What Is An Ideal Internet? A Global Exploration of Digital Rights Trends

Internews is proud to share our first publication of a body of work under the Greater Internet Freedom (GIF) Project, in collaboration with Pollicy and funded by USAID. Through this project, Pollicy seeks to explore the issues, challenges and opportunities within internet freedom by collaborating with decision makers, thought leaders and change agents across the globe.

Our goal is to promote critical and thought-provoking conversations and action at the intersection of technology, data and society. We are interested in understanding the current state and capacity of practitioners working on creating their ideal interpretation of the internet and digital spaces. We do so by mapping out organizations, bodies of work, resources, funders and by investigating the long-term and sustainable support needed for actors to further their work, especially in the Global South and among grassroots communities.

In the paper, we look at topics and issues pertaining to access and inclusion, security, safety and protection, privacy and anonymity in the digital age, freedom of expression, communication and information, and data governance. While the initial work is not exhaustive of each topic and trends within the existing literature on internet freedom, we hope that forthcoming publications under this project will address these gaps adequately.