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digital activism

This tag is associated with 4 posts

FCJMESH-010 : Getting Open Development Right

By ⋅ December 22, 2015 ⋅ Post a comment

Zara Rahman the engine room 10.15307/fcj.mesh.010.2015 
 In this article Zara Rahman, from the engine room, explores tensions between the activist motivations that are driving the use of technologies in Open Development and the rights and aspirations of vulnerable people and communities. She discusses how we might and why we must resist the push for new technologies to be adopted too quickly in pursuing an Open Development agenda.
 This article will look at a few issues around the Open Development movement, which is a relatively new agenda within the field of international development. Open Development is centred on the idea that ‘openness’—in different forms—can improve the international development sector. Generally, there are a few broad themes that come up in most definitions of what Open Development includes: • the availability and use of (open) data relating to development programs • participatory decision making and involvement from those affected by the […]

FCJMESH-009 Ranking Digital Rights: Keeping the Internet Safe for Advocacy

By ⋅ December 22, 2015 ⋅ Post a comment

Nathalie Maréchal Ranking Digital Rights Project doi: 10.15307/fcj.mesh.009.2015 The Ranking Digital Rights project is creating a system to evaluate the world’s Internet and mobile companies on policies and practices related to free expression and privacy in the context of international human rights law. In this article, project researcher, Nathalie Maréchal, talks about the ideas and events that have informed the project and the challenges and opportunities involved in taking it forward. The techno-utopianism of the early 2000s has given way to new discourses warning about the threats that the Internet poses to democracy and human rights (Deibert, 2013; MacKinnon, 2012; Morozov, 2011). These discourses are now being shaped by Edward Snowden’s revelations about the United States government’s mass surveillance programs which have brought privacy issues to the fore, and by the subsequent proliferation of news reports about Internet safety and security which have reinforced that this is a serious issue […]

FCJMESH-008 Solutions for Online Harassment Don’t Come Easily

By ⋅ December 21, 2015 ⋅ Post a comment

Jillian C. York Electronic Frontier Foundation doi: 10.15307/fcj.mesh.008.2015 When popular technologies are being used to work against people, it is natural we look for solutions. But what if there is no perfect solution? In this article he Director for International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Jillian York, examines how social media harassment leads to complicated frictions between free speech and the protection of other basic human rights. Don’t feed the trolls. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me. They’re just words. These are just a few of the things said to individuals—particularly women—who speak out about harassment they’ve experienced online. Time and time again, they are told to simply ignore it, to clamp down on their own privacy settings, or worse, that online harassment or stalking isn’t real harassment or stalking. The problem appears to be getting worse. As we increasingly […]

FCJMESH-007 Our Enduring Confusion About the Power of Digital Tools in Protest

By ⋅ December 18, 2015 ⋅ Post a comment

Ivan Sigal and Ellery Biddle Global Voices doi: 10.15307/fcj.mesh.007.2015 Since 2005 Global Voices has supported thousands of writers, online media experts and translators to share stories across borders and languages. Many of these stories have covered digital activism and protest around the world. In this article Ivan Sigal and Ellery Biddel share what they’ve learnt about protests, tipping points and technologies by reflecting on these stories and on the contrary narratives about these events that mainstream media have tended to focus on.
 Did technology X spark revolution Y? Pundits and political leaders have pointed to or blamed social media for driving the uprisings in the Arab region and for many other mass protests around the world, including those in the Philippines and Korea at the beginning of the century, as well as more recent uprisings in Burma, Moldova and Iran. In each case, it is clear that social media platforms […]

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