Digital spaces, rights and responsibilities

Digitisation is no longer something in the distant future but has become an everyday process, even in Africa. Digitisation as a transformative social process accelerated at a frantic rate during the Covid-19 pandemic. As a result, over the past three years, the world has become increasingly dependent on digital technologies for financial transactions, socialisation, education, political engagement, news and information, remote working and religious meetings.

Social media platforms play a crucial role in providing space for public debates. They have nourished political, economic and cultural participation, and have been creatively used to organise protests, engage in electoral campaigns, broadcast content censored by mainstream media and whistleblowers in corruption cases.

Given the significant permeation of digital technologies into our everyday lives, concepts like digital rights and responsibilities have surfaced at the centre of policy and scholarly debates. Despite this, few countries worldwide have made legislative provisions to respect and enjoy digital rights, and none in Southern Africa.

So, what are digital rights? Digital rights refer to a set of universal human rights that ensures everybody has equal access to an open internet governed in an inclusive, accountable and transparent manner to ensure people’s fundamental freedoms and rights. In short, digital rights are simply human rights in the digital space. They ensure citizens have equal access to information and freedom of expression in a safe space that respects privacy and security, protects data, gives the right to anonymity and to be forgotten, protects minors, and protects intellectual property.

Digital rights are crucial in an era where platform companies, state parties and telecommunication operators wantonly violate privacy and security. These rights are crucial for safeguarding freedom of expression online. Unfortunately, they are also curtailed by draconian laws and regulations. Some African governments have targeted digital spaces to exert control and censorship, mute dissent, and engage in digital surveillance.

This government interference, compounded by cyberbullying, online gender-based violence, hate speech, disinformation, fraud and other forms of negative participation, has made digital rights all the more important. Users should become digitally responsible and adhere to certain digital citizenship norms and standards – to show the same compassion, respect and trust for their fellow citizens as they do in the ‘real’ world.

However, digital rights and responsibilities do not operate in a social vacuum. They must be actualised in different political, social and economic environments, including national governments, end-users, platform companies, advertisers, civil society organisations and internet intermediaries.

It also must be noted that most digital platforms, as business entities, are geared towards profit maximisation. This means that private interests often triumph over public ones, with platforms often capturing personal data for the core purpose of profit making.

Because of the harms and unfreedoms associated with proprietary digital spaces, these issues should not be treated as a matter of personal privacy and security, but rather as an issue of social justice. We need to tackle this by adopting ‘platform justice’. This allows us to reimagine and create different platform futures anchored in the creation of public interest digital platforms (PIDP) that are geared towards the promotion of public good.

* Admire Mare is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Media at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. His research interests include analysing the intersection between technology and society, digital journalism, social media and politics, media and democracy, political communication, digital campaigns, digital diplomacy, platformisation of news work, media and conflict, media startups and innovation and artificial intelligence in resource constrained in newsrooms.