Videos of Elon Musk promoting dubious investments. Popular news anchors advertising all manner of products. Seemingly plausible news articles bearing bylines of known journalists. Welcome to the world of AI-enabled misinformation and disinformation that has rapidly spiraled into the new normal. Over 11,000 business leaders in 113...
In Britain over 20 years ago a large group of local postmasters were prosecuted for fraud. Many were convicted, some jailed, most lost jobs and incomes. Why? Because the Horizon computer system, used to manage their financial accounts was thought incapable of error. Only later,...
An entrenched digital colonialism is shrinking public space and violating communication rights. The global ecumenical movement is called to respond with digital justice, WACC General Secretary Philip Lee told communicators from the Council for World Mission (CWM) gathered in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on 16–18 January. Our...
Substack is the latest digital communication platform to set off a freedom of expression debate after the co-founder Hamish McKenzie stated that the platform would not demonetize those posting extremist content on the newsletter platform — namely Nazi and white supremacists. The comments sparked both condemnation...
WACC has launched the webinar series “AI, You, and Your Organization” to offer social justice advocates an ethics-based approach to the use of artificial intelligence. “Artificial intelligence has been headline news since the launch of ChatGPT over a year ago, with many claiming that it can...
A dynamic cohort of young church leaders have committed to tackling tech-facilitated gender-based violence following a digital gender-justice workshop led by staff from WACC and the World Council of Churches on December 11–14 at the Ecumenical Institute of Bossey (Switzerland). Technology-facilitated gender-based violence, or TFGBV, is...
A recent webinar co-organized by WACC and the World Council of Churches on the churches’ role in misinformation and disinformation highlighted the dilemmas all of us face to effectively challenge lies online, whether deliberately created or inadvertently shared. Fact-checking has become one of the essential fronts...
A workshop being held 11–14 December is engaging young church leaders in preventing gender inequities and advocating for gender justice in social media and other online spaces. Together, participants in the event “Taking Action Against Online Sexual and Gender-Based Violence” will review community standards on social...
A webinar co-organized by WACC and the World Council of Churches (WCC) on 5 December will explore how churches can seek and serve the truth in the age of social media and digital communication. The virtual event “Seeking and serving the truth? What role do churches...
WACC partners advanced a vision for just, inclusive, and community-led digital communication at the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) 2023 last week in Kyoto, Japan. “The Internet We Want — Empowering All People” was the theme of this year’s meeting of the IGF, a UN mechanism bringing...