"This paper examines the practices, performance, and perceptions of the messaging platform Telegram as an actor in the 2020 Belarus protests, using publicly available data from Telegram’s public statements, protest-related Telegram groups, and media coverage. Developing a novel conceptualization o
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f platform actorness, we critically assess Telegram’s role in the protests and examine whether Telegram is seen as playing an active role in Belarusian contentious politics. We find that Telegram’s performance and practices drive citizens to form affective connections to the platform and to perceive Telegram as an ally in their struggle against repressions and digital censorship. Meanwhile, the Belarusian state uses Telegram’s aversion to censorship and content moderation to intervene in contentious politics by co-opting grassroots approaches and mimicking manipulative efforts of other authoritarian regimes. Our conceptual framework is applicable to post-Soviet authoritarian contexts, but can also serve as a useful heuristic for analyzing platform actorness in other regime types." (Abstract)
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"This joint stakeholder report focuses on key issues relating to human rights online in India, including internet shutdowns, digital exclusion, freedom of speech and expression online, online harassment and hate speech, privacy, surveillance and data protection. The report draws on extensive and ong
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oing monitoring of the situation of human rights online in India by a number of civil society organisations and a desk review." (Introduction, page 3)
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"This white paper seeks to provide an overview of the core thematic issues around digital rights and digital safety across the world. The content builds off a global mapping exercise of organisations and knowledge, predominantly focused on Africa and the Middle East, Latin America, Asia-Pacific, Eas
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tern Europe and Central Asia. This document is intended to serve as a primer for practitioners and newcomers into the field of digital rights to gain a broad understanding of key issues within this ecosystem." (Introduction, page 5)
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"This article takes up the popular argument that much online discussion is toxic and hence harmful to democracy, and argues that the pervasiveness of incivility is not incompatible with democratically relevant political talk. Instead of focusing on the tone of political talk, scholars interested in
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understanding the extent to which digital platforms threaten democratic values should focus on expressions of intolerance. I demonstrate the validity of this conceptual model by investigating the discursive and contextual features associated with incivility and intolerance online in the context of public comments in two different platforms—news websites and Facebook. Results show that incivility and intolerance occur in meaningfully different discussion settings. Whereas incivility is associated with features that reveal meaningful discursive engagement, such as justified opinion expression and engagement with disagreement, intolerance is likely to occur in homogeneous discussions about minorities and civil society—exactly when it can hurt democracy the most." (Abstract)
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"Data governance is an integral aspect of digital authoritarianism because it incorporates any type of control, authority, and manipulation of data […]. Within the context of digital authoritarianism, data governance may incorporate both states and non-state actors that collaborate with states to
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facilitate their control over the data sources. This section analyses data governance in the context of its relationship to digital authoritarianism. Among the various facets of the topic, it concentrates mainly on surveillance, privacy, and digital methods of transnational repression that the states use to intimidate and silence their anti-regime activists abroad." (Data Governance, page 3)
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"DataFest Africa is an annual event that seeks to celebrate data use in the region by bringing together a variety of stakeholders of diverse backgrounds such as government, civil society, academics, students and private industry experts under one roof and theme. Since 2019, Pollicy, with support fro
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m partners, has been organising DataFest, an annual celebration of data that has so far transformed from a Kampala edition (DataFest Kampala) to an African regional edition (DataFest Africa). DataFest Africa continues to bring together data enthusiasts, Civil Society Organisations, Government, private sector and more to discuss trends on data across the continent. The biggest so far, the 3rd edition of DataFest (now DataFest Africa) held under the theme: "Data Futures: Big Data, Little Data, and Everything in Between'' was a hybrid event that attracted a wide range of participants and stakeholders. The month-long edition started on June 10th to July 17th. We welcomed a total of 716 participants from 3 countries, a steady increase in our community, which has more than tripled since our first ever edition in 2019. This report is a reflection of key outcomes, numbers and impact of the 2022 edition of DataFest Africa." (Introduction)
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"This report details the urban-rural connectivity gap in nine low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and what that means for their potential to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals [...] Across all nine countries [Colombia, India, Indonesia, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda, Mozambique, South Af
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rica], roughly only one in ten people have meaningful connectivity. In urban areas, this increases to one in seven. In rural areas, the ratio drops to one of every twenty. This disparity becomes even worse in the two LDC countries in our study: in Mozambique and Rwanda, fewer than one in every fifty people in rural areas have meaningful connectivity. This should alarm policymakers because as a share of the world’s rural population, one in four lives within an LDC country: as part of the world’s online population, only one of every twenty users connects from an LDC country." (Executive summary, page 3)
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"This report details the legal framework / rule of law tools in place, and responses by the government, social media companies, and civil society to address illegal harmful content and potentially harmful content online in Kenya. This research draws from 13 interviews with people active in Kenya's g
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overnment and civil society, along with four workshops held in Nairobi, Kisumu, and Mombasa counties. The workshops attracted the participation of 105 actors and stakeholders from civil society, community-based organizations, technology companies, and representatives from line ministries and agencies in government. It also draws from trends gathered from Build Up' social media listening process, along with existing research, legislation, policies, and current events. The social media listening process focused on Twitter and Facebook, from 2017 to 2022, focusing on ethnic, political, and gender-based hateful narratives and peace messaging in the run-up to the next election cycle in August 2022. The literature review and interviews focused on existing legislation or company policies that address hate speech and misinformation, along with actions taken by government agencies, civil society, and technology companies to address related hate speech and misinformation narratives." (Introduction, page 1 & Methodology, page 5)
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"The observations made in this report make emphatically clear the failings of the current legal framework in defending human rights in the context of access to the internet. As seen in the report, the disruption of access to the internet is triggered at the most menial of instances, including for re
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asons where alternatives to internet shutdowns are available. The glaring absence of necessity, rationality, proportionality, and due process in the exercise of shutdown powers has attracted significant disrepute to the state of democracy in India." (Way forward, page 43)
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"The How-to Note is a brief, user-friendly guide that helps program design teams understand and prioritize the Digital Principles most relevant to their work. Through a series of leading questions and worksheets, this digital activity design checklist provides actionable guidance for each Digital Pr
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inciple and shares additional resources for ensuring that programs are well-designed and effective." (Publisher description)
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"This cross-cultural comparison study between China and the US aimed to examine the short video-sharing social media platform, TikTok/Douyin, particularly its use in the two countries. Because China and the US have some evident differences in cultural values, they are ideal for cross-cultural compar
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ison between Western and Asian countries. Other than knowing the platform itself, how people use it, and their influencer video use, the study further explored how cultural values influenced user behaviors on TikTok/Douyin. Two survey studies were conducted in each country. The questionnaire asked the same question but in two language versions Chinese and English. Questions asked about participants' demographic information, TikTok/Douyin use preference, influencer preference, and cultural values. In general, Chinese participants had a more extended time experience of using Douyin, and they spent more time on Douyin every day. Participants had a different preference for influencers' expertise on each platform. US participants favored music influencers while Chinese participants favored food influencers. Moreover, Chinese participants were more likely to be persuaded by influencers to make purchase decisions than US participants. Besides, Chinese participants claimed a higher individualism score and a lower power distance score than US participants, which contradicts with Hofstede's original cultural scores for each country." (Abstract)
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"Se han encontrado importantes y fundados aportes desde organizaciones de la Sociedad Civil sobre el tema, con consensos sobre los principales contenidos de las exigencias de transparencia y rendición de cuentas que deberían atender las grandes plataformas de Internet -en especial las dominantes y
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con fines lucrativos- para proteger derechos fundamentales, así como importantes y crecientes acuerdos sobre la necesidad y urgencia de exigir esa transparencia mediante una legislación específica. De la información encontrada también se desprende una importante expansión del debate en torno a la regulación de las plataformas en la región (en especial, de redes sociales) y la presentación de numerosas iniciativas de ley. Paradojalmente, la inclusión de obligaciones de transparencia es limitada. Una llamativa excepción es el proyecto N°2630/2020, que pretende instituir la Ley de Libertad, Responsabilidad y Transparencia en Internet en Brasil." (Resumen)
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"El presente documento aborda la problemática de la moderación de contenidos en las plataformas haciendo hincapié en su impacto fundamental en el periodismo y teniendo como eje los derechos a la libertad de prensa y la libertad de expresión." (Introducción, página 5)
"This publication is the last of four reports from a regional study completed in 2021 and funded by the technical assistance of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) on Policy Advice for COVID-19 Economic Recovery in Southeast Asia. The project supports the recovery efforts of Southeast Asian countries t
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o return to their economic performance before the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. It also assists countries in preparing for national, regional, or global transformations that may take place post-COVID-19. The focus countries are Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Thailand, which tapped ADB's COVID-19 Pandemic Recovery Option facility. The study produced four reports on the following thematic areas: 1. Supporting post-COVID-19 economic recovery in Southeast Asia. 2. Strengthening domestic resource mobilization in Southeast Asia. 3. Implementing a green recovery in Southeast Asia. 4. Harnessing the potential of big data in post-pandemic Southeast Asia." (Foreword)
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"The present paper sheds light on the current trends of cyber capacity building and its implications in Africa and beyond as well as on its actor landscape. It argues that Germany and Europe should strategically engage more with African countries in terms of cyber capacity building to avoid that the
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se countries slide into the camp of 'digital authoritarianism' and help them to embrace the benefits of digitalized economy flanked by proper cyber security." (Executive summary, page 4)
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"The FNF Global Innovation Hub published in 2022 this guide using easily understandable language and examples of daily scenario that civil servants and the public encounter to help readers to painlessly grasp technical terms such as open source, FLOSS software, and open standard. Also, the Guide exp
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lains why Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) is the key to improve transparency, accountability, accessibility, and effectiveness of public digital service. It enables readers to establish Public Money? Public Code! as the mindset of perceiving public digital service: If a public digital service is built by using tax payers’ money, it should be supervised and examined by them as all public infrastructure. Finally, the Guide also provides practical policy recommendations on enhancing the use of FLOSS in governments." (Publisher description)
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"This study argues for the diversification of South Africa's digital economy, as it builds a case for the support of platform co-operatives, which are worker-owned and managed social enterprises that contribute to the diversification, decentralisation and democratisation of the digital economy by fo
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stering structural change for fair social outcomes as a natural consequence of economic development. Platform cooperatives represent an important counterbalance to the rent-seeking venture capital funded tech monopolies that currently dominate the platform economy. This study views their emergence - as well as other social enterprise models - as a gauge for the diversification of South Africa's digital economy." (Introduction)
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"O capítulo 1, “Reconhecimento e representação: sobre vozes, epistemicídio e resistências”, investiga e discute as formas, contextos e a constituição sóciohistórica, econômica e cultural da sociedade brasileira contemporânea e de seus grupos estigmatizados e precarizados, enfatizando
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o papel da posse, acesso, uso e apropriações diferenciadas das TIC. Na mesma direção, o capítulo 3, “A nova geração de telefonia móvel 5G já nasce com data de validade”, antecipase e se concentra na crítica dos modos como a inovação tecnológica digital, como conduzida no Brasil, vêm carrear novas formas de exclusão, opressão e sofrimento social. A partir da perspectiva original de Rheingold (1994) sobre as comunidades virtuais, em certa medida ingênua, pois que baseada em partilhas cordiais entre os indivíduos, outros pensadores vêm agregando elementos adicionais, mais críticos e problematizadores, capazes de contemplar conflitos e desigualdades de poder na luta e na militância política no ciberespaço e na cibercultura. Para contribuir com essa discussão, o capítulo 2, “Dimensões interseccionais da vulnerabilidade digital no Brasil”, introduz e expande a compreensão do fenômeno e dos conceitos associados às vulnerabilidades digitais, apontando para a necessidade da construção crítica de uma educação midiática focada na superação das condições da exclusão digital e na construção de cidadãos autônomos – e na (re)construção de suas vozes sociais, sua expressão e suas justas reivindicações materiais e simbólicas, na participação democrática. O tema é retomado de forma aprofundada no capítulo 4, “Educação midiática para a vida online: descolonização, diferença e alteridade”, que sinaliza a necessidade e a urgência de políticas, ações, iniciativas e medidas da educação popular no âmbito do aprendizado das, pelas e para as mídias digitais." (Apresentação, página 7-8)
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"Entre os achados do trabalho quantiqualitativo que partiu de um universo de 229 participantes: lideranças e militantes da cidade, do campo, das florestas e das águas das diferentes regiões brasileiras. Destaca-se que 47% do público entrevistado tem dificuldade no uso da internet; pessoas negras
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e pardas usam mais celulares; 59,1% das associações contatadas não têm área de informática. As constantes mudanças no mundo digital têm consequências direta nas práticas cotidianas de uso social e apropriação das tecnologias de informação e comunicação (TIC). Essas mudanças alteram drasticamente as formas de representação de interesses, seja na área econômica, política, social, cultural, religiosa, sindical/ associativa e tecnológica, além de Influenciar o processo de construção das agendas, a tomada de decisão política, a formação de lideranças e também as políticas públicas. Por exemplo: cerca de 83% da população do Brasil tem acesso à internet no Brasil, no entanto, desse total, 58% das pessoas têm acesso apenas pelo celular. As desigualdades ficam ainda mais em evidência quando analisamos a situação de negros, periféricos, quilombolas, LGBTQIA+, mulheres e idosos. Por isso, a pesquisa é uma ferramenta para elaborar políticas públicas mais inclusivas." (https://institutolula.org/instituto-lanca-livro-sobre-transformacao-digital-nesta-terca)
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