Ranking Digital Rights is honored to announce that we are one of nine winners of the 2014 John S. and James L. Knight Foundation’s Knight News Challenge. This year’s challenge focuses on breakthrough ideas that strengthen the Internet for freedom of expression and innovation.
One of our sister projects at New America’s Open Technology Institute, Measurement Lab (M-Lab), is also a Knight News Challenge winner. We look forward to collaborating with them and the other impressive projects run by brilliant people committed to keeping the Internet open and free.
The News Challenge award supports significant elements of RDR’s work through the end of 2015. Specifically, in the second half of 2014 it will support a pilot study in which we will test out our Phase 1 methodology on ten or so Internet and telecom companies around the world. In 2015, it will support implementation of the full public ranking of up to 50 companies.
It goes without saying that this award would not have been possible without the hard work and dedication of RDR’s institutional partners and researchers. Nor would it have been possible without the generosity of our existing funders who made that work possible.
We sincerely thank the Knight Foundation which supports transformational ideas that promote quality journalism, advance media innovation, engage communities and foster the arts. The foundation believes that democracy thrives when people and communities are informed and engaged. Ranking Digital Rights contributes to that mission by engaging and informing the public on what ICT sector companies are (or aren’t) doing to respect users’ rights, generating data that that the consumers, the media, investors, and policymakers can use to hold the world’s most powerful companies accountable to international human rights standards.
