Rights in the digital age

The rights-based perspective on ethical and political questions presented by the new digital media has recently regained attention in academic and political debates. As the recent report by the United Nations Secretary-General on digital cooperation notes, digital technologies do not only help to advocate, defend, and exercise human rights, but they are also used to suppress, limit, and violate human rights—and therefore, “the internet cannot be an ungoverned or ungoveranable space.” 1 Yet, there is no consensus on what human rights in the digital realm are, and who should take the lead to govern them in the increasingly complex media and communications landscape. The more focused concept of communication rights, in turn, has already a varied history, starting with the attempts of the Global South in the 1970s to counter the Westernization of communication. 2 The connections between human rights and media policy have also been addressed throughout the past decades, especially in international contexts. 3 Communication rights have also been invoked with more specific aims, for instance, as cultural rights, the rights of dis-abled persons, or the rights of sexual minorities in today’s communication environment. 4