We expected 2025 to be a challenging year for human rights defenders, if only from the global political turmoil U.S. President-Elect Donald Trump is promising. For many, though, Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement on 7 January that Meta would replace fact checkers on Facebook and Instagram with the...
"Our Rights, Our Future, Right Now” is the theme of Human Rights Day, 10 December 2024. The focus is on people’s inalienable rights – regardless of race, colour, religion, sex, language, or other status – which must be guaranteed if the world is to have...
The 33rd edition of the annual 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence campaign begins today. It is natural to feel despondent that things will never change. One may ask why funding investments directed to efforts to end violence against women and girls (VAWG) seem not...
Media Development 2024-4 A Global Vision of Digital Justice International, regional, and national organisations worked hard to secure a place for civil society’s expectations in both the UN’s Pact for the Future and its Global Digital Compact. Such is the complexity that WACC commissioned a background paper...
At the beginning of 2024, Media Development took the theme Towards Democratic Governance of Digital Society. Its editorial claimed that a digital era that is genuinely democratic depends on “Societies in which everyone can freely create, access, utilise, share and disseminate information and knowledge, so...
Clemencia Rodriguez (Colombia/USA), Seán Ó Siochrú (Ireland), Parminder Jeet Singh (India) The fictional portrait below of Nelly and her family living in a media and digital world is based on research conducted by the authors as well as secondary sources. The reality of the struggle for...
Anita Gurumurthy and Nandini Chami The Global Digital Compact upholds “gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls and their full, equal and meaningful participation” as a core principle for digital cooperation [para 8(d)]. The extraordinary complexity of our times, which the digital phenomenon...
Daya Thussu As the world marks the first anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel and its bloody aftermath, it is worth reflecting on the way this ongoing conflict has been covered by the US-dominated international media and compare it with media attitudes towards another contemporary...
Robert Hackett, with Farrukh Chishtie “Pretend you are God.” – Editor’s advice on how to write like The Economist.1 In a confusing and turbulent world, many readers, presumably seeking comprehensive and reasonably objective international news, turn to The Economist (TE). It’s a venerable self-described newspaper, in weekly magazine...
Kiran Hassan The Council of Europe defines the role of media in conflict situations and wars as critical to providing the public with accurate and timely information. It suggests that the supply of trustworthy news and images contributes to the protection of civilians and conflict prevention...