der Kaufverweigerer ist deutlich höher.

Wenn diese Diagnose richtig ist, dann stimmt sie überein mit den Befürchtungen vieler, dass es mit dem realweltlichen sozialen oder eben auch ökologischen Engagement gerade der besonders netzaktiven jüngsten Generationen nicht weit her ist. Es ist eben doch etwas anderes, auf Facebook „Initiativen” per Mausklick zu unterstützen, oder für seine Ideale auf die Straße und gegen Widerstände an zu gehen. Impulse zu sozialer Veränderung bedürfen kaum des Internets, wenn wir unter sozialer Veränderung das tatsächliche gemeinsame Handeln motivierter Menschen verstehen. Allerdings können moderne Medien dann unter Umständen hilfreiche Organisationsmittel bieten.

Bertelsmann's "Future Challenges" Launches

2010-04-23T11:05:45Z

Image via Wikipedia

The Bertelsmann Foundation’s newest project “Future Challenges” was launched on 22 April at a conference in Washington D.C. featuring the annual convention of the foundation’s American subsidiary.
This is what the project team has to say about their initiative:

“Mega trends are shaping the global agenda. Their impact is reaching far into our daily lives. We are gathering tons of information on each single trend, but we hardly know anything of how these trends interact, which interdependencies exist between them and what they will cause. Up until today science generates knowledge in a very exclusive way: research results are mainly discussed within closed “expert” communities far away and mostly untouched by a broader audience. Internet and social networks aren’t embraced by scientists. But we think science should become more public, and science should depend on public support. […]”

The “Future Challenges”-Team of the Bertelsmann Stiftung intends to overcome these limitations. Our new internet-platform futurechallenges.org aims to spread knowledge on global change and make it accessible for everybody. […]”

At the moment, the use of social media tools is limited on the site but the project coordinators envision to gradually expand their usage as the project grows and its instruments develop over time.
The new site features a version of my latest article “Social Media in Georgia: Challenging Invisible Boundaries in War and Peace” that is available for easier reading via Scribd (page 105ff) or on the “Future Challenges” website itself.

The Impact of New Media Tech on Georgian Civil Society

2010-04-17T06:25:40Z

My latest article on the impact of web 2.0 or social media technologies on the civil society landscape of Georgia has just been published by OpenDemocracy.net.

The article aims to provide you with a comprehensive introduction into the role of social media after the Russo-Georgian war in August 2008 and critically examines the impact of (information) crises on the abilities of civil societies to react and have their say.

World Map of Social Networks: No Homogeneous World

2010-02-13T20:40:05Z

Image by guglielmorubini via Flickr

Vinco’s Blog recently published a new world map of social networks.. The map shows the worldwide distribution of social network usage based on aggregated data from services like Alexa.

I find the map, albeit not new data, highly interesting. It’s quite well known that Facebook is slowly making progress in conquering the “world of social networks”. Nevertheless, specific networks such as Odnoklassniki in the Russian-speaking world, may be here to stay for some time to come.

Even with all the buzz about the downsides of “data silos” and “walled gardens”, maybe there are plenty of reasons why people prefer “their own” realm - and possibly even ought to? As I have tried to show in an upcoming article for we.magazine (to be published in April 2010) using the example of the country of Georgia people frequently use online networks for a number of reasons, not necessarily abstract concepts of openness or accessibility. Here many who have been brought up under Soviet rule prefer the system of Odnoklassniki as it mimics the real-life structure of the education system they attended. Facebook as many other services are often labelled “Western” which is not necessarily a flattering statement with many above a certain age. Still, many of the youngsters do indeed join Facebook and other competitors.

To simply claim that openness is and a one-size-fits-all approach of universal goodness (just as many people do for transparency) may ignore the simple fact of human beings using the systems - not machines. And humans often do not prefer in daily life what sounds great on paper. What is needed is better research and more hard data on how the brave new world of online social networking plays out in real life. What networks are useful to people, why, and in which circumstances? What “soft skills” (e.g. image, upbringing, education etc.) may influence the choice of participation in building the global civil network?

It is important to ask these questions also from a viewpoint of how global civil society as a formative force besides governments and private business can be furthered in short and long run.

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Public Eye Awards: Classic Example for Social Media Use?

2010-01-19T11:00:00Z

Image via Wikipedia

Nominations are now open for the “Public Eye Award”, an initiative by the Berne Declaration and Greenpeace that “awards” the “nastiest corporate players” annually at an event related to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The team also awards the “Greenwash Award”, a “prize” with a goal that seems to be quite obvious:

The Public Eye Awards (formerly Public Eye on Davos) are a critical counterpoint to the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos. Organized since 2000 by the Berne Declaration (BD) and Pro Natura (the latter replaced by Greenpeace in 2009), Public Eye reminds the players of the global economy who impact people and the environment with destructive business practices that actions have consequences - in this case for the image of the company. We present shame-on-you-awards to the nastiest corporate players of the year. Two of these (in the categories ‘Global’ and ‘Swiss’) will be awarded by an in-house jury of experts while winner of the people’s award will be chosen on this website by… the people. Starting this year (2010) we also present a ‘Greenwash Award’ to account for the rapidly growing number of institutions that fabricate social-environmental fig leaves in an attempt to make inveterate corporate players look greener than they are.

]]>On its web site the award features a “Hall of Shame” and an open voting system that allows visitors to vote for a specific firm that they believe has recently behaved in a particularly shameful way. This year, the choice is made up of the firms Arcelor Mittal, Farner PR, GDF Suez, IOC, Roche, and the Royal Bank of Canada.

I think the award is a great idea worth contributing to. It allows civil society to be better informed about the (mal)practice of multinational businesses and thus build an awareness for global streams of value generation and the manifold issues related to them. The PEA, however, apparently also serves as a gatekeeper in their field of action as the interested individual would not be able to either procure the hard data required to assess a firms behaviour, nor reliably judge that behaviour of any global actor based on such data alone. The “People’s Awards” is a strictly “democratic” approach with no bias towards professional expertise. Apparently, individual organisations are nominating also the firms on the shortlist for these types of award, not the people directly.

The issues obvious: based on which knowledge should I, as a citizen, make my decision. The question would be if social media could replace such a nomination procedure in a way that adds amy value. Could they inject “substance” into the decision making process or would they lead to a further dilution of the process by involving “swarm logics” and further removing the individual from making the decision? Do professional organisations with the funding and expertise serve a purpose in filtering and assessing data that leads to a nomination, or would crowdsourcing open up new possibilities for citizen interaction? Or, should we look at an entirely different model such as organisational nomination overseen closely by citizens (if not already the case)?

The Social Media Landscape (in Colours)

2010-01-16T11:00:00Z

The social media landscape as shown in a great diagram that is in fact 10 months old. What has changed since then?

See the full-sized picture after the jump.

Twitter Applications Hold Potential for Crisis Communication?

2010-01-14T09:46:48Z

Image via Wikipedia

With Twitter becoming increasingly popular and surpassing the 25 Million user mark by Q4 2009 more and more applications appear that make use of Twitter for collaboration. Many of them are free and open source and thus may hold substantial value for non-profit use.

]]>One of the recent additions is Twitterbox, a Twitter-style collaboration tool that allows users to share information and files. The service is not only free but can also be installed on an organisation’s own servers. This is also what sets itself apart from comparative services like Basecamp.

While Basecamp is not really useful if you do not pay for it as the free service is tightly limited applications like Twitterbox, TwitAlbums for private media sharing, or Quora for quick surveys of the twitterverse could provide substantial added value and flexibility.

The question is if a project management tool built around 140-character messages and data makes sense in the first place. Open source applications hold value in themselves simply because they are free. And their interlinking with other (free) services (“mash-ups”) makes them only more useful specifically in critical situations where data is scarce and can be transmitted easily using ubiquitous technology like mobile phones. In that case short message length would make sense as it preserves valuable bandwidth and keeps costs down.

A project management tool could come in here to coordinate ad-hoc events like flash-mobs, demonstrations with relative ease provided the application is simple enough to be accessed via regular phone-like devices. From this perspective applications like Twitterbox could add long sought-after structure to efforts to coordinate collaborative actions of many while on the move.

Ninety One

2010-01-03T10:23:04Z

…is the number (percentage) of Germans saying they are respecting the environment through environmentally friendly behaviour in their daily lives. However, only 65 percent are willing to pay higher prices if that would allow to produce cleaner products. Only 56 are willing to pay for electricity from renewable energies. Plus, 43 percent are not willing to do so at all. Only 24 percent of Germans can agree to the statement “Driving your car should become more expensive to reduce CO2 emissions”. 75 percent openly reject this statement (all data Stiftung Denkwerk Zukunft).

That makes clear that as measures to protect the environment get more and more concrete fewer and fewer people are agreeing to support them. One the one hand, we’re having a communication problem here. Think of Germany’s most chauvinist automobile club, the ADAC, acting like the “car driver’s party” and consistently rejecting more drastic measures that would make the polluters (aka: car drivers) pay.

On the other I believe this also highlights the gap between our scientifically-minded world that is much more focused on understanding complex issues through advanced analysis than it is on actually solving them through practical action. Thus, you could easily say that we are also having an “action problem” here. We may be increasingly paralyzing ourselves by focusing on the analytic part of the equation only.

Webcast of "Triodos Bank Dialogue" Available

2010-01-01T11:00:00Z

Triodos Bank, Europeans first sustainable bank that was recognized as “Sustainable Bank of the Year” by Financial Times and the International Finance Corporation, has published a series of 8 videos thus making available key footage from their “1. Triodos Bank Dialogue” event online using YouTube.

The event that was held in Frankfurt am Main on 2 December 2009, features such renowned speakers as Claus-Otto Scharmer from the MIT who gave a speech on the “7 Acupuncture Points of Capitalism”.

Scharmer’s speech is worth watching as his work borrows heavily from less recognized voices critical about capitalism from the early 20th century such as Rudolf Steiner and later Josef Beuys. Scharmers takes specifically the latter’s “artistic approach” to economics as a basis for much of his work on organizational development.

The (Sad) Story of Cap and Trade

2009-12-30T11:00:00Z

Annie Leonard has done it again. The lead figure of the incredibly well done and successful "Story of Stuff" again tries to communicate in a comprehensive and easy-to-follow way why cap and trade, the global system to limit and market carbon emissions, just will not work.

Admirably, Annie in her video also points to one of the most urgent issues I too have with the system: while desperately adapting our visions to our economic system we are trashing the planet and sacrifice our own free will. Because we believe that what can be done is determined by capitalism or political motivations we try to design a system that is fundamentally flawed lets us do what we love to do: continue shopping.

Thanks Annie!

Brandoscope: Communicating Sustainability

2009-12-26T11:00:00Z

Brandoscope have opened the doors to their self-titled new website. The site is an offer by a Berlin-based firm and available in multiple European languages. It offers a directory of organic production standards and firms and links both: while searching for a standard, the user is presented with direct links to firms adhering to it. Vice versa, a visitor looking for a specific brand will be presented with the standards the respective firm is publicly abiding by.

While the site’s directories are still incomplete with icons and logos missing and only a limited number of (German) firms being available for research, the goal is clear. It is considered to be beneficial to the individual customer to clearly communicate which brands obey to which standardized regulations in the production of foodstuffs or other goods.

]]>Brandoscope certainly is a good idea in principle. But I wonder if it will take root. Does it really hold value for the average customer to be able to look up such data before or after making a purchase? Sure, people do want to be sure more often than ever before that brands abide by certain regulations for socially and economically acceptable behavior. But do they also want to verify this while there are professional organisations whose job it is to ensure such behavior in the first place? After all, we have online and offline magazines that test products in multiple dimensions.

I also fear that Brandoscope would have to supply more and more detailed informationon what the seals actually mean to offer real value. At the moment, such information is limited to some basic, verbose self-description in narrative form.

There are others who try to communicate the multidimensional quality of products such as Soil & More, or Bio mit Gesicht in Germany. From what I know, the principle of allowing customers to look up detailed about a firm’s social or environmental behavior does not work well at least in part because of the “offline-online-gap”, the need to type in some data online to get to the information that people what to be able to rely on but not necessarily research themselves.

To some extent Goodguide is different. For once because they offer highly detailed science-based insight gained through “investigative” research. But the system also works better because they have a mobile application for iPhones and other devices that can even read barcodes.

It may work because it minimizes the hassles of bridging the “offline-online-gap”. If it works in the long run may be less sure.

The idea to offer additional background information has been done by others. Smi. It is seldomly used because of the offline-online bridge. People don’t use it possibly because they expect others to take care.

Kids Tell the World What we Need: 350ppm

2009-12-22T17:00:00Z

350org has encouraged people all over the world to contribute pictures for this great slideshow on Flickr.com. In the show, kids tell us what we need: 350!

I think that’s a great way to communicate the message through faces and personalities. Every picture tells a story, every face is an appeal to our humanity. (WGD8YXP3J63P)

Film on Unconditional Basic Income Available in Multiple Languages

2009-12-21T19:00:00Z

The German film “Grundeinkommen” on the issue of the unconditional basic income is now available in more than 10 languages via the multilingual video portal dotsub.

The film with a length of more than one and a half hours has been produced by Enno Schmidt and Daniel Häni and is also available via the thematic portal grundeinkommen.tv. It provides a comprehensive and emotional introduction to the topic and is certainly worth the time for anyone interested in the issue.

The Delegates Came and the Delegates Sat

2009-12-21T00:21:09Z

With a topic like climate change and COP15 you are for a second wondering if it is okay to laugh about this. But after listening to it in full, I just could not hold back.

COP15 squeezed into 4:12 minutes. Four minutes to forget about the drama we have just seen in Copenhagen.

The video is from the BBC’s “Now Show” that can be accessed directly at this link.

Webcast of 1. Right Livelihood College Lecture Available

2009-12-19T15:12:42Z

The webcast of the first official “Right Livelihood College Lecture” at the University of Lund, Sweden, is now available as a webcast on the institution’s site (requires Microsoft Silverlight).

The lecture that features both speakers giving their speeches before a discussion plenary with students of the LUCSUS centre of the University of Lund (Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies) was given on 6 December 2009 following the award ceremony of the “Alternative Nobel Prizes” in Stockholm. The Right Livelihood College is a global initiative to light bright young individuals with seasoned change makers to help them develop their ideas.

For more information on the event, it’s lecturers David Suzuki (Canada) and René Ngongo (Democratic Republic of Congo) please see here.