By Whitney Shylee May, The University of Texas at Austin | – Images of the protests that followed the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Zhina Amini on Sept. 16, 2022, in Iran and reports of the government’s brutal crackdown have circulated widely on social media. This flow of information comes despite efforts by the Iranian regime […]
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media
Saudi Arabia must release Two of its Citizens Jailed for editing Wikipedia
By Advox | – ( Globalvoices.org) – Osama Khaled (L) and Ziyad Sufyani (R), two wikipedians who have been sentenced to 32 and 8 years in prison for their peaceful online activism in Saudi Arabia. Photo provided by GCHR. Used with permission Access Now, ALQST for Human Rights, ARTICLE 19, Global Voices (GV), the Gulf […]
The Making of the Modern Middle East: A Personal History (Review)
Review of Jeremy Bowen, The Making of the Modern Middle East: A Personal History (London: Picador, 2022). Greifswald, Germany (Special to Informed Comment) – Ali Abdullah Saleh, Bashar al-Assad, Hassan Nasrallah, and Muammar Gaddafi are just some of the prominent figures in contemporary Middle Eastern history that Jeremy Bowen has had the opportunity to interview […]
The State of Online Free Expression Worldwide: 2022 in Review
By Jillian C. York | – ( EFF ) – It’s been a tumultuous year for free expression globally. From internet shutdowns, crackdowns on expression and closed-door partnerships to attempts to restrict anonymity and end to end encryption, in many places, digital rights are under threat. And while the European Union has made regulatory strides, […]
Lessons Learned in the Internet’s Darkest Corners
( Tomdispatch.com ) – We all do it. Make little snap judgments about everyday strangers as we go about our lives. Without giving it a second’s thought, we sketch minibiographies of the people we pass on the sidewalk, the guy seated across from us on the train, or the woman in line in front of […]
Iran: State-Backed Hacking of Activists, Journalists, Politicians (HRW)
Human Rights Watch – (Beirut) – Hackers backed by the Iranian government have targeted two Human Rights Watch staff members and at least 18 other high-profile activists, journalists, researchers, academics, diplomats, and politicians working on Middle East issues in an ongoing social engineering and credential phishing campaign, Human Rights Watch said today. An investigation by […]
In Turkey, Social Media Platforms become Complicit in censoring Media and Freedom of Speech
By Arzu Geybullayeva | – ( Global Voices ) – Metin Cihan is a Turkish journalist who has long been engaged in exposing corruption among government officials. On July 17, 2022, Twitter restricted his Twitter account on the grounds that the journalist shared private information, even though none of the information he shared was private. […]
Musk’s Twitter won’t Label as False the Whopper that Iran has Sentenced 15,000 Protesters to Die (It is so far 2)
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Maria Ramirez Uribe at Politifact explains that a wildly inaccurate Instagram post alleging that Iran’s parliament had sentenced 15,000 arrested demonstrators to death went viral. The allegation of 15,000 on death row was shared by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other prominent figures and then went viral on Twitter. […]
Citizens’ Social Media can provide an Antidote to Propaganda and Disinformation
By Robert W. Gehl, York University, Canada | – In early October, the Pew Research Center released a report called “The Role of Alternative Social Media in the News and Information Environment.” While the report is well-researched and reveals a great deal about the current state of digital media, news and right-wing propaganda, it is […]