Access to information
Article republished from CIPESA's website. As of midnight on July 1, 2018, telecom companies in Uganda blocked access to social media platforms for all users and required them to pay a newly introduced Over-The-Top (OTT) tax before regaining access. The tax resulted from a March 2018 presidential directive for social media to be taxed to raise resources “to cope with the consequences” of social media users’ “opinions, prejudices [and] insults”. The tax will likely push&nb...
In October 2017, Media Matters for Democracy (MMfD) and its team of reporters started a journalistic endeavour to test the effectiveness of the right to information (RTI) laws in the federal capital Islamabad, and the provinces of Sindh, Punjab, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Between October 2017 and March 2018, the team filed a total of 195 records requests to different public bodies across Pakistan and followed up insistently to gather data and information. This piece details the team’s experien...
In the last five years the legislative landscape governing the practice of the right to information (RTI) in Pakistan has improved tremendously. RTI was codified as a constitutional right of the citizens of Pakistan with the 18th amendment in April 2010. The right was granted through the inclusion of Article 19(A) which states: “Every citizen shall have the right to have access to information...
While an increasing number of people are now using the internet, the lack of comparable and accurate gender disaggregated data obscures the true extent of the differences in access to, and use of the internet between men and women. This toolkit has been designed for stakeholders who are interested in integrating gender into their research projects in order to better understand this gender gap i...
Welcome to the fifth monthly round-up of developments impacting your local access networks. Categories 1. Get involved Digital Empowerment Foundation is calling for sessions for their Digital Citizen Summit. The deadline to submit your session proposal is 30 April 2018. Read more. 2. Calls for grants The Beyond the Net Medium and Large Grants Programme is now open for applications until 1...
7amleh – The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media published its annual report on Palestinian digital activism under the title #Palestine 2017. This annual report is being published for the third consecutive year and monitors social media activities of all Palestinians throughout 2017. The research provides statistics and information about Palestinians' internet access and usage, ex...
Main purpose of the job APC is looking for a person to join its communications team as content curator and writer for APC-managed platforms and projects, with a focus on capacity-building materials. This position will require you to edit and produce written outputs, and to find, organise and, when necessary, re-adapt the materials in several online spaces, like toolkit.ngo. This position also r...
At three different times over the past four years, the EROTICS project: An Exploratory Research on Sexuality and the Internet, by the APC Women’s Rights Programme, sent out a questionnaire to its worldwide network of gender and sexuality activists, advocates, professionals and scholars, to learn about the role of information and communication technologies in their work. The survey was particu...
In the context of the Internet Governance Forum 2017 and growing international debates about the so called “fake news”, the undersigned organizations would like to express strong concerns about possible paths that the framing of the issue is taking. The terminology has been widely spread in rhetorics from the Global North, but we cannot import such a concept without taking into account the ...
What have our readers liked most during this year that is coming to an end? Check these stories out if you haven't had a chance to read them yet! What do we want to accomplish in 2017? For years, the internet has had a transformative effect throughout the world. Despite the increasing curbs on freedoms and rights, APC will continue to work on promoting access to a free and open internet to impr...
Association for Progressive Communications (APC) 2018
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