Visible Protests in the Hybrid Media Era: Social Media, Live Streaming and Witnessing

I’ve got a new blog post up on the FuJoMedia website, where I reflect on this Sunday’s anti-corruption protests in Russia and consider the risks and benefits of live streaming and networked social media for protest visibility.

How do protestors make themselves visible? One could argue that the whole point of a protest – a public, uncomfortable act of dissent often exemplified by occupying space and blocking streets – is to capture people’s (and governments’) attention to the point where they cannot look away. The difficulty, of course, comes when protest events and actions are mediated by mainstream news outlets who decide which frame to apply to the protests and which parts and angles of them to make visible – or invisible – to their audience. Not an ideal setup.

But in the hybrid media system, where according to Chadwick, old and new media co-exist and entangle with technologies and actors using them, visibility becomes a more complex concept. The mainstream media no longer hold a monopoly over visibility, as connected mobile devices and social media platforms afford citizens the power to capture, share and consume their own versions of what they see and experience during a protest.

Read more at the link.

 

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New Ranking Digital Rights Index Is Out

The Ranking Digital Rights Project has published their 2017 Corporate Accountability Index, which evaluates 22 of the world’s most powerful telecommunications, internet, and mobile companies on their public commitments and disclosed policies affecting users’ freedom of expression and privacy.

This year’s report finds that company disclosure remains inadequate across the board, and users are given little information to make choices about their security and privacy and have little control over what happens to their data. Further, most companies seem to disclose even less information about their freedom of expression policies and practices than about privacy-related ones.

I am proud to have contributed to the research for the Index and to have been a part of an important effort to increase accountability and transparency of corporations who control a large chunk of the world’s “privately owned” digital public spaces and networks.

Read a summary of the 2017 Ranking Digital Rights Corporate Accountability Index, see the report data and infographics, or download the complete report.