Happy Friday!
I hope you are having a great week. This week I am highlighting a few interesting reports and articles in the #techforgood space. First is a report on harassment through social media in Cambodia. This report from LICADHO highlights a growing trend in modern communications and the need for better protections as well as digital space spaces for people at risk. I’ve also highlighted a new handbook from WHO on building digital health infostructure, a post about digital gaming for development, and a fantastic podcast about NFTs.
As always, if you have anything you’d like me to highlight, please send me an email at: jesse@glean.net.
Have a great weekend!
What’s interesting this week…
Report: Status Update: Harassment on Social Media in Cambodia
Facebook, the Cambodian government and other social media companies are failing to protect users and contributing to human rights abuses online.
Facebook dominates Cambodia’s social media space and, through inaction and neglect, has created a platform that is too often a site of government surveillance and harassment, as well as sexual harassment, discrimination, threats, and other harassment from private individuals.
In a new report, the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (LICADHO) is calling on Facebook, the Cambodian government, and other social media companies to do more to protect human rights online. “Status Update: Harassment on Social Media in Cambodia” is a report detailing the findings of a survey of more than 700 people conducted by LICADHO. More than one-third (38%) of respondents had experienced online harassment, with LGBT+ people, youth, and activists facing such harassment at even higher rates. Moreover, 20% percent of women respondents had experienced sexual harassment online.
New WHO Handbook: How to Build Digital Health Information Infostructure
The Digital Health Platform Handbook from the International Telecommunication Union and World Health Organization aims to assist countries with the advancement of their national digital health system, specifically through the use of a digital health platform, or DHP.
This digital platform provides the underlying foundation for the various digital health applications and systems used to support health and care services. It enables individual applications and systems to interoperate and work together in an integrated manner.
The Indo-Pacific: A look at the 427 active hubs in the region
The technology landscape across the Indo-Pacific region over the past decade has been heavily influenced by the presence of India and China, due to the sheer size of the investment activity and relentless expansion strategy across the ASEAN community (e.g. Digital Silk Road). In the case of China, however, the strict regulatory environment has also worked in favour of less regulated, neighbouring countries, especially the Chinese-speaking Singapore and Malaysia. According to our latest research, the region presents a highly diverse landscape, with countries such as Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia leading under metrics such as investment volumes and ecosystem sizes, a number of emerging economies including Vietnam, Philippines, and Thailand playing catch up with their forerunners, and finally the nascent scenes in Cambodia, Myanmar, and the smaller Pacific Islands, which are characterised by limited access to private capital and less scalable markets.
Digital Gaming Trends Offer Applications for International Development
Have you ever suffered the consequences of someone else’s online gaming habits? Maybe it was your college roommate playing World of Warcraft mere hours before your 8am exam, your partner choosing Call of Duty over date night, or your child’s “hidden” Candy Crush play under the dinner table as you tried to ask about their day. It is not unheard of for frequent gaming to negatively affect one’s ability to focus, productivity at work, or social relationships. In fact, in 2018, the World Health Organization even recognized “gaming disorder” among the addictive disorders included in its 11th edition of the International Classification of Diseases. Disorders are classified when the associated pattern of behavior results in significant distress or impairment in “personal, family, social, educational, or occupational functioning.”
Podcast: Everything you need to know about NFTs with Nathan Schneider and Corey Doctorow
“In this episode we’re talking NFTs. If you don’t know what this latest phenomenon in the crypto, blockchain, asset speculation world is, if you’ve heard of NFTs but wanna know more, or if you wanna hear why NFTs might be leading us to an (even more) dystopian future — we’ve got you covered.
We’ve brought on two guests to help unpack the NFT craze: Nathan Schneider is an Assistant Professor of Media studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, journalist, founder of the Media Enterprise Design Lab, and author most recently of Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition that Is Shaping the Next Economy, published by Nation Books.”