Strategic use of the internet
The Internet Freedom Festival (IFF), which takes place in Valencia, Spain on a yearly basis, has become one of the main events for civil society to gather around issues of surveillance, censorship and circumvention worldwide. Hundreds of activists, journalists and members of the technical community get together to explore trends, challenges and strategies. At this 2017 edition, APC is fully supporting the IFF as a partner, along with organisations like Hivos and ...
The Association for Progressive Communications and Derechos Digitales are delighted to invite organisations from the global South to participate in the Global South Mixer Party, to take place at the Internet Freedom Festival 2017 in Valencia, Spain, on Thursday 9 March at 19:30 in Patio Naranjos. We want to offer a space for exchange and interaction between actors from the global South. Are you part of a project, campaign or initiative that you would like to share with us, or do you want...
Social Media Exchange (SMEX) is a registered Lebanese NGO that works to advance self-regulating information societies in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). While they engage globally, Lebanon is their home, making Arab society and culture their primary context for action. APCNews interviewed Jessica Dheere and Mohamad Najem, the co-directors of SMEX, which just joined the APC network. APC...
Do internet campaigns work? This is what Alexandra Demetrianova reflects upon in her research for GISWatch about labour rights violations in garment factories of Cambodia. In this interview, she discusses how the internet has played a key role in the struggles of garment factory workers (mostly female) and trade unionists to demand for an increase in their minimum wage. She also speaks about th...
Although in a number of countries the gender dimension of the digital divide has been bridged, this is not so in Nigeria, where there is huge differential between men and women in terms of access to and use of the internet. Within the country, it is worse in the states in the northern parts of the country. This is due to a number of factors including culture, religion, education and attitudes. ...
“In this age, when the mass media rest in fewer and fewer hands, we must have strong, vital, independent voices if we ever want to hear all the stories or seek justice. We have an incredible opportunity to change lives.” (Peter Gabriel – WITNESS co-founder) One of the distinct characteristics of these times is that many people have access to devices that in previous days were...
In a changing environment with tremendous competition among messages, how can we ensure that our communications have maximum impact? APCNews talked to Paz Peña, a Chilean journalist and social communicator who has been working on digital rights issues for the past eight years. She was advocacy director for the NGO Derechos Digitales, APC’s member organisation in Chile, until recently when sh...
During the “Arab Spring” of 2011, the internet was a space for mobilisation. Since then, it has become a space for oppression of activism and dissent as well, with the governments of numerous countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA, Maghreb-Machrek in Arabic) adopting or amending legislation to crack down on online speech, deploying censorship and surveillance tools in an attemp...
The Arab world is undergoing tremendous change. From the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia in 2011 to the war and refugee crisis in Syria and the fight against fundamentalists in Iraq, the region is overburdened with change. The strengths and weaknesses of digital rights, as well as the mere ability to use the internet securely, are not immune to these geopolitical shifts. Parallel to these shifts...
Association for Progressive Communications (APC) 2018
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