ProPA · Pro-Democracy Platform Advocacy: Fostering Social Media's Accountability to Dissident Voices under Authoritarianism

Pro-Democracy Platform Advocacy: Fostering Social Media's Accountability to Dissident Voices under Authoritarianism

Digital platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, have long touted themselves as defenders of freedom of expression, yet their content moderation rules have faced global criticism, amongst others for failing to tackle authoritarian repression of dissident voices. Government trolls successfully run malicious reporting campaigns that result in the platforms’ removal of activists’ posts and accounts. Meanwhile, civil society under authoritarianism lacks means of legal recourse and can only engage in international advocacy to urge social media companies to implement safeguards. To which extent have advocacy efforts for protection of pro-democracy content led to changes in digital platforms’ content moderation rules? Have these changes resulted in a more open online civic space for pro-democracy activism? What limitations remain? To address these questions and foster platform accountability for vulnerable users, Dr. Mai Van Tran worked under Prof. Trisha Meyer’s supervision at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) - Centre for Digitalisation, Democracy and Innovation (CD2I) at Brussels School of Governance (BSoG) and Sam Gregory’s secondment supervision at WITNESS Inc. to achieve two main R&I objectives. First, the project built and tested a theoretical model of pro-democracy platform advocacy, based on primary data from Myanmar, Thailand, and Cambodia and secondary data from Hong Kong, Palestinian, and other Global South-based human rights advocates regarding pro-democracy advocacy efforts towards Facebook/Meta, Twitter/X, Telegram, YouTube, TikTok, etc. Second, the findings were turned into two academic articles, a book chapter, a best practice guide for pro-democracy activists, a set of policy recommendations for social media companies, and a set of Digital Defence Resources for social media users. One academic article is published open-access on Open Research Europe, the best practice guide is published open-access on Tech Policy Press, and the Digital Defence Resources is available at digidef.info and as a Telegram chatbot. Moreover, the project disseminated and exploited the research results via presentations at fifteen academic conferences and workshops, three multistakeholder conferences, four facilitation workshops and activities with activists, and three meetings with social media companies.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз