Original version of the Threatened Voices platform, 2009-2014.

Threatened Voices launched in November 2009 as a collaborative mapping project to build a database of bloggers who were threatened, arrested or killed for speaking out online and to create a platform to  support advocacy for their freedom and safety. Imagined and designed by Sami Ben Gharbia, who was Global Voices Advox Director from 2007–2012, Threatened Voices filled a crucial gap in understanding about human rights reporting, focusing on threats to bloggers, unaffiliated citizen activists, and people being targeted purely for their online activities. At the time, most documentation of human rights abuses focused on political activists, media, and writers and artists. Threatened Voices aimed to highlight the import and consequences of online expression, as described for example, in Jillian York’s article the Arab Digital Vanguard: How a Decade of Blogging Contributed to a Year of Revolution.

From 2009–2013, Threatened Voices documented 900+ cases of individuals targeted for their online expression, at the time the largest dataset of harms of this type. Threatened Voices researchers worked with the people in the dataset in order to ensure that the data did not present a risk to them, and also relied on publicly available records. The project was supported almost wholly by volunteer contributions. The Electronic Frontier Foundation collaborated with the project under the brand Bloggers Under Fire, hosted a version of the site on their platform, and contributed research and shared updates about the status of threatened individuals.

In 2013, with a grant from UNESCO, Threatened Voices contributors gathered in Casablanca, Morocco, together with representatives from the Media Legal Defence Initiative, the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Amnesty International, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and the UN’s Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner. This group devised a new data structure, and organized threats by technological interference, physical harm, intimidation, and judicial or legal threat.

In 2014 Threatened Voices, with funds from Hivos, Omidyar Network, the MacArthur Foundation and the Ford Foundation, and in collaboration with Visualizing Impact, began building a new platform to expand the research. ​​A team of researchers, coders, data visualization experts, writers and human rights experts, including Ellery Roberts Biddle, Hisham Almiraat, Vaibhav Bhawsar, Ivan Sigal, Ramzi Jaber, Jessica Anderson, and Moraad Taleeb rebuilt the methods and the platform, informed by the Huridocs Events Standard Formats and verified and updated 519 cases in the dataset.

Threatened Voices platform display of Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah timeline of events, 2006-2015.

The project aimed to develop a stronger network of regular, expert contributors for the site to keep the information current and accurate. Overall, the project sought to provide legal advocacy specialists, researchers, journalists, and policymakers with accurate, useful data on real world threats to individuals practicing their rights to online speech. This information would help advocates and researchers understand the dynamics of individual cases and trends over time. It would also provide data that helps them advocate for stronger legal protections for online speakers at national and international levels. A second goal was to increase awareness of threats to individuals for the general public.

Version two of the Threatened Voices platform, 2016.

At the same time as this platform was nearing completion in 2017, we were observing a significant shift in the nature of threats to online expression, marked by mass online surveillance, repression of speech at scale, targeting of people for acts as simple as liking or sharing content, and an escalation of the nature of the threat to individuals in many states. The work of documenting threats was becoming expensive, labor-intensive and a challenge to the mental health of people doing the research. The idea of an online repository of cases itself seemed as if it might create risk for the people in the dataset, in ways that were not true in the past. Also, as online activity became a ubiquitous element of activism and expression, the lines between online and offline activism and expression of rights became less significant.

In 2018, after consideration, consultation with partners and outreach to people in the dataset, Global Voices decided to shutter the project. We concluded it with an offline installation of the work in 2019, at the Slought Gallery in Philadelphia. Captures of the original Threatened Voices dataset live on at the Internet Archive and in nearly 500 stories on the Global Voices website, categorized under the topic Threatened Voices.

Slought Gallery offline installation of Threatened Voices, 2019. Photo: Ivan Sigal.

Threatened Voices research methods have also taken on another life, as the basis for threat analysis for the Unfreedom Monitor, an Advox research project that explored technology and authoritarian practices in 20 countries, from 2021–2023, which includes over 70 stories and 25 research papers.

We continue to use the categorization developed during the project as it applies to stories we publish today.