mediadev library

10 Facts to Counter Encryption Myths

Namrata Maheshwari

Access Now (2021), 23 pp.

"There is no question that we must address the issues of child safety, disinformation, national security, and criminal activity in the digital age. However, even if the stated end goal for mandating encryption backdoors is legitimate, the means must be necessary and proportionate. Deliberately intro ... more

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Unseen Eyes, Unheard Stories: Surveillance, Data Protection, and Freedom of Expression in Kenya and Uganda During COVID-19

Sigi Waigumo Mwanzia, Victor Kapiyo, Phillip Ayazika

Nairobi; Kampala: Article 19;Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTAnet);Pollicy (2021), 22 pp.

"This report has documented the surveillance measures and practices in Kenya and Uganda during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The key trends include poor oversight over COVID-19 data collection, the lack of independent data protection authorities, the use of telecommunications data to ‘t ... more

Uncovering the Iceberg: The Digital Surveillance Crisis Wrought by States and the Private Sector

London: Amnesty International (2021), 21 pp.

"Technologists at Amnesty Tech’s Security Lab were able to identify traces of NSO’s “zero-click” attacks (malware infections that require no interaction with the target) through cutting edge forensic analysis, including by linking these new attacks to previously documented attacks on human r ... more

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Digital Dominion: How the Syrian Regime's Mass Digital Surveillance Violates Human Rights

New York: Access Now;UIC John Marshall Law School International Human Rights Clinic (2021), iii, 26 pp.

The Monitored Watchdogs: Journalists’ Surveillance and its Repercussions for their Professional and Personal Lives in Pakistan

Sadia Jamil

Journalism Studies, volume 22, issue 7 (2021), pp. 878-895

"Journalists, across the world, are ever more at risk of surveillance from state and non-state antagonists. However, to work safely in a monitored environment is a substantial challenge for journalists. In such regimes, journalists and media organizations are often prone to attacks by the state auth ... more

Media and Politics in the Southern Mediterranean: Communicating Power in Transition After 2011

Roxane Farmanfarmaian (ed.)

Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge (2021), xv, 426 pp.

"This edited volume presents ground-breaking empirical research on the media in political transition in Tunisia, Turkey and Morocco. Focusing on developments in the wake of the region’s upheavals in 2011, it offers a new theoretical framework for understanding mediascapes in the confessional and h ... more

“We Have to act Like our Devices are Already Infected”: Investigative Journalists and Internet Surveillance

Philip Di Salvo

Journalism Practice, volume 16, issue 9 (2021), pp. 1849-1866

"Internet surveillance has become a crucial issue for journalism. The “Snowden moment” has shed light on the risks that journalists and their sources face while communicating online and has shown how journalists themselves can be targets of surveillance operations or other forms of malicious dig ... more

Latin America in a glimpse

Vladimir Garay (ed.)

Derechos Digitales (2020), 31 pp.

Arendt’s Algorithm: AI’s Disenfranchising Effect on Refugees as Examined Through China’s Uighur Population

Gideon Salutin

[author] (2020), 23 pp.

"China’s Integrated Joint Operations Platform (IJOP) operates in Xinjiang by collecting Big Data and alerting authorities to those it deems potentially harmful to the CCP regime. It does so through two major devices: the mobile phone, and the camera. These act as tools of disablement constraining ... more

Digital Surveillance and the Impact on Journalism in Russia

Andrei Soldatov, Irina Borogan

Potsdam: Friedrich Naumann Foundation (2020), 15 pp.

Civil Society in the Digital Age in Africa: Identifying Threats and Mounting Pushbacks

Hlengiwe Dube, Maristella A. Simiyu, Tomiwa Ilori

Pretoria; Kampala: Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria;CIPESA (2020), 78 pp.

"The report documents the threats to civil society in the digital age by examining the legislative and regulatory framework in four countries in Africa: Egypt, Sierra Leone, Uganda and Zambia. These countries were selected from the four main geographic regions of Africa, in order to provide a sense ... more

Red lines of journalism. Digital surveillance, safety risks and journalists’ self-censorship in Pakistan

Sadia Jamil

In: Journalist Safety and Self-Censorship

Ingrid Fadnes; Anna Grøndahl Larsen; Roy Krøvel (eds.)

London; New York: Routledge (2020), pp. 29-46

"Drawing on Reese’s hierarchy of influences model, this study investigates the extent to which safety risks and digital surveillance result in journalists’ self-censorship in Pakistan. This study also explores the key areas of journalists’ self-censorship in the country and how it affects thei ... more

Online surveillance and the repressive Press Council Bill 2018. A two-pronged approach to media self-censorship in Nigeria

Olunifesi Adekunle Suraj

In: Journalist Safety and Self-Censorship

Ingrid Fadnes; Anna Grøndahl Larsen; Roy Krøvel (eds.)

London; New York: Routledge (2020), pp. 80-99

"This chapter examines the perceptions of Nigerian journalists towards the Nigerian Press Council Bill 2018 and the governments’ online surveillance. The study employs survey and interview methods: 217 Nigerian media practitioners selected from print and online media responded to the questionnaire ... more

TikTok and WeChat: Curating and Controlling Global Information Flows

Fergus Ryan, Audrey Fritz, Daria Impiombato

Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), International Cyber Policy Centre (2020), 68 pp.

"The Chinese state has demonstrated a propensity for controlling and shaping the information environment of the Chinese diaspora—including via WeChat. The meteoric growth of TikTok has now put the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in a position from which it can shape the information environment on a ... more

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Assessing Digital Threats to Democracy, and Workable Solutions: A Review of the Recent Literature

Kathleen Kuehn, Leon A. Salter

International Journal of Communication, volume 14 (2020), pp. 2589-2610

"Concerns surrounding the threats that digital platforms pose to the functioning of Western liberal democracies have grown since the 2016 U.S. election. Yet despite a preponderance of academic work in this area, the precise nature of these threats, empirical solutions for their redress, and their re ... more

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Spotlight on Artificial Intelligence and Freedom of Expression

Barbora Bukovska

Vienna: OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media (2020), 72 pp.

"Artificial intelligence (AI) has become an increasingly important tool for shaping and arbitrating online information. It is increasingly, and often invisibly, used by both public authorities and private companies, and greatly impacts the way people seek, receive, impart and access information. Cou ... more

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Social Media and Politics in Africa: Democracy, Censorship and Security
Top Insights

Maggie Dwyer, Thomas Molony (eds.)

London: Zed Books (2019), xiii, 299 pp.

"Drawing on over a dozen new empirical case studies – from Kenya to Somalia, South Africa to Tanzania – this collection explores how rapidly growing social media use is reshaping political engagement in Africa. But while social media has often been hailed as a liberating tool, the book demonstra ... more