Towards Democratic Governance of Digital Society is the January 2024 edition of the WACC's Media Development Journal. This issue seeks to address growing concerns around the potential for governments, security services, and Big Tech to misuse digital technologies to suppress and exploit users. More importantly, it delineates pathways to ensure that such technologies are instead used to uplift and empower people.
IT for Change’s Anita Gurumurthy, Nandini Chami and Deepti Bharthur have made crucial contributions to the publication. Together with sociologist Seán Ó Siochrú, Anita wrote an article ‘Digital Platforms Versus Democratic Political Discourse: Challenges and the Way Forward’, emphasizing that the foundation of an accessible, democratic digital space is a “space largely free from market and consumeristic forces.”
Nandini Chami and Anita shared valuable insights in their piece, ‘To Breathe Easy and Dance Light: Embracing Revolution with the DisCO Manifesto’, wherein they advocate for a new digital order outside capitalism. The publication also features IT for Change’s paper, Reframing AI Governance through a Political Economy Lens, authored by Deepti Bharthur and Anita.
Learn more about the journal and our inputs here.