This research shows how the Chinese Communist Party uses tailored, reactive messaging in response to regional events, and analyses the effectiveness of that messaging in shifting public discourse online.

Australia has strong sense of human rights and freedoms, but the basic human rights of Australian people are not very well protected in Australian law. The Australian Human Rights Commission has developed a model for what a national Human Rights Act might look like, how...

This research, by the Policy Institute at King’s College London, is based on two new representative surveys of UK university students. The study reveals two main patterns – firstly, that the large majority of university students in the UK think their universities are protecting their...

The study, based on a survey of professors and members of the public, reveals that Canadian universities are political monoliths whose lack of viewpoint diversity contributes to serious problems on campus. Professors, especially the 9 percent of conservative professors whose views differ from the overwhelmingly...

The term 'woke' has its origins in African American vernacular, and has come to mean alert to racial injustice, or to social injustice more generally. With an eye towards testing another common political stereotype, the Australia Institute polled Australians to find out what they think...

Three decades after Sir Tim Berners-Lee created the first web server, the technologies that once promised to usher in a new era of democracy are now also being used to spread disinformation and sow distrust. Amid a global pandemic and the contentious political events surrounding...

There are increasing demands from the public, media and politicians for some imposition of order on the Internet, much of which focuses on the management of speech. This paper outlines some of the primary pressures Canadians are facing in terms of censorship, algorithms, data collection...

In this paper, UK historian Simon Heffer argues that much of the power of identity politics is to make normally rational people who consider themselves part of an oppressor majority behave in an irrational and self-hating way.

This submission, from the New Zealand Human Rights Commission, provides feedback on the New Zealand government's proposals to broaden protection against hate speech.

When federal parliament resumes next month, the Senate will vote on controversial new regulations governing charities. One leading Liberal Senator, Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, has expressed her fear that the rule could curb freedom of speech.

This report from Human Rights Watch asserts that Australian universities have failed to protect the academic freedom of students from China, and of academics who criticise the Chinese Communist Party.

This report looks at key philosophical and ideological issues underlying cancel culture and examines the flawed foundations upon which Critical Theory rests. The report also sets out some key principles to guide responses to critics who insist that Australia — a country we know exemplifies...

This report highlights that as COVID-19 spread across the world during the year, governments across the democratic spectrum repeatedly resorted to excessive surveillance, discriminatory restrictions on freedoms like movement and assembly, and arbitrary or violent enforcement of such restrictions by police and non-state actors.

This report is the product of an effort to understand the scale and scope of “transnational repression,” in which governments reach across national borders to silence dissent among their diaspora and exile communities.

This report sets forth a series of functional steps to enable citizens, governments and platforms to deal with the matter of harmful speech in a free and democratic, rights-based society like Canada.

This document is the final report of Emeritus Professor Sally Walker AM's review of Australian universities' alignment with the Model Code on freedom of speech and academic freedom, recommended by the Hon. Robert French AC in his 2019 Review of freedom of speech in Australian...

Like all modern societies, Australia has to understand, interpret and learn from its history. In this paper, Peter Kurti argues that we must be sure to protect our country, our communities and our citizens from the three dangers posed by cancel culture — the corrosion...

In this paper, the author argues that it is one thing to be an advocate for your own interests; quite another to seek to attack, undermine and destroy someone else’s. Yet that is what the so-called ‘cancel culture’ seeks to achieve, and it is why...

Our universities have long ceased being institutions interested in the rigorous exercise of freedom or the scientific method and today better resemble elaborate public relations outfits, writes Bella d'Abrera.

In May 2020, Facebook announced the inaugural batch of members of its Oversight Board. The Board will be a group of 40 people supported by staff, whose initial task will be to serve as an independent appeals mechanism to have a final say on select...

The 2014 military coup marked the beginning of five years of tenacious efforts by the Thai authorities to silence the voices of human rights defenders, activists, journalists and opposition politicians, including online. This briefing draws from 18 interviews with human rights defenders, activists, politicians, lawyers...

This paper advances the argument that behind any rights claim lies a moral claim, and that this moral claim is essentially a claim about human dignity. The paper also argues that defending religious freedom is important because it amounts to defending fundamental claims people wish...

Freedom House has found that 2019 was the 14th consecutive year of decline in global freedom. The gap between setbacks and gains widened compared with 2018, as individuals in 64 countries experienced deterioration in their political rights and civil liberties while those in just 37...

This document includes a detailed analysis of human rights developments in 25 countries and territories from the Asia-Pacific region.

As British courts this week hear arguments for and against the Wikileaks founder's extradition to the US, the questions about journalism, the law and freedom of speech it raises are vital ones.