What recent protests in the Democratic Republic ...
When people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) took to Twitter in June to protest skyrocketing internet and mobile data prices, it was only the latest in a series of struggles between Congolese netizens and the government over internet policy. On May 17, netizens in the DRC were shocked t... |
Distorting the News in Africa: How Dictators Hav...
By Elie Smith In response to the influence of Western media in their countries, African dictators have ramped up nationalistic and pan-African propaganda through government-sponsored media. These media outlets spend their time either painting an overly rosy picture of the situation in Africa, or att... |
Highlights from the Global Media Policy Forum: T...
By Teemu Henriksson Editor’s Note: This post was first published on WAN-IFRA’s website and is republished here with permission. WAN-IFRA’s Public Affairs and Media Policy department held its annual Global Media Policy Forum held at the World News Media Congress on Monday 13 Ju... |
Russia’s Internet Crackdown
By Guest Blogger As part of Russia’s authoritarian turn following Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency in May 2012, the Kremlin has launched an unprecedented crackdown on the Russian Internet. A barrage of restrictive new laws, the blocking of websites critical of the government, the prose... |
Blogging Against Autocratic Rule in Nepal: The R...
By Tilak Pathak On the morning of February 1, 2005, just before heading to my job at I watched the king of Nepal announce on national television that he had ousted the country’s democratic government. Shortly thereafter, I attempted to call my editor only to find that all phone lines had been cut... |
Correa’s Creative Use of Copyright Law to Stif...
By Vanessa Aliaga It is safe to say that Ecuadorean President, Rafael Correa, does not take criticism well. His frenzied Twitter rants garnered international attention last year when John Oliver, a British comedian and the host of HBO’s Last Week Tonight, mocked the president’s temper on air. Bu... |
The Growing Trend Toward Criminalizing Free Spee...
By Lamii Kpargoi Over the last two decades, many African countries have progressed from repressive governance, including suppressing dissenting opinion, to democracy, opening some space for freedom of expression. Thirteen countries, including Sierra Leone, Tunisia, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Nigeri... |
Year in Review: Top 5 CIMA Blog Posts of 2015
As 2015 comes to an end, it’s a good time to take stock of which topics attracted the most interest on CIMA’s blog over the past year. To do this, I performed a quick analysis of the number of blog post visitors in order to compile a list of the five most-read blog posts of […] |
Soft censorship Tweetchat round up – #soft...
[View the story “#softcensorCHAT” on Storify] |
Europe’s failed intervention on Hungarian ...
Since 2010 Hungary–a tiny, EU-member, CEE country–became the symbol for modern, illiberal censorship and dictatorship, oppressing media freedom, introducing soft-censorship and turning public service media to state propaganda. Hungary by today serves as case study on theories of modern dictators... |