COMMENT BLOG
A remark, a critique, an opinion…
Political accountability in the age of Twitter
On 19 September, Veteran BBC journalist John Humphreys hosted his last “Today” radio programme after 32 years. Known for his aggressive interviewing on a morning news programme that for decades has often set the tone and issues for the day’s news in Britain, he used...
When fact-checking isn’t about ‘right’ or ‘wrong’
The rise of “fake news” charges and deliberate disinformation have led to an important counter effort: fact-checking. News agencies, civil society organisations, and concerned individuals have taken on the fight for “truth” – assessing political claims and struggling...
Children’s communication rights need better protection
Google should have known better! An Associated Press piece in The Guardian newspaper (“YouTube fined $170m for collecting children's personal data”, 4 September 2019) notes a serious violation of children’s right to privacy: “Google’s video site YouTube has been fined...
Climate change literacy and community media
Not everyone is familiar with climate change. A new survey released by Afrobarometer paints a bleak picture of how agriculture conditions are worsening due to higher temperatures, delayed rainfall, and crop failure. Crucially, among some people, it also identifies...
Privacy on the frontier of lawlessness
Privacy was something that used to be taken for granted. Ordinarily, the private life of an individual was not open to scrutiny, while public life was the concern of law and order and decency. In communication terms, privacy meant that only the addressee could open...
Ban books, ban people
“For the past twenty years, the main issue restricting ublic debate in terms of Turkish laws has been the prosecution and imprisonment of journalists, writers and intellectuals on the grounds that they contribute to violence and terrorism.” This quote comes from a...
From manufacturing consent to manufacturing consensus
An influential book on communications in the 1980s was Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of Mass Communication, by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky. It proposed a “propaganda model” as a way of understanding how the mass media system intersected with the U.S....
It’s vital to be able to “read” social media
In an era when misinformation and “fake news” abound on social media, it is important to understand where people get their news. Democratic participation and accountable government rest on informed and balanced opinion that is transparent about its motivations and...
Big data’s big brother: Real-time data processing
Walk around any city and your face will be caught on camera and might even be added to a facial-recognition database. That data can now be processed in real-time. Regulations about how it can be used are minimal and generally weak. The military, law-enforcement...
“Democracy, as we know it, is about to die…”
There was a mantra among communities and businesses when foreign goods and huge chain stores started crowding out small, local operations. “Buy local” was the cry. With climate change sensitising people to the carbon footprint of food and flowers flown in from around...
Civil rights and the climate crisis
Philip Alston, UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, writes that the impacts of global heating are likely to undermine not only basic rights to life, water, food, and housing for hundreds of millions of people, but also democracy and the rule of...
Short-sighted policies for short-term gain
Accessibility and affordability are watchwords of the communication rights movement. Yet when it comes to digital access, governments have still not got their act together. The Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) says that Africans face the highest cost to connect...
PHOTO CREDIT: Paul Jeffrey/ACT Alliance