It has led to wholesale urgent calls to assist Afghans – particularly women, journalists, and those who have worked for or aided humanitarian aid organisations and military – to flee the country or to be protected if they choose to remain. See for instance, Global Alliance on Media and Gender’s urgent call on the United Nations take urgent action to protect women journalists seeking to leave or remain in Afghanistan

The crisis also lays bare the digital media conundrum – is it a human rights blessing or curse?

In his recent opinion piece for The New York Times, Thomas Friedman, says there is hope that through digital communication, the Taliban can be held to account:

“When the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, iPhones, Facebook and Twitter didn’t even exist. Flash forward to today: Afghanistan is not only much more connected to the world, but it’s connected internally as well. It will not be nearly as easy for the Taliban to hide their abuses from the world or from fellow Afghans.

In 2001, virtually no one in Afghanistan owned a mobile phone. Today, more than 70 percent of Afghans do, and many of them have internet-enabled smartphones. While there is nothing inherently liberalizing about owning a phone, according to a 2017 study by Internews, Afghanistan’s social media ‘is already propagating change as it has become a platform for denouncing cases of corruption and injustice, bringing attention to causes that have not yet been addressed on traditional media and seemingly letting any social media user voice a public opinion.’

Maybe the Taliban will just shut it all down. And maybe they won’t be able to.”

But there is also evidence that the Taliban is already using digital accounts and the data held by government and NGOs to track down those they consider “collaborators”, and guides to help individuals delete their digital history and increase the security of their devices is also being shared [[]]

The future of Afghanistan is grim, but in the words of Malala:

“We will have time to debate what went wrong in the war in Afghanistan, but in this critical moment we must listen to the voices of Afghan women and girls. They are asking for protection, for education, for the freedom and the future they were promised. We cannot continue to fail them.”

We cannot let the abuses of any government or powerful group stay in the shadows. This is the essence of our communication rights – and our responsibility.

Photo: Ottawa, Canada. August 14th, 2021. End War in Afghanistan protest from local diaspora, asking the West to stand up to the Taliban. Image: Meandering Images/Shutterstock

Far ahead of current growing concerns about fake news, disinformation, and an info-pandemic, he warned of “filter bubbles” – personalised information ecosystems or digital echo chambers – that insulate us from views of the world that do not accord with ours.

Of course, there is nothing intrinsically new about filter bubbles. Readers of The Sun newspaper in Great Britain were not likely to be readers of The Guardian. In the USA, aficionados of Fox News Channel are unlikely to tune in to PBS documentaries on social welfare or prison reform.

Pariser is an author, activist, and entrepreneur concerned to make communication technology and media serve democracy. He became executive director of MoveOn.org in 2004, where he helped pioneer the practice of online citizen engagement. He is the co-founder of Upworthy, a website for meaningful viral content, and Avaaz, a global citizen’s organization.

In an essay in Wired (13 October 2020), Pariser noted that today in place of outdoor space, “we spend much of our time living and conversing with others in a different location: digital space. But social media and messaging platforms weren’t designed to serve as public spaces. They were designed to monetize attention.” He went on to call for “truly public squares on the Internet”.

To some extent, this is what used to be called public service media, now morphing into public interest media. But it’s broader than that. Our common digital future must be built around the call for accessibility, affordability, diversity, and accountability.

Worldwide, people need to be able to access digital platforms in ways that they can afford. Diversity means that no one should be made invisible, censored or silenced. Accountable means that both platform users and providers take moral responsibility for content.

Pariser identifies three challenges. First, money. He advocates “taxing targeted advertising and using those funds to shore up democratic functions that the big tech platforms have eroded, such as local journalism.”

Second, talent and research. We need to identify a diverse, representative generation of tech builders who believe in the cause.

Third, public imagination. How to persuade people and communities of the direct benefits of an open and democratic digital communication infrastructure.

Truly public squares on the Internet is an ideal worth struggling for.

Photo: Digital Storm/Shutterstock

There are undoubtedly many instances of positive and exciting changes taking place. Unfortunately, the overall picture is dispiriting. Studies show that organisations like WACC, which advocate for and defend people’s right to communicate, still have much to do.

Published on 2 December 2019, Article 19’s Global Expression Report 2018/2019 summarises major developments – both positive and negative – in freedom of expression around the world. The report is a barometer of national contexts that collectively point to failures of oversight and emerging trends.

Based on qualitative data from 161 countries covering 2018, together with a backward glance from 2019, the report details the factors that contribute to the health (or otherwise) of freedom of expression globally. Its conclusion:

“Too many countries are encouraging a downward trend in the rights of their own people. The data translates into a bald fact, that three of every four people on the planet are experiencing a deteriorating environment for freedom of expression… We see that tactics aimed at suppression are multiform, and while old strategies remain effective (such as silencing of journalists), new tactics are added to the armoury every year.”

The report’s introduction is titled “Expression breathes life and legitimacy back into our governments”, underlining the symbiotic relationship between good governance and good citizenship. It says, “Legal threats to freedom of expression continue – from broad and ambiguous national security laws to laws that unduly limit online expression, as well as new frameworks that delegate blocking and removal to online platforms, which often do so without transparency or accountability.”

Of particular concern are digital media and digital platforms, where the use of algorithms to monitor content has led to “a huge volume of people and communities affected by inaccurate and unjust content removals. In particular, voices of difference and dissent are being silenced online; human rights defenders, LGBTQ+ communities, and political opposition groups across the world have had their content removed and accounts deleted.”

Urgent work is being done on the ethics of the digital transformation of society and on securing a positive role for civil society organisations in the expansion and regulation of digital communication technologies. To begin with, as Article 19’s Executive Director Thomas Hughes concludes, “Our best path forward is a public debate – held everywhere from the street to the judiciary – which both feeds into and demands accountability from our democratic structures.”

Photo above: Trismegist san/Shutterstock