Author: Raffaella Ronzi

For a decolonized digital development: fostering digital rights & dignified storytelling

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In this thread I would like to discuss on a deeper level three topics that particularly caught my interest, in the broader discourse of development decolonization and coherent ICT4D participatory practises, and that I think are of fundamental importance:

–         Risks & Solutions of Digital Aid (introduced here)

–         Digital Dignity: How do we ensure digital rights? (I discussed about it here and here)

–         Media representations & dignified storytelling

When we talk about “international development” we have to discuss digital media and communication approaches of every actor and sector, as international development relies greatly on digital communication. The implementation of digital solutions provides huge opportunities to enhance the performance of humanitarian practices and reinforces peacebuilding and protest activities.

If we talk about the most commonly used tools, as messaging apps grow in popularity, their usage in emergencies is also on the rise and could play a crucial role in the future (Lunt 2017). Affected communities can keep in touch with each other, have access to updated information and connect with humanitarians to report on emergency situations. When a disaster occurs, access to right information is not always easy, but it is critical to provide fast, diversified, safe and sustainable communication streams that will help organizations make quicker and pondered decisions that can save lives. (Heeks. 2017). 

The implementation of advanced information systems, such as humanitarian apps, contributes to tackling a wide range of problems (Lunt 2017). For example, 4W maps were developed to provide information for humanitarian assistance planning, covering critical questions, such as who is doing what, where, and when. Crisis mapping is also one common means of digital humanitarianism. Drone application instead permits mapping, delivering essential items to remote locations, monitoring environmental changes and damage evaluations (Fondation Suisse de Déminage 2016).

RISKS

At the Wilton Park conference the implications of digital technology for individuals affected by armed conflict were discussed, identifying five major existing problems: 

  •  Dual-use technology: Facial recognition software, drones, biometric and digital identity systems, crisis mapping tools and satellite imagery, although initially used for good, may also do a lot of harm on crisis-affected populations that can become targets and cause issues, such as data protection.
  • Third-party service providers: It highlights the question of ownership and consent over information and data that is being shared. Especially when the third-party is a commercial entity that clearly benefits from the exploitation of this data.
  • Humanitarian Data Incidents: Events involving the management of data that have caused harm or have the potential to cause harm to crisis-affected populations, organizations on the field and other individuals or groups.·
  •  Humanitarian and Civilian Data Targeting by Military Actors
  • Handling of requests for access to biometric data by state authorities. 

While digital solutions provide the capabilities to respond to crises in a better way, if mismanaged, these same technologies risk exposing users to violations of their rights (Hill 2018), causing problems related to data protection, privacy, misinformation, propaganda, data interception, or unauthorized access.

Unfortunately, humanitarian organizations do not have appropriate standards or internationally agreed and approved ethical digital regulations, that in combination with people’s living conditions, culture, inequalities can cause serious obstacles in facilitating humanitarian support. The biggest issue is the fact that legislation around the protection of metadata and data is not uniform worldwide, and the places where humanitarian facilities operate tend to be under-legislated (Bouffet and Marelli 2018). This gap can be used to violate human rights, freedoms, and create threats to lifes of humanitarians, volunteers, or affected communities.

MAKE DIGITAL RIGHTS REAL

Protecting personal data means protecting life: there is an urgent need to identify the ways to mitigate risks in humanitarian action digitalization. Some attempts to protect personal data and information apps are performed by their developers, as of Telegram, even prior to the implementation of the GDPR in Europe. The International Committee of the Red Cross also deals with the issue of metadata protection in the framework of humanitarian action. (ICRC and Privacy International 2018)

All parties involved in humanitarian action should understand the need to prevent the leakage of personal data and violations of privacy. Unfortunately, much depends on the decision-makers, CSR initiatives and policies within the companies and appropriate support from the government.  According to Kaspersen and Lindsey-Curtet, it is essential to provide “proactive discussion on global standards for collecting, sharing and storing data in times of crisis – and a zero-tolerance for attempts to penetrate these organizations to gain insights into people at their most vulnerable”.

 The Digital Geneva Convention would safeguard civilians around the world from state-led or state-sanctioned cyberattacks in any moment. (Microsoft 2017). Thus, this initiative is an urgent call to action to update and adapt rights and obligations to the current dynamic realities, ensuring digital dignity and protection for all parties involved. World government leaders, NGOs, humanitarian organizations should incorporate cyber threats into legal, social, and political frameworks.

For the Digital Freedom Fund, it is fundamental to “make digital rights real” – for them to be tangible and relevant to everyone in society, not just to a privileged few. They have to be firmly situated in broader social justice. Hopefully, this will help to realise more ambitious goals, like defunding surveillance tech that targets racialised communities and re-directing resources to communities. It was found that what are considered top priorities are different than the practical issues that marginalised groups face on a daily basis (ex: digital access), and that some digital rights organisations approach systemic injustices from a merely technical perspective, rather than considering them harms that intersect with other human rights violations. 

The Human Rights Watch proposes three suggestions to protect human rights in the digital sphere:

–  Creation of a “special rapporteur” for the right to privacy at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

– Contribute to Development of Multi-Stakeholder Internet Governance: Being tested by global connectivity,  some governments (ex: China), increasingly endorse a concept of Internet sovereignty. The multi-stakeholder model for Internet governance must be protected and strengthened.

– Human Rights Protection should be a National Security Priority: it is needed to solidify the international understanding that protection of human rights and adherence to the rule of law in the digital realm are essential to the protection of national, global security and human rights, rather than antithetical to it. Digital attacks on human rights activists and civil society actors have become the way of repressive governments to undermine human rights work.

Digital risks are an integral part of our lives, as we cannot ignore the new opportunities that enhance the performance of humanitarian action, but we should create an environment that is friendly to human rights, freedoms, and dignity.

THE IMPLICATIONS OF MEDIA REPRESENTATIONS

Since the 20th century, the media has been using images of violence, suffering and trauma to engage with the public to generate emotion and demand that something needs to be done to alleviate suffering of those in crisis (Neuman, 2017). The power of humanitarian imagery is used in order to create a “community of interest” as a form of solidarity, with the hope that it would generate a larger public interest and subsequently, a CNN effect.  According to Lobb and Mock (2007), during humanitarian response efforts, the mass media serves as the primary informational intermediary, informing donors, and policy-makers as well as the non-affected public: “disaster and crisis response often is hampered by poor communication.” . In fact, media coverage and its intensity on crises has very little, if any, to do with humanitarian needs and it is decided based on other aspects such as “geographic proximity to Western countries or elites, costs, logistics, legal impediments, risk to journalists, relevance to national interest, eye-catching story and news attention cycles”.

The overwhelming media coverage and the trap of imagery can do more harm than good. Media has the power to generate funding, but the selective nature of media’s interest affects the sustainability of the resources, and lots of needy emergencies are not covered. NGOs are also guilty of using negative images: although they can instill compassion and will to donate, audiences could also feel manipulated through the feelings of guilt and cause them to be resistant (Orgad and Vella 2012), can spark a desire for revenge and campaigns can also lead to compassion fatigue, leading the audience to fail to respond. Often, there is less coverage in certain areas of conflict due to accessibility and safety reasons and the media would rely on alternative sources such as the NGOs on the ground. In return, NGOs could get good publicity and create public pressure and challenge official sources.  Still, the media lacks critical analytical assessment of information, which leads to error in judgement and inappropriate response to aid. The amount of effort and resources mobilised by the sensationalism could be coordinated better, channelled to aid crises which are neglected.

In order to mobilise appropriate humanitarian response, humanitarian NGOs and agencies, officials and the media need to work together in order to thoroughly consider the social imaginaries of the groups of people they are sending aid to and prevent misconception of information from being broadcasted and educating the public so to achieve a better understanding of the communities.

DIGNIFIED STORYTELLING

As I stated, it is important to avoid poverty porn not just for directing the aid properly, but also for ethical reasons, to ensure a dignified and empowering storytelling for the communities.

So how do you create a powerful message which both respects the subject?For Mr Echwalu, a refugee worker in Uganda, the answer is simple ” humanising people. An ideal way is to tell stories – positive stories about ambitions. Yes,- they were in a bad situation-, but I would always use the voices of the people. I think there is a media landscape: bad news is more interesting than good news, the challenge is to tell the true story, with dignity and respect.” For example the 2017 Golden Radiator Award went to Batman, by War Child Holland, with the jury describing it as “powerful” and as “effective humanitarian crisis imagery“. I would like to stress the importance of the “Principles of Dignified Storytelling” and The Dignified Storytelling Forum that will take place at Dubai’s EXPO, that promises to expand an enriching discussion about what really is dignified representation.

 In order to end poverty porn we have to be careful about 3 corcerns:

  •    There’s something fundamentally wrong with the equation “more fundraising = less poverty”, as only a fraction of humanitarian aid goes through local organisations.
  •   It’s time to stop interacting with audiences in a transactional way, and make them join the change, not just “click and donate” 
  •  Reinforcing narrative frames that center whiteness and wealth is dangerous, irresponsible, and unacceptable.

 Even though they may carry fundings, we should avoid PR-ized stories:

 “Despite her good intentions, the focus of the PR-ised story is clearly the celebrity herself, as a corporate brand, while the people she purports to save are pushed outside the frame. They don’t have much to say about (…) an inherently unequal, competitive & unjust system-perhaps because their privileged Western, white, middle class backgrounds have not adequately prepared them for the realities of intersectional race & class based oppression” 

Celebrities firstly get to decide which causes should receive the attention, they take away the focus from the recipients of aid but also from successful local initiatives. We can say that white saviorism is often connected to celebrity humanitarianism, and it is crucial to aim for for helping communities help themselves instead of trapping them in an eternal need of foreign aid.

I think that it also crucial that practitioners keep ironically interrogating themselves about field work through memes, satyrical videos and parodies as in #HumanitarianStarWars. Irony is often a double-edged sword, but if used properly, it can amplify exponentially the power of criticism.

SOLUTIONS

We need to decolize aid work, as Kenyan writer and development consultant Ciku Kimeria says: “the development sector today is still full of examples of paternalistic attitudes from the West: average Western undergraduate educated people get to chair meetings of local experts with decades of experience” .We understood that “Technology as an abstract concept functions as a white mythology”, and that AI, the digital realm and the whole development sector are intrinsically racists. (Denskus T. ,2020)

One solution is to foster more and more participatory practise. The book by Buskens and Webb (2009) had three emancipatory themes: agentic use, critical voice, and personal and social transformation. It is important to discuss situational awareness of the role, reflexivity and power over the use or design of ICT. Receivers are not just recipients but participants in the decision making process, they retake control over the media coverage of the crises they face, instead of waiting for others to reach them, increasing community engagement. Participatory methods have often been perceived as a means to address power inequalities within technology design in developing countries.

At least as much attention needs to be paid to issues of inequality as to the use of ICTs for economic growth. For example, it is crucial to address the gender problem in the digital sphere: a significant gender gap in mobile phone ownership and usage exposes women to the risk of being left behind and it would affect the possibilities to be rescued from dangerous situations and to express the rights to life, liberty, and security of a person, as it is stated in the UDHR (1948). Mobile operators, software developers, humanitarian facilities, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) can work together to promote policies and initiatives aimed to reduce the cost of phones and digital literacy.

To sum up, there are different steps that can be taken, including: fostering digital literacy, strengthening data protection practices and creating the right safeguards for the adoption of digital technologies, adopting suitable humanitarian policies, ensuring humanitarians continue to put people at the centre of their work.

In a world that relies and manages policies and commercial strategies on the usage of data, it is important to secure proper legislation regarding our daily communication privacy. In the Global South data extraction is unfortunately expected to become a booming business, “Mining” people for data is reminiscent of the colonizer attitude that declares humans as raw material.” (Birhane A.)

We should narrow the digital divide but it is needed to improve the knowledge of affected people and aid workers on the use of new technologies, to ensure the most secure and ethical use of digital devices. The continuous coverage of real problems faced by humanitarian missions, as well as a joint search for solutions should be always sought after. It is crucial to identify ways for covering the humanitarian principles such as humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence in the era of digitalization.

During this blogging experience, I found interesting to read about, and discuss the whole spectrum of reflective ICT4D practises, decolonization of development, datafication and digital rights (all so pressing, actual and critical topics!), and to explore new communicative methods and techniques. It was engaging for me to post content on my social media platforms and analyze the responses and to open threads linking different inspiring sources taken from my daily experience. What I would do differently next time is that I would experiment more with podcasts or videos, that I didn’t feel comfortable using this time. I think that even recording our online sessions and discussions would have been an inspiring documentation on how to create a blog from scratch. It was inspiring to collaborate with my colleagues and build together such a crucial and urgent discussion. I really enjoyed the collaborative approach of this examination, reading and engaging with blog posts permitted to reflect and to learn a lot while interacting with very knowledgeable people. Everybody has been very responsive and helpful, and I really appreciated having the possibility to discuss and e-meet other fellow students, as in online learning the socializing opportunity is not always easy to grasp.  Thank you for your precious support and enthusiasm!

 

SOURCES:

Digital Rights (2) : The case of Palestine

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“Technology in general is never either neutral or objective; it is a mirror that reflects societal bias, unfairness, and injustice.”

 In May 2021, 7amleh, The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media, worked to document digital rights violations occurred during the 2021 Israeli attacks, and in the document Hashtag Palestine 2020 are listed detailed digital rights violations committed by government authorities and technology companies against Palestinians.

 This year, Palestinian groups have been demonstrating against the Israeli Supreme Court’s decision to displace Palestinians in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah. This time not radicalists nor Hamas soldiers, but young Palestinians used Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube and TikTok to document and denounce human rights violations. Social media companies started removing Palestinian content from platforms, often without clear reasons or violations and Israel arrested around 800 Palestinians because of their posts.  In 2014, Israel’s world exports of cyber security and surveillance technologies exceeded its military equipment exports. Such technologies were sold to authoritarian and repressive regimes in Colombia, Kazakhstan, Mexico, South Sudan, the UAE…

THE ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS

In many occasions, various social media platfoms silenced the voice of Palestinian people and activists. Israeli cyber units sent requests to social media platforms to take down specific content without a court order, through the use of a specific app that can be used  “remove inciting content from social media, fight antisemitism and anti-zionism, and take part in special pro-Israel campaigns and efforts.”

Artificial intelligence is being used to censor pro-Palestine sentiment. Haaretz revealed that algorithms were used to build profiles of what Israel views as likely Palestinian attackers, based on a prediction of violence, rather than any actual attack – or even a plan to commit it, and the popularity of the suspect. Israeli intelligence hacked Facebook accounts to gain access to such private information as Israel occupies and controls the entire telecommunications infrastructure used by Palestinians.

Facebook is often criticized for its lack of transparency and arbitrary decisions, and it’s regarded as “pro-Israel”, as he lists Zionists as a “globally protected group,”  and that “people must not praise, support organizations that intimidate an internationally recognized state.”, and terrorism for FB includes the use of premeditated violence by non-governmental organizations “to achieve a political, religious or ideological aim.” As a result, Facebook has censored activists and journalists in disputed territories such as Palestine, Kashmir, Crimea, and Western Sahara.

Moreover, in 2016, the Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked and Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan announced an agreement between Israel and Facebook to set up teams to monitor and remove “inciteful” content. Facebook may fear being sued and Israel as a geopolitical actor. In 2015, a pro-Israeli organization, Shurat HaDin-Israel Law Center, filed a suit against Facebook because of a leaked internal document regarding content that denies the Holocaust.

Regarding Youtube, Although YouTube’s mission statement promises “to give everyone a voice and show them the world,” this is not always the case with its ongoing and unjustified declaration that some videos violate its community guidelines. This raises significant problems when it comes to users’ digital rights. YouTube is not held accountable regarding the clarity and equity of its four guidelines; it can maneuver between them interchangeably to justify content removal. One of YouTube’s justifications for using AI programming is that it could be much more efficient and fast in detecting inappropriate content. However, Dia Kayyali at WITNESS explains that while “computers might be efficient in detecting violence, they are not as nuanced as humans. They are not good at figuring out if a video is ISIS propaganda or vital evidence of human rights violations.” Whether explicitly acknowledged or not, the central aim of commercial companies developing AI is not to rectify bias generally but to infer the weaknesses and deficiencies of individual “users,” as if people existed only as objects to be manipulated”

In a range of videos, researchers found that many YouTube videos about the Israeli army and military remain on YouTube. Another incident of hate speech and harassment is the video promoted by Israeli clothing brand, Hoodies. The Islamophobic video ends with the slogan “Freedom is basic.” despite activists’ critiques, the video remains on YouTube. In interviews, Palestinian human rights defenders reported experiencing language and locative discrimination against their content on YouTube and silencing “because it is violent”.

Instagram is reported to have  silenced many accounts in Palestine. The excuse by Mosseri was “many people thought we were removing their content because of what they posted or what hashtag they used, but this bug wasn’t related to the content itself, but rather a widespread issue that has now been fixed”. However, Mona Shtaya, 7amleh manager, said “The excuses that have been used by the companies, such as ‘global technical bug’ are neither logical nor convincing” she told Al Jazeera.

FB censoring Still I Rise NGO

Many people and organisations across the world continue to face low reach and engagement on their posts on Instagram and other platforms, this is a phenomenon called “shadow banning”. Given the targeted and repeated nature of such censures, activists continue to express doubts about such explanations from social media companies, I linked here the example of Govoni, of the organization “Still I Rise”. In addition, several Palestinians in Jerusalem have reported receiving threatening text messages from Israeli Intelligence, the messages are believed to be an intimidation tactic meant to keep activists and residents of the surrounding areas from engaging in protests or other political action.

It is not only Israel and social media platforms that suppresses Palestinian social media users: The Palestinian Authority does this as well, to destroy unfavorable political views or criticisms of Palestinian leadership. The PA recently passed a law that further curbs Palestinians’ freedom to express themselves online. The controversial Electronic Crimes Law was signed by Palestinian President Abbas in 2017, without any public consultations with Palestinian civil society. The pretext of the new law is to fight online crimes,, but the law itself is in stark contravention of basic privacy protection laws and freedom of speech. It confers extensive power to state institutions to monitor, collect, and store data pertaining to online activities of Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS

Digital rights concerns are a relatively new concept in the OPT.

–        Palestinian civil society organizations have a responsibility to raise awareness about these rights, most importantly regarding digital security. Keeping one’s accounts protected and private information private should be a priority, especially for journalists and activists.

–        Palestinian civil society and media must also expose and mobilize against Israel’s unethical surveillance practices, censorship, and persecution of Palestinians’ freedom of expression. Online campaigning (such as #FBCensorsPalestine), has proven effective in addressing social media companies’ digital rights violations due to biased positions, despite claims of neutrality.

–        Social media platforms should publish transparency reports for deletions, blocks, or restrictions of content and profiles of users and it must clearly explain how a person can appeal the decision.

–        Palestinians also need to build coalitions with international digital rights organizations that should ensure that AI is not hyper-surveying and discriminating against Palestinian content and that can help exert pressure on social media companies and the Israeli government to discontinue their violations.

–        The human and digital rights of Palestinian children and youth should be safeguarded, and support for their activism and full protection in accordance with international lawshould be provided.

–        Pressure should be exertet on Israel to comply with UN resolutions and respect international laws that protect the Palestinian population living under occupation and publicly condemn violations of these rights.

However, despite the biases, limitations and unclear policies of social media companies, their platforms have allowed for international outrage at the brutality and trauma Palestinians have been suffering for decades and protests in other countries around the world are also erupting, due in large part to mobilisation and activism through social media. Increased attention and exposure to these linguistic biases has allowed people to reject the narrative presented by Western media outlets. This is in large part due to the visibility of Palestinian voices, which are finally telling their own stories and narrating their own experiences, in spite of the limitations of social media. The censure we’ve seen big tech companies exercise paints a disconcerting picture of how easy it is to rob a person of their voice, particularly if that person belongs to a marginalised group. This is exactly why support and amplify Palestinian voices, and indeed voices of all oppressed groups, is now more important than ever. 

➡️ If you want you can check Labiba’s network blog and Instagram page: here we write about Palestine “from a different perspective”.

SOURCES

Birhane A.(2019) The Algorithmic Colonization of Africa, retrieved from: https://reallifemag.com/the-algorithmic-colonization-of-africa/

Nadeem R. (2021), Silencing Palestinian Voices in the Digital Age, retrieved from: https://www.digitalrightsmonitor.pk/suppressing-palestinian-voices-in-the-digital-age/

Nashif N, Fatafta M (2017), Surveillance of Palestinians and the Fight for Digital Rights, retrieved from: https://al-shabaka.org/briefs/surveillance-palestinians-fight-digital-rights/ 

Nazzal A. (2020), YouTube’s Violation of Palestinian Digital Rights: What Needs to be Done, retrieved from: https://al-shabaka.org/briefs/youtubes-violation-of-palestinian-digital-rights-what-needs-to-be-done/

PAX for peace (2020), Palestinian Digital Rights, retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFC0OI_hDHQ

7amleh – The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media (2019), The Attacks on Palestinian Digital Rights, retrieved from:  https://7amleh.org//storage/The%20Attacks%20on%20Palestinian%20Digital%20Rights.pdf

7amleh – The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media (2021), Unsafe spaces: How the digital rights of young Palestinians in Jerusalem are being increasingly violated online, retrieved from: https://ifex.org/unsafe-spaces-how-the-digital-rights-of-young-palestinians-in-jerusalem-are-being-increasingly-violated-online/

7amleh (2018), Digital rights in Palestine, retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed5IAVwgLL0

Digital Rights: The urge for awareness

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black mirror

In today’s world, in a reality that is more and more hyperconnected, fluid and digitized, digital rights equal human rights. That is why it is important to investigate what they are, why they are crucial and how we can protect them, for ourselves and others, as humans, digital entities and practitioners.

The Keynote speech by Michelle Bachelet at the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (2019), addresses the most controversial and discussed digital right, which is “the right to Privacy and Data Protection”

“Alongside these very real dangers – under-regulation, over-regulation and deliberate misuse – we are also seeing unprecedented risks to the right to privacy. The dark end of the digital spectrum threatens not just privacy and safety, but undermines free and fair elections, jeopardises freedom of expression, information, thought and belief, and buries the truth under fake news. The stakes could not be higher – the direction of countries and entire continents. (…) People’s profiles, “scoring” and “ranking” can be used to assess their eligibility for health care, insurance and financial services. Digital technology is being used not just to monitor and categorize, but to influence. Our data is not just digitized, but monetized and politicized. Digital processes are now shaping us as well as serving us. We are right to feel profoundly concerned about how Big Data, artificial intelligence and other digital technologies are impacting our lives and society.”

Among artificial intelligence-powered systems and tools implemented with discriminatory algorithms, emerging technologies seem to be designed more and more to ensure mass surveillance. We finally realised that our Data, health informations, preferences as customers are being storaged and used to increment marketing sales and strategies in many different realms. Due to the Covid outbreak, we got used to live in a “digital bubble”, gifting our communications and thoughts to social media platforms and instant messaging apps. How healthy, and especially, how safe is all this?

From the limitations to freedom of expression to real censorship, from diffamation to online hate speech, the web is a dangerous spidernet that grasps all of us. We can’t really be aware of what this situation will lead to in the upcoming future. Cybersecurity is essential to ensure the freedom to exercise your digital rights, following the GDPR, for example by preserving the privacy through encryption of communications. If our data is being violated, in the EU the member countries have bodies such as the European Data Protection Committee (EDPC) or authorities like the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) that investigate and prosecute infringements, imposing serious sanctions.

Unfortunately, following the Cambrigde Analytica scandal and the latest breaches of Data in many platforms, we can’t really be sure not to become victims of information leaks. But in other countries there are much less opportunities to access digital rights or even access human rights. In countries where civil rights are not contemplated, digital rights and the freedom of speech and thought are just an utopia, censorship is being applicated by the social media giants without any penal retaliation, and “as privacy becomes a privilege, protected in the Global North, data extraction from the Global South is likely to accelerate.”

What most of the people are not aware of is the fact that the entertainment industry, and even platforms like Netflix are collecting our data. How much is Black Mirror a prediction of the future? The rating system shown in the episode “Nosedive” is already a scary reality in China, and in the episode “Bandersnatch”, your choice on how to continue the storyline, actually opened a discussion about how your own emotional choices are being given to the platform for free to use.

Following this thread, who hasn’t carelessly published thoughts and pictures on platforms that got to know us better that we probably know ourselves (or at least this is the risk)? That’s why is essential to be conscious of the Big Market behind the digital world and to educate children in using social medias carefully.

But do we know what digital rights are?

In order to investigate more the topic, I was pretty curious about the general perception regarding digital rights, and I asked on my personal IG profile a quick and easy poll for my audience. I formulated three simple questions, just to get an overview:

33 people replied to the first survey, and it is interesting to notice that more than half (52%) of the participants have never heard about Digital Rights. It is actually a topic of fundamental importance nowadays, but it is not something that unfortunately is not being discussed during the news or on social media. That same social media where people express themselves, and share their lives, thoughts and data. I intend to incentive a deeper conversation on this platform, and this I also the reason behind this poll: to make people aware of their rights and the consensus they are giving when ticking the “I agree” button.

It is curious that in the last poll, most of the people chose the correct answer, including all 3 digital rights listed. This can be totally random or it can mean that people in the end had already subconsciously interiorized what digital rights actually are. Many people linked digital rights to privacy, instead, as probably most of our discussions concern the usage of our data.

Another thought-provoking outcome is the fact that most of them wanted to learn more about Digital Rights. That’s why I decided to prepare a brief infographics below listing the main Digital Rights, which were collected in the Guide to Human Rights for Internet users. This guide aims to broaden the knowledge about the rights you own in the online environment, and to provide with guidance on what to do when your rights are being challenged. The guide links to the European Convention on Human Rights; it was adopted by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg on 16 April 2014.

As noticeable, there is not a proper legislation about digital rights, since every country decides to apply its own regulations, but common guidelines can be used as framework. I found an interesting initiative by the Digital Freedom Fund stating that “Digital Rights are Human Rights”, that makes us even more realise that the connection between the real and the digital world is costantly shrinking, and if we want to secure Human Rights, we have to make sure to secure Digital Rights too.

odiare ti costa

Every right entails a responsability: it is critical to remind ourselves the quote: “your rights end where mine begin” by Charles Deems. In fact, a significant issue that has grown incontrollably during this year in certain platforms, especially on Facebook, is the online violence. The United Nations Report on Cyber Violence against Women and Girls found that 73% of women have been exposed to, or experienced, forms of online violence. That is why I highly appreciated the initiative of Tlon, an Italian couple, founders of a “school of philosophy and imagination” and a publishing house, that finally changed the way we live social media, by raising awareness and offering legal solutions to fight the hate speech online, which is often total random and became a sad relief valve for people’s frustrations.

The usage of our private information is something that is beyond our ability to manage the problem itself. We can’t live without the digital world, but we should really be careful about the “privacy paradox,” which refers to the discrepancy between the concept of privacy reflected in what users say and what they actually do. To conclude, the booming of digitalization and the collection of privacy data is a vital topic that needs to be urgently addressed by and to every stakeholder. Awareness should be raised among civic society, institutions and organizations. It is important to increase our digital literacy and also to ensure a clearer legislation — national or international — that defines reasonable and legitimate uses of personal information and mandates companies to obtain the consent of the individuals involved.

We can indeed and sadly point out that the hyper digitalization acts as a new form of colonization in many countries. It’s crucial to get to know our enemy in order to tackle the risks it carries. Even though the enemy sometimes is “too volatile or too big” for us or anybody else.
Granting an equalitarian access to the internet and the digital world is not a solution and it doesn’t guarantee empowerment. It may narrow the digital divide, but lot of other educational and awareness-related activities need to be implemented beforehand.

This digital revolution has to be investigated from a human rights perspective on a much deeper level, and I will discuss how we can secure digital rights in the aid work practise and dignified storytelling in my next article.

If you want to be part of a broader discussion about Data and Datafication, check our collegues’ posts here!

your digital rights

Digital Humanitarianism: potentialities and risks

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We indeed live in a globalized and hyper-connected world. The digitalization we are experiencing, fastened by the Covid Pandemic, is endemic, inevitable and is speeding like never before.

It touches us in many ways, some may not be perceptible nor foreseeable at the present moment, but it involves everybody and our common future, as individuals, communities and global reality.

In aid work, digital technologies are fundamental tools: they allow humanitarians to map, predict and respond to humanitarian crises and serve affected people more efficiently. Increased connectivity and digital access empower affected people to connect, to find information and to express their needs more easily.

On the other side of the coin, numerous other problems arise.

Zuboff describes a “surveillance capitalism”, which is “data from humans used to turn into profit, at the expense of the people themselves”. For example, humanitarian organizations collect, store, share, and analyze data that is attractive to parties in an armed conflict. As a result, a growing wave of digital attacks and cyber espionage target humanitarian organizations.

In addition, AI is being used to shoot targets and it’s getting increasingly out of human’s control. We also assist to phenomena of disinformation, misinformation, hate speech and the incapability of accessing digital technologies contributes to increasing the digital divide.

While digital technologies offer unparalleled opportunities for granting humanitarian relief, they must be used ethically and responsibly to minimize the risks.

In this thread, I want to discuss the possible solutions to the dark sides of Digital Humanitarianism, and how we can foster a more participatory approach towards the communities involved. I am also interested in Dignified Storytelling and Digital Rights.
My main areas of research are South America and the Middle East, which also represent a kind of emotional geography for me.

➡️ I hope you will enjoy my contributions! In the meanwhile, what are your thoughts about the possibilities and risks of digital hyperconnection?

Sources:

Zuboff, S. (2019) The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future, PublicAffairs, New York.

Collins A., (2019) Forged Authenticity: Governing Deepfake Risks, EPFL International Risk Governance Center. https://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/273296?ln=en.

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