In this Hive Mind Podcast episode, performance and sound artist, Edyta Jarząb, shares how deep listening is more than just hearing—it’s a tool for resilience, activism, and transformation.   What you’ll discover:   ✔️ The meaning behind the phenomena of “sound”, “hearing” and “listening”, ✔️ What does the “activism audio sphere” sound like, ✔️ What is “deep listening” and what role it plays in resilience and resistance, ✔️ How activists use sound, body, and voice to create change.    🎙 Hosted by Joanna Krukowska (TechSoup Europe)  📍 Recorded at Podcastownia Ciekawość (Warsaw, Poland) 🎵 Music by Zykovich Yauheni aka JJ 📆 Recorded on October 31, 2024 

Data is all around us and with us, almost every moment of our life. In the digital age, we produce and use vast amounts of data. Does data mirror society and its complexity? Can the digital world offer hope for alternative solutions to inequality? In the latest episode, we try to step back and reflect on the current state of regulations of technology, algorithmic bias, excluding technology, and data activism with our guest - Kuba Piwowar - a sociologist and cultural scientist who holds a PhD in the humanities, specializing in the socio-cultural aspects of new technologies, data activism, and research methods. The podcast was recorded and mixed at "Podcastownia Ciekawość" (Warsaw, Poland)   🎙 Podcast host: Joanna Krukowska (TechSoup Europe)  🎵 Music by Zykovich Yauheni aka JJ   📆 Podcast recorded on June 21, 2024 

🌍Imagine this moment but without the internet. It is impossible, as you are reading this online, right? Have you ever wondered what the “insides” of the internet look like? How is data stored and how is the internet transmitted? Or what consequences does it have for the environment? In this Hive Mind Community Podcast episode, we explore the environmental impact of our digital activities and its importance in activists’ work with Joanna Murzyn: a technological activist and hacker at heart, an expert in digital ecology. Joanna engages in sustainable digitization with care and promotes responsible digital practices. Listen to this episode and reflect on the potential first steps you can take to apply a more digitally ecological approach in your or your organization's activity. 🎚️ The podcast was recorded and mixed at "Podcastownia Ciekawość" (Warsaw, Poland)   🎙 Podcast host: Joanna Krukowska (TechSoup Europe)  🎵 Music by Zykovich Yauheni aka JJ   📆 Podcast recorded on June 5, 2024  ℹ️This podcast episode was recorded as a part of TechSoup's Digital Activism Program.

Hope: a word that embodies the many activities, ways of thinking, and values that unite civil society organizations across the world. Could hope be at the core of activists' communication with the outside world? Or is it impossible to build a narrative around inequalities, injustice, and human rights violations in this way? Mainstream media often keep audiences on a heightened emotional level, consistently highlighting drama, problems, and the dangers of the world we live in. We frequently see "poly-crisis" narratives, built around risks, threats, and the edgy context of today’s world. How does this influence people? How should civil society organizations and activists communicate both internally and externally? We present a concrete proposal from one of the most inspirational organizations—Hope-based Communications—shared by its founder, Thomas Coombes. In our conversation, Thomas discusses his experiences and how organizations worldwide have shifted toward hope-centered communication strategies. The podcast was recorded and mixed at "Podcastownia Ciekawość" (Warsaw, Poland)   🎙 Podcast host: Joanna Krukowska (TechSoup Europe)  🎵 Music by Zykovich Yauheni aka JJ   📆 Podcast recorded on June 17, 2024 This podcast episode was recorded as a part of TechSoup's Digital Activism Program and was funded by a grant from the United States Department of State. The opinions, findings, and conclusions stated herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the United States Department of State. ✔️🔗 If you want to boost your creative powers and learn to craft empowering positive narratives, register for our free, self-paced course on the subject! Follow the link in the button to sign up: 🔗 https://bit.ly/3tT9Fk8

Engaging in activism is both a rewarding and tough journey, requiring strong dedication and resilience to overcome obstacles. Beneath the passion for change lies a growing concern: the burnout.  For the latest Hive Mind Community podcast, we sat down with Natalia Sarata (RegenerAkcja) to talk about the complexities of burnout among activists, exploring its underlying causes, its profound impact on individuals and organizations, and, most importantly, the strategies to combat and prevent it.  🎚️ The podcast was recorded and mixed at "Podcastownia Ciekawość" (Warsaw, Poland)   🎙 Podcast host: Joanna Krukowska (TechSoup Europe)  🎵 Music by Zykovich Yauheni aka JJ   📆 Podcast recorded on January 23, 2024  For activists and leaders: Enhance your and your team's well-being and strategic navigation through crises. 🌈 Gain exclusive access to stress management, communication skills, and crisis response planning. Enroll in our free, self-paced course on Personal and Organizational Resilience 🔗 https://bit.ly/42c7Aw3 

In the latest Hive Mind Community podcast, we talk to Wiktoria Jędroszkowiak (Wschód Initiative) and explore together the definition of climate activism, its potential variations, the global versus local aspects of climate activism, and the crucial topic of climate justice and equity within our actions. The podcast also touches on technological themes, including the significance of AI for the climate, climate ecology, and the impact of technology on the climate.  The podcast was recorded and mixed at "Podcastownia Ciekawość" (Warsaw, Poland)  🎙 Podcast host: Joanna Krukowska (TechSoup Europe) 🎵 Music by Zykovich Yauheni aka JJ   📆 Podcast recorded on January 24, 2024 Enhance your digital awareness and critical thinking! Learn bot detection, recognize misinformation, and understand how propaganda works. 🧠 Enroll to our free, self-paced online course Think Twice: Media Literacy Online: 🔗https://bit.ly/3OfQ98l

At the beginning of 2024, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is still trending. We observe new tools, upgrades, and public discourse focusing on the hyped generative AI. As most of the focus is being placed on the technological level, the ethical and societal contexts of AI use need more attention from the perspective of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs).    During the talk with our expert, Kamil Śliwowski, we dive into digital awareness and literacy as well as the consequences of using AI.    The podcast episode focuses on different layers of AI, such as:   The role of the digital trainers,   the influence of the (offline and online) community,   open-source models,   and the ethical side of AI.    Kamil Śliwowski, Digital Skills Trainer and Online Course Author. He loves to learn by teaching others, researching, and experimenting with digital tools to write his blog and newsletter (⁠otwartezasoby.pl⁠). He has been involved in the Creative Commons movement and organization in Poland and internationally for over a decade. Currently working with NGOs like INCO, Panoptykon, School with Class, and Sektor 3.0.  🎚️ The podcast was recorded and mixed at "Podcastownia Ciekawość" (Warsaw, Poland)  🎙 Podcast host: Joanna Krukowska (TechSoup Europe) 🎵 Music by Zykovich Yauheni aka JJ  📆 Podcast recorded on December 1, 2023  💡 Article mentioned in the podcast: “Hype cycle, meet harm cycle”, by Alix Dunn, available here.

The field of social media is constantly changing. We observe them both as users, but also as citizens. Social media platforms are a tool for influencing consumer and civic decisions. We invited Katarzyna Szymielewicz (Panoptykon), a lawyer specializing in human rights and technology, to discuss how large platforms work, how they affect the functioning of individuals and groups, and what changes we can observe in the near future. The Internet, which has become an inseparable part of our daily life, is constantly changing. In recent years, following the global pandemic experience in particular, the hybridization of life is an everyday occurrence. Observing numerous discussions on AI, we bring up an equally important topic from the Civil Society Organizations’ (CSOs) perspective: the social media platforms. Web 2.0, or the social media internet, has been with us in full stride for more than a dozen years; the question is: how do the platforms affect the everyday functioning of citizens and human rights today? During the talk with Katarzyna Szymielewicz, we dive into changes observed in the online sphere, explaining the workings of profiling, microtargeting, borderline content. We also discuss legal issues governing social media, sharing good practices observed in the EU. ✅ In this episode of our podcast interview series for NGOs and CSOs, you can deep dive into the following dilemmas and get your questions answered: How do social media platforms work? What are: “profiling”, “micro-targeting”, and “recommender systems” in social media? What is wrong with social media regarding human rights and democracy? Can we observe any good practices and trends in regulating digital services? What is “The Digital Services Act” about? What are “VLOPs” and “VLOSEs”? Is a democratic digital world even possible? Katarzyna Szymielewicz is a lawyer specializing in human rights and technology. She’s the co-founder and lead of the Panoptykon Foundation – a Polish NGO defending human rights in the context of contemporary forms of surveillance. Katarzyna is vice-president of European Digital Rights, a coalition of 33 privacy and civil rights organizations. She is a board member of the Tactical Technology Collective and Amnesty International (Poland). A graduate of the University of Warsaw (Law) and the School of Oriental and African Studies (Development Studies), she is now a member of the Council for Digitization in Poland. 🎙️🎚️ The podcast was recorded and mixed at "Podcastownia Ciekawość" (Warsaw, Poland) 🎵 Music by Zykovich Yauheni aka JJ 📆 Podcast recorded on October 27, 2023 💡 Read more on recommender systems in the Briefing Note "Fixing Recommender Systems.From identification of risk factors to meaningful transparency and mitigation" by Panoptykon Foundation, Irish Council for Civil Liberties, and People vs BIGTTECH

The topic of Artificial Intelligence has been a significant point of discussion worldwide. We have invited Professor Aleksandra Przegalińska, one of the leading voices in this field, to address our questions regarding the work of activists and CSOs and the impact of AI on civil society. ✅ In the first episode of our podcast interview series for NGOs, you can delve into the most common aspects of AI and get the answers to the following questions:  • What is Artificial Intelligence? Is there one AI, or are there many "AIs"? • Can AI support CSO/ NGO workers? • How can AI contribute to building communities, fostering trust, and strengthening social capital? • To what extent can the new, tech-generated forms of disinformation spread and affect the civil society members dedicating their efforts to counter disinformation? • What should we bear in mind when using AI consciously? • What skills are necessary to effectively use AI-based tools? Do we require a new set of media literacy skills? • AI is often portrayed as a tool for amassing economic capital, but could it also be harnessed for social capital? 🎧🔗 Listen to our podcast to get all the answers! Aleksandra Przegalińska – Professor at the Leon Koźmiński Academy, and a Postdoctoral Fellow in Management Sciences. She earned her PhD in the Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence at the Institute of Philosophy of the University of Warsaw. She is currently the Vice-Rector for International Cooperation and ESR at the Leon Koźmiński Academy. Since 2016, Aleksandra has conducted research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. She is a graduate of The New School for Social Research in New York, where she participated in research on identity in virtual reality, with a particular focus on Second Life. She is currently a Research Fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research. In 2022, she began working with the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard. Aleksandra is interested in the development of Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing, machine learning, social robots, and wearable technologies. The podcast was recorded at Podcastownia Ciekawość (Warsaw, Poland): http://podcastownia.pl/ Music by Zykovich Yauheni aka JJ

In this episode, you will hear Jakub Górnicki talking to Tomáš Kriššák about the "Project HOPE",  within which a set of tools in the form of an online game was designed to help people tackle negative consequences of the Internet and the social media, including cyber-bullying and propaganda. Tomáš is a Slovak expert in cognitive security and countering disinformation and a trainer having worked previously for the Open Society Foundation (OSF) Slovakia and more recently for Gerulata. He has also prepared dozens of media literacy workshops and programmes aimed at addressing the potential impact of misinformation on our society and other forms of public manipulation. More recently, he has concentrated his efforts on the issue of youth de-radicalization.