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Contextualizing Hacktivism: The Criminalization of Redhack

Bülay Dogan

Philadelphia: Annenberg School for Communication, Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC) (2019), 37 pp.

"Through a meticulous empirical examination of the criminalization of the Turkish hacktivist group Redhack, Dogan explores the critical conflation of hacktivism with cyber-terrorism—by national security organizations and academic researchers alike —that enables states to criminalize non-violent ... more

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Tecnologías digitales: Miradas críticas de la apropiación en América Latina

Ana Rivoir, María Julia Morales (coord.)

Buenos Aires; Montevideo: CLACSO; RIAT (2019), 405 pp.

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Innovative Arab Media and the New Outlines of Citizenship: A Collaborative Vision Builds Stronger Journalism Across the Region

Lina Attalah

New York: Century Foundation (2019), 15 pp.

"In this report, I have provided a glimpse of the ways in which innovative media outlets act as political agents in their current contexts, through their expressed positions, their content, and the forms in which they publish. Further work is needed to more fully describe the editorial sensibilities ... more

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Social Media in Africa: An Emerging Force for Autocrats and Activists

Geoffrey York

In: Media and Mass Atrocity: The Rwanda Genocide and Beyond

Allan Thompson (ed.)

Waterloo, Ontario: Centre for International Governance Innovation (2019), pp. 415-430

"The most extreme damage inflicted by social media can be seen in South Sudan. As documented in the chapter by Theo Dolan, social media in South Sudan has contributed to hatred and conflict among ethnic groups. Many investigators, including UN investigators, have warned that South Sudan's social med ... ia are triggering violence against ethnic groups. Since the beginning of the civil war in late 2013, social media has fuelled waves of hate speech that have provoked deadly violence and ethnic conflict in South Sudan, including massacres and other atrocities. In that sense, social media has become a new variation of the "hate radio" phenomenon that flourished in Rwanda before and during the 1994 genocide … Social media is also emerging as a powerful way to harass and intimidate the opponents of a regime or a political party. In this sense, it adds another weapon to the arsenal of a powerful regime that already has multiple weapons at its disposal. A regime can mobilize its supporters to use social media in a targeted way against its foes, or it can use its financial resources to create a fake army of fictional users on social media. In either case, it is tilting the playing field against its enemies. A targeted attack through social media can be more effective than the telephone threats or messages often deployed in the past. The use of social media can be more intimidating because it belittles the targeted person in front of a much bigger audience. The presence of this audience means that the attack is more damaging, more difficult to ignore and has the potential to mobilize large numbers of people against the victim … While social media is often used for anti-democratic purposes in Africa's authoritarian states, it has also been used as a force for reform, accountability and justice. It has helped to safeguard the fairness of elections. It has allowed greater scrutiny of potential threats, such as vote-rigging or violence, allowing citizens to be alerted when there is still a chance to prevent the worst abuses. It has put a spotlight on corruption and political wrongdoing, allowing activists to mobilize pressure on governments to resolve these long-neglected problems. In some cases, as it did in the Arab Spring, social media has played a role in toppling an authoritarian state. When an election was called in the small West African state of Gambia, where the dictator Yahya Jammeh had ruled for 22 years, opposition candidates had little access to state-controlled media. So the main opposition party created more than a dozen WhatsApp groups, allowing it to communicate with voters. Other forms of social media also proliferated. A leading independent group, the Gambia Youth and Women's Forum, discussed election issues on a public Facebook group with 55,000 members. The government blocked access to WhatsApp and eventually extended the shutdown to the entire internet, but Gambians used virtual private network (VPN) technology to bypass the shutdown. The opposition won the election and Jammeh was forced to flee the country." (Pages 419-423) more

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Social Media in Egypt: Impacts on Civil Society, Violent Extremism & Government Control

Sabine Shyre

Tokyo: Toda Peace Institute (2019), 7 pp.

"Throughout this policy brief, we vet the use of social media in a major Middle Eastern country - Egypt - where the youth took to the streets to express frustrations that lasted almost a lifetime. While social media helped topple autocratic dictator, Hosni Mubarak, it played the role of Pandora’s ... more

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Brazil’s Digital Resistance Against Corruption

Shaazka Beyerle

Tokyo: Toda Peace Institute (2019), 13 pp.

"From 2008 to 2010, 3.6 million Brazilians took part in the “Ficha Limpa” movement to impact political corruption by ensuring that anyone who runs for office has a “clean record.” This case study on the combination of a grassroots social movement paired with the Avaaz global web movement’s ... more

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Communication for Social Change: Context, Social Movements and the Digital

Pradip Thomas

Los Angeles et al.: Sage (2019), viii, 216 pp.

"Communication for Social Change: Context, Social Movements and the Digital is a critical introduction to communication for social change (CSC) theory. The book presents refreshingly new perspectives and specifically makes the case for CSC theory to factor in context, leanings from social movements ... more

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Personal Data: Political Persuasion. Inside the Influence Industry - How it Works

Berlin: Tactical Tech (2019), 121 pp.

"This guide categorises data-driven campaigning methods to loosely reflect how value is created along the data pipeline, from acquisition (asset), to analysis (intelligence) to application (influence)." (Page 3)

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Knowledge and Legitimacy: The Fragility of Digital Mobilisation in Sudan

Siri Lamoureaux, Timm Sureau

Journal of Eastern African Studies, volume 13, issue 1 (2019), pp. 35-53

"This paper examines digital mobilisation with respect to knowledge production, legitimacy and power in Sudan since new communication and surveillance technologies became widespread. Enthusiasm for digital opposition peaked with the Arab Spring and troughed through the repressive government apparatu ... more

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Online Activism in Latin America

Hilda Chacón (ed.)

New York; London: Routledge (2019), ix, 317 pp.

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Reporting Human Rights, Conflicts, and Peacebuilding: Critical and Global Perspectives

Ibrahim Seaga Shaw, Senthan Selvarajah (eds.)

Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan (2019), xxi, 280 pp.

"This book focuses on the reporting of human rights in broadly defined times of conflict. It brings together scholarly and professional perspectives on the role of the media in constructing human rights and peacebuilding options in conflict and post-conflict environments, drawing on case studies fro ... more

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#meinung #macht #digital #plattformkapitalismus

ila, issue 426 (2019), pp. 4-40

"WhatsApp und Facebook werden auch in Lateinamerika massiv genutzt, vor allem aufgrund ihres vermeintlich kostenlosen Charakters. Auch dort wird das Problem der rechten Meinungsmache und der Fake News diskutiert, denn die Tatsache, dass sich die Leute heute vor allem über Werbeplattformen informier ... en, die unzutreffend „soziale Medien“ genannt werden, hat handfeste politische Auswirkungen. In Brasilien und El Salvador wurden die jüngsten Wahlen nicht über Präsenz und Debatten in den traditionellen Medien gewonnen, sondern über gut vorbereitete und teure WhatsApp-Kampagnen. In Brasilien siegt so der Rechtsextremist Jair Bolsonaro, in El Salvador der politische Wende-hals und PR-Profi Nayib Bukele. Die brasilianischen WhatsApp-Nutzer*innen wurden während des Wahlkampfs mit gefälschtem, häufig explizit sexuellem Inhalt geflutet, wie etwa der Meldung, dass die Arbeiterpartei plane, Babyfläschchen mit Nuckel in Penisform zu verteilen, um die Homosexualisierung der Kleinkinder voranzutreiben. Haarsträubendes postfaktisches Zeitalter – warum fallen Fake News auf fruchtbaren Boden? Klar ist: Klassische Medien haben ihre Funktion als „Gatekeeper“, als Instanzen, die sortieren und filtern, längst eingebüßt. Die Gesellschaften werden vielfältiger und unübersichtlicher: mehr Pluralität auf der einen Seite, andererseits immer tiefere Gräben, die sich durch die Gesellschaften ziehen. Die mediale Öffentlichkeit und die Zugangsbedingungen zu ihr wandeln sich. Die Menschen misstrauen „denen da oben“ durchaus zu Recht. Aber die kommerziellen Global Tech Player beherrschen die Räume für Kommunikation, Information und Meinungsbildung mit Algorithmen. Das hat Folgen. Das Geschäftsmodell basiert auf Datenschürfen, kombiniert mit persönlich zugeschnittener Werbung. Du bekommst das, was du sehen und hören willst, nicht was wahr ist und den Tatsachen entspricht. Und davon profitieren vor allem rechtspopulistische Akteure. Gibt es dazu einen funktionierenden linken Gegenentwurf? Wir, die Macher*innen der ila und ähnlich Gesinnte, wollten eigentlich schon immer zur Bildung einer Gegenöffentlichkeit beitragen, positionierten uns gegen den „bürgerlichen Journalismus als Stellvertreterjournalismus“, wollten „Betroffenenberichterstattung“. Heute haben Rechte und Rechtsextreme den Begriff „Gegenöffentlichkeit“ für sich gekapert. Und jetzt haben wir den Salat. Aktuell existiert eine Öffentlichkeit jenseits der Dichotomie „staatlich geregelt oder privat“. Wir haben kein Problem mehr damit, unsere eigenen Inhalte zu verbreiten und eigene Medien zu schaffen. Das stellt allerdings noch längst nicht sicher, dass wir auch gehört werden. Der springende Punkt ist nicht mehr der Zugang, sondern die Reichweite. Wir konkurrieren mit allen anderen Anbietern von welcher Information auch immer um Aufmerksamkeit. Und dabei verfügen wir, kaum anders als früher, immer noch über die schwächeren Möglichkeiten. Wie sieht also das Überleben im „Plattformkapitalismus“ aus, wie sich darin bewegen, schützen, informieren, seine Meinung bilden und als politisch Aktive oder alternative Medienschaffende die eigenen Inhalte verbreiten? Dazu ein paar Ideen, die sich aus der Auseinandersetzung mit dem Thema und lateinamerikanischen Gesprächspartner*innen herauskristallisieren: Versteht, die Technik zu verstehen (in Lateinamerika ist die Rede von hackear la tecnología, also die Technologie für die eigenen Zwecke zu nutzen wissen), wahrt eine kritische Distanz, haltet eure Informationsquellen vielfältig (was vor allem auch Kindern und Jugendlichen vermittelt werden sollte), schafft und nutzt alternative Plattformen. Manchmal kann auch digitales Fasten das Gebot der Stunde sein. Handy aus und raus auf die Straße – oder in den Wald." (Editorial) more

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Social Media and Politics in Africa: Democracy, Censorship and Security
Deep 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

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Digital Activism Engagement Ecosystem: Creating Constructive Conversations on the Benbere, Habari and Yaga Blogging Platforms

Yaa Jahou Nyan

Utrecht (NL): University of Applied Sciences, Master Thesis (2019), 42 pp.

"The premise of this research is that digital activism, like many other forms of online engagement work in an ecosystem. And just like the success of a species is largely dependent on environmental factors, and its reaction to those circumstances, so does the success of a digital activist platform. ... more

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Revisiting Leadership in Information and Communication Technology (ICT)-Enabled Activism: A Study of Egypt’s Grassroots Human Rights Groups

Evronia Azer, G. Harindranath, Yingqin Zheng

New Media & Society, volume 21, issue 5 (2019), pp. 1141-1169

"Scholars argue that contemporary movements in the age of social media are leaderless and self-organised. However, the concept of connective leadership has been put forward to highlight the need for movements to have figures who connect entities together. This study conducts a qualitative research o ... more

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El reto de la democracia digital: Hacia una ciudadanía interconectada

Elaine Ford Deza

Lima: Jurado Nacional de Elecciones (JNE); Oficina Nacional de Procesos Electorales (ONPE); Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS); Democracia & Desarrollo Internacional (2019), 174 pp.

"Son cuatro los capítulos que acá se incluyen que reúnen teoría, conceptos, casos, iniciativas, datos, ejemplos y, por supuesto, reflexión y análisis. Los capítulos abarcan: 1. Definiciones sobre Democracia Digital. Se revisa de manera teórica, clara y concisa lo que es la Democracia Digital ... more

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Action Steps: A Decade of Civil Society Advocacy in the Information Society. A Baseline Review of the Global Information Society Watch Country Reports (2007-2017)

Alan Finlay

Association for Progressive Communications (APC); International Development Research Centre (IDRC) (2018), 80 pp.

"This review looks back over 11 years of civil society advocacy in the information society – a total of 510 country reports published in Global Information Society Watch (GISWatch) from 2007 to 2017. It covers a period of important global shifts, from the exponential growth and influence of social ... more

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Identidades do jornalismo cidadão: Uma análise da cultura organizacional da Mídia Ninja

Fernanda Vieira Bastos

Brasilia: Universidade de Brasília, Faculdade de Comunicação (FAC), Bachelor Thesis (2018), 105 pp.

"O jornalismo cidadão é uma das principais formas de democratizar a comunicação. A pesquisa possui o objetivo de compreender a cultura organizacional de uma das grandes representantes desse tipo de jornalismo, a Mídia Ninja. Para isso, utilizou-se a metodologia triangular com a aplicação de q ... more

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Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics: How the Internet Era is Transforming Kenya

Nanjala Nyabola

London: Zed Books (2018), xxiv, 273 pp.

"Explores the drastic efforts being made by elites to contain online activism, as well as how ‘fake news’, a failed digital vote-counting system and the incumbent president’s recruitment of Cambridge Analytica contributed to tensions around the 2017 elections. Reframing digital democracy from ... more

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Protests in the Information Age: Social Movements, Digital Practices and Surveillance

Lucas Melgaço, Jeffrey Monaghan (eds.)

London; New York: Routledge (2018), xiii, 176 pp.

"This book explores the complex and contradictory relationships between communication and information technologies and social movements by drawing on different case studies from around the world. The contributions analyse how new communication and information technologies impact the way protests are ... more

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

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