Global Headlines Digest | The New Yorker on the teen drama that lives inside social media, and a bigger 2026 World Cup
Global Headlines is a new QDaily column for 2018, still in trial run, and still meant to help you know more.
Global Headlines is a new QDaily column for 2018, still in trial run, and still meant to help you know more.
What the agenda-setters are talking about
The New Yorker: Could a screen-peeping game on social media be the future of television?
At 3:40 p.m. on April 24, SKAM Austin dropped its first episode on Facebook. No ads, no promotion from the production team, no credits. It looked like any other update in the feed. The story follows a group of high schoolers in Texas, and episodes run to no fixed length — as short as two minutes, "as long as" eight. The release times track the plot, and the plot tracks real high school life: at 12:40 p.m. on a Monday you watch the show's couple fighting at school at that same 12:40, and on a Saturday evening you watch a student choosing an outfit just before the party.
At heart, SKAM Austin is no different from any other drama about the romantic troubles of teenagers, but the producers buried so much of the story that the show became a large-scale game of peeping and deduction. Every character has an Instagram account, and by following those accounts you can dig up their carefully staged — and sometimes self-incriminating — pasts, and work out the fine grain of who feels what about whom. Follow them and they sometimes follow you back; Facebook and Instagram keep sending real-time alerts: "abby_taffy just posted a photo." Together this makes for an immersive experience that erases the line between the fictional social network and the real one.
Traditional television is a one-way street. The actors on one side of the screen and the viewers on the other are both fixed in place, neither touching the other, while producers strain to guess what audiences want to watch and what they will buy. That model held for more than 50 years, and in the age of YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter it is falling behind. Young people barely watch TV; they spend nine hours a day with online media. SKAM arrived to meet them: it suits an attention span that keeps shrinking, and at the same time offers the thrill of taking part, through suspense and many ways in. It also, of course, suits the platform's marketing needs — for Facebook, what better ad is there than a drama in which everybody uses Facebook?
The cultural point of SKAM is that viewers are not only watching but also making: the creative team adjusts details of the plot according to fan comments. Viewers feel it is less a substitute reality than an extension of their own lives.
Beyond the story and how it is told, every stage of SKAM's planning and distribution is cut to fit young people. The Norwegian team behind the original knew the young had already moved to social networks, so they set the story there; they knew the young did not want their parents finding out what they were posting, so they ran no public advertising at all and let word of mouth do the work. It worked — in Norway, more young people have heard of SKAM than of Game of Thrones.
The New Yorker's writer points out that, like every other "killer app," SKAM exists in the end to make money. Creator Julie Andem admits that they did try to push audience engagement as high as it would go, but insists the aim was not money — it was to make young Americans feel less alone.
The phone may look like a more democratic and less preachy medium than television, but SKAM has not shaken off its public-broadcasting parentage (NRK, the Norwegian producer, is called Norway's BBC). It still means to teach its audience. Its lesson is still this: keep at it and things will turn; shame passes, growth lasts; the young should build confidence and become people of their own.
News-makers of the past 24 hours
FIFA made the decision by vote on Wednesday in Moscow, the capital of Russia, host of this year's World Cup. It is the first time in the tournament's history that three countries will host together. With the U.S., Canada, and Mexico caught up in trade and diplomatic quarrels, the joint bid handed all three a reason to stand together.
The United States is the main stage. Under the plan, it will hold 60 of the 80 matches, with 10 each for the other two countries; the final is set for MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. The U.S. and Mexico hosted the men's World Cup in 1994 and 1986 respectively, and Canada has hosted the women's.
The three countries' leaders each welcomed the result. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters: "The whole world will have a chance to come together and see how closely Canada, Mexico, and the United States can work together."
U.S. President Donald Trump promised that strict visa restrictions would not apply to fans coming to watch. Reuters reminds readers that even with a second term he will be out of office by early 2025. During the bidding, Trump had warned that any country voting against the three North American hosts would pay for it in trade talks.
The three countries promise the tournament can bring FIFA $11 billion in revenue.
The part that matters more to us: the 2026 World Cup will grow from 32 teams to 48. They will be split into 16 groups, with the top two from each going through to the knockout rounds. The regional quotas for the 48 places are believed to be: 16 for Europe, 9 for Africa, 8.5 for Asia, 6 for South America, 6.5 for Central America and the Caribbean, 1 for Oceania, and 1 among the hosts.
What else happened in the world
France's National Assembly voted by a wide margin on Wednesday to pass the contested reform bill for the state rail company SNCF, a decisive win for President Macron in his fight with the unions. Analysts have set that fight alongside Margaret Thatcher's battle with Britain's coal miners in the 1980s. The bill goes to the Senate on Thursday.
Italy's government summoned the French ambassador to protest France's criticism of its migration policy. Italy's newly formed populist coalition had just closed the country's ports to keep a migrant ship from docking, drawing fierce criticism.
The U.S. Justice Department plans to take more civil rights cases to court to fight discriminatory treatment of houses of worship by some municipal bodies. It is seen as the Trump administration's latest move in support of religious freedom.
Eighty-four scientists wrote jointly in Nature that Antarctic ice is melting three times faster than it used to. Two-fifths of the loss has come in the past five years. The scientists say global warming is now a real threat to coastal regions.
A proposal by venture capitalist Tim Draper to split California in three will go before voters at this year's election. California is the most populous state in the U.S., with nearly 40 million people; the initiative would divide it into northern, central, and southern parts to make it easier to govern. Democratic candidates for governor have come out against it.
Somebody said
"It's like coming back to the land of the living. Right now, I feel completely free."
Piera Aiello, 51, is an Italian politician. At 14 she was forced to marry the son of a Sicilian mafia boss. In 1991 a rival clan killed her husband. She then entered witness protection, changed her name, left Sicily, and never showed her face in public again.
Last year Aiello decided to take back control of her life and ran for parliament as a candidate of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement. Through the campaign she had to keep her face behind a veil; people called her "the faceless candidate." After she won, she began working in Rome, where her real identity could no longer be kept safe. So she decided to take off the veil and face the public.
"I decided to stand up, so that the people who resist the mafia are no longer pushed to the margins," Aiello said.
Fighting the mafia is Aiello's central cause. Efforts to contain it have had some success in recent years, but organized crime remains a serious problem, in Italy and abroad. Cocaine smuggling into Europe is believed to be run by one mafia clan. Some informants who fled overseas are still hunted. Aiello's election has given them reason to imagine a future again.
Paulos Tekle, an Ethiopian immigrant, lost his son in the Grenfell Tower fire in London a year ago. June 14 is the first anniversary. The criminal investigation is still running, and Londoners are demanding the full truth and that those responsible be held to account.
The most direct responsibility lies with the firm that built the tower. Experts found the cladding on the outside of the building did not meet construction standards; once the building caught fire, the material gave off thick, toxic smoke, which kept firefighters from reaching residents to get them out.
That has raised questions about how Britain handles fires. The country uses a passive approach: at Grenfell, residents were first told to stay in their flats, and only two hours later were they finally ordered to evacuate. The fire service argues that the bad calls came from crews not knowing the building materials were defective and underestimating how hard the rescue would be, not from the response policy itself.
More of the criticism is aimed at the Kensington and Chelsea council and the tenant management organisation (TMO). The tower's former residents say the two official bodies ignored the building's safety hazards for years and must answer for a disaster made by people.
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Mexicans will be allowed to write in candidates' nicknames in the presidential election.
With less than three weeks to go before Mexico's general election, the electoral commission has changed the rules: besides ticking the box beside a printed name, voters may write in a nickname, an abbreviation, or a campaign slogan, and it will count. Opponents say this could make a mess of the count.
Plenty of Mexican politicians go by nicknames. The current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, is usually called "Amlo," and, from the literal sense of his name, is also called after a local fish. He is fond of coining nicknames for his rivals, and they spread across social networks; one political science professor says Amlo's gift for packaging and selling himself is a match for Trump's.
The outcome, though, looks settled. Many Mexicans want the country to change how it fights drug violence and political corruption, and Amlo leads every poll by a wide margin.
A day before the World Cup opens, Spain's football federation fired the national team's head coach.
As Spain's head coach, Julen Lopetegui had never lost a match; his work was excellent. He had renewed his contract with the federation only recently. Then, two days before the tournament kicked off, Real Madrid suddenly announced that Lopetegui would take over at the club after the World Cup, on a three-season deal. The federation was furious.
"We have been forced to fire the national team coach," federation president Luis Rubiales said at a press conference on Wednesday. "We wish him well; his work in qualifying was outstanding. But an employee cannot go looking for his next job and leave the federation aside, keeping us in the dark until five minutes before the announcement."
The federation then named Fernando Hierro, a former Spain and Real Madrid defender, as head coach. His first match will be Friday night's group game against Portugal.
On This Day
June 14, 1920: Max Weber, sociologist, historian, and one of the founders of sociology, died.
June 14, 1934: The film Song of the Fishermen was released.
June 14, 1985: Several European Community countries signed the Schengen Agreement, to phase out border checks between them.
June 14, 2015: Qiao Shi, former Communist Party leader and former chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, died.
June 14, 2017: Fire broke out at Grenfell Tower in London, killing 72 people.
Cover image from: Tina Rataj-Berard on Unsplash
Translated from the original QDaily article. Original publication date retained.