"This study analyses the impacts of COVID-19 and its associated public policy responses on digital and intersectional inequality in South Africa from a demand-side perspective. The overarching research question it seeks to address is: To what extent were people in South Africa able to mitigate the n
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egative (health and economic) effects of the pandemic and lockdowns through digital substitution? It draws on the results of a national phone questionnaire of 1 400 randomly selected respondents and the findings from six focus groups of men and women from urban and rural areas to examine the levels of digital substitution in relation to work, schooling and economic activity (such as banking, e-commerce and online business). It also investigates how digital substitution enabled access to social protection and COVID-19 relief. Finally, it discusses how public and infrastructure policies could be optimised for post-pandemic recovery and future policies." (Executive summary)
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"Artificial intelligence (AI) is exerting unprecedented pressure on the global higher educational landscape in transforming recruitment processes, subverting traditional pedagogy, and creating new research and institutional opportunities. These technologies require contextual and global ethical anal
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ysis so that they may be developed and deployed in higher education in just and responsible ways. T o-date, these efforts have been largely focused on small parts of the educational environments leaving most of the world out of an essential contribution. This volume acts as a corrective to this and contributes to the building of competencies in ethics education and to broader, global debates about how AI will transform various facets of our lives, not the least of which is higher education." (Publisher description)
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"Researchers at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) led a two-year investigation into the online media ecosystem of al-Shabaab and the Islamic State in Africa, analyzing the role of “independent news” outlets and their intersections with hundreds-strong networks of amplifier profiles on F
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acebook linked to a number of central pages identifying themselves as “media outlets” or “media personalities” operating in Somali, Kiswahili and Arabic. Researchers found that the network of support for al-Shabaab and Islamic State extended across several platforms, including decentralized messaging applications such as Element and RocketChat, and encrypted messaging platforms such as Telegram, as well as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. A qualitative cross-platform analysis showed the most active, networked, and multilingual ecosystem of support for al-Shabaab and the Islamic State existed on Facebook, where profiles and pages classified as “media outlets” were sharing terrorist content openly and eschewing private groups and profiles. The content that ISD researchers observed through the networks is often linked to “media” and “media personality” pages in Somali, Kiswahili and Arabic, and not only violates the platform’s community guidelines, but also points to language moderation blind spots that have been previously documented by journalists as well as whistleblowers." (Publisher description)
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"Digitale Technologien sind eine Zumutung! Um dies zu ändern, sollten wir uns nicht von ihnen abwenden, sondern uns eingehender mit ihrer transformatorischen Macht befassen. Shintaro Miyazaki ruft dazu auf, die alternativen Rhythmen des kooperativen, solidarischen Zusammenlebens (Commoning) operabe
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l zu machen und die Digitalität so zum Tanzen zu bringen. Er macht ein Leben vorstellbar, in dem Profit und Eigentum keine Rolle mehr spielen, sondern das nachhaltige Zusammenspiel der Bedürfnisse unserer lebendigen Ökosysteme mit jenen aller Menschen oberste Priorität hat. Hier trifft Kapitalismuskritik auf eine kritische, marxistisch-informierte Medientheorie der algorithmischen Modellierung anderer Zukünfte." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"Trust in the news has fallen in almost half the countries in our survey, and risen in just seven, partly reversing the gains made at the height of the Coronavirus pandemic. On average, around four in ten of our total sample (42%) say they trust most news most of the time. Finland remains the countr
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y with the highest levels of overall trust (69%), while news trust in the USA has fallen by a further three percentage points and remains the lowest (26%) in our survey.
• Consumption of traditional media, such as TV and print, declined further in the last year in almost all markets (pre-Ukraine invasion), with online and social consumption not making up the gap. While the majority remain very engaged, others are turning away from the news media and in some cases disconnecting from news altogether. Interest in news has fallen sharply across markets, from 63% in 2017 to 51% in 2022.
• Meanwhile, the proportion of news consumers who say they avoid news, often or sometimes, has increased sharply across countries. This type of selective avoidance has doubled in both Brazil (54%) and the UK (46%) over the last five years, with many respondents saying news has a negative effect on their mood. A significant proportion of younger and less educated people say they avoid news because it can be hard to follow or understand – suggesting that the news media could do much more to simplify language and better explain or contextualise complex stories.
• In the five countries we surveyed after the war in Ukraine had begun, we find that television news is relied on most heavily – with countries closest to the fighting, such as Germany and Poland, seeing the biggest increases in consumption. Selective news avoidance has, if anything, increased further – likely due to the difficult and depressing nature of the coverage.
• Global concerns about false and misleading information remain stable this year, ranging from 72% in Kenya and Nigeria to just 32% in Germany and 31% in Austria. People say they have seen more false information about Coronavirus than about politics in most countries, but the situation is reversed in Turkey, Kenya, and the Philippines, amongst others." (Summary, page 10)
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"This report analyzes the evidence and justification for these various policies and examines the implications for news media in low-income and developing countries. It identifies the particular challenges that countries with small markets, weak currencies, less stability, and less press freedom face
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in pursuing the policies outlined in this report, underscoring the importance of a coordinated global approach." (Introduction, page 2)
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"The OECD Policy Framework on Digital Security helps policy makers understand the economic and social dimension of cybersecurity, raises their awareness about the OECD approach to digital security policy, and encourages them to make use of OECD digital security recommendations to develop better poli
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cies. The Framework provides a helpful narrative based upon OECD digital security recommendations and identifies linkages with other policy areas addressed through existing OECD standards and tools." (Foreword, page 3)
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"This guide looks at how our mobile devices could leak data about our locations and what we could do to protect ourselves against it. It’s designed for most Central European journalists’ threat models and only looks at how our mobile devices could give up precise location data on us. It doesn’
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t look at some of the other ways your location can be tracked, such as through payments, CCTV cameras, or images you post online, and doesn’t cover coarse location data (for example, how your IP address might reveal which country or city you’re in)." (Page 1)
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"The largest-ever analysis of Google’s ad practices on non-English-language websites reveals how the tech giant makes disinformation profitable." (Introduction)
"Temporary internet disruptions and shutdowns pose serious challenges to the exercise of a wide range of rights and therefore cannot be justified under any pretext, whether these relate to preservation of national security, safeguarding the public order, or countering disinformation, among others. A
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ny measure that restricts people's ability to connect to the internet should be strictly justified through the principles of proportionality and necessity. The notion of network disruptions should thus take into account that partial disruptions can take place and have almost as much a deleterious effect on human rights as internet shutdowns." (Conclusion, page 27)
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"La contratación pública es uno de los temas que puede resultar más complicado para los periodistas, pero no imposible. Las reglas que rodean este ámbito son complejas, incluso para los funcionarios públicos. Los documentos generalmente son difíciles de entender y, en Ecuador, muchas veces has
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ta difíciles de leer. Sin embargo, en el país tenemos la ventaja de que (casi) toda la información es pública y, por lo tanto, accesible para los periodistas. Ecuador tiene un Portal de Compras Públicas bastante complejo, pero que se puede aprender a manejar. Y de esta manera, se ha convertido en una herramienta indispensable para los periodistas en la investigación de casos de corrupción. Pero no solo eso. Hablar de compras públicas es hablar de recursos de todos los ecuatorianos, por lo que la publicación de notas, reportajes e investigaciones sobre el uso de este dinero siempre va a ser interesante para los ciudadanos. Este tipo de trabajos permite identificar quién recibe el dinero público y quién provee bienes y servicios a las instituciones. Una vez que un periodista aprende a manejar temas de contratación pública, puede trabajar e investigar en todas las áreas, desde salud pública hasta gobiernos locales." (Introducción)
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"The Covid-19 pandemic has led to the rise of digitally enabled remote work with consequences for the global division of labour. Remote work could connect labour markets, but it might also increase spatial polarisation. However, our understanding of the geographies of remote work is limited. Specifi
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cally, in how far could remote work connect employers and workers in different countries? Does it bring jobs to rural areas because of lower living costs, or does it concentrate in large cities? And how do skill requirements affect competition for employment and wages? We use data from a fully remote labour market—an online labour platform—to show that remote platform work is polarised along three dimensions. First, countries are globally divided: North American, European, and South Asian remote platform workers attract most jobs, while many Global South countries participate only marginally. Secondly, remote jobs are pulled to large cities; rural areas fall behind. Thirdly, remote work is polarised along the skill axis: workers with in-demand skills attract profitable jobs, while others face intense competition and obtain low wages. The findings suggest that agglomerative forces linked to the unequal spatial distribution of skills, human capital, and opportunities shape the global geography of remote work. These forces pull remote work to places with institutions that foster specialisation and complex economic activities, i. e. metropolitan areas focused on information and communication technologies. Locations without access to these enabling institutions—in many cases, rural areas—fall behind. To make remote work an effective tool for economic and rural development, it would need to be complemented by local skill-building, infrastructure investment, and labour market programmes." (Abstract)
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"Beinahe täglich posten oder liken wir etwas auf Twitter, Facebook oder Instagram. Als Orte direkter Kommunikation und Interaktion sind die Sozialen Medien längst zu Plattformen für die Verhandlung und Verbreitung kultureller Ausdrucksformen unseres Alltags geworden. Doch bei näherer Betrachtung
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entziehen sich die komplexen Prozesse medial vermittelter Interaktionen und Artikulationen von Akteur*innen, die gemeinsam kulturelle Bildungsräume und -prozesse im Rahmen informeller, digitaler Alltagspraktiken realisieren, dem einfachen Zugriff. Ausgehend von der Interdependenz von Technik, Aisthesis und Artikulation entfalten die Beiträger*innen des Bandes aus unterschiedlichen disziplinären Perspektiven den Versuch eines (Auf-)Lesens von Spuren kultureller Bildungs- und Transformationsprozesse in Sozialen Medien." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"This literature review examines, specifically, social science work presenting evidence concerning the existence, causes, and effect of online echo chambers and consider what related research can tell about scientific discussions online and how they might shape public understanding of science and th
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e role of science in society." (Executive summary, page 4)
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"Based on interviews with a strategic sample of 11 publishers in eight low- and middle-income countries, the authors of this report analyse how various digital publishers across a range of Global South countries approach digital platforms: both big platform companies such as Google and Meta; rapidly
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growing ones, including TikTok; and smaller ones such as Twitter and Telegram. It highlights key shared aspects of their approaches that can serve as inspiration for journalists and news media elsewhere, in terms of how they see platforms (what we call 'platform realism'), how they approach them in their day-to-day work (what we call 'platform bricolage'), and key aspects of their overall approach (what we call 'platform pragmatism')." (Executive summary, page 7)
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"In 2020, the French Parliament passed an amendment that put the country at the forefront of attempts by democratic states to restrict young people's access to legal online pornography. This study examines the necessity for and potential efficacy of the amendment, Article 23, through a comparative a
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nalysis of emerging legislative and regulatory approaches in France, the UK, Canada, Utah, and Germany, and through a survey of French 15-,16-, and 17-year-olds. Among other things, our survey shows that 41% of 15-, 16-, and17-year-olds in France visit dedicated pornographic sites, on average monthly and often much more frequently. However, the range of media platforms via which French adolescents are exposed to pornography, their knowledge about technologies that could circumvent age verification, and the power, scope, and implementation of Article 23 may limit the legislation's efficacy. Our findings suggest the mechanisms that may limit its efficacy include media displacement, socio-technical circumvention, and the Article's relatively broad and imprecise nature. This study has implications for legislators and regulators in democratic countries beyond France as they too grapple with the challenges of regulating online pornography. Furthermore, it extends the often contradictory and/or limited evidence that exists about adolescents' consumption of pornography." (Abstract)
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"The Citizen Lab and Access Now have conducted a joint investigation into Pegasus hacking in El Salvador in collaboration with Frontline Defenders, SocialTIC, and Fundación Acceso. We confirmed 35 cases of journalists and members of civil society whose phones were successfully infected with NSO’s
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Pegasus spyware between July 2020 and November 2021. We shared a sample of forensic data with Amnesty International’s Security Lab which independently confirms the findings. Targets included journalists at El Faro, GatoEncerrado, La Prensa Gráfica, Revista Digital Disruptiva, Diario El Mundo, El Diario de Hoy, and two independent journalists. Civil society targets included Fundación DTJ, Cristosal, and another NGO. The hacking took place while the organizations were reporting on sensitive issues involving the administration of President Bukele, such as a scandal involving the government’s negotiation of a “pact” with the MS-13 gang for a reduction in violence and electoral support. While evidence linking a particular infection to a particular Pegasus customer is often unavailable, in this case we identified a Pegasus customer operating almost exclusively in El Salvador since at least November 2019 that we call TOROGOZ, and have connected this operator to an infection attempt against El Faro." (Key findings)
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"1. Women’s uptake of mobile internet in lowand middle-income countries continues to increase, but the rate of adoption has slowed. Across low- and middle-income countries, 60 per cent of women now use mobile internet. Only 59 million additional women in low-and middle-income countries started usi
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ng mobile internet in 2021 compared to 110 million in 2020. This is significant since mobile remains the primary way most people access the internet, especially women. 2. The mobile internet gender gap had been reducing, but progress has stalled. Across low- and middle-income countries, women are now 16 per cent less likely than men to use mobile internet, which translates into 264 million fewer women than men. By comparison, the mobile internet gender gap in low- and middle-income countries was 25 per cent in 2017 and 15 per cent in 2020. The gender gap is widest in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa and has remained relatively unchanged in all regions since 2017 except South Asia. In South Asia, the mobile internet gender gap had narrowed significantly, from 67 per cent in 2017 to 36 per cent in 2020, but has now widened to 41 per cent. This is due to continued increase in mobile internet adoption among men but no notable increase among women, particularly in India where men’s mobile internet use increased from 45 per cent to 51 per cent while women’s has remained flat at 30 per cent. 3. The gender gap in smartphone ownership has widened slightly. Over the past five years, the gender gap in smartphone ownership had been reducing year on year across low- and middle-income countries, from 20 per cent in 2017 to 16 per cent in 2020. Women are now 18 per cent less likely than men to own a smartphone, which translates into 315 million fewer women than men owning a smartphone. This year’s increase has been driven by an increase in the smartphone gender gap in South Asia, as well as a continued increase in the smartphone gender gap in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, once women own a smartphone, their awareness and use of mobile internet is almost on par with men [...]" (Key findings)
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