Ella McPherson

Since 2011, CGHR has collaborated with the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, providing research support to his mandate. In 2012, a team of researchers produced a ‘Research Pack’ on the threats to the right to life of journalists for an Expert Meeting held in Cambridge, ultimately contributing to the Special Rapporteur’s report that year to the Human Rights Council. In 2013, work began on a broader collaboration studying violations of the right to life across the African continent, culminating in a report, ‘Unlawful Killings in Africa,’ to guide the Special Rapporteur’s future activity. In 2014, a CGHR research team began a study of how the use of information and communication technologies affects the right to life, resulting in this report and the ICTs and Human Rights blog. This report was originally a discussion document prepared by CGHR Research Associate Dr Ella McPherson in collaboration with the mandate of the Special Rapporteur and ahead...

'Deal with me, here I stand!' were words that Christof Heyns used to convey the drama inherent in many forms of assembly and protest. Central to so much of Christof's work – including his doctoral research on civil disobedience in South Africa and his captivation with the example of Mahatma Gandhi in struggles against injustice and colonialism – was the sense of urgency, even of crisis, that such principled action can usher forth against the seeming unassailability of state power in all its forms.

General Comment 37 should go further to recognize appropriate protections for gatherings in online spaces. This submission considers and makes recommendations first, in relation to the implications of digital mediation for the scope of the right of peaceful assembly and, second, in relation to restrictions on the right and related state obligations. Submission by Michael Hamilton, Suzanne Dixon and Jennifer Young (University of East Anglia) and Ella McPherson, Sharath Srinivasan, Eleanor Salter, Katja Achermann, Camille Barras, Allysa Czerwinsky, Bronwen Mehta and Muznah Siddiqui (Centre of Governance and Human Rights, University of Cambridge).

The scene is a dusty stretch -possibly of road -framed by rubble, old tires, barrels, abandoned vehicles and crumbling walls. The footage is shaky, giving the impression that the camera is handheld. A man runs out of a doorway opposite and shots ring out. Small puffs of smoke erupt behind and ahead of him, suggesting that bullets are hitting the wall along which he runs. A moment of calm elapses, and then the camera pans left to a young boy, probably around eight years old, getting up from the ground. The boy begins to run toward an abandoned car; the shots recommence and a puff of smoke emerges from his chest. He falls, slow-motion, first to his knees, and then to his side. He lies there, face away from the camera, for a few seconds, then begins to run again, head down, toward the car. He drops behind it, then emerges dragging a younger girl in a bright pink top by the arm. They both run back the way he came, ducking at first, then running faster as the shooting continues. Througho...

The use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is creating a wealth of new opportunities as well as a variety of new risks for human rights practice. Given the pace of innovation in the development and use of ICTs, our understanding of their impact on human rights lags. This report provides a crucial and in depth look at ICT initiatives and trends across the key human rights practices of prevention, fact-finding, and advocacy, identifying both risks and opportunities. In prevention, ICTs can be harnessed to protect human rights defenders, to prevent violations in police-civilian interactions, and in data-driven early warning systems and communication-based conflict prevention. That said, ICTs also create new security risks for human rights defenders and can violate the right to privacy. In fact-finding, ICTs afford the spontaneous and solicited participation of civilian witnesses in the production of human rights evidence. Of course, a greater volume and variety of inf...

This article describes social-organizational models that Mexican newspapers have evolved in response to competition from electronic media. The spot news model competes through simulation and cannibalization, and it is organized for efficiency. Its routine of speed and steep hierarchy keep newsroom credibility centralized among newspaper leaders, which makes it difficult for new sources to convince reporters to listen to them, and for reporters, in turn, to convince editors to publish new sources. The reportage model, in contrast, competes with electronic media through differentiation, emphasizing investigation and analysis over speed. Its newsroom is correspondingly organized according to a slower schedule and a flatter hierarchy. The reportage model therefore decentralizes newsroom credibility by allowing reporters the expertise and autonomy they need to put new sources into print. Though these two models represent simultaneous reactions to market competition, they have opposing ef...

In this chapter, we first describe the settled practices of human rights fact-finding that open source investigations have disrupted. Although the authority to shape these practices is centralized largely with Western human rights institutions populated by professional experts, the more decentralized underpinnings of open source investigation – namely, the use of information produced by civilian witnesses and through diverse networks – have an equally long history. We go on to detail how the rise of new technologies in human rights fact-finding has allowed for the participation of new actors in the form of civilian witnesses and analysts and necessitated the participation of others in the form of technologists and machine processes. These new actors bring with them not only new data and new methods, but also new norms about what human rights knowledge should be. The clash of these new elements with established practices produces a knowledge controversy in which much is possible and much is at stake. In the subsequent chapter section, we take a closer look at what is at stake through examining the power relations within human rights fact-finding revealed and disturbed by this knowledge controversy. Namely, we look at the power to shape human rights methodology, because methodology rules in and rules out particular types of human rights information with respect to evidence. It thus rules in and rules out particular types of corresponding subjects and witnesses of violations with respect to access to human rights mechanisms that can help them, in turn, speak truth to power. Ultimately, we are concerned with the impact of these power relations on pluralism, or the variety and volume of voices that can speak and be heard, both in terms of shaping the practices of human rights fact-finding, and in terms of access to human rights mechanisms that help subjects and witnesses speak truth to power.

Pre-print version of: McPherson, E. 2017 ‘Social Media and Human Rights Advocacy’ in Tumber, H. and Waisbord, S. (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Media and Human Rights. London, UK: Routledge, pp. 279–88. The rise of social media has seen its concomitant celebration as a ‘liberation technology,’ namely a technology that supports social, political, and economic freedoms (Diamond, 2010). This chapter provides a framework for understanding how the use of social media intersects with the practice of human rights advocacy at NGOs. This framework is not to deny the disruptive possibility of human rights advocacy conducted over social media, but rather to ground related techno-optimism in the broad and complex terrain that influences this potential (Youmans and York, 2012; Madianou, 2013). This chapter begins by arguing that the view that social media liberates advocacy by creating new pathways to visibility rests on an incomplete conception of visibility, one which focuses on the production of communication and overlooks the corresponding transmission and reception of that communication necessary for visibility to take place (Hindman, 2010). The visibility of human rights advocacy can be understood as depending on the logics of the social media field, the target audience fields, and the political field(s) across and within which human rights communication takes place. This chapter overviews this field theory approach to communication before outlining in broad strokes what we know about each of these logics. Equally important, however, is what we don’t know. For different reasons, each of these logics is somewhat inscrutable – that of the social media field because of its novelty, mutability, and proprietary secrecy; those of target audience fields because social media advocacy effects are both hard to isolate and under-researched; and those of political fields because surveillance tactics are often covert. All of this inscrutability creates risk, and risk, as we shall see, is anathema to visibility. One of the benefits of the field approach is its concern with inequality (Bourdieu, 1993). As an actor’s ability to mitigate risk corresponds to his or her resources, it may be that – instead of being a leveler – social media advocacy is exacerbating inequalities of visibility within the human rights field (Beck, 1992; Mejias, 2012; Thrall, Stecula and Sweet, 2014). The chapter concludes by sketching a research agenda for the use of social media in human rights work.

This article contributes to the emergent literature on the use of social media at advocacy organizations. Much of this existing literature focuses on these organizations’ production of social media information; this article, however, explores the complementary and relatively unexamined consumption of social media information that can form part of advocacy work. By drawing parallels between journalism and advocacy, the article develops two theoretical models of how advocacy organizations evaluate social media information as part of this consumption. These models differ according to the information values at their cores and according to how these values are evaluated in practice; correspondingly, the models interact differently with social media’s affordances. The key information value for the evidence model is the veracity of the information’s metadata, and this is largely evaluated through a time-intensive verification process requiring corroboration and drawing on human expertise. ...

This article contributes to the emergent literature on the use of social media at advocacy organizations. Much of this existing literature focuses on these organizations’ production of social media information; this article, however, explores the complementary and relatively unexamined consumption of social media information that can form part of advocacy work. By drawing parallels between journalism and advocacy, the article develops two theoretical models of how advocacy organizations evaluate social media information as part of this consumption. These models differ according to the information values at their cores and according to how these values are evaluated in practice; correspondingly, the models interact differently with social media’s affordances. The key information value for the evidence model is the veracity of the information’s metadata, and this is largely evaluated through a time-intensive verification process requiring corroboration and drawing on human expertise. ...

While much of this book is focused on the effects of human rights coverage on mobilization, we must remember that this coverage is not produced in a vacuum. During the day-to-day practice of journalism, members of the media are affected by a variety of influences that determine not only what information they choose to report and how they report it, but also what information they choose to ignore. These choices – or, as the case may be, commands – shape the human rights information transmitted by the media, and, if we presume that this information has an effect on its audiences, shape mobilization as well. It is therefore very important to understand the influences on human rights reporting. Through a case study of human rights reporting at Mexican newspapers, I aim to provide an overview of what journalists are trying to do when they cover human rights stories and how these aims interact with overt influences on journalism, such as economic considerations and political pressures, to produce human rights news. To do this, I have developed a framework for thinking about how the headlines are plucked from the informational ether of every news day. Specifically, information is assessed against basic criteria of newsworthiness. Of that which is considered newsworthy, the more a particular piece of information is in line with a newspaper’s journalistic, economic, and political aims relative to other bits of information, the more likely it is to be published. I explain these assessment categories in turn in this chapter, describing what kinds of human rights news survive this winnowing at Mexican newspapers.

Since 2011, CGHR has collaborated with the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, providing research support to his mandate. In 2012, a team of researchers produced a ‘Research Pack’ on the threats to the right to life of journalists for an Expert Meeting held in Cambridge, ultimately contributing to the Special Rapporteur’s report that year to the Human Rights Council. In 2013, work began on a broader collaboration studying violations of the right to life across the African continent, culminating in a report, ‘Unlawful Killings in Africa,’ to guide the Special Rapporteur’s future activity. In 2014, a CGHR research team began a study of how the use of information and communication technologies affects the right to life, resulting in this report and the ICTs and Human Rights blog. This report was originally a discussion document prepared by CGHR Research Associate Dr Ella McPherson in collaboration with the mandate of the Special Rapporteur and ahead...