Ranking Digital Rights

The Ranking Digital Rights project is led by Rebecca MacKinnon, senior research fellow at the New America Foundation, and includes institutional partners such as Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Berlin; Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore; Hu Yong, Peking University School of Journalism and Communication; Instituto de Tecnologia e Sociedade, Brazil; Johns-Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies; Center for the Study of New Media & Society, Moscow; Center for Global Communications Studies  at the Annenberg School, University of Pennsylvania; Access; and the World Wide Web Foundation.

Internet and telecommunications companies, along with mobile device and networking equipment manufacturers, exert growing influence over the political and civil lives of people all over the world. These companies share a responsibility to respect human rights. The Ranking Digital Rights project brings together a group of international researchers and advocates to develop a methodology to evaluate and rank the world’s major Information and Communication Technology (ICT) companies on policies and practices related to free expression and privacy in the context of international human rights law.

CMCS is contributing to the overall development of the project and leading case studies on European mobile phone providers and social media platforms for a UNESCO report and towards the pilot project, as well as recent participation in a series of roundtable discussion with senior representatives from Facebook, Twitter, Google, British Telecom and others at the Human Rights in Silicon Valley conference. A funding application has been submitted to the Knight News Challenge Grant.

Project website: http://rankingdigitalrights.org/