scholarly journals Digital Pitfalls: The Politics of Digitalization in Bangladesh

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdul Aziz

The state-led investment in digital infrastructure under the ruling party’s political agenda of “Digital Bangladesh” has given rise to scholarly and policy debates, especially around issues of digital surveillance and media censorship. Such concerns have intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic. This article analyzes contemporary Bangladesh in the context of emerging trends related to the digitalization of society. In particular, I employ the concept of “digital pitfalls” to explore the state’s use of surveillance and the politics of fear to limit freedom of expression and silence critical voices in the digital age.

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 666-670 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fidel González-Quiñones ◽  
Juan D Machin-Mastromatteo

We present a classification of the types of censorship of media to frame the various issues that journalism and freedom of expression face in Mexico, which mainly include the role of the State in preventing or enforcing censorship, the monopoly of a few corporate groups that control most of the mass media and dictate fixed editorial lines throughout all of them, the effect of violence on journalism and the issues that are emerging around the freedom of expression in social media.


2011 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-11
Author(s):  
Janet Deppe ◽  
Marie Ireland

This paper will provide the school-based speech-language pathologist (SLP) with an overview of the federal requirements for Medicaid, including provider qualifications, “under the direction of” rule, medical necessity, and covered services. Billing, documentation, and reimbursement issues at the state level will be examined. A summary of the findings of the Office of Inspector General audits of state Medicaid plans is included as well as what SLPs need to do in order to ensure that services are delivered appropriately. Emerging trends and advocacy tools will complete the primer on Medicaid services in school settings.


Author(s):  
Corey Brettschneider

How should a liberal democracy respond to hate groups and others that oppose the ideal of free and equal citizenship? The democratic state faces the hard choice of either protecting the rights of hate groups and allowing their views to spread, or banning their views and violating citizens' rights to freedoms of expression, association, and religion. Avoiding the familiar yet problematic responses to these issues, this book proposes a new approach called value democracy. The theory of value democracy argues that the state should protect the right to express illiberal beliefs, but the state should also engage in democratic persuasion when it speaks through its various expressive capacities: publicly criticizing, and giving reasons to reject, hate-based or other discriminatory viewpoints. Distinguishing between two kinds of state action—expressive and coercive—the book contends that public criticism of viewpoints advocating discrimination based on race, gender, or sexual orientation should be pursued through the state's expressive capacities as speaker, educator, and spender. When the state uses its expressive capacities to promote the values of free and equal citizenship, it engages in democratic persuasion. By using democratic persuasion, the state can both respect rights and counter hateful or discriminatory viewpoints. The book extends this analysis from freedom of expression to the freedoms of religion and association, and shows that value democracy can uphold the protection of these freedoms while promoting equality for all citizens.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-41
Author(s):  
Donato VESE

Governments around the world are strictly regulating information on social media in the interests of addressing fake news. There is, however, a risk that the uncontrolled spread of information could increase the adverse effects of the COVID-19 health emergency through the influence of false and misleading news. Yet governments may well use health emergency regulation as a pretext for implementing draconian restrictions on the right to freedom of expression, as well as increasing social media censorship (ie chilling effects). This article seeks to challenge the stringent legislative and administrative measures governments have recently put in place in order to analyse their negative implications for the right to freedom of expression and to suggest different regulatory approaches in the context of public law. These controversial government policies are discussed in order to clarify why freedom of expression cannot be allowed to be jeopardised in the process of trying to manage fake news. Firstly, an analysis of the legal definition of fake news in academia is presented in order to establish the essential characteristics of the phenomenon (Section II). Secondly, the legislative and administrative measures implemented by governments at both international (Section III) and European Union (EU) levels (Section IV) are assessed, showing how they may undermine a core human right by curtailing freedom of expression. Then, starting from the premise of social media as a “watchdog” of democracy and moving on to the contention that fake news is a phenomenon of “mature” democracy, the article argues that public law already protects freedom of expression and ensures its effectiveness at the international and EU levels through some fundamental rules (Section V). There follows a discussion of the key regulatory approaches, and, as alternatives to government intervention, self-regulation and especially empowering users are proposed as strategies to effectively manage fake news by mitigating the risks of undue interference by regulators in the right to freedom of expression (Section VI). The article concludes by offering some remarks on the proposed solution and in particular by recommending the implementation of reliability ratings on social media platforms (Section VII).


2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (7) ◽  
pp. 670-685
Author(s):  
Erik Skare

Rapid developments in digital infrastructure have made all-encompassing surveillance all too possible. However, the same infrastructure has simultaneously enabled the use of new possibility spaces that react to, shape, and resist these structures of control and surveillance. The Israel/Palestine conflict is no different, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) has created an electronic unit with hackers to circumvent and resist the Israeli matrix of control and its surveillance. I argue that out of this dialectical relationship in Palestine, between new possibility spaces of resistance and structures of control, new phenomena arise in the gray area between the nation state hacker and the hacktivist as PIJ emulates the features of a modern state army. To understand the nature of its electronic unit, one must take this dialectic into account by introducing the category, “proto-state hacker.”


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernando Miró-Llinares

Nowadays it is easy to find public statements about the situation of freedom of expression in different democracies questioning the exercise of this right, perhaps as a result of the political tensions to which democratic states have been subjected in recent years. In this sense, Spain does not escape from these diagnoses. Both international indicators that try to measure the situation and evolution of freedom of expression in different States and academic scholars highlight the excessive criminalization of certain speeches that end up in criminal proceedings that sentence people who make offensive expressions, mainly through social networks. However, in order to reach this diagnosis it is necessary to put together all the symptoms that would lead us to that conclusion. Therefore, in this paper I analyze two main indicators that could shed more light on the state of freedom of expression in Spain and the impact that social networks have had on it. Firstly, I analyze the legislative evolution of expression offences since 1995, to evaluate the limits of certain expressions in order to reach the conclusion that, effectively, over the years the punitive scope of what cannot be expressed has been extended, thus limiting, at least in abstract, freedom of expression. Secondly, I analyze the jurisprudential evolution of all these crimes since 1995 to show that, indeed, the proliferation of sentences from 2015 to the present shows the increase in the criminalization of expressions that are made eminently through social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. To conclude, I reflect on the possibility that the latest absolutory sentence by the Constitutional Court of the singer of the band Def con Dos César Strawberry will increase the feeling that, from now on, all expression is admissible and, therefore, will increase free expression in general and, in particular, in social networks, since, it does not seem that our legislator is willing to rectify in its steps the excessive criminalization of certain offenses. I also reflect on the need to approach freedom of expression in a more empirical way and the need to evaluate not only the limitations that the law and judicial processes impose on freedom of expression, but also the extent to which citizens in general and, in particular, users of social networks, without the need to have gone through any criminal proceedings, have stopped expressing their opinions because only in this way will it be possible to determine the state of health of our right to freedom of expression.


2021 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 105-118
Author(s):  
Žilvinas Švedkauskas ◽  
Ahmed Maati

An emerging literature has shown concerns about the impact of the pandemic on the proliferation of digital surveillance. Contributing to these debates, in this paper we demonstrate how the pandemic facilitates digital surveillance in three ways: (1) By shifting everyday communication to digital means it contributes to the generation of extensive amounts of data susceptible to surveillance. (2) It motivates the development of new digital surveillance tools. (3) The pandemic serves as a perfect justification for governments to prolong digital surveillance. We provide empirical anecdotes for these three effects by examining reports by the Global Digital Policy Incubator at Stanford University. Building on our argument, we conclude that we might be on the verge of a dangerous normalization of digital surveillance. Thus, we call on scholars to consider the full effects of public health crises on politics and suggest scrutinizing sources of digital data and the complex relationships between the state, corporate actors, and the sub-contractors behind digital surveillance.


2016 ◽  
Vol I (I) ◽  
pp. 85-100
Author(s):  
Ahmed Sohail ◽  
Ahmed Fasih ◽  
Zubair Muhammad

The respect of human rights in a society determines the destination of that society or state. It is the level of satisfaction of citizens of a country which convinces them to work for the growth and progress of that state or society. The people of FATA are living under a draconian law which is known as Frontier Crime Regulations (FCR). There is agrave human rights violation of the people of FATA under this law. Freedom of speech, freedom of expression etc. are hampered by the FCR and the common people live under a threat of collective punishment as well. Moreover, due to military operations against the militants in the area, millions of people from FATA have been displaced. At times, there are grave violations of human rights of the displaced persons as well. This paper will explore the state of human rights in FATA in general and evaluates its impact on the Federation of Pakistan. The paper evaluates different instances of human rights violation in various agencies of FATA and their root causes as well.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 27
Author(s):  
Iman Mohamed Zahra ◽  
Hosni Mohamed Nasr

'The right to know' represents a fundamental and vital human right. Progress and development of nations fully require information freedom and knowledge sharing. Using a qualitative analysis of a sample of information and press laws in most of Arab states, this paper aims at discussing 'the right to know' from different perspectives while highlighting the surrounding aspects and their consequences on the right of freedom of expression in those states. The paper also tends to clarify the effects of new media on the vision and practices of governments regarding 'the right to know' and the freedom of the press in the digital age. Moreover, the paper analyzes the different types of censorship the Arab states use to control the new media. Findings shed light on different aspect of 'the right to know' within the different challenges of the digital age and clarify the strong bondage of this right with the other human rights, especially freedom of expression and freedom of the press.


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