Human Rights in the Digital Age

Theme lead: Professor Ella McPherson 

CGHR’s Human Rights in the Digital Age theme addresses the emergent and rapidly evolving changes wrought to human rights practices and norms by the use of digital technologies. With respect to practices, this includes human rights fact-finding and advocacy; with respect to norms, this includes human rights related to communication, information, expression, privacy, assembly and association. 

The research and activities under this theme approach human rights from a communications perspective and, as such, are particularly concerned with pluralism and solidarity. Another core concept of the theme is risk, particularly risk governance around perceived threats to security and facticity.   

Praxis research in this theme includes academic startup, The Whistle, as well as the Digital Verification Corps and innovative, interactive tools such as the Social Life of Data experience, the Digital Human Rights Toolkit, and the chatbot providing information for asylum-seekers in the UK.  Empirical scholarship includes investigations of human rights fact-finding using digital tools, reimaginings of the practice of witnessing, and explorations of the digitally-mediated freedom of assembly.   

Research Project

Open Source Investigation for Academics

Events

Cambridge Colloquium on Communication Technology and Politics

On 7 July 2026, the Centre of Governance and Human Rights convened the Cambridge Colloquium on Communication Technology and Politics at the Provost’s Lodge, King’s College.

Digital Verification Corps

CGHR’s DVC Students Support Amnesty International Report on Iran’s 2022 Woman Life Freedom Uprising

CGHR’s DVC students have contributed towards Amnesty International’s new landmark report on crimes against humanity during the Woman Life Freedom uprising in 2022.

Event

The Leader’s Aura: Online Sentiment, TikTok Charisma and the Crisis of Political Trust

14/10/2026

Room SG2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DP

Event

Understanding, Refusing, Finding Inspiration: Towards a Living Critique of Domination

02/12/2026

Room SG2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DP

Publication

Popular tribunate or bourgeois populism? #saccageparis and social media’s radical-democratic paradox

In this paper, Dr Antoine Sander argues that the case of an idiosyncratic digital movement in Paris—#saccageparis—has much to contribute to recent debates around social media’s democratic potential.