INTERNET SHUTDOWN ASSESSMENT TOOL

What We’re Doing 

Internet shutdowns are intentional interferences of Information Communication Technology (ICT), and they are increasing in regularity and duration globally and are a well-established practice in dozens of countries. Internet shutdowns are a severe human rights violation with long term impacts on freedom of expression. Anecdotally, members of our Localization Lab community have told us about the significant impact to community development and public health that require urgent and ongoing research. 

To address this problem, Localization Lab is developing an Internet Shutdown Assessment Tool that helps researchers and communities document the differentiated health impacts of Internet shutdowns. Our approach is unique in the Internet shutdown research space because we distinguish between access to connectivity and sudden loss of that connectivity, which are important to distinguish when developing research and advocacy toolkits. 

We know that the impacts of lack of connectivity access and loss of connectivity are felt disproportionately depending on an individuals’ identity and social history and, using a universal design approach, we looked at cross-cutting factors to develop a resource that documents the outsize impact of Internet shutdowns on historically marginalized communities.

What We’ve Done

The current version of our assessment tool is in development and adopts the medical anthropological concept of “structural vulnerability” to reconceptualize Internet shutdowns as public health events. 

To do this, we use the concept of “structural vulnerability” as developed by Philippe Bourgois and James Quesada to document the impact and indicators of social exclusion, economic precariousness, and historical marginalization on health. We adopt their lens of social determinants of health to document the impact of connectivity loss on individual and community health and wellbeing. In developing our assessment tool, we broke down the aspects of Internet shutdowns (e.g., loss of access to chat apps, search engines, Internet of Things, servers, and Google Drive) and looked at how shutdowns impact communities along lines of gender, race, ability, age, etc. 

The current version of the tool includes both a rubric that enables users to map out the type of connectivity loss on the y-axis and the ways that individuals and communities are affected by them on the x-axis. The current version of the tool also includes a questionnaire that researchers and communities can use to document how individuals and communities use Internet-connected technologies and to develop an impact assessment about the ways that sudden connectivity loss affects their health and livelihoods.

What We’re Doing Next

The next stages of our project include collaborating with communities to test the tool’s usability for community-led research; to adapt the tool based on the findings; and to produce a community-led proof of concept that demonstrates the exigency of documenting the health impacts of Internet connectivity loss in local contexts. 

Interested in learning more about our work in digital rights? Reach out to us at info@localizationlab.org or follow us on X @ L10nLab to join the conversation.