Instagram – the opium of the people

Once used mainly by teens and young millennials, Instagram continues to grow as one of the most popular social media platforms. As of June 2018, Instagram had reached one billion monthly active users. More than 500 million use the platform daily.

Challenging voter manipulation in the US elections

Free Press and four allies have filed a lawsuit (27 August 2020) challenging an order against social media companies. The US District Court, Northern District of California, will hear a complaint against President Trump’s “Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship”, which targets online platforms with...

Democracy demands diversity in the news

How can news organizations practice diversity and how can newsmakers contribute to overcoming division and exclusion? A digital panel session discussed these questions as part of German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle’s Global Media Forum 2020. It focused on the need for news organizations to promote...

Staying silent about Hong Kong is not an option

Media freedom is the freedom to protest. “Hong Kong has long been respected as a powerful global economic hub and lively political and democratic space, supported by a proud and strong independent media. Yet the imposition of the new national security law… has undermined fundamental...

New media laws obstruct the right to communicate

A new law in Tanzania tightens controls on cooperation between local and international media outlets. Under new regulations announced by the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority, which came into force on 10 August 2020, local media must now seek government permission to broadcast foreign content. They...

Time for Facebook to face the music

There are laws about what can be seen or said in public. So why don’t they apply to social media? In principle they do. The problem is enforcing them. In part it’s a problem of scale.

Tackling hate speech online and offline

There is nothing new about hate speech. What has changed is the mode of delivery. In Nazi Germany, it was state-controlled newspapers and radio. At the time of the genocide in Rwanda, it was a radio station run by the Hutu government. Today, it is...

VAW: A plague within the pandemic but not headline news

Last year the South African president elevated the epidemic of violence against women to national crisis level following pressure from activists, promising to put in place a public national register of offenders, a review of cold cases and harsher penalties for perpetrators.

News media, discrimination, and bias

No apologies for quoting at length from “The Media Isn’t Ready to Cover Climate Apartheid” by Michelle García (The Nation, 17 June 2020). While praising the public service ethic of many media outlets, whose coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic has been exemplary, she notes an...

Enabling community engagement in humanitarian responses

In times of disaster, the need to engage with affected communities to ensure useful, timely and accurate information is mutually shared is increasingly recognised as essential.

Speaking up for free speech

A group of 153 academics, writers, and social activists published a letter in Harper’s Magazine (7 July 2020) expressing concern that “a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments” are tending “to weaken norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of...

The enemy on your wrist

Tags: surveillance, wearables, monitoring tools, privacy Electronic tagging has always been controversial. Today it is being touted in the name of health security.

Toppling statues are opportunities for collective reflection

Protests against racism unleashed by the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, at the hands of police in Minneapolis spread all over the United States, Canada, and parts of Europe in May and June of this year.

Protecting journalists is a balancing act between dictums and dictators

The Philippines is facing another crackdown on media freedoms. On June 15, 2020, a court in the capital Manila, convicted former CNN journalist Maria Ressa and former Rappler writer Reynaldo Santos Jr. of cyber libel for publishing an article that implicated a prominent businessman who...

Time to stand up for journalism and journalists – again!

Democracy stands or falls by its guarantee of freedom of expression and opinion and an independent press. Two tragic events have thrown that statement into sharp relief: the global coronavirus pandemic and the murder of George Floyd in the USA.

Upgrading digital infrastructure to serve all people everywhere

Ownership of mobile phones, especially smartphones, is spreading rapidly across the globe. Yet, there are still many people in emerging economies who do not own a mobile phone, or who share one with others. According to the Pew Research Center, in 2019 mobile divides were...

Advocating freedom from fear

At a time when the world is rightly focused on the coronavirus pandemic and its long-term consequences, under-reported news includes how far down the road we are (or not) toward the abolition of nuclear weapons. The report “Enough is Enough: Global Nuclear Weapons Spending in...

Journalists are key workers in a chaotic world

It’s a familiar story. Toe the government line – any government – and survive. Criticize the government, or its cronies, or policies that benefit the few rather than the majority, and risk censure or worse. Investigative journalism examines questions of public interest: crime and corruption,...

Migrant voices in the time of Covid-19

With the onset of the current pandemic, things are bound to get a lot more challenging for many migrants and refugees, as well as for the societies that host them. The number of forcibly displaced people worldwide was already the highest it had been in decades even...

A pandemic of mistrust

The World Press Freedom Index, compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), suggests that the coming decade will be decisive for the future of journalism. The 2020 edition of the Index, which evaluates the situation for journalists in 180 countries and territories, identifies five converging crises: geopolitical...

No surveillance without safeguarding privacy!

A key issue arising from responses to the Covid-19 pandemic is surveillance. Once governments have established ways of tracking and monitoring individuals in the name of national health security, they may become very difficult to undo.

Extraordinary measures, extraordinary protections

More than 100 civil society groups have urged governments not to use the global coronavirus pandemic as cover for future pervasive electronic snooping but to make sure data is erased once the health crisis is over.

To deny information is to deny human rights

Even faced with COVID-19, despotic regimes will stop at nothing. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has expressed its concern at some Middle Eastern governments taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to increase state censorship and to clamp down on the dissemination of news and information.

Zoom zooms to rectify digital rights breach

Civil liberties are most fragile during times of crisis. As conflict the world over has shown, digital communications infrastructures can easily be used to censor, to silence, to monitor, and ultimately to sanction. In China, WeChat and Weibo are extremely popular. China introduced new laws...

Backsliding for profit

Trade relations must not be allowed to threaten hard-won universal rights. The United Kingdom appears to be trying to wriggle out of applying the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to its post-Brexit existence as a non-member of the European Union (EU).

Digital privacy and the need to know

Collecting personal data for the best of reasons – such as tackling the coronavirus pandemic – has triggered a wave of misgivings. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (www.eff.org) has responded to growing concerns with a statement (10 March 2020) urging “a balance between collective good and...

When mainstream media get it right

Interesting to see the media’s largely positive role in helping to combat the coronavirus crisis. According to Forbes Magazine (March 16), the World Health Organization (WHO) is becoming the planet’s most important social media influencer.

Public service broadcasting: It’s political

Attacks on the independence of the BBC are multiplying. The principle of public service broadcasting – or, in these days of digital convergence, public service media – ought to be sacrosanct. The question then becomes one of the need for unbiased oversight and financial autonomy.

Pushing the limits of media freedom in the interest of democratic protest

A report from Lebanon’s Maharat Foundation examines the role of freedom of expression and media during the 2019 uprising. Maharat’s aim is to create societal and political conditions that enhance freedom of expression and access to information both online and offline. It equips a progressive...

International digital taxation: It’s long overdue

“Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today.” Pulitzer Prize winning American author Herman Wouk may have written that, but it certainly seems to be true of some of the major tech companies whose profits include those from dubious digital surveillance techniques.

Civil society has a chance to regain the high ground

Surveillance and loss of privacy are watchwords in the digital transformation of societies worldwide. Who is watching us and for what purposes? Who is infringing private spaces and closing down public spaces? When it comes to communication infrastructures and technologies, accessibility and affordability are no...

Giving migrants a voice – and others a history lesson

National Public Radio (NPR) in the United States is demonstrating the importance both of giving a voice to migrants in media, and of ensuring the independence of the public broadcasting platform. As reported by another public broadcaster, BBC (“The immigrants telling stories history missed” 10...

Measures to tackle disinformation and propaganda in Europe

Recently, the European parliament voted in favour of stronger EU measures aimed at countering “highly dangerous” Russian disinformation and at upgrading the EU’s anti-propaganda unit.

‘It takes a village to keep children safe both online and offline’

Children now represent one third of all Internet users.

This number is expected to increase once developing countries – where most of the world’s children live –become digitized.
This is both exciting and worrisome. Exciting because it has been established that connectivity opens doors to new educational experiences, skills, and other benefits. Worrisome because of what we know and experience about the Internet’s darker side.

Media reform is alive and kicking!

In September 2019, in a victory for the principles underlying media democracy, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit rebuked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) by overturning the agency’s latest attempts to eliminate long-standing limits on local-media ownership.

Protest in the digital realm

Digital technology is a growing force in today’s world. Since advocacy groups during the Vietnam War became incensed by televised images of suffering and torture, information and communication technology has changed the way we interact with the world around us.

Media independence: A fundamental question

It’s surprising that the issue of “fake news” took so long to raise its head. Deliberate misinformation and bias have been around for as long as journalism itself – more than 400 years by some accounts. The yellow press (a term coined in the 1890s...

How the 5G wireless dividend can help connect those left behind

Private, public, and civil society actors should work together to encourage more sustainable financing of universal access efforts Access to communication and information tools and platforms, including digital platforms, is essential to enable us all to exercise our human rights. In today’s world, fully exercising...

How the 5G wireless dividend can help connect those left behind

Private, public, and civil society actors should work together to encourage more sustainable financing of universal access efforts

Political accountability in the age of Twitter

Photo: London UK. 24th July 2019. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, delivers a speech outside 10 Downing Street. Credit: Michael Tubi/Shutterstock On 19 September, Veteran BBC journalist John Humphreys hosted his last “Today” radio programme after 32 years. Known for his aggressive interviewing on a...

Political accountability in the age of Twitter

On 19 September, Veteran BBC journalist John Humphreys hosted his last “Today” radio programme after 32 years. Known for his aggressive interviewing on a morning news programme that for decades has often set the tone and issues for the day’s news in Britain, he used his last programme to criticise current politicians for avoiding scrutiny by the media.

When fact-checking isn’t about ‘right’ or ‘wrong’

The rise of “fake news” charges and deliberate disinformation have  led to an important counter effort: fact-checking. News agencies, civil society organisations, and concerned individuals have taken on the fight for “truth” – assessing political claims and struggling to prevent misinformation guiding our decisions and...

When fact-checking isn’t about ‘right’ or ‘wrong’

The rise of “fake news” charges and deliberate disinformation have  led to an important counter effort: fact-checking. News agencies, civil society organisations, and concerned individuals have taken on the fight for “truth” – assessing political claims and struggling to prevent misinformation guiding our decisions and behaviour.

Children’s communication rights need better protection

Google should have known better! An Associated Press piece in The Guardian newspaper (“YouTube fined $170m for collecting children’s personal data”, 4 September 2019) notes a serious violation of children’s right to privacy: “Google’s video site YouTube has been fined $170m to settle allegations it collected children’s...

Children’s communication rights need better protection

Google should have known better!

An Associated Press piece in The Guardian newspaper (“YouTube fined $170m for collecting children's personal data”, 4 September 2019) notes a serious violation of children’s right to privacy:

Climate change literacy and community media

Not everyone is familiar with climate change. A new survey released by Afrobarometer paints a bleak picture of how agriculture conditions are worsening due to higher temperatures, delayed rainfall, and crop failure. Crucially, among some people, it also identifies little or no knowledge about climate...

Climate change literacy and community media

Not everyone is familiar with climate change.

A new survey released by Afrobarometer paints a bleak picture of how agriculture conditions are worsening due to higher temperatures, delayed rainfall, and crop failure. Crucially, among some people, it also identifies little or no knowledge about climate change itself.

Privacy on the frontier of lawlessness

Privacy was something that used to be taken for granted. Ordinarily, the private life of an individual was not open to scrutiny, while public life was the concern of law and order and decency. In communication terms, privacy meant that only the addressee could open...

Privacy on the frontier of lawlessness

Privacy was something that used to be taken for granted.

Ordinarily, the private life of an individual was not open to scrutiny, while public life was the concern of law and order and decency. In communication terms, privacy meant that only the addressee could open letters or telegrams and telephone operators would not listen in to conversations. Unauthorised disclosure could be sanctioned.

Ban books, ban people

“For the past twenty years, the main issue restricting ublic debate in terms of Turkish laws has been the prosecution and imprisonment of journalists, writers and intellectuals on the grounds that they contribute to violence and terrorism.” This quote comes from a report by English...

From manufacturing consent to manufacturing consensus

An influential book on communications in the 1980s was Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of Mass Communication, by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky. It proposed a “propaganda model” as a way of understanding how the mass media system intersected with the U.S. economy, political system, and mobilising support for the special interests dominating state and corporate activity.

It’s vital to be able to “read” social media

In an era when misinformation and “fake news” abound on social media, it is important to understand where people get their news.

Big data’s big brother: Real-time data processing

Walk around any city and your face will be caught on camera and might even be added to a facial-recognition database. That data can now be processed in real-time. Regulations about how it can be used are minimal and generally weak.

“Democracy, as we know it, is about to die…”

There was a mantra among communities and businesses when foreign goods and huge chain stores started crowding out small, local operations. “Buy local” was the cry.

Civil rights and the climate crisis

Philip Alston, UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, writes that the impacts of global heating are likely to undermine not only basic rights to life, water, food, and housing for hundreds of millions of people, but also democracy and the rule of law.

Short-sighted policies for short-term gain

Accessibility and affordability are watchwords of the communication rights movement. Yet when it comes to digital access, governments have still not got their act together.

A voluntary way of holding social media to account

Article 19 – the international freedom of expression organization – has proposed creating Social Media Councils (SMCs) as a way of moderating content on social media based on a “multi-stakeholder accountability mechanism”.

Unfriendly-fire: Media freedom under threat

“Elected leaders in many democracies, who should be press freedom’s staunchest defenders, have made explicit attempts to silence critical media voices and strengthen outlets that serve up favorable coverage. The trend is linked to a global decline in democracy itself: The erosion of press freedom is both a symptom of and a contributor to the breakdown of other democratic institutions and principles, a fact that makes it especially alarming.”

Internet governance should work towards mechanisms to reinvigorate independent journalism

A free and independent media sector is one of the cornerstones of what it means for a country to be a liberal democracy. The emergence of the Internet was initially received with much optimism as there was an expectation that it would help democratize media systems, allowing “citizens to report news, expose wrongdoing, express opinions, mobilize protest, monitor elections, scrutinize government, deepen participation, and expand the horizons of freedom."

True public service media to the rescue

Every ten years or so the BBC comes in for criticism for being too partial or too impartial.

World Wide Web or webs of intrigue?

In its 2019 report, the Internet Society asks whether the Internet economy is consolidating and, if it is, what the implications might be.

Seeing and hearing people who matter

It is more and more evident that communication and information issues are intrinsically connected to questions of sustainable development and human dignity.

Support for local media

Subscribers to The Guardian in the UK recently received a message of appreciation from the Editor-in-Chief, Katherine Viner. She announced that after a three-year “turnaround” strategy the newspaper had hit its goal of breaking even – making a small profit that has been ploughed back into supporting their journalism.

Digital vulnerability and global justice

As with every new technological innovation, there are pros and cons, advantages and disadvantages, benefits and risks.

Stand up for press freedom worldwide!

It’s a more clandestine and dangerous world when journalists can be threatened with violence, detention, and death for doing their job.

Freedom of the press in an age of anxiety

The UK Foreign Secretary has appointed international human rights lawyer Amal Clooney to act as a special envoy on media freedom. She will also chair a high-level panel of legal experts on the issue.

Instalike vs. Instahate

In the “good old days” of traditional media, there were gatekeepers whose task was to apply professional and ethical standards to content. In addition, government and public entities established print and broadcast regulations that were independently monitored to ensure compliance.

Why are Indigenous and minority languages important in today’s world?

The United Nations has declared 2019 as the International Year of Indigenous Languages in order to raise awareness about the importance of linguistic diversity in relation to sustainable development, culture, knowledge, and collective memory. People’s ability to communicate in their own language is one of the cornerstones of communication rights. 

Can migrants make themselves heard in the age of national populism?

Rates of forced migration are the highest they have been in decades. In 2016, approximately 40 million people became internally displaced persons (IDPs) and 22.5 million became refugees, the highest figures on record. These are staggering numbers.

Media reform in the UK

Trustworthy news and opinion is the Holy Grail of journalism today.

An independent report reviewing challenges facing high quality journalism in the UK has been published. The Cairncross Review: a sustainable future for journalism (12 February 2019) recommends a new regulator to oversee the relationship between news outlets and technology giants and urges a public investigation into the dominance of Facebook and Google in the advertising marketplace.

What next for the web?

The 30th birthday of the World Wide Web saw its founder publish an open letter reflecting on how the web has changed our world. He  identifies what must be done to build a better web that serves all of humanity.

Fake news and the hijacking of public opinion

British Members of Parliament are agitating for tougher regulations to combat fake news.

To share or not to share

A friend forwarded a YouTube video reporting on an apparent practice in a Central Asian country of abducting women for marriage.

Digital surveillance: Who watches the watchers?

Last year Australia passed a bill weakening security on the iPhones and software people rely on in today’s digital world. This sweeping law could force tech companies to access encrypted data.

I Got Algorithm

How to prevent social networks from damaging the well-being of young people?

Mind your language!

Masculine, feminine, or gender-neutral?

Data protection and googol fines

Data privacy, also called information privacy, is about what data in a computer system can be shared with third parties.

Building trust in a fragmented world

Genuine communication is all about creating relationships and building trust.

What makes great journalism? On foreign correspondents and terror

Yet another terrorist act played out in Nairobi just two weeks into 2019.

Hunger for truth games

Media wars can easily get personal. Today the name of the game is Showtime! Ratings trump sober facts and inconvenient truths. Fox News offers foxy entertainment; The New York Post offers sensationalism; the gutter press epitomised by the likes of the UK’s The Daily Mail and the German tabloid Bild Zeitung have been known to peddle downright lies.

Shrinking civic space demands alternative strategies

At the end of 2018, an astonishing statistic was published by CIVICUS Monitor, a research collaborative effort that rates and tracks respect for fundamental freedoms in 196 countries.

What price freedom of information?

Freedom of information, including the right to access information held by public bodies, is crucial to democracy, good governance, and good citizenship.

Time for a communication revolution from below!

Sobering words for those who still believe that information and communication technologies (ICTs) are the panacea for the world’s ills. In “Developing Countries Losing Out To Digital Giants” (IPS News, 17 October 2018), Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury write:

New Mexican government should prioritize the protection of journalists

Mexico is among the most dangerous countries in the world to be a journalist. Over 70 journalists were killed during the past decade; 8 have been killed in 2018 alone. Many more have been threatened or assaulted in different forms. Worst of all, impunity is rampant.

WhatsApp calls time on WhatsApp

Social media are accused of bringing about the demise of traditional journalism. They are used to tar news stories with the brush of “fake news” as loud-mouthed politicians eagerly point the finger at what they deem to be critical or unfavourable coverage.

Integrity in news coverage

The world’s leading newspapers are struggling to maintain their place as voices of conscience in society when via social media everyone is free to express alternative views and opinions.

When media, politics and sexual violence collide

How media report on sexual violence when political interests are at play is a litmus test for how serious they are about professional ethics.

‘Fake news’ is undermining Brazilian rights

During Brazil’s military dictatorship (1964-85), the people’s ability to exercise some of their most fundamental human rights was severely curtailed. In addition to engaging in torture, extrajudicial killings, and repression against opposition groups, the successive military governments that governed Brazil during this period relentlessly restricted freedom of expression, access to public information, and controlled the majority of media outlets.

Beware propaganda from the wireless industry

There has always been a suspicion that radio waves do more harm than good. With the arrival of the Internet of Things – wireless computing devices embedded in such everyday objects as fridges, washing machines and coffee makers – the scenario easily slips into one of doomsday. 

Media bread and circuses

On 7 September 2018, former President Obama delivered a pointed critique of the Trump presidency. Speaking to students at the University of Illinois, he urged political awareness and action, saying:

Genocide in the news: On media elitism and racism

Why do some genocides make the news and others hardly? Let me rephrase: Why do international news media give grossly disproportionate attention to different yet similarly grave ‘deliberate and systematic destructions of a racial, political, or cultural group’ (Miriam-Webster definition)? 

When did you last take a break from social media?

According to a 2018 research report from the Pew Research Centre on trends in social media use in the United States, 74% of Facebook users in that country visited the platform at least once a day, and 51% did so several times a day. 

Protecting privacy in a world of digital communications

“New technologies will enable high levels of social control at a reasonable cost. Governments will be able to selectively censor topics and behaviors to allow information for economically productive activities to flow freely, while curbing political discussions that might damage the regime.China’s so-called Great Firewall provides an early demonstration of this kind of selective censorship.”