In 2020 Donald Trump was reportedly the biggest source of political disinformation in the world, fuelling social unrest, voter supression, and distrust in democracy. The US election forced us to stare over the precipice at what happens if the political deployment of digital disinformation is allowed to go unchecked…
Co-authored with Becky Faith and first published here by the Institute of Development Studies. As Covid-19 tracing apps proliferate this month, governments of all hues will gain the ability to track citizen movements in real time and to collect the largest ever trove of personal and real-time location data in history. This could save thousands of lives. It could also be a historic inflection point in civil liberties, the depth and scale of which was unimaginable to George Orwell or…
The Principles for Digital Development were written in 2012 by a group of international donors and multilateral organisations. They are a great point of reference to guide practitioners applying digital technologies to development programs. In 2015 USAID led a successful process to recruit 50 other agencies to sign-up the Principles including the World Bank and DFID. Who could be against the good advice provided by the Principles (below), which include Use Open Standards and Open Source Software; Reuse and Improve; Address Privacy and Security; Design With The User and Be Collaborative? I support these principles whole-heartedly…
Toxic masculinity and everyday sexism create a hostile environment for women in technology workplaces and in online spaces. In an increasingly digital world the male-domination of technology design, software production, and digital content is a serious problem that demands urgent remedy…
Following a popular Twitter Thread I wrote on this subject recently, I thought it might be useful to have these all in one place…
Richard Heeks recently asked whether the emerging relationship between digital technology and international development should be referred to as “Digital Development” or “Digital-for-Development”. I use these two terms to refer to different things…
Nothing is more practical than rules to guide thinking. In this post I share the ten rules I use to think about technology and society…
I recently ran a session on Digital Development here at IDS for staff from two bilateral donors. Preparing for that session amid news revelations about the abuse of social media by governments and corporations in countries across Africa & Asia turned my thinking on Information and Communications Technology for Development (ICT4D) on its head…
Mobile internet use in the Philippines is growing rapidly, but so are associated digital inequalities. I’ve just published a new research report with my colleague Kevin Hernandez based on our study in the Philippines, which suggests that far from creating equality of access to information, the use of mobile and internet technologies is creating new class divisions in technology access and new forms of digital inequality…
This month I have been in the Philippines researching participatory technology initiatives designed to include Filipino citizens in participatory governance programmes…