Songs in the local language of the Marapu community in East Sumba, Indonesia, have become a bridge for the Marapu community to directly communicate and receive information and relevant health recommendations from the World Health Organisation and national and local governments in a culturally familiar...
The military strategy to fight the AA and other rebel groups in the country can be summarized into cutting off four key areas: recruitment, food, budget, and information. The fourth part, information, means to censor news and media about the Arakan conflicts....
On the evening of April 22, 2020, researcher Ravio Patra was arrested in Jakarta, Indonesia, not long after an attempt to protect his safety due to a WhatsApp privacy breach. His work has captured the interest of many, notably his most recent critique on the...
The pandemic has impacted how civil society organisations do advocacy work, derailing weeks (or months, in our case) of planning. However, we knew we had to adapt and innovate. Instead of a physical conference, we decided to execute a fully online youth conference for April...
The internet is a primary source of information on the global COVID-19 pandemic. But Arakan (formally known as Rakhine State) in western Myanmar is now experiencing the longest internet shutdown in the world. The internet blockage has also caused a lack of information and knowledge...
Coconet is an Asia-Pacific regional initiative supporting changemakers to build the digital rights movement. In October 2019, Coconet II expanded the space for new changemakers: activists, journalists, artists, technologists, filmmakers, lawyers, and researchers, who represent a wide variety of social and environmental movements. Over 120...
While governments and health workers worldwide are focused on combatting the COVID-19 pandemic, they are also busy fighting another related pandemic that cuts across all sectors of society: a massive “infodemic” equally as wide-reaching and harmful....
COVID-19 has raised some serious questions: Can privacy and public health security go hand in hand? Is it enough to use safeguards such as transparency and the use of intrusive technology only when absolutely necessary?...
EngageMedia worked with Dr. Jun-E Tan, an independent researcher and digital rights expert, to produce a blog post, a three-part series on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and human rights in Southeast Asia, and a video wrapping up the discourse for the whole engagement....
Members of the Coconet community took part in the fourth Myanmar Digital Rights Forum (MDRF), which focused on the importance of digital rights in the face of disinformation, internet shutdowns, and emerging technologies....