The Facebook Papers: How Authoritarian Governmen...
By Gideon Sarpong Last year’s avalanche of media stories about Meta (formerly Facebook), capped by revelations from the whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former product manager for the company, has put a spotlight on Facebook and how the platform could exercise greater transparency to allow citizens... |
Bearers of Bad News: The Unchecked Spread of Dis...
Last week, elections in the Indian state of Karnataka caught the world’s attention. For many, the results could hold a clue to the fate of Prime Minister Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party going into next year’s national election. Yet, the draw of the story was not the electio... |
Azerbaijan’s Triple Threat to Media and Freedo...
By Turgut Gambar Azerbaijan has been routinely condemned for its alarming human rights record, endemic levels of corruption, and election fraud. Not surprisingly, according to Freedom House’s 2018 Freedom in the World report, Azerbaijan is assessed as a “not free” country. While Azerbaijan has... |
Indonesian Cyber Media Association: Collective A...
Independent news producers in Indonesia say the dominant platforms for digital content distribution, namely Facebook and Google, are taking advantage of them and undermining their viability as media businesses. While this is an increasingly common complaint from news producers, especially in the Glo... |
Facebook’s “Explore Feed” Expe...
By Marija Šajkaš Facebook’s experimentation with a feed that would sideline everything but user-generated content and paid posts is threatening to separate independent journalists and civil society representatives from their audiences in Serbia. “What is the best way to hide online content? Pl... |
Audiences worldwide are hungry for quality news ...
There is growing concern that the channels for digitally distributing news–chief among them Facebook and Google–direct traffic and resources away from smaller, independent outlets in growing media markets. Opaque and fast-changing algorithms can devastate readership overnight, and with the stagg... |
Germany’s Fight Against Fake News: Can it Work...
By Niko Efstathiou and Bebe Santa-Wood The fight against misinformation in media continues to ramp up. We are witnessing an explosion of proposed solutions and approaches in how to best filter “fake news.” Many foundations, NGOs, and tech platforms are putting money into media literacy, fact-c... |
With Mainstream Media Weakened in Bolivia, Socia...
By Raul Peñaranda U. In February 2016, the independent Bolivian news agency ANF, where I work as managing editor, revealed that vice president Alvaro García Linera had not graduated from Mexico’s prestigious UNAM university with a degree in mathematics, as he had been claiming for decades. AN... |
When Hate Goes Viral: The Danger of Social Media...
By Ashif Rabi Last November, a group of Bangladeshi Muslims attacked a Hindu neighborhood in the Eastern part of Bangladesh. Thousands of people ransacked the temples and homes of Hindu families. Attacks such as these on minorities are not a new thing in Bangladesh, but this particular incident ha... |
In Vietnam, Digital is Democratizing
By Pham Muoi Nguyen and Dr. Quan-Hoang Vuong Vietnam has long been a place where media and newspapers are under strict control both by the government as well as the propaganda departments of the communist party. Although the country has more than 850 newspapers and magazines, the homogeneity in ... |