Category: ICT4D

3 Ways New Media Contributes to the Decolonising Development Discourse

  By , , ,

By Cara-Marie Findlay

A blogcast. Listen and read along as Cara-Marie Findlay reads her third and final individual blog post. 

Introduction

In my first blog post, I briefly touched on how new media— like social media —is helping to facilitate overdue discussions on racism and decolonisation within Development. As an example of how new digital media can help to facilitate discussions in general, I engaged my fellow practitioners by posing a question about motivation in different online practitioner groups. For my second post, I shared the answers of colleagues from around the world, and linked them to the Time to Decolonise Aid report published earlier this year. 

 

In this post, I discuss three ways new media contributes to the discussion around decolonising development: circulation of pertinent information through blogs and websites; community building through “writing back” on social media; and encouraging on-going dialogue about Development news and updates. In the following paragraphs, I share specific examples of each of the three contributions. I include a brief look at some of the limitations of new media in the decolonising development discourse. Finally, I conclude with my own reflections on my experience writing this blog series. 

 

Key Assertions 

In the context of this post, new media, refers to the “decentralization of channels for the distribution of messages…an increase in the options for audience members to become involved in the communication process, often entailing an interactive form of communication; and an increase in the degree of flexibility for determining the form and content through the digitization of messages” (McQuail, 1994 as referenced in Lievrouw & Livingstone 2002, p. 3). While decolonising development speaks to “the process of deconstructing colonial ideologies regarding the superiority and privilege of Western [or Eurocentric] thought and approaches” (Peace Direct, 2021, p. 13).  

 

Before going any further, it is important to note that as practitioners we are “doing development in an increasingly digitalised context,” or to state it another way, we are engaged in “Development in a Digital World” (Roberts, 2019). What does that mean? It means, in our current setting, many aspects of social and economic life have become datafied—from social interaction to shopping habits—and it would be remiss of us to ignore the consequences this has for international development. 

 

Three Contributions

Circulation of Pertinent Information 

One of the consequences of doing Development in a Digital World is an added digital layer to humanitarian work. Mark Duffield refers to this digital layer as “cyber-humanitarianism” or “the increasing reliance [on] remote and smart [inter]Net-based technologies” (Duffield, 2013, p. 4) for the delivery of, and access to, Development aid. Technologies such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality are rapidly reshaping the humanitarian space. Thus, Development agencies and practitioners need to understand the trends, emerging issues, and potential harm we are buying into. 

 

Fortunately, new media, such as blogs and websites, can offer a way to circulate pertinent information that looks critically at these emerging issues. Including, how cyber-humanitarian technology can, and has, helped to re-entrench neocolonial ideas in Development (e.g. modernisation). Blogs and websites also offer the possibility for significantly increasing the reach of the writer and/or publisher, thus attracting a wider audience. 

 

For example, U.S. media watch group FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) has been around since 1986. FAIR’s weekly radio show CounterSpin has addressed topics such as racism and technology. ‘Black Communities Are Already Living in a Tech Dystopia’ is a Counterspin episode that featured an interview with Ruha Benjamin, the author of Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. In the interview, Benjamin articulates that technology “is not, in fact, objective in the way we are being socialized to believe” (Jackson, 2019). A view that challenges the prevailing Western ideology that technology is neutral, and an important fact for us to consider as practitioners engaged in cyber-humanitarian work. 

 

FAIR’s website makes it easy to find and listen to previous episodes, including the one aforementioned; and for those who would rather read than listen, FAIR includes a typed transcript of the interview on the episode’s webpage. The FAIR website makes it convenient to share an episode’s page on social media or to email it. It is safe to assume that without a website, an email list, and shares on social media, FAIR would not be able to reach “an international network of over 50,000 activists” (FAIR, n.d.). New media has made it possible to amplify and circulate serious points, such as “how the implicit biases of the larger society can affect technological outputs” (Findlay, 2021). In turn, amplifying and circulating questions around the effectiveness of cyber-humanitarianism; and the need to decolonise our understanding and use of ICT4D (information communication technology for development). New media also made it possible for a U.S. organisation to reach an international audience. 

 

Community Building on Social Media

New Media (particularly, social media) also presents an opportunity for virtual communities to be formed around the postcolonial concept of “writing back;” that is “responding to colonial legacies [or] challenging colonial cultural attitudes” (McEwan, 2019, p. 31). New media allows people situated in the Global South, who are often “rendered voiceless” to “write back back from the margins” (McEwan, 2019, pp. 22, 57) and contest the ‘lingering and debilitating modes of thought and action’ in Development (Myers, 2006 as quoted in McEwan, 2019, p. 33). Modes that would silence or ignore the experiences of those who were previously colonised, and who are now receiving Development assistance from primarily Western humanitarian agencies.

 

These virtual communities may come in different forms. For example, there is the Black Women in Development Facebook group, which allows Black women from around the world to share their Development experiences (the good, the bad, and the ugly) while also enabling them to be a resource to one another (e.g. sharing job opportunities, offering advice, etc.). 

Another example of a virtual community centered around writing back is the No White Saviors (NWS) instagram page. NWS is an advocacy campaign, led by four women (three are native Ugandans, the other is described as a “white savior in recovery”), dedicated to directing the Development and Aid sectors towards an anti-racist future. NWS uses their instagram platform in particular to: highlight problematic examples of Development and aid practice; issue calls to take online and offline action; and to spotlight and support those they believe are doing Development right. Their instagram posts often feature long captions explaining the significance of the corresponding image and a call to action urging their community of 877K followers to respond to the post in some way. As in real life, people who are a part of, or who visit, this virtual NWS community “use words on screens [i.e. their comments on a NWS post] to exchange pleasantries and argue, engage in intellectual discourse…exchange knowledge, share emotional support, make plans, brainstorm” etc. (Rheingold, 1993 as quoted in Lievrouw & Livingstone 2002, p. 7). The NWS instagram community has united people who are physically separated (many situated in the Global South and many in the Global North as well) around the common belief that the Development sector needs to be decolonised and reformed to ensure a better, more equitable, Development. 

 

Encouraging On-going Dialogue

Another way new media contributes to the discourse of decolonising development is through its ability to generate dialogue and offer audience members an opportunity to react and respond in their own time. Sometimes these responses are close to real-time (for example, replying to breaking news on Twitter); and other times these responses may come weeks, months, or even years laters (for example, leaving a comment on an older blog post or online news article).  

New media has made it easier for anyone with access to the internet to collect, disseminate, and react to news; in this case, news regarding racism in the Development sector. For example, in September 2020, The New Humanitarian published an article, “Readers React | Racism in the Aid Sector and the Way Forward” composed almost entirely of reader comments to a series of different New Humanitarian articles on “how the Black Lives Matter movement is reverberating through the aid sector.” The Readers React article shared aid worker/Development practitioner experiences of racism in their humanitarian work, in their own words. The article also includes a link to a Google form where readers can continue to add and share their own experiences with racism within the sector, even today, more than a year later. It is important to note that the series of #BlackLivesMatter articles launched by The New Humanitarian in June was in direct response to the murder of George Floyd in the U.S. which sparked racial justice protests around the world. 

 

Limitations of New Media 

While new media has, and can, contribute to the decolonising Development discourse it also has its limitations. These limitations include the circulation of fake news or other inaccurate information, and the censorship (or “shadowbanning” – blocking a social media account’s content so that it is less prominent or visible to others) of voices that diverge from dominant Development discourses. 

 

Additionally, the ease of which a user can choose to engage (or not engage) in a virtual community is also a reason virtual communities must be considered more unstable than “‘real-life’ or offline communities;” since “individuals [and organisations and campaigns like NWS] can become active and prominent quickly, and just as quickly disappear altogether” (Lievrouw & Livingstone 2002, p. 7). 

 

Furthermore, it is still unclear how much influence new media has (if any) on the existing levers of power in Development—policy, practice, and scholarship. 

 

To quote one of my professors, Tobias Denskus, and his esteemed colleague Andrea Papan: 

 

“There is little evidence that blogging and its learning processes influence macro-policy making [in Development]. Organisational rituals and artefacts such as global summits, policy papers, and the powerful role of international organisations in research, policy, and practice still shape the [dominant] discourse[s]. Blogs can help to expose these rituals and continue to work towards an alternative virtual learning space that reflects new and diverse voices…and can help introduce reflexive writing to more people.” (Denskus & Papan, 2013, p. 466). 

 

Though this quote is in reference to blogging, the sentiment can be applied to all forms of new media. 

 

Another clear limitation is the lack of access to new media for peoples in the Global South. Many individuals situated in the Global South still do not have access to an affordable or stable internet connection that would allow them to engage and participate in these forums, which limits their important and needed contributions to the discourse on decolonising development. 

 

Conclusion

This blog series has allowed me to gain a deeper understanding of how useful a tool new media can be in adding to the discourse around decolonising development. Interestingly enough, new media is a term that has been used since the 1960s and 1970s by researchers investigating the implications of information and communication technologies (Lievrouw & Livingstone 2002, p. 2). And the Eurocentric thought and approaches that have led to, and invisibilised, racism within the sector is as old as Development itself. Thus, for me, questions still remain. Is new media capable of influencing transformative change within the sector? If yes, then how? Especially, when one of the key features of new media is the decentralisation of channels. The levers of power within development remain very much centralised and entrenched within the Global North. Since this is the case, as practitioners we must seriously question whether those who are currently at the helm of these levers of power even desire to see decolonial transformation within the sector. More than that, as practitioners, we must ask ourselves if we truly desire a decolonised Development which may in turn oust us from being positioned as “experts”. 

 

As previously mentioned in an earlier post, I started a consulting company to help ensure that more underrepresented and impacted peoples would be able to participate in the Development dialogue and process taking place. Thus, although this academic exercise is coming to an end, I (along with my colleagues at my consulting firm) will continue to explore these critical questions and engage the broader public on topics in Development through the company blog. 

 

My hope is that as practitioners we will continue to engage in reflexive practice and create space for, and embrace, difference within this field. Only when we take into account and value our different experiences and ways of knowing, will we be able to truly come together and discover the best and most effective ways to solve the world’s biggest challenges. 

 

References

Denskus, T. & Papan, A. (2013): Reflexive engagements: the international development blogging evolution and its challenges, Development in Practice 23:4, 435-447.

Duffield, M. (2013). Disaster-resilience in the network age: Access-denial and the rise of cyber-humanitarianism (DIIS Working Paper 2013:23). Copenhagen: Danish Institute of International Studies (DIIS). Retrieved from: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/122292/1/782863604.pdf

Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). (n.d.). What’s FAIR? Retrieved from: https://fair.org/about-fair/

Findlay, C. (2021). On C.L.Ai.R.A. and Tech Bias in the United States. Findlay House Global, 14 September, retrieved from: https://peoplecentreddevelopment.com/pubs/2021/on-claira-and-tech-bias-in-the-us

Jackson, J. (2019): Black Communities Are Already Living in a Tech Dystopia (Links to an external site.), Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, 15 August.

Lievrouw, L., & Livingstone, S. (2002). Handbook of new media. SAGE Publications, Ltd, https://www-doi-org.proxy.mau.se/10.4135/9781848608245

McEwan, C. (2019). Postcolonialism, decoloniality and development. Routledge.

Peace Direct (2021): Time to Decolonize Aid-Insights and Lessons from a global consultation. London: Peace Direct.

Readers React | Racism in the Aid Sector and the Way Forward. (2020). The New Humanitarian. Retrieved from: https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/2020/09/11/racism-in-humanitarian-aid-sector-Black-lives-matter 

Roberts, T. (2019). Digital Development: What’s In a Name. Appropriating Technology. http://www.appropriatingtechnology.org/?q=node/302

Gender and ICT4D initiatives – access, empowerment and transformative agency

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In my first blog post in this collective project, I initiated a discussion on de-/postcolonial and participatory development processes and reflected on how this is a part of the development discourse and sector gaining more and more ground. I also reflected on its complexity; the theorisation around it is more straightforward than its actual implementation, with so many layers in need of close analysis; the power relations, social hierarchies, opportunities for participation, as well as the structures and productions of knowledge we operate within.

In this final blog post, I want to immerse myself even more within this question, with a focus on the area of ICT4D and gender; an intersecting area often assumed to support the progression of “empowering women”, democratising opportunities for participation with increased access to online spaces, information, and technology. The focus of this text is not the gendered divide or gender gap of access to technology and internet on global or local scales per se, but rather what the empowerment and participation consequently imply and the expected outcomes of greater access. I want to problematise and explore further how ICT initiatives can be a tool for women’s empowerment when these so often seem to be purely focused on access – without regard to transformative agency.

 

 

ICT, gender, and development

The research on ICT for development dates back some 30 years; since its beginning more or less focusing on the less materially advantaged in low- and middle-income countries. Similarly, the relation between gender and technology were initially explored already in the 1980-1990s, with scholars from different fields arguing that the areas are co-constructed, gender relations reproducing themselves by the use of technology in society, while technology “can be flexibly reinterpreted, re-designed, or performed in ways that move beyond stable categories and showcase women’s agency”. States Hafkin (2000): “By the mid-1990s, when ICTs became an important productive resource, gender analysts turned their attention to finding ways to ensure women’s access to ICT”. Since, the importance of ICTs for human development has been discussed at length within international development cooperation, and in 2013, the director of UN Women spoke on the importance of ICTs for achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment, namely how ICTs can improve women’s economic productivity, have the potential to improve access to education, involvement in politics, and enable women’s access health services and report on safety risks. (Hafkin, 2000; Walsham, 2017; Williams and Artzberger, 2019)

 

 

Initiatives on the nexus of ICT, gender and development are thus increasing in their presence within international development initiatives, with the hopes of ICT projects supporting social, economic, and political development in low- and middle-income countries. There is hope for ICTs to “open up windows for women to the outside world”, thus speeding up development processes, giving direct access to internet and information technologies, the rhetoric in the majority of initiatives outspokenly highlighting women’s empowerment (Asiedu, 2012). This goes in line with various of the Sustainable Development Goals explicitly focusing on ICT4D, such as target 5.b: “Enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology, to promote the empowerment of women” and target 9.c: “Significantly increase access to information and communications technology and strive to provide universal and affordable access to the Internet in least developed countries by 2020”, amongst other related SDGs. For target 5.b., the single indicator is “Proportion of individuals who own a mobile telephone, by sex”; however, according to Our World in Data, there is no defined target level for this indicator. While writing this text, the latest progress report from the UN was published in April 2021 and states: “Empowering more women with mobile telephones has been shown to accelerate social and economic development. However, in the 66 countries and territories with data for the period 2017–2019, average mobile telephone ownership was 8.5 percentage points lower for women than for men” (Our World in Data SDG Tracker).

 

Access = empowerment?

A conclusion to draw from the evolution of gender, development and ICT initiatives is that there seems to exist an assumption that the usage of, and access to, ICT for certain groups will subsequently lead to empowerment and positive social change. As noted in SDG 5.b. “Enhance the use of enabling technology (..) to promote the empowerment of women”, the only indicator is that of increasing access to mobile phones. One might, therefore, problematise – in what concrete ways does access equal empowerment in the context of gender and ICT4D?

Before immersing ourselves in this question, it is important to define what we mean by women’s empowerment – a concept widely and often arbitrary used in international development cooperation without much definition. Beginning in the 1980s, the empowerment approach was added to the gender and development intersection overall, stressing the need for women’s access to productive resources (Hafkin, 2000). Some scholars argue that “neoliberal development agendas” often use the concept as “a tool for self-help participation in the development process”. Others argue that the focus often seems to be on economic empowerment, equalising economic strength with power (Asiedu, 2012). However, this text will use the definition by Naila Kabeer; that empowerment equals transformative agency, not only focusing on immediate inequalities but enabling “achievements that suggest a greater ability on the part of poor women to question, analyse, and act on the structures of patriarchal constraint in their lives”. Empowerment processes should thus enable capacity, agency, and choice to challenge normative gender roles and power relations in each context, including the sense of agency and self-worth. (Kabeer, 2005)

Asiedu states that the focus on access to information, technology, and internet “repeats the modernisation approach to development rhetoric which assumes that when women are given access to resources, they would automatically benefit from development”, in line with the assumption that mass global communication of Western industrial societies, science and transfer of modern technology would solve global poverty (Asiedu, 2012). Essentially, an assumption that technologies are objective, neutral, universal – global access creating equal opportunities, thereby ignoring local techniques, knowledge, and practices. Already in 2004, Anita Gurumurty, prominent scholar of the gender and ICT-intersection, stated that ICT is strategically managed by “powerful corporations and nations” with little space for ownership by many groups (Gurumurty, 2004). Indeed, power-holders manage algorithms and moderate online content favouring consumerism and specific knowledge-spread, more so today than 17 years ago. As an example, data from 2018 demonstrate that only 0.7 per cent of the world’s domain names are registered in sub-Saharan Africa (Ojanperä et al. 2017, 40 in O’Donnell and Sweetman, 2018). Analysing online content and their sources, the organisation Whose Knowledge, with the global aim of centring the knowledge of marginalised communities online, state that while 3/4 of internet users today come from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, most of the online content is created by men from Europe and North America. In addition, the organisation estimate that only 7% of world languages are captured in online published material. (Whose Knowledge)

Interestingly – why do we assume positive social change and “empowerment” automatically originating in increased access to online spaces and technology when structures online reflect the structures that already shape the world and our societies: power relations, the production of knowledge, class, race, gender? Information, technology, communication, and the internet are neither objective, universal nor neutral, as stated by these scholars and accessible data. While embracing the notion that technology mirrors our societies, we understand that “technologies are affected by intersecting spectrums of exclusion including gender, ethnicity, age, social class, geography, and disability”. Infrastructure, freedom of information, affordability, ability, are other factors that can present challenges for recipients of ICT initiatives (O’Donnell and Sweetman, 2018). With gender relations reproduced by and embedded within ICTs, these are subsequently not gender-neutral – and we cannot assume sudden empowerment solely by access.

 

A case study from Afghanistan by scholars Hussain and Amin explores how ICTs are used in processes to support empowerment, with the conclusion that the majority of these activities (with the exception of a few initiatives on health) do not realise the vision of empowerment in challenging patriarchal power relations; they merely enable them to meet existing needs. Using ICTs for empowerment and thus challenging current power relations (“e.g. using the internet to learn about rights to divorce or citizen’s rights, or sharing ‘private’ stories of abuse in social media spaces”) is putting them at security risks or repercussions, risking an increased regulation of online presence and actions. The scholars conclude that ICTs, more than creating an agency of access, also need to challenge traditional gendered structures and “how men prevent them exercising transformative agency at household level, controlling and policing women’s use of ICTs.” The scholars conclude that the gender, development and ICT intersection need to move beyond the focus on access, affordability, availability, and awareness and question whether certain groups can use these technologies to advance their interests when it comes to economy, health, and political initiatives both within and outside the home, thus analysing both design and content of ICT initiatives. (Hussain and Amin, 2018)

 

Analysing power structures to enable the transformative potential of ICTs

However, the idea of this text is not an argument to criticise the fundamental and imperative use of ICTs to support gender equality and empowerment; it is rather an aim to reflect on development practices and methods (linking to the theme of this collective blog) and problematise the assumption that access to ICT equals empowerment, as well as emphasise the need for transformative agency.

Many scholars disseminating and discussing practices of ICT initiatives for gender equality and empowerment argue that a postcolonial and bottom-up approach would better support enabling empowerment and transformative agency. With the notion of technology mirroring our societies, postcolonial approaches analysing the production of knowledge and gendered relations within ICTs are essential to disentangle issues of power and inequalities, including a deep analysis of the power players and content creators online. Integrated and holistic approaches that encourage equitable access and collective empowerment of “local ICT appropriation”, including the inclusion of marginalised communities online, are needed (Asiedu, 2012).

Adding an intersectional perspective would further nuance the issue, taking into account that not only ICTs but also their recipients are shaped by class, ethnicity, age, sexuality, interplaying with the recipients’ access and the ability for transformative agency. This is, of course, the case for development initiatives in general; “the conversion of a commodity to a capability, as well as the choice to act on the opportunity, is influenced by a number of factors”, as put by Sein (2019) adding to recently mentioned factors cultural traditions, environmental factors, and virtually all factors playing into a person’s life and immediate context. As put by Asiedu: “When gender issues are defined in terms of male/female, it is assumed that barriers to ICTs faced by women have to do largely with their gender rather than their gender intersecting with their class, ethnicity and social position” (Asiedu, 2012).

Analysing these structures, initiatives of ICTs and their limitations, online content, and the question of who designs ICT, including the greater inclusion of marginalised groups in these integrated approaches, could help us facilitate processes better supporting the enabling of transformative agency for users and the transformative potential of ICTs. This includes adding this lens to our own organisational and institutional structures as practitioners within the development sector, in our forming of ICT initiatives and their implementations in practice, with a focus on agency and ownership, more than access only, to make use of the powerful role ICTs can have for transformative agency.

 

 

Concluding my last blog post, I want to reflect shortly on this blogging experience. Writing academic texts that are to be published online is somewhat new to me, most of my earlier experiences being academic essays for my university teachers’ eyes only or more commercial texts in work settings.

I did not expect the initial hesitancy I noticed in my writing when developing texts meant to be published online. I am not used to writing from a first-person perspective, in the “I” form. However, by developing the different blog posts and discussing with my group colleagues, I became more and more comfortable with the format and started to enjoy this mixed form of writing, a style between the more informal format and academic texts. I will bring the blogging experience to my future practice within the development sector, including the reflective practice on our roles as practitioners within the development sector.

My most significant learning from this experience is reading my fellow classmates’ texts, both within and outside this blog. I realise that we rarely have the opportunity to read each other’s texts and essays in university studies overall, if not in group work or group seminar settings. This was an exciting way of exploring different persons’ writing styles, topics of interest and expertise. It has been a great experience to learn more about ICT4D research, initiatives, and the sector as a whole, through this type of “new” format, hand in hand with what the area is actually about. I was impressed by the diversity of topics, expertise, and case studies from all over the world within this cohort.

 

 

Bibliography:

  • O’Donnell, N & Sweetman, C (2018) Introduction: Gender, development and ICTs, Gender & Development, 26:2, 217-229, DOI: 10.1080/13552074.2018.1489952
  • Williams, L & Artzberger, G (2019) Developing women as ICT users: a miniature scoping review of gender and ICTs for development, Gender, Technology and Development, 23:3, 234-256, DOI: 10.1080/09718524.2019.1679330
  • Walsham, G (2017) ICT4D research: reflections on history and future agenda, Information Technology for Development, 23:1, 18-41, DOI: 10.1080/02681102.2016.1246406
  • Hussain, F & Amin, S (2018) ‘I don’t care about their reactions’: agency and ICTs in women’s empowerment in Afghanistan, Gender & Development, 26:2, 249-265, DOI: 10.1080/13552074.2018.1475924
  • Kabeer, N (2005) ‘Gender equality and women’s empowerment: A critical analysis of the third millennium development goal 1’, Gender & Development 13(1): 13–24, doi: 10.1080/13552070512331332273
  • Our World in Data: SDG Tracker. https://sdg-tracker.org/ (Information retrieved November 6, 2021)
  • Asiedu, C (2012) INFORMATION COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES FOR GENDER AND DEVELOPMENT, Information, Communication & Society, 15:8, 1186-1216, DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2011.610467
  • Whose Knowledge. https://whoseknowledge.org/  (Information retrieved November 7, 2021)
  • Seing, M et al. (2019) A holistic perspective on the theoretical foundations for ICT4D research, Information Technology for Development, 25:1, 7-25, DOI: 10.1080/02681102.2018.1503589
  • Hafkin, N. (2000). Convergence of concepts: Gender and ICTs in Africa. Gender and the information revolution in Africa, 1-15.

Podcast Episode: Interview with a Development Professional on the Impact of ICTs

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By Katharina Hribernigg

For my second blog post I wanted to interview a development professional on how ICT has impacted their work.

I would also be interested to hear how ICT has impacted your work as a development professional, so please take a listen and then leave a comment.

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 learning in Africa: where do struggles and solutions come from?

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UNICEF just published its report on education in Africa describing a discouraging digital learning context in the Western and Central part of the continent where 48% of students did not have access to distance learning during lockdown.

This happened because there was actually no distance learning offered or because if there was, students did not have a computer or an internet connection at home, especially those living in rural areas.

The broader reasons were governments’ limited support to teachers and a lack of funds for distance learning. In fact only 50% of Northern African and 27% of sub-Saharan countries train teachers in distance education. More training of teachers is undoubately needed to broaden the range of opportunities offered to students, being Africa’s future workforce. Digital competences need to be embedded in school national curricula. They should also be communicated as lifelong key competences that are essential, today, for social development.

However, during the Covid restrictions, African governments found a variety of effective alternatives which should be maintained and further developed, as claimed by UNICEF. The learning material was disseminated through take home papers but also TV and radio channels (broadcasting for hours every day) and through digital platforms (offline and online).

The solution of the Kenyan government was among the most successful ones. The key was to create its own digital learning contents and develop an enabling environment from the early stages: DigiSchool increased the distribution of digital tools and the level of students’ enrolment and motivation to come to school to use devices. Once again, in C4D and ICT4D, an approach that consider beneficiaries’ preferences in designing and implementing their own solutions seem to be the only possible way.

The report stresses the importance of public-private partnership and brings the case of the Africa Code Week, currently taking place throughout the continent where hundreds of teachers are being trained on coding. UNICEF recommends partnerships with telecommunications companies and internet providers to decrease the cost of services as well as with IT corporates and mobile network operators to introduce innovative learning approaches that can reach students in rural areas.

It is interesting to note that the report does not mention the non-African origins of the two discussed best practices (DigiSchool was implemented thanks to the Chinese Government and the Chinese corporation Huawei while the Africa Code Week is a yearly initiative from SAP, the German corporation, started in 2015). Yet they show the importance of African countries collaborating to fund ICT for learning through continental projects.