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Provocations: Solidarity Platforms Research Group

With a small team of student research volunteers, CGHR is carrying out Solidarity Platforms Project this term, based on CGHR’s Provocations: Tech Design and Human Rights project. This project is being developed in dialogue with Technology and Human Rights Fellows from the Carr Center, Harvard University. 

Digital platforms have become the dominant paradigm when it comes to the design of technologically-mediated communication spaces. However, their data-extractive ethos, algorithmic opacity and profit-seeking models often work against opportunities for solidarity. Against this backdrop, ‘Solidarity Platforms’ proposes a way of thinking and doing platforms based on meaningful communication, where data is treated with care and users can contest the very foundations of the digital spaces in which they participate. This project takes a practice-based approach to digital platforms as its insights stem from human rights defenders and civic activists from across the world working on tech projects that can safeguard their values and ideals.