Rebecca MacKinnon

I am co-founder with Ethan Zuckerman of Global Voices and presently a board member of the organization.

After wandering the earth for many years, I presently live in Washington, DC, where I am an independent writer, researcher and advocate for digital rights. Previously I founded and ran Ranking Digital Rights. My first book, Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom, was published in 2012. I am also a founding member of the Global Network Initiative and board member of the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Before moving to Washington DC in 2010 I was a visiting fellow at Princeton's Center For Information Technology Policy. In 2009 I was an Open Society Institute Fellow. In 2007 and 2008 I taught online journalism at the University of Hong Kong's Journalism and Media Studies Centre. From 2004-06 I spent three years at Harvard, mainly as a research fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, which is where Ethan and I started Global Voices.

Before all of that, from 1992-2003 I worked for CNN in Asia including as Bureau Chief in Beijing and Tokyo. I covered stories from Taiwan to Korea (North and South) to Pakistan. I'm fluent in Mandarin Chinese.

Email Rebecca MacKinnon

Latest posts by Rebecca MacKinnon

Arab Bloggers Meet in Tunis

On Monday in Tunis, the 3rd Arab Bloggers Meeting kicked off with a day-long public conference. The meeting is co-hosted by Global Voices, Nawaat and Heinrich Böll Foundation and is attended by around 100 bloggers from nearly all Arab countries.

Support Global Voices: Help make the world a more connected place

  20 December 2010

Even with much support from passionate volunteers, we need financial support to keep this project going and growing. Global Voices has become an incubator for important and innovative projects around the globe. If you believe the work we're doing at Global Voices is important for making the world a wider and more connected place, we hope you'll support us with a donation.

Hong Kong: GV Editor Oiwan Lam faces court battle over Flickr photo

  16 July 2007

On May 11th, Oiwan Lam, Global Voices Northeast Asia Editor, committed what she says was a deliberate act of civil disobedience. Writing on the citizen media website InMedia Hong Kong, Oiwan called on her readers to post links to erotic websites and also included an artsy photo of a topless woman that she found on Flickr, the photo sharing site owned by Yahoo!. The post was originally published here, but has now been removed from the InMedia site and posted on a Wordpress.com blog. As Boingboing and others reported earlier this week, Oiwan's post has been classified as "Class II indecent" by Hong Kong's Obscene Articles Tribunal.

Delhi Summit Reflections: We ARE the People of the Year.

  19 December 2006

As global voices editors, authors, community members, and allies convened our second annual summit in Delhi this weekend, TIME magazine dedicated its “person of the year” to YOU: people around the world who are taking media creation into their own hands. (Photo by Jace. Click to enlarge.) The TIME article...

Global Voices Delhi Summit Slideshow

  16 December 2006

Day 1 of the Global Voices Delhi Summit is well underway and the photos are starting to emerge on Flickr. Here is a slideshow. People are contributing their photos of the meeting (and a few from their travels before the meeting) by uploading their pictures to Flickr and tagging them...

Global Voices Summit begins Saturday!!

  15 December 2006

If you aren't able to join us in Delhi for Saturday's Global Voices 2006 Summit, please join us online! Information about the schedule, webcast, live online chat, and other information can all be found on this web page. Or you can click here to go directly to the streaming audio...

Global Voices launches new search function!

  9 December 2006

Global Voices co-founder Ethan Zuckerman and tech guru Boris Anthony have put together a new “Global Voices Web” search using the new Google Co-op platform which enables you to create your own search engine. Check it out – it's in the yellow search bar near the top of the page...

Corporate Social Responsibility: The blogosphere reacts

  10 November 2006

If you missed the live webcast of Reuters’ Corporate Social Responsible panel yesterday, you can click here to view the full-length archived video. Stephen Frost live-blogged it on the CSR Asia blog. We had a sizeable group of bloggers from a range of countries on the live IRC chat –...

Global Voices Delhi Summit: Join us in December!

  25 October 2006

Please join us for the Global Voices 2006 Summit, December 16th in New Delhi, India! The Global Voices Summit, on December 16th, will be our annual opportunity to take stock, come together and explore our central question: How can we use the Internet to build a more democratic, participatory global...

Video: Vietnamese bloggers get “kinky” for charity

  28 September 2006

Vietnamese blogger Elmooh has uploaded a series of four videos shot at an “Offline Party” – a blogger-organized charity fundraiser in Hanoi. The party included a game involving young men, young women, bananas and candles. (Don't worry, it's all g-rated and everybody keeps their clothes on!) I e-mailed Elmooh asking...

Ted Turner on the U.N.: Spoke but didn't listen

  20 September 2006

On Tuesday afternoon in New York, Georgia Popplewell, Alice Backer, Kamla Bhatt and I did our best to ask questions on behalf of the world's blogosphere at the Reuters “Newsmaker” conversation with Ted Turner, who gave $1 billion to set up the U.N. Foundation ten years ago. The bloggers participating...

Thailand: Living thru a Coup

  19 September 2006

Stuart G, an expat living in Bangkok, worries that the military might start fighting itself. But meanwhile he says “there is no fighting going on now. I am safe, my refrigerator is stocked, and I am not in danger.” Cowboy Caleb also has a running account of events from a...

Thailand: Coup News Blackout?

  19 September 2006

Metroblogging Bangkok blogs as the coup unfolds. He says CNN, BBC and all the international cable news channels have gone down and writes: “now just a matter of getting the Internet down…. I'll see you guys when Thailand becomes civilized again…” Kwanzoku has screenshots from the TV news until: “Now...

Thailand: Live-blogging the Coup

  19 September 2006

With what appears to be a military coup unfolding in Bangkok, Bangkok Pundit is live blogging the confusion. Gnarly Kitty also gives running commentary as the news unfolds, and fears the impending loss of Internet and mobile access… which means the live-blogging may not last for long.

U.N. reform: when you talk, will they listen?

  18 September 2006

When you talk, will this man listen? Let's find out on Tuesday. What is your opinion of the United Nations? What kind of impact has it had on your country and people? How should it be reformed? Who should lead it? Global Voices is hoping to share your views in...

Happy Blog Day!!!

  31 August 2006

Happy Blog Day!!! Today we celebrate the wonders of the growing and very global online conversation. Blog Day founder Nir Ofir suggests we celebrate by recommending five new blogs. But I really want to take this opportunity to give thanks to our tremendously hard-working Global Voices editors – bloggers living...

International Blog Day is almost here!

  29 August 2006

Don't forget! The second annual international Blog Day is coming up this Thursday, August 31st. Please spread the blog love by participating. A very exciting thing is the vast array of languages in which people are blogging about Blog Day. It will be a day in which we celebrate our...

Celebrate Blog Day with a Global Voices twist!

  14 August 2006

We hope that bloggers around the world will join us in celebrating the second annual Blog Day on August 31st. Israeli blogger Nir Ofir, who conceived and organized Blog Day last year, recently wrote: On these days, of war in the middle east, I would like to remind you all...