"We structured the report by beginning with an overview of the digital environment in the Philippines in 2020 before delving into the impact of technology on human rights: the key events, challenges and accomplishments, then a forecast of 2021 and 2022. These are divided into the following key thema ... tic areas: Internet Access; Gender and Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs); Privacy and Data Protection; Freedom of Expression. This report is based on the Foundation for Media Alternatives’ (FMA) monitoring of situations where technology impacted human rights in the country. It covers the months of January to December 2020, and the analysis and scoping is conducted using secondary resources such as news articles, press releases and reports." (About this report, page 2) more

"It may be observed that, first, at the level of public perception, government actions to restrict free speech are often preceded by statements criticizing the media and foreshadowing a penalty or sanction, which are actually directed to the public and not the media, as if to prime the latter on the ... acceptability of the planned restrictions. The president and his personnel routinely come up with fresh allegations, repeated over time, to discredit journalists and the media, which, in a social media environment crowded with ‘trolls’ and which is at the mercy of algorithms, may be deeply reinforced by echo chambers and confirmation bias. Second, to justify the implementation of legal restrictions, law personnel take a very liberal interpretation of laws, which just straggles the line between what is allowable and what is not (the idea of “continuing publication”; vagueness in the terms “public interest,” “spreading panic or fear,” etc.) thereby allowing the interpretation a degree of legitimacy, since it not entirely wrong and is subjective. Third, freedom of expression is not the only battlefront, so to speak, as evinced by government’s reexaminations of corporate registrations, licenses, permits, and franchises of media entities. At their core, media entities are corporations and journalists are mostly employees (if not contributors) and in that context, there is space for government agencies to nitpick on documents submitted to their offices as part of regulatory compliance, and prepare in advance legal arguments based on records under their custody." (Summary and conclusion, page 40) more