A recently released UNESCO report confirms comprehensively what many of us have sensed: the rise of social media and digital communication platforms have created an existential challenge to independent media and journalism. “Journalism is a public good: World trends in freedom of expression and media development:...
The 50th anniversary celebrations of NGO CSW/NY, which organizes the civil society side of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) commence this month. The civil society forum is the central stage for global advocacy to promote women’s empowerment, human rights and gender...
In 1985, following the hijacking of a Trans World Airlines flight by a Shi’ite Muslim group, UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher accused the news media of providing the terrorists with the “oxygen of publicity”. Thatcher misconstrued the role of public interest media, but the underlying question...
One of the foremost texts in English exploring the thorny subject of media ethics in a digital age is founded on the protonorms1 of truth, human dignity, and non-violence, while simultaneously arguing for understandings that are both local and global, specific and universal. In particular,...
[caption id="attachment_42257" align="alignleft" width="190"] MD 2022/1[/caption] Media Development 2022-1 This issue of Media Development asks what do social justice and social injustice look like in the digital era, especially for marginalized people and communities? In what ways has the digital era changed the notion of public space?...
Ellen Ueberschär When did you discover your communication rights? Your right to get transparent and trustworthy information, your right to read the texts that are meaningful to you and to share your own thoughts with others or to make them public? I can tell you when I...
By Dennis Smith Since time unremembered, humankind has used language, gesture, and other symbolic systems to create meaning in common. And from these distant beginnings to today’s social media platforms, competing power elites have struggled to control access to and dictate the terms of distribution of...
By Heinrich Bedford-Strohm If Christian faith is about bringing the gospel into dialogue with life, if we as the church have the task of reading the signs of the times, as the Second Vatican Council has told us to do, and if we can only fulfil...
Association for Progressive Communications The human rights implications of the gender digital divide are that women are excluded from participating fully in public and social life, and as such are unable to fully exercise their human rights, online and offline. The gender digital divide exacerbates existing...
Working Group An international working group prepared the following paper for the symposium on “Communication for Social Justice in the Digital Age”, which took place in Berlin and online September 13-15, 2021. It sets out an understanding of public space today, outlines what issues are at...