Category: Civil Society

Algeria’s Mouwatana: ‘opportunity for building energetic dissent’?

     

Algerian police recently arrested a number of political and human rights activists and journalists who protested in central Algiers against President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s bid for re-election for a fifth term,… Read more »

Can democrats restore ‘Internet’s Lost Promise’?

     

Russia has used information warfare to influence election outcomes with the aim of weakening the values, defenses and self-belief of Western democracies, notes Sir Peter Westmacott, a former British Ambassador… Read more »

Tech giants expose global Iranian propaganda push

     

Hundreds of accounts allegedly originating in Iran and Russia were shuttered by Facebook and Twitter for “inauthentic behavior” and “coordinated manipulation,” the companies announced. Facebook deleted 652 pages, groups, and… Read more »

South Africa’s civil society halted kleptocratic state capture

     

South Africa’s fragile democracy was protected from kleptocratic state capture by the “galvanizing action” of a vibrant coalition of civil society groups, including organized labor, say the authors of a… Read more »

50 Years After Prague Spring, Lessons on Freedom

     

As his country commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Soviet invasion that crushed an effort to ease the totalitarian grip of Communism known as the Prague Spring, the Czech Republic’s… Read more »

How to counter ‘asymmetric risk for democratic societies’

     

Hackers linked to Russia’s government tried to target the websites of two U.S. think-tanks, suggesting they were broadening their attacks in the build-up to November elections, according to Microsoft, Reuters… Read more »

Technology in service of ideology: exporting China’s ‘digital totalitarian state’

     

How do you effectively govern a country that’s home to one in five people on the planet, with an increasingly complex economy and society, if you don’t allow public debate,… Read more »

How democracies can counter authoritarian sharp power

     

All around the world, authoritarian governments are interfering with the institutions of democratic societies in ways that would have been unthinkable even during the Cold War, according to the National Endowment for… Read more »

China revising ‘ideological architecture’ to project sharp power

     

A major human rights crisis is unfolding in northwestern China, according to the United Nations, which said last week that there were credible reports that the Chinese government is holding one million… Read more »

Counter influence strategies for combating disinformation

     

The potential for Russian hacking of election systems in the 2018 midterm elections has emerged as an urgent and destabilizing issue in the run-up to the U.S. elections, CodaStory reports…. Read more »