November 2015

Why Jon Stewart’s return to the airwaves matters to the 2016 presidential race

[Commentary] Looks like we’ve got a late entry in the presidential race after all. Comedian Jon Stewart isn’t, technically, running for office. But the former “Daily Show” host is poised to resume his quadrennial campaign to be satirizer-in-chief, now that he’s inked a deal with HBO. Stewart’s reemergence (he’s been working on an animal rescue farm that he started with his wife, Tracey, since leaving Comedy Central in August) could be significant. But according to smart people who study this sort of thing, Stewart wields measurable influence in presidential elections, though the beneficiaries might not be as obvious as you think.

A 2008 Pew Research Center study found that “Stewart’s humor targeted Republicans more than three times as often as Democrats” in a four-month sample, quantifying what had long seemed obvious to many viewers. A separate study of Stewart’s wisecracks during the 2004 party conventions, conducted by political scientists at East Carolina University, concluded that “the ridicule of Republicans focused much more on policy and character flaws. Humor pointed toward Democrats, on the other hand, tended to focus more on innocuous physical attributes.” In other words, Stewart’s jokes about Republicans are not only more voluminous but also more pointed. None of this would matter if Stewart’s comedy had no impact on viewers’ opinions. But it does.

Actively helping kids learn to navigate the digital world is better than shielding them from it

[Commentary] Tune into the conversation about kids and screen time, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that before the invention of the iPhone, parents spent every waking moment engaging their kids in deep conversation, undertaking creatively expressive arts-and-crafts projects, or growing their own vegetables in the backyard garden. There’s a tendency to portray time spent away from screens as idyllic, and time spent in front of them as something to panic about. But research shows that vilifying the devices’ place in family life may be misguided.

I’ve spent the past two years conducting a series of surveys on how families manage technology, gathering data from more than 10,000 North American parents. And it turns out that the most successful strategy, far from exiling technology, actually embraces it. We can’t prepare our kids for the world they will inhabit as adults by dragging them back to the world we lived in as kids. It’s not our job as parents to put away the phones. It’s our job to take out the phones, and teach our kids how to use them.

[Alexandra Samuel is the director of the Social + Interactive Media Centre at Emily Carr University in Vancouver, Canada]

EU Antitrust Chief Keeps Open Mind on Next Steps in Google Case

The European Union’s antitrust chief shrugged off Google’s attack on EU allegations that the search-engine company abused its monopoly power, saying she hasn’t made up her mind on how the probe will play out. Margrethe Vestager said her staff in the European Commission is analyzing Google’s highly critical response to a statement of objections “with an open mind.” “What we do now is that we dig into the Google response” and listen to comments from complainants, Vestager said.

The Google response “is a substantial piece of work” and even with EU’s resources “it will still take some time before we’re done with it.” Twelve months into her job, Vestager has to decide on the next steps in the EU’s five-year antitrust battle with Google. The Mountain View, California-based company described demands in the EU statement of objections as “peculiar and problematic.” The EU accused the tech company of “positioning and displaying more favorably, in its general search result pages, its own comparison-shopping service.”