Unified Communication: What do Digital Activists need?

Abstract

Digital activists use tools and platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter to organize networked protest. However, these tools appear to lack the necessary features to establish secure and private communication, particularly regarding anonymity and encryption, which could put activists and others at risk of persecution. However, it is not clear which security and privacy features are actually required from the activists’, rather than the academic, point of view. In this paper, we use semi-structured interviews to collect and analyze the specific requirements for functionality, security, and privacy of Unified Communication (UC) (i.e., audio/video conferencing + instant messaging). We compare these requirements with features provided by common UC platforms and derive critical technical requirements and guidelines for sociotechnical aspects which need further research.