Webinar: Remote Connections: Getting Digital Communication Right in the COVID-19 Response

September 17, 2020

Remote Connections: Getting Digital Communication Right in the COVID-19 Response

The growth of digital communication technologies has facilitated the rapid growth in remote communications. The COVID-19 pandemic, and the resulting measures to enforce physical distancing, have made digital technologies ever more important when communicating with communities in humanitarian, development and public health contexts. And while these technologies have facilitated mass messaging, their use has highlighted serious challenges, including the propagation of misinformation, deepening digital exclusion, issues around data privacy and the struggle to hold technology providers (and those that use such technologies) to account.

In partnership with the CDAC Network, we invite you to join us for a discussion with international development experts, leaders, and digital pioneers on the promise and constraints of digitally communicating with communities and other topics such as:

  • Discussion of how digital communication technologies have transformed the way in which we communicate with and engage populations, particularly in the COVID-19 and resulting wider-than-health response.
  • Discuss the challenges of digitally communicating with communities: challenges of misinformation, digital exclusion, issues of data privacy and accountability.
  • Discussion of the extent to which digital communication can replace face-to-face communication in times of physical distancing, and the extent to which it cannot.
  • Explore how the Digital Principles can inform the ways we engage communities and design communication technologies

This conversation will be hosted by Laura Walker McDonald, Senior Director for Insights and Impacts at Digital Impact Alliance and will feature guest speakers

  • Jemilah Mahmood, Special Advisor to the Prime Minister of Malaysia Muhyiddin Yassin on Public Health 
  • Anahi Ayala Iacucci, Independent Consultant
  • Sandra Zerbo, CDAC Senior National Coordinator for Communication and Community Engagement in Burkina Faso.

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