Digital Rights Activism

Benedict Mette-Starke‘s PhD project will examine the consequences of the so-called ‘opening up‘ of Myanmar since 2008 in regard to the emergence of digital rights activism. The relation between freedom of speech and (self-)censorship will be a particular focus. The concept of freedom will be differentiated in relation to what is politically possible and what is socially imperative. Equal access to digital networks is a further important issue in regard to digital rights activism in Myanmar. It is connected to the more general question of the make-up of infrastructure/s. A third key aspect of the research will be intellectual property rights and their significance in relation to digital rights activism and infrastructure. Based on ethnographic data, the research will build on and contribute to recent debates in the anthropologies of law, infrastructure as well as literature on activism.