COMMENT BLOG
A remark, a critique, an opinion…
Speaking up for decency and dialogue
Stars on the digital Walk of Infamy are being awarded to world leaders. Former US President Donald Trump, current Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, and current Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro have each received one. They have been admonished by Twitter and...
Facial recognition use and abuse
Public safety and national security are two advantages of facial recognition technology. Law enforcement agencies use the technology to identify known criminals and to find missing children or seniors. Airports are increasingly adding facial recognition technology to...
Biosurveillance can threaten human rights
Using smartphones to track and trace during the Covid-19 epidemic creates a smokescreen for wider surveillance measures that may infringe people’s right to privacy. Human rights activists are concerned that such data can be used to discriminate against migrants,...
Time to detrumpify the media
The antics of the outgoing US president have raised profound questions about the role of mass and social media in society today. How do public interest media – the kind that publish information and points of view on important issues that affect policies, lives, and...
16 Days of Activism and the News Media in 2020
This month marks the start of the annual '16 Days of activism against gender-based violence' campaign running from November 25 to Human Rights Day December 10. Unlike previous years, lockdowns and curfews intended to arrest the spread of Covid19 have led to a...
Democracy is freedom of the press
People the world over are willing – some are even praying for – a free and fair election in the USA on November 3. In ordinary times, for that to happen the media must also be free and fair. But these have not been ordinary times. Until very recently, the news media...
Our common digital future
In his 2011 book, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding From You, Eli Pariser wrote, “the rise of pervasive, embedded filtering is changing the way we experience the internet and ultimately the world.” Far ahead of current growing concerns about fake news,...
Investigative journalism is a form of activism
Covid-19, migrants, and the climate crisis apart, public interest media is today’s hot topic. In the USA, Hungary, and the Philippines – to cite just three countries – some politicians have labelled media outlets critical of their policies and actions “fake media” or...
In bringing about gender justice, men have a role to play
Women all over the world are celebrating the sixth instalment in 25 years of the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP). What is it? A series of extensive gender and media monitoring studies conducted every five years since 1995 by WACC Global, an international NGO...
Communication as a building block of a post-pandemic world
Since the emergence of the communication rights movements in the 1980s, activists have advanced a vision of the right to communicate as a highly political enterprise. The main idea at the heart of the movement has always been that democratizing media and communication...
Investing in journalism that serves the public interest
Public interest journalism addresses the needs of citizens in a democratic community. Journalism that serves the public interest acknowledges that citizens are able to comprehend the policies and decisions that affect them. It assumes they are capable of applying...
Instagram – the opium of the people
Once used mainly by teens and young millennials, Instagram continues to grow as one of the most popular social media platforms. As of June 2018, Instagram had reached one billion monthly active users. More than 500 million use the platform daily. Two years previously,...
PHOTO CREDIT: Paul Jeffrey/ACT Alliance