Student Union
- By Max Cotton
Will the US Get Left in the Digital Dust?
A recent report provides some surprises about which countries are gaining traction in the digital space and which are stalling.
Researchers at the Fletcher School of International Affairs at Tufts University in Massachusetts looked at where digital is replacing "physical interactions," in communications, society and politics, commerce, media and entertainment.
For example, instead of handing over paper currency to a human who locks it in a safe, we now make bank transfers with the swipe of a phone screen, regardless of location.
"We identified many hot spots around the world where these changes are happening rapidly and other spots where momentum has slowed," the authors of the Digital Evolution Index said. "Two years on, depending on where we live, we continue to move at different speeds toward the digital planet."
Countries were organized into the categories of Stand Out, Stall Out, Break Out and Watch Out. The highest rating, Stand Out, was given to countries that are digitally advanced and show significant momentum for innovation.
Winners in bringing people online were Singapore, New Zealand and the United Arab Emirates. Malaysia was perched on the edge of Stand Out.
"Not only are they digitally highly evolved, they are moving very, very fast," said Bhaskar Chakravorti, one of the report's authors and senior associate dean at the Fletcher School.
Governments in this category act as "stewards and connector" to ferry public and private sectors into the digital space, he said.
Likely to stall
While digitally advanced, the nations of Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Finland and Denmark were the top five most likely to Stall Out, the report said. While they might be ahead of the curve, their momentum has slowed.
"European governments are not making the investments needed to advance the development of new technologies," Chakravorti said. The EU "is not a digital market union."
Mexico, India, Morocco and Russia were poised to Break Out. While not very digitally advanced, they are evolving rapidly by making infrastructure stronger.
The report said it was important for countries to understand basic aspects of digital competition:
— Digital technology is widespread and spreading fast. "There are more mobile connections than people on the planet, and more people have access to a mobile phone than to a toilet," the report said.
— Digital players wield outsize market power, it added. "Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook were the five most valuable companies in the world. ... Seventh overall was China's e-commerce giant, Alibaba Group. These players enjoy economies of scale and dominant market share."
— Digital technologies are poised to change the future of work, affecting as much as 50 percent of the world economy, the report said. "There is both anticipation and apprehension about what lies on the other side of the threshold of the 'second machine age.' "
— Digital markets are uneven, the report said. Politics, regulations and levels of economic development play a major role in shaping the digital industry. The world's largest internet user population, at 721 million, is China, where many of the major global players don't have entry.
India has the greatest market potential, the Fletcher School researchers said, with 462 million internet users. But it struggles with multiple languages and infrastructure challenges, although the government has tried to enable a digital market.
Fragmented EU market
The European Union has 412 million internet users, but the market is fragmented and still forming a "digital single market," the report said. In many countries, several websites or digital companies are blocked.
Around the world, digital access itself is far from uniform: Barely 50 percent of the world's population has access to the internet today, the report said.
Cash is another condition plaguing digital commerce, it said. Digital alternatives have not replaced cash in many places, despite online options. In 2013, the report said, 85 percent of the world's transactions were in cash. Even in the Eurozone, 75 percent of point-of-sale payments were in cash.
"In Malaysia, Peru, and Egypt, only 1 percent of transactions are cashless," the authors wrote. In India, where the government adjusted 86 percent of its currency, cash withdrawals were 0.6 percent higher than a year earlier.
At the bottom of the pack were Egypt, Pakistan and Peru, rated Watch Out. These countries are not digitally advanced, and they lack momentum to get there. Some actually are declining digitally, the report said.
The study authors recommended that countries improve by closing the "mobile gap," or the difference between the number of mobile phones and the number of mobile phones with internet access.
As for global titans Germany and the U.S., the report said they are in danger of losing momentum, having moved so far, so fast. The U.S. is not investing in "foundational technology" for "10 years, 20 years, 30 years from now," Chakravorti said.
Global citizens, especially young people and international students, will look away from the U.S. if it does not invest more in technology, and toward Asia, he said.
Asia is the most digitally exciting region in the world, led by China and Malaysia, the report said. Entrepreneurship and venture capital is being aimed at that region, and it can expect to see a lot of investor and entrepreneurial interest in coming years.
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Lily Meskers faced an unexpected choice in the lead-up to the first major election she can vote in.
The 19-year-old University of Montana sprinter was among college athletes in the state who received an inquiry from Montana Together asking if she was interested in a name, image and likeness deal to support Sen. Jon Tester, a three-term Democrat seeking re-election. The group, which is not affiliated with the Tester campaign, offered from $400 to $2,400 to athletes willing to produce video endorsements.
Meskers, who is from Colorado but registered to vote in Montana, decided against the deal because she disagrees with Tester's votes on legislation involving transgender athletes in sports.
"I was like, OK, I believe that this is a political move to try to gain back some voters that he might have lost," Meskers said. "And me being a female student-athlete myself, I was not going to give my endorsement to someone who I felt didn't have the same support for me."
Professional athletes such as LeBron James, Colin Kaepernick and Stephen Curry have taken high-profile stances on hot-button topics and political campaigns in recent years, but college athletes are far less outspoken — even if money is available, according to experts in the NIL field. Being outwardly political can reflect on their school or endanger potential endorsement deals from brands that don't want controversy. It can certainly establish a public image for an athlete — for better or for worse — or lead to tensions with teammates and coaches who might not feel the same way.
There are examples of political activism by college athletes: A Texas Tech kicker revealed his support for former President Donald Trump on a shirt under his uniform at a game last week and a handful of Nebraska athletes a few days ago teamed up in a campaign ad against an abortion measure on the Tuesday's ballot.
Still, such steps are considered rare.
"It can be viewed as risky and there may be people telling them just don't even take that chance because they haven't made it yet," said Lauren Walsh, who started a sports branding agency 15 years ago. She said there is often too much to lose for themselves, their handlers and in some cases, their families.
"And these individuals still have to figure out what they're going to do with the rest of their lives, even those that do end up getting drafted," she added.
College coaches are not always as reticent. Auburn men's basketball coach Bruce Pearl has used social media to make it clear he does not support Kamala Harris, Trump's Democratic opponent in next week's presidential election. Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy once caused a stir with a star player for wearing a shirt promoting a far-right news outlet.
Blake Lawrence, co-founder of the NIL platform Opendorse, noted that this is the first presidential election in the NIL era, which began in July 2021. He said athletes are flocking to opportunities to help increase voter turnout in the 18-to-24 age demographic, adding that one of his company's partners has had 86 athletes post social media messages encouraging turnout through the first half of the week.
He said athletes are shying away from endorsing specific candidates or causes that are considered partisan.
"Student-athletes are, for the most part, still developing their confidence in endorsing any type of product or service," he said. "So if they are hesitant to put their weight behind supporting a local restaurant or an e-commerce product, then they are certainly going to be hesitant to use their social channels in a political way."
Giving athletes a voice
Many college athletes have opted to focus on drumming up turnout in a non-partisan manner or simply using their platforms to take stands that are not directly political in nature. Some of those efforts can be found in battleground states.
A progressive group called NextGen America said it had signed players in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Virginia to encourage voting among young people. Another organization, The Team, said it prepped 27 college athletes in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona and Michigan to lead volunteer voter participation opportunities for students. The organization also said it got more than 625 coaches to sign a nonpartisan pledge to get their athletes registered to vote.
The Team's executive director is Joe Kennedy, a former coach who coordinated championship visits and other sporting events at the White House during President Barack Obama's administration. In early October, it hosted a Zoom event during which panelists such as NCAA President Charlie Baker and WNBA players Nneka Ogwumike and Natasha Cloud gave college athletes advice about using their platforms on campus.
In its early days, The Team seized upon momentum from the record turnout seen in the 2020 election. The NCAA that year said Division I athletes could have Election Day off from practice and play to vote. Lisa Kay Solomon, founder of the All Vote No Play campaign, said even if the athletes don't immediately take stands on controversial issues, it's important for them to learn how.
"It is a lot to ask our young people to feel capable and confident on skills they've never had a chance to practice," Solomon said. "We have to model what it means to practice taking risks, practice standing up for yourself, practice pausing to think about what are the values that you care about — not what social media is feeding into your brain, but what do you care about and how do you express that? And how do you do it in a way that honors the kind of future that you want to be a part of?"
Shut up and play?
Two years ago, Tennessee-Martin quarterback Dresser Winn said he would support a candidate in a local district attorney general race in what experts said was very likely the first political NIL deal by a college athlete.
There have been very few since.
The public criticism and fallout for athletes who speak out on politics or social issue can be sharp. Kaepernick, the Super Bowl-winning quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, hasn't played in an NFL game since January 2017, not long after he began kneeling during the national anthem at games.
Meskers, the Montana sprinter, said political endorsements through NIL deals could create problems for athletes and their schools.
"I just think that NIL is going to run into a lot of trouble and a lot of struggles if they continue to let athletes do political endorsements," she said. "I just think it's messy. But I stand by NIL as a whole. I think it's really hard as a student athlete to create a financial income and support yourself."
Walsh said it's easier for wealthy and veteran stars like James and Ogwumike to take stands. James, the Los Angeles Lakers star, started More Than a Vote — an organization with a mission to "educate, energize and protect Black voters" — in 2020. He has passed the leadership to Ogwumike, who just finished her 13th year in the WNBA and also is the president of the Women's National Basketball Players Association. More than a Vote is focused on women's rights and reproductive freedom this year.
"They have very established brands," Walsh said. "They know who they are and they know what their political stance is. They know that they have a really strong following that -- there's always going to be haters, but they're also always going to have that strong following of people who listen to everything that they have to say."
Andra Gillespie, an associate professor at Emory University who teaches African American politics, also said it is rare that a college athlete would make a significant impact with a political stand simply because they tend to have a more regional platform than national. Even celebrities like Taylor Swift and Eminem are better at increasing turnout than championing candidates.
"They are certainly very beneficial in helping to drive up turnout among their fans," Gillespie said. "The data is less conclusive about whether or not they're persuasive – are they the ones who are going to persuade you to vote for a particular candidate?"
Athletes as influencers
Still, campaigns know young voters are critical this election cycle, and athletes offer an effective and familiar voice to reach them.
Political and social topics are not often broached, but this week six Nebraska athletes — five softball players and a volleyball player — appeared in an ad paid for by the group Protect Women and Children involving two initiatives about abortion laws on Tuesday's ballot.
The female athletes backed Initiative 434, which would amend the state constitution to prohibit abortions after the first trimester, with exceptions. Star softball player Jordy Bahl said on social media that the athletes were not paid.
A University of Montana spokesperson said two athletes initially agreed to take part in the NIL deal backing Tester. The school said one withdrew and the other declined to be interviewed.
For Meskers, deciding against the offer boiled down to Tester twice voting against proposals to bar federal funds from going to schools that allow transgender athletes to play women's sports, a prominent GOP campaign topic. Tester's campaign said the proposals were amendments to government spending packages, and he didn't want to play a role in derailing them as government shutdowns loomed.
"As a former public school teacher and school board member, Jon Tester believes these decisions should be made at the local level," a Tester spokesperson said. "He has never voted to allow men to compete against women."
Meskers said she believes using influence as college athletes is good and she is in favor of NIL. She just doesn't think the two should mix specifically for supporting candidates.
"I think especially as student athletes, we do have such a big voice and we do have a platform to use," she said. "So I think if you're encouraging people to do their civic duties and get up and go (vote), I think that's a great thing."
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