Environmental Defenders is pleased to share that our work has been featured as a central case study in a peer-reviewed article published in Acta Academica, a South African humanities journal, in December 2025.
The paper, “Considering socio-ecological digital activism through a Fuchsean lens,” authored by Prof Inge Konik of the Department of Philosophy at Nelson Mandela University, draws extensively on Environmental Defenders’ programmes, reports, and digital activities to examine how grassroots organisations navigate the opportunities and risks of digital activism in the face of authoritarian capitalism.
Using the theoretical framework of Austrian critical theorist Christian Fuchs, and supplemented by perspectives from global South scholars including Kenyan political activist Nanjala Nyabola and digital studies scholar Michael Kwet, the paper analyses how digital platforms and technologies, while powerful tools for advocacy and resistance, are equally instruments of surveillance, algorithmic manipulation, and what Fuchs calls the “surveillance-industrial complex.” The paper argues that these risks are especially acute for environmental human rights defenders operating in contexts like Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where governments and corporations increasingly deploy digital tools to monitor, intimidate, and suppress civil society.
Environmental Defenders contributed directly to this research through years of engagement with the author, sharing our organisational experience, reports, and digital security practices. The paper examines how our use of community radio, open-access publications, interactive reports, podcasts in local languages, and encrypted communications tools positions us within what the research describes as the digital public sphere, creating space for critical public debate and resistance against extractivist capitalism in the Albertine Rift and Congo Basin regions.
The article also references an earlier co-authored paper by Prof. Konik and three Environmental Defenders staff members, published in Capitalism Nature Socialism in 2025, on ecofeminist struggles amid extractivist conflicts in Uganda and the DRC.
We are proud that our frontline experience is contributing to academic knowledge on digital activism, environmental justice, and the protection of civic space in the global South.
The article is open access and available here: https://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/aa/article/view/10197