Media Development

The document explores the challenges of maintaining a free and independent media in a datafied society, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. It analyzes the rise of state surveillance in Latin America, the failure of health communication in India, and the struggle for media sustainability. It also advocates for linguistic rights and a new 'digital social contract' to reclaim data ownership from global corporations.

• In Latin America, the deployment of digital surveillance for COVID-19 contact tracing has been hindered more by technological and institutional failures than by data protection laws. These obstacles include poor reach of mobile technologies, unequal cell coverage, and chronic deficits in national health systems.
• The Indian government's communication during the COVID-19 crisis is characterized as a failure that increased public paranoia and vulnerability. The state is accused of under-communicating essential facts and attempting to restrict media reporting to official government versions.
• The 'Digital Justice Manifesto' argues that the current digital economy is based on the 'intelligisation' of socio-economic processes, where a few global 'intelligence corporations' control data and techno-structures. It calls for a new digital social contract where data subjects own their data individually and collectively.
• Public interest media is facing a sustainability crisis due to the shift of the global advertising market toward companies like Google and Facebook, which hold a 63% market share (approximately USD $61.6 billion per year). This has led to a decline in reliable news sources and increased misinformation.
• In Jamaica, there is a palpable tension between media regulation and censorship. While regulation is viewed as a set of ethical guidelines to ensure quality and fairness, censorship is described as a harsher, morals-based tool used to suppress expression, such as the banning of 'daggering' lyrics in dancehall music.
• The document highlights a critical need for multilingual communication during humanitarian crises. It notes that while English once dominated 80% of web content in the mid-1990s, it has shrunk to around 30%, yet the top 10 languages still make up 82% of total Internet content, effectively silencing many of the world's 7,117 languages.
• The author Parminder Jeet Singh argues that data should be treated as a public good and a common infrastructure to prevent the monopolistic appropriation of society's data by a few corporations, which otherwise increases economic and social inequalities.

APA

World Association for Christian Communication (2020). Media Development. https://waccglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/3-2020.MD_.final_-2.pdf

Chicago

World Association for Christian Communication. Media Development. 2020. https://waccglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/3-2020.MD_.final_-2.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Association for Christian Communication |title=Media Development |date=March 2020 |url=https://waccglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/3-2020.MD_.final_-2.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldassociationforchristiancommunication2020media, author = {{World Association for Christian Communication}}, title = {{Media Development}}, institution = {World Association for Christian Communication}, year = {2020}, month = mar, url = {https://waccglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/3-2020.MD_.final_-2.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }