According to Freedom House’s Freedom on the Net 2024 report, global internet freedom has declined for the fourteenth year in a row. VOA’s Philip Alexiou spoke with Elizabeth Sutterlin, a researcher with the advocacy group, on October 21. Sutterlin outlined the various tactics used to tackle online publishing, including prison sentences and violence. The interview is about the impact of these issues on Africa. It has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Elizabeth Sutterlin: This continued decline in global internet freedom is largely driven by a global attack on freedom of expression. In three quarters of the countries we cover in the project, we saw people being arrested for expressing themselves online. And this year we also saw a record number of people experiencing physical violence in retaliation for their online activities.
Philip Alexiou from VOA: Does this kind of thing happen more often during election season, or is it always going on?
Sutterlin: I think this is always an ongoing problem. But this year our report really looked at the rapid series of elections taking place around the world, including in Africa, in places like South Africa and Zimbabwe. And we’ve really seen that this election has deepened this crisis. False and misleading claims have attempted to undermine the integrity of the election itself. And there have been attempts to delegitimize independent fact-checkers, who do essential work to ensure that people who vote have reliable information to make informed choices about their future.
VOA: What are these countries doing? Look at Zimbabwe, like you said, South Africa. I know you have studied some other countries in Africa. What tactics are used and how are people targeted?
Sutterlin: We’ve seen a range of tactics deployed to limit people’s access to information online. Arrests and imprisonment are common in all but one of the countries we cover in Africa this year. We saw people being arrested or imprisoned for their online expressions. An example of this: last October in Angola, an influencer was sentenced to two years in prison and a hefty fine for insulting the president in a TikTok video.
But over the course of the project, we have increasingly seen an increase in the manipulation of the online information space through the use of pro-government commentators and others pushing online narratives. Zimbabwe is a prominent example of this, as state media during their elections last August amplified stories that discredited both domestic election observers and international groups reporting on the conduct of the elections.
VOA: But there has also been some improvement in some countries, and Zambia, at least in Africa, was one of them. And if you look at that country or some other countries, what are they doing to actually make things better by reducing censorship and control?
Sutterlin: Zambia, as you said, had one of the greatest improvements in the region; actually the biggest improvement worldwide this year. And this was really driven by the space that opened up for online activism. So while there is certainly much further to go, we continue to see some arrests of people for insulting the president and other issues. Zambian civil society has truly led the way in pushing back on repressive measures. They have been advocating for the reform of problematic cybercrime laws and recently took the regulator to court after imposing new requirements for facial photo collection and SIM card registration. Civil society advocacy and mobilization online has truly been a driving force behind these improvements.
VOA: And when it comes to generative AI, I know we talked to Freedom House before, and the idea was that, at least in the United States, it wasn’t really a problem, even though people were using it, it didn’t have much benefit. influence or have a major effect on people. But is that also the case in other countries trying to use generative AI?
Sutterlin: It is a very important question. In our research this year, we saw that generative AI is widely used to create false or misleading content, especially around elections. In South Africa we had an example of deepfake videos of celebrities supporting certain political parties. But a very important caveat to talking about generative AI and its impact on elections is that we don’t yet understand the impact of the technologies and whether it makes influence operations more persuasive. There is still a large research gap in this area in how we can assess and study the effectiveness and social impact of these campaigns.
VOA: Is there one group that is more at risk than the other, or not?
Sutterlin: Yeah, I mean, I think journalists, activists and human rights defenders just doing their job and holding powerful people accountable can certainly put them in danger. But as countries continue to tighten and restrict controls on freedom of expression, we are increasingly seeing this impact on ordinary users. In one example from this year, a teacher in Kenya who posted in a Facebook group about just the quality of his country’s roads was later kidnapped and beaten. And it shows once again the brutal consequences these global trends can have and that literally everyone is at risk.
This story comes from VOA’s English to Africa Service.
