Image made by Ameya Nagarajan on Canva Pro for Global Voices
By Brett Davidson
This post is part of Global Voices’ April 2026 Spotlight series, “Human perspectives on AI.” This series will offer insight into how AI is being used in global majority countries, how its use and implementation are affecting individual communities, what this AI experiment might mean for future generations, and more. You can support this coverage by donating here.
Technology such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and algorithm-driven platforms is having unprecedented impacts on almost every aspect of life, from academia to employment to the environment. When it comes to social justice, democracy and human rights, things look bleak: algorithms are channeling us into ideological echo-chambers, while AI has taken surveillance and data extraction to alarming new levels. At the same time, social media platforms enable civil society organizations to reach audiences and tell stories in powerful new ways, while AI allows people to do research and message testing they would never otherwise be able to afford.
As part of a recent project called “New Tech, New Rules,” the International Resource for Impact and Storytelling (IRIS), with support from Luminate and the Open Society Foundations, commissioned 10 case studies from organizations and researchers across the Global Majority, to hear how this new technology is affecting them and their work, and how they are adapting and adjusting. The studies came from across Latin America and the Caribbean, the Arab region, Nigeria, Tunisia, India and Hong Kong.
Each case study is incredibly rich and interesting in itself (and some of their authors are writing about them for Global Voices) — but, looking across them, we were able to discern several interesting patterns that perhaps resonate and offer lessons for others.
A toolkit of tactics: Co-opting, countering and innovating
Across the case studies, we saw three clear ways in which civil society is responding to the tech-infused authoritarian context: through Co-opting, Countering and Innovating.
Some organizations are co-opting culture and technology for their own purposes: for example, Fogo Cruzado in Brazil is collaborating with the UK-based Future Narratives Lab to use AI to test messages aimed at reducing public support for police violence in favelas.
Others are focused on countering and resisting tech-driven surveillance and digital violence, such as Derechos Digitales, which is using social media to campaign and mobilise opposition against the widespread use of facial recognition technologies by authorities in Brazil and Chile.
Still others are innovating, finding new forms and approaches to journalism and to narrative civic engagement. An example of the former is Alharaca, a group of feminist journalists from El Salvador working in exile and experimenting with getting offline and slowing down rather than giving in to the tech-driven pressure to speed up. They are bringing audience members together in person and trying out new storytelling approaches, such as board games and immersive sound installations. When it comes to civil society, activists in Hong Kong are adapting to pervasive AI-driven surveillance by using humor, embedding meaning in seemingly innocuous terminology and working through short-lived, temporary organizations.
Of course, co-opting technology, countering it, and innovating in the face of it are not mutually exclusive. Fogo Cruzado’s co-optation of the research possibilities AI offers is, of course, hugely innovative. It is only through narrative and organizational innovation that activists in places like Hong Kong and Tunisia are able to counter and resist state repression. Nevertheless, they are also distinct approaches, and we believe this trio of tactics serves as a potentially useful menu for organizations to consider as they navigate our current moment.
From the hyperlocal to the transnational
Several of the case studies foreground a turn to the hyperlocal as a way to prioritize grassroots issues and voices sidelined by national media and politics, as well as to sidestep the scrutiny of authorities mostly focused on the national stage. Shifting the frame from one that places national politics in the center, what was previously thought of as marginal becomes central: hyperlocal stories, news and politics are where it’s at. This is where politics intersects with people’s lives, where connection and power-building can happen outside of surveilled tech platforms, where issues intersect, where audiences and media creators overlap, and where change seems possible.
At the same time, there is a turn to the supra-national, looking at trends and connecting the dots of political developments beyond the nation-state, and as a way of sharing lessons and building cross-border solidarity. Just as authoritarians connect and learn from one another across borders, just as technology knows no borders, so civil society actors realize they need to connect across boundaries and borders to make meaning and build power.
Flexibility is everything
In a fast-changing environment, where techno-authoritarianism is both continually innovating and intentionally disrupting and overwhelming, being flexible and adaptable is an essential strategy. While this is apparent across all of the case studies, perhaps the clearest example comes from Hong Kong, where the case study authors highlight the importance of ephemeral infrastructures that can appear, dissolve and reappear or reconfigure themselves as needed. These arrangements — micro-groups, informal collectives, rotating convenors, volunteer networks — sustain momentum while avoiding singular points of vulnerability. This is also a really important lesson for funders to note – both resilience and impact depend on the ability to anticipate and pivot at short notice, and funding arrangements need to build this in.
It takes a constellation
No single organization can do everything; no one can achieve systemic impact acting alone. As our case studies illustrate, robust, decentralized and collaborative networks are necessary, both within countries and across borders. Narrative workers and civil society actors are actively forming alliances and seeking assistance and expertise from organizations and peers from beyond their fields to bolster their narrative efforts, strengthen their advocacy campaigns, and guard themselves against digital attacks and surveillance. Funding strategies in turn should proactively support what the Polis Project calls “the infrastructure of resistance.”
The interconnectedness of narrative, technology and power
Across the 10 case studies, we see three elements in constant interaction, each inseparable from the others: narrative, technology and politics. Civil society actors are narrative workers: narrative is upstream of technology, and culture and meaning-making constitute THE key terrain of struggle right now. They are technologists: operating with, on and through current and emergent technology to build power and engage in the struggle over culture, narrative and meaning, constantly adapting and innovating, always balancing technology’s possibilities and affordances with its risks, limitations and harms. They are political actors, organizers and power-builders: making meaning both about and with technology, in the interests of social justice and democracy.
Overall, while the surveillance, abuses, and huge concentrations and imbalances of power that AI and other new technologies enable are very worrying, we found a good deal of encouragement in these case studies. Operating in hostile territory, using tools owned by so-called “broligarchs” and authoritarians, social justice-focused advocates and activists, journalists and storytellers around the world are successfully adapting and employing technology and culture to build people power in the interests of democracy and social justice.
Brett Davidson is founder and principal at Wingseed LLC, and works with the International Resource for Impact and Storytelling (IRIS) as lead for narrative infrastructure building. Previously he was Director of Media and Narratives at the Open Society Public Health Program, and before that worked in civil society and a radio journalist in South Africa. He writes about narrative change and listening as a political act.
