The politics of funding the digital good: implementing “Tech for Democracy” projects in the Global Majority
This project aims to investigate how funding from Global North donors, including Big Tech, governments, and philanthropies, influences digital projects aimed at promoting democracy in the Global Majority (Latin America, South Asia, and Southeast Asia).
This research examines how these donors define, measure, and incentivise good digital interventions and how their financial support shapes local civil society mandates. We will interview key actors, analyse funding strategies, and use crowdsourcing to map the flow of funding from Global North sources to the Global Majority. We will also explore how local initiatives address definitions of good from major donors within their specific contexts.
This project gathers diverse understandings of digital good. Specifically, it will shade in conflicting advocacies between the Global North and the Global Majority, as well as within the Global Majority. Analysing the aid industrial complex shaping definitions and measures of digital good, this research will seek to identify structural conditions that enable resilience, focusing on the capacities, creativity, and digital well-being of tech and media workers in the
Global Majority.
Team
Jonathan Corpus Ong
Internationalisation Lead, Digital Good Network
Associate Professor of Global Digital Media, UMass Amherst
Mathias Felipe de Lima Santos
Lecturer, Macquarie University, Australia
Thales Lelo
Assistant Professor, Federal University of Minas Gerais