# Lecture 1

## Keywords:

- introduction
- ethics
- disappointment
- request
- commit
- course outline

## Glossary:

- **"Yes, and" game**: The "yes, and" game is an activity deriving from improv theatre. Two people face each other and communicate, without any filtering or the fear of saying the "wrong" thing, the first thing that comes to their mind, starting from a suggested topic. It helps in putting on the table all the possible ideas regarding a certain issue, problem, or argument.

## Notes:

The lecture (and the year) began with a round of introductions: Giulio first, and then the class. Giulio described how the course was going to run. Namely, he explained how the course is dialogue-focused, pragmatic, and follows a framework developed by Simon Critchley. <!--(*Note*: I'm not sure about this... can anyone confirm? -Liam)-->

This framework has three stages: Disappointment (where a party details how they have been ethically wronged), request (where the party makes a request to rectify ethical injustice), commit (where we, acting as data scientists, commit to a course of action). Examples of ethical requests include demands for privacy, to be left alone, or to avoid interference in a given political discussion. The question of how we commit/how we respond to these ethical requests also brought up the concept of "responsibility". Responsibility was surmised as a personel decision about the ability to respond to a given ethical request. <!-- This is what I have written in my notes about responsibility but im not sure if i have it 100% please correct me if i've got it wrong! - Tessa -->

The distinction between normative ethics and meta-ethics was discussed. Normative ethics prescribes *norms* which inform the ethical choices we make. For example, a normative claim could be "Killing people is ethically wrong". If we accept this claim, then it will impact the ethical choices we make. Meta-ethics investigates what ethics *is*. For example, are ethical statements *real*? Are they Platonic? Are they socially constructed?

After this, Giulio told the class about the course layout. The course can be divided into five main components. Frontal lectures, coding labs (3), dialogue labs, guest lectures, and the data science project (which will be worked on in groups of aproximately three people). Assessment for the course is weighted in the following way: pre lab readings for dialogue labs (10%), collabrative note taking (10%), coding labs (20%), group project and presentation (40%), and an essay (20%). The essay will be approximately four pages in length and involve understanding and analysing an ethical arguement.

We dicussed the tradeoff between coding and computational labour, including some of the shortcuts that businesses take to reduce computational labour. But what are the tradeoffs of this?
Introduced the programming language R (though Giulio prefers Julia) which we will be using in the first lab on Wednesday.

# Lab 1

## Keywords:

- Australia v Facebook

## Glossary:

- **"Fantastic Binomial" game**: Gianni Rodari's *Fantastic Binomial* is a word-pairing game which can be used to facilitate discussion. Given a list of words (perhaps generated using the *Yes, and* game), participants each choose two words from the list. After gathering into pairs, the participants mix and match words with their partners. This process is designed to create small, unexpected phrases. For example, if Bob has the words "Chicken" and "Soup", and Alice has the words "Cream" and "Cheese", Bob and Alice can create phrases like "Cream chicken" and "Cheese soup". Finally, the pair can discuss the culinary implications of their new dishes.
- **"Why?" game**: Popular among young children, the *Why?* game attempts to deconstruct arguments into their fundamental constituents. The game starts by making a claim ("The sky is blue"), which is followed by the question "Why?". The answer to this question ("Because of Rayleigh scattering") becomes the next claim. This process is repeated until fruitful discourse stops ("Because... uh... photons?").

## Notes:

In this lab, we discussed the ethical implications of Facebook banning news pages in Australia.

Late February 2021, the Australian parliment heard the *News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code* bill. This bill requires Facebook to pay media companies for the news stories displayed on their website. Several days later, Facebook responded by blocking access to news pages in Australia.

To outline the ethical problem, the class begun by watching Al Jazeera's coverage of Australia v Facebook. The *Yes, and* game was played to generate a series of terms and concepts relating to the issue at hand. After this, the class was introduced to the *Fantastic Binomial* game. This prompted some discussion, where important elements of the ethical issue were explored. To see what the experts had to say, the class watched more of the Al Jazeera broadcast. Finally, the *Why?* game was played. This helped the class understand both sides of the conflict and illustrated the necessity of good discourse in forming strong arguments.

What are the ethical implications of the Facebook vs Australia decision? Will Google prioritize the news organizations that they have the best deal with? Will they punish/limit traffic to organizations that were difficult to work with? What about small independent publishers, can they compete with corporate packages? Will Google even deem it necessary to go through the rigmorol of establishing publishing deals with small publishers? Or will they just stick to a few big organizations? Will this lead to an even greater concentration of media resources? If these steps do come to pass, will we see some cost passed on to the consumer?

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## Notes:

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