The Democracy + Tech Initiative creates policy practices that align global stakeholders toward tech and governance that reinforces, rather than undermines, open societies. It builds on the DFRLab’s established track record and leadership in the open-source field, empowering global communities to promote transparency and accountability online and around the world. The Initiative examines how the tech that connects and informs people is funded, built, and governed, and how that affects the viability of rights-respecting and democratic societies around the world.
Connective technologies are ubiquitous in modern life, and the ways in which governments use, promote, and regulate them is central to the global order. As many nations embrace an increasingly forceful authoritarian approach to these issues, the need for a powerful, coherent, and actionable democratic approach has never been greater.
The Democracy + Tech Initiative is designed to:
Center human rights and democracy in tech and policy debates;
Shape what happens next by looking beyond the current tech and democracy flash points;
Ensure decisions about global tech include equities and stakeholders around the world;
Connect and align siloed communities and issues in government, industry, and civil society; and
Elevate a new generation of diverse leaders with crosscutting expertise to shape policy and industry outcomes.
The Democracy + Tech Initiative is supported by a world class cohort of nonresident fellows with crosscutting expertise, all dedicated to the mission of ensuring a more equitable and rights-respecting world. They are the embodiment of the Initiative’s approach, driving insight and action from a combined community of leaders representing the experience and sectors required to create change. They include AI experts, human rights advocates, scholars on China, former government officials and diplomats, leaders in companies seeking to address online harms, and former tech executives.
A post from the World Economic Forum and Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania on creating mutlinational solutions to global internet challenges.
Camille Stewart Gloster, the inaugural deputy national cyber director for technology and ecosystem security, spoke at the DFRLab’s 360/StratCom about her newly created office’s ambitious agenda to address a wide scope of cyber challenges.
The DFRLab, as part of its annual 360/StratCom event, convened a discussion about the FOC, including the need to coordinate action to protect a free, open, secure, and interoperable internet.
An op-ed in the New York Times from Nonresident Senior Fellow Katie Harbath on the global challenges Facebook, and their parent company Meta, will face going into election season 2022.
The verdict: Back to you, Facebook. The company’s Oversight Board ruled Wednesday that former US President Donald Trump will remain banned from the platform for encouraging the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.
Disinformation operations in Africa are hidden in discretely coordinated social media campaigns. Rose Jackson joins CSIS’s podcast: Into Africa to discuss he importance of people-to-people engagement in responding to disinformation.
It’s become so regular an occurrence these days that you’d be forgiven if you missed it entirely: On Thursday, the CEOs of Facebook, Twitter, and Google headed to the US Congress (virtually, of course) to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
The riot at the Capitol was conceived in plain sight, as we reported last week. For weeks on far-right networks across the web, extremists discussed their plans for violence. Is it happening again? Experts at our Digital Forensic Research Lab have been monitoring the chatter.
The mob that broke into the US Capitol yesterday was aided significantly by online coordination and planning. The team at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab has conducted exhaustive research into how that happened, combing through social media and other networks frequented by the far right. Let’s break down what they found.
Former Wikimedia CEO Katherine Maher discusses her experience leading one of the world’s largest and most trusted platforms, and the launch of the DFRLab’s new Democracy + Tech Initiative.
A fireside chat with Congressman Malinowski on the ways technology has changed the struggle for human rights, his tenure leading the State Department’s Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor bureau, and his efforts in Congress to make tech more accountable and democratic.
The U.S. State Department’s Global Engagement Center’s 2021 U.S.-Paris Tech Challenge awardee announcement and judges panel discussion on countering disinformation and propaganda in Europe.
The Digital Forensic Research Lab hosts the authors of book “SYSTEM ERROR: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot” for a panel discussion, moderated by Nanjala Nyabola.
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