Building a public square, free from Big Tech
The Citizens has committed itself to more community building work. This is what we have done so far.
At the start of this year, the Citizens committed itself to more community building work. Up until now our mission was clear - to report on and challenge the stranglehold of Big Tech billionaires on our economy, politics and information space.
With Musk in the White House there has been an explosion of reporting and growth in public awareness on the issues we care most about. We are being challenged to do more. It’s not enough to bang on about the problems and contribute to the doom scrolling. We need to offer alternatives.
In the last three months we have developed a series of activities to do just this.
Firstly, we wanted to learn more about what you, our community, need. And to do that we had to hear you. So we set up a Signal group for you to meet, discuss and share ideas - if you haven’t joined it’s over here.
Then we did a survey - thanks to all of you that completed it. Here are the results.
Overwhelmingly, you want more investigations. We are working on it. With scant philanthropy in the space, we are looking for alternative ways to generate income, because we also want to do more of this work.
Secondly, you said you wanted more actions and campaigns. So do we. We need to be strategic about these and have selected what we believe to be the most urgent and critical — we need to tighten up the loopholes on political donations to avoid a massive injection of cash into Reform UK.
The reason Musk couldn’t fund the AfD in Germany is because he is a “government official” - with reports of him leaving the White House this may not be a concern leaving the door open to him.
Don’t forget about this:
Ketrin Jochecová
Building on the success of our podcast Sergei and the Westminster Spy Ring, which showed how if the Russia Report had been heeded back in 2020 we would already have better election protections in place, we are headed to Parliament in May where we will call on MPs to urgently tighten up the loopholes to prevent foreign donations into UK politics. This will be followed by a public event at the Greenwood Theatre in London which we will be announcing soon and hope to see you all at.
We need to do all we can to stop Musk from using his chequebook to influence our elections. He and his cronies are determined. But so are we.
Thirdly, more events. We started the year with a star-studded webinar called ‘A Warning to America - 2073 and The Arrival of Techno Authoritarianism’, which featured Nobel-prize winner Maria Ressa, Washington Post columnist Rana Ayyub, Oscar-winning director Asif Kapadia and the Citizens’ co-founder Carole Cadwalladr. Watch it here.
In February, we worked with our friends at Byline Times to put on a screening of the film 2073 which looks at themes like authoritarianism, technocratic dominance, surveillance, climate change and how these issues are connected. The screening was followed by a Q&A with its director Asif Kapadia, Byline Times’ Peter Jukes and the Citizens’ Carole Cadwalladr.
While the screenings and Q&As helped outline the problems, it stopped short of providing solutions.
So, we’ve been developing a series of practical and solution-oriented community events.
We kicked off with a series of intimate masterclasses with the help of one of our community and communications specialist Nick Smallman on how to communicate progressive ideas in a polarised world. The masterclass featured movement leaders and you, and we learnt from each other how best to move outside our bubbles and translate our messages for different audiences.
We are collaborating with ooto on a series of events and resources for the 2073 impact campaign. Including a webinar on Big Tech alternatives with Sherif Elsayed-Ali, a Custodian for Free our Feeds, Nicolás Tapia Correa, a member of Laboratorio Popular de Medios Libres, and Kyle Taylor, co-founder of Resistance Hub, and an upcoming workshop with human rights defenders and civil society actors on digital sovereignty and using safe and private tools for resistance.
For colleagues working in increasingly hostile environments where their data is being weaponised against them, these are the solutions they urgently need.
We have ended the quarter with a workshop in partnership with the Bylines Network on ‘How to report on Big Tech’. This was delivered by our journalists Manasa Narayanan and Sabrina Provenzani who gave a much-needed primer to anyone starting on their Big Tech reporting journey.
Team Citizens
Events coming soon…
In the next few weeks look out for a series of invitations focusing on our political donations campaign, AI and its impact on the music industry, AI developments under the Labour government and what this means for us… and much more.
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