One of Paraguay’s most widely-listened to community radio stations, Radio Viva, has recently joined the APC community as a member through its parent organisation, Asociación Trinidad Comunicación, Cultura y Desarollo. Asociación Trinidad works towards the democratisation of communications and improving civil participation through solidarity in action for a sustainable Paraguay. One of the many ways it achieves this work is through Radio Viva.

“It was an eye-opener,” says privacy advocate Gus Hosein when he talks about the findings from APC’s exploratory research on sexuality and the internet in Brazil, India, Lebanon, South Africa, and USA. And it’s given him some good ammunition with which to field those annoying radio callers who question the need for privacy online.

APC members elected a new board of directors for the world’s oldest online network during a ballot at the eleventh face-to-face APC council meeting on March 20.

African countries have committed to migrating to digital broadcasting by June 2015. It will be a costly process and it is not clear who will benefit — or where the resources needed to make the transition will come from. A new website provides independent information for policy-makers about making the transition and reports on digital migration in Ghana, Nigeria and Senegal.

An unprecedented achievement for the study and prevention of further violence against women in Cambodia was announced last month with the opening of a Women and Gender Studies Centre in the capital city Phnom Penh.

Although the political significance of piracy as a form of rebellion in South Africa has mostly dropped away in the post-Apartheid era, “the sharply racialised patterns of inequality and access to media have not,” says a new book that looks at the prevalence of media piracy, how it is organised, and why people buy pirated goods or work in the black market. The book collects case studies from various countries including a chapter on South Africa by APC. The case study of Hanover Park, a township outside Cape Town, reveals that watching pirated films brings families together. And more importantly, allows people with limited means the opportunity to access information and culture they would otherwise not be able to afford, bridging the social gap between the different social classes and making them be a part of a global conversation.

Various social organisations that have been working together since 2005 to shape the information society in Latin America and the Caribbean have once again chosen APC to act as the civil society liaison within the eLAC2015 Plan of Action. Latin American and Caribbean governments in the Third Ministerial Conference on the Information Society approved the plan in November 2010.

“Open spectrum is important because access is important” says Steve Song, telecommunications fellow at the Shuttleworth Foundation in an interview with APCNews. But in South Africa, the problem is not lack of access – it’s that access is not affordable. Freeing up wireless spectrum, such as television white spaces —the space between channels— or making more information available on spectrum that is currently not in use could help to make affordable access a reality. Song is the author of a new country survey report commissioned by APC in which he explores how spectrum is currently managed in South Africa, and the barriers that are blocking availability.

Boyfriends and girlfriends rarely make commitments and plans to delete private photographs of each other when they snap them. What happens when the relationship breaks down and one of them decides to post them online? What about the people who receive and forward the images and videos? In each act of viewing and forwarding, they are continuing and replicating the violence. APC is launching a new campaign to stop the spread of violence by committing not to forward abusive messages. We invite you to take a stand.