World Day of Social Justice 2021: Unveiling Social Justice Issues in the Digital Economy

Most of us have probably heard the term “social justice” in the media and in classrooms. But what does it mean? The United Nations defines social justice as, “an underlying principle for peaceful and prosperous coexistence within and among nations.” This means that social justice goes hand-in-hand with peace, human rights, and material security. 

During the World Summit for Social Development in 1995, political leaders from all over the world agreed to commit to social development and wrote the Copenhagen Declaration and Programme of Action. The Copenhagen Declaration calls for the UN to take the initiative to address issues concerning global social development. To raise awareness about social justice issues, the UNGA dedicated Feb. 20 as the World Day of Social Justice beginning in 2009. 

Today, as we celebrate the 13th World Day of Social Justice, we will examine this year’s theme and consider a framework for thinking about the visibility of social justice concerns. We then discuss a few important social justice issues in the context of the digital economy and reflect on the visibility of social justice issues in our personal lives. 

A Call for Social Justice in the Digital Economy

Each year, the UN designates a special theme for World Day of Social Justice. This year’s theme, “A Call for Social Justice in the Digital Economy,” centers the importance of the digital economy in the world. With many adults working and children studying from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, the digital economy is an increasing social justice concern. The crisis of the pandemic both reinforces the importance of the digital economy and highlights its flaws and shortcomings.

The UN calls for transformations in the digital economy, including bridging the digital divide, better regulating digital labor platforms, and equitably integrating the Global South into the global digital economy. These efforts align with the Sustainable Development Goals that motivate the work of many UN organizations. Transforming the digital economy can help advance efforts to eradicate poverty, ensure gender equality, promote fair labor practices, and achieve social well-being for all.

Making Social Justice Issues Visible

Social justice begins with awareness. With that in mind, it is important to understand that some issues related to social justice are much more visible than others, but that doesn’t make those less visible issues any less important. Issues may be less visible for a myriad of reasons, which means that as advocates for social justice we must further investigate not only the issues we already are aware of, but also those issues that may not have much attention. 

Visibility can be limited for a number of reasons, including when issues are very localized. For example, students at UNC Chapel Hill who engaged in protests to remove Silent Sam were most visible to the campus community and surrounding communities. If you are unfamiliar with the university, or the specific story regarding this case, you’re probably wondering what “Silent Sam” even is. But, if I told you that the protests were about removing a century-old Confederate monument from our campus, you may find the issue to be more visible than you thought previously, since there have been a number of these types of protests across the United States. Even for folks outside of the United States context, the visibility of campus protests related to Confederate monuments is likely very low; however, the visibility of anti-racism movements makes this a strong framework for understanding this social justice cause.

Issues often intersect and have broader implications that can be understood across cultural and societal bounds. We must do our due diligence to examine those intersections and grant more visibility to issues that get excluded from the public eye. 

Information Access in the Digital Economy as a Social Justice Issue

Access to information and information technology is a key social justice issue that the UN considers on this World Day of Social Justice. Here are some of the ways we can see this issue and humanitarian responses to it in the world today.

Secondhand Phones in Indonesia

Around July 2020, twelve Jakartan journalists from various media outlets — under the name Wartawan Lintas Media — joined forces to help underprivileged students in the Greater Jakarta area obtain smartphones for their online classes. 

In an interview with Indonesian newspaper Kompas, founder Ghina Ghaliya said that she was inspired when a garbage collector knocked on her door and asked her for a second hand smartphone so that his child could attend school virtually. She then found out that some families in Jakarta only have one smart device which forces the parents and children to wait for their turns to fulfill their daily responsibilities. For families who do not have adequate devices and internet access, students struggle to learn and adults face challenges to work. 

From this encounter, she realized that there was a great need for smartphones among the poor communities in Jakarta during stay-at-home orders. The #ponselpintaruntukpelajar (smartphones for students) program opened smartphone donations through Instagram. The smartphones donated must have a touch screen, a functioning power and volume button, and should be able to run Zoom. By Sept. 2020, they had collected a total of $38,194 and distributed a total of 379 smartphones. 

Although #ponselpintaruntukpelajar started as a local program, its participants expanded rapidly and the organization received smartphone requests from other parts of Indonesia, showing the significance of this need. 

Broadband Access in Rural America 

Access to the internet has evolved from a luxury for some to a necessity for almost all. The internet is a way for people to connect, organize, work, relax, and share information. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced more and more people into a virtual space for work, school, and social connection — and it has left those without access to this virtual space behind. It is clear that the demand and need for increased broadband access has risen rapidly over the decade, but the supply has failed to meet such drastically changing needs. The rural community, both within the United States and outside of it, has been one of the most impacted groups due to this discrepancy in supply and demand. 

According to the Institute for Local Self Reliance, “Only around 2 percent of urban Americans lack access to broadband service compared to 30 percent of rural Americans.” Even more concerning, the lack of access to broadband is especially acute from a global perspective since there are still an estimated 3.7 billion people still unconnected throughout the world, with most of those people from the Global South. The availability and affordability of internet access are essential social justice issues which must be addressed immediately. Particularly, we need effective policy responses from all levels of government that expand internet access to every person.

Additionally, the Brookings Institute finds that guidelines from the Federal Communication Commission have failed to adjust to the reality of the digital economy. Definitions of broadband internet speeds have not increased to compensate for the intensifying demands of our technology. The Brookings Institute calls for the expansion of high-speed fiber internet in order to address the demand in the digital economy. As Americans work and take classes on Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and other communication tools, it is more vital than ever that the urban-rural digital divide ends.

Educational Tools for Refugees

Technological tools and information access are essential elements of education at home. For many refugees and internally displaced people, these resources are difficult to find. In my article on the educational crisis facing refugees, I found that only half of refugees are regularly attending primary school. These numbers are undoubtedly worse now as we enter into the second year of the pandemic and students permanently leave school to join the workforce to support their families. 

Expanding access to smartphones, laptops, and the internet are essential social justice needs, particularly for refugees in the Global South. Although we may be aware of major refugee and immigration crises, migrants around the world face a largely invisible struggle for physical, social, and economic security. Enhancing existing programs that provide refugees with technology and bringing awareness to the needs of this vulnerable population is a vital next step for overcoming the digital divide.

In particular, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has piloted programs that can help reduce the technological divide for refugees. Aula Movil is one such program that offers refugee students the chance to go to school. Aula Movil is a mobile classroom in Bolivia which drives around to give Venezuelan migrant and refugee students the opportunity to receive formal education and even psychosocial services which are vital for these young students. The intersections of immigration and poverty that lie at the heart of the digital divide must be addressed in order to give refugees an opportunity to thrive in the digital economy.

Labor Shifts in the Digital Economy as a Social Justice Issue

Another important social justice issue within the digital economy comes from transformation in how laborers work. Protections for workers in the traditional economy often fail to translate to protections in the digital economy, or new challenges emerge for worker protections. We discuss some of the ways these shifts are taking place below.

Women’s Digital Labor in Japan

In her ethnography Invisibility by Design, Gabriella Lukács examines how women became both the driving engine and victims of Japan’s digital economy. 

The digital labor market enticed women with the promise that they could develop their own meaningful careers on the internet. Because Japanese women have long been excluded from salaried employment, they were able to better navigate the precarious digital labor market. Many of these women become net idols — internet celebrities who market themselves through their  images, personalities, and attractiveness.

Net idols, as well as many of the other careers available in the digital economy, are unlike traditional nine to five jobs. These women work irregular, long hours in the hopes of becoming successful and self-sufficient entrepreneurs. To maintain their career, they have to spend countless hours communicating with their fans to meet their fans’s emotional needs. This type of work is called “unpaid affective labor” which demands women to fulfill emotional requirements for a job without getting paid for it. Unpaid affective labor is typical when women are working as housewives. 

The net idol phenomenon promotes the idea that digital unpaid labor is a prerequisite for a meaningful career. With the rise of the net idols, many male entrepreneurs saw business opportunities by creating blogging platforms and ranking websites for net idols and their fans to use. While male internet entrepreneurs become successful in establishing lucrative careers, female net idols are locked into jobs that do not give them reliable income. 

This situation is not unique to Japan. Research shows this problem occurs in other parts of the world such as Australia. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development finds that the digital gender divide affects both developing and developed countries, with these effects most prominent in the least developed countries. Because of this, it is impossible to ignore the issue of gender inequity when talking about the digital economy. 

Worker Exploitation and Mass Consumption

Thinking more broadly about the labor shifts caused by the growth of the digital economy, corporations that operate primarily in the digital economy engage in concerning labor practices. As convenient as it may be to order takeout through Uber Eats, purchase home goods on Amazon, or select groceries for delivery on Instacart, these choices directly contribute to declining worker protections. It may not be initially clear how this happens, so let’s look more closely at the concepts of the gig economy and mass consumption.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics defines the gig worker as someone who works irregularly on “gigs,” which may be contracts of a few weeks or deliveries that take a few minutes, in order to make a living. Gig workers may work multiple gigs at a time and go far beyond the standard 40 hour work week. They may also work full- or part-time jobs on top of this gig work. In 2005, the BLS reported that gig workers made up between 2 to 4 percent of the U.S. economy. Today, that number has spiked to 35 percent. Gig workers receive limited or no employer benefits, like health insurance or retirement saving accounts, and also face higher health risks during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly as consumers rely more and more heavily on the services that gig workers are employed under.

The digital economy simplifies consumption and facilitates the growth of these gig-based companies, as well as the demand for low-cost products from corporations like Amazon and Walmart, which tend to have more stable employment opportunities. However, stable employment in the digital economy does not always translate to labor protection gains. The massive profits of these companies have not trickled down into increased wages and better labor protections for the average employee. Instead, these gains have been concentrated in the hands of CEOs and upper management of these corporations. The UN calls for strengthened labor protections that focus on the rights of workers which have not been adequately addressed in the context of the digital economy. These protections are vital to make the digital economy a more equitable forum for workers throughout the world.

Social Justice in Our Communities

In addition to learning more about ongoing solutions to some of the issues discussed throughout the article, it is also a great practice to reflect about the visibility of social justice issues specifically as this relates to personal experiences. Considering issues in our own communities and those which we may never encounter in communities far away gives us an opportunity to think about unique solutions that we can apply in different contexts. We invite readers to join us in reflecting about questions related to the visibility of social justice issues and the digital economy. 

• What issues are visible in your community? Are there ways that these issues connect to broader social justice concerns in your state, country, or the world?
• How can the identity of individuals facing an issue make the issue more or less visible to a broader audience?
• What issues may not be as visible in your community, and why? 
  • If you have identified a less visible issue, what can you do to increase visibility surrounding it? 
• Why do you think visibility is important when responding to social justice issues? 
• Beyond these examples, are there other social justice concerns in the digital economy that you can think of?