Ranking Digital Rights: Evaluating internet and telecommunications companies on commitments, policies and practices affecting freedom of expression and privacy

Digital Asia Hub hosted Rebecca Mackinnon for a talk on “Ranking Digital Rights: Evaluating internet and telecommunications companies on commitments, policies and practices affecting freedom of expression and privacy” on November 10. The talk was the second in Digital Asia Hub’s Seminar Series and held in partnership with the Journalism and Media Studies Centre (JMSC) at HKU. 

Rebecca MacKinnon directs the Ranking Digital Rights project at New America, evaluating tech companies on their respect for users’ free expression and privacy. MacKinnon is co-founder of the citizen media network Global Voices and author of Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle For Internet Freedom. She was a founding Board member of the Global Network Initiative and is currently on the Board of the Committee to Protect Journalists. Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, MacKinnon was CNN’s Bureau Chief and correspondent in China and Japan between 1998-2004.  More recently, she has taught at the University of Hong Kong’s Journalism and Media Studies Centre and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She has held fellowships at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center and Berkman Center for Internet and Society, the Open Society Foundations, Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy, and the New America Foundation. MacKinnon received her AB magna cum laude from Harvard University and was a Fulbright scholar in Taiwan. She lives with her husband Bennett Freeman in Washington DC.

If you are interested in collaborating with Digital Asia Hub to host an event, or inviting its Executive Director Malavika Jayaram as a speaker, please email Julianne Chan.