Models for Digital Rights Campaigning

The next session at AoIR 2018 starts with Efrat Daskal, who begins with a brief review of the development of the digital rights discourse since the original UN Declaration of Human Rights. Human rights in the digital age have developed especially since 2000, and especially the Internet Rights and Principles Charter of 2014 has made an important contribution. This enshrined the rights to access to information and technology, privacy and safety, and freedom of speech.

Several civic campaigns have also contributed to this, driven by various digital activists and civil society organisations around the world. These operate at national, regional, and international levels, in political, judicial, and public arenas; some lobby for policy change, file lawsuits testing current regulation, or seek to influence public discourse through journalistic work or public engagement.

The challenges in working with the public lie in the public’s still very limited understanding of the issues; there is also a decline in political and civil involvement, and – especially in non-Western contexts – also significant political interference with the work of international digital rights advocacy groups.

One of the big challenges here is to build communities of followers and supporters; this is done through communication, education, and activation. Organisations use multiple channels to reach multiple audiences, including social media (even in spite of some of the issues that exist on such platforms themselves); they also create hidden and private channels, especially in non-Western contexts, and engage offline with local groups.

Educational activities are directed at expanding the public’s knowledge, enhancing public safety, and promoting political action; this is done by providing informational resources as well as facilities to simplify the steps towards politics action. This also requires cultural information framing, in order to motivate people’s action through easily accessible stories.

Finally, initiating political activities and events is a less prominent approach, largely because organised politics is paying less and less attention to such events. Overall, the organisations function more as mediators of technical as well as political knowledge; they promote lived citizenship to create national civic consciousness, and are moving increasingly from transnational to global approaches.