iMAP 2023 Internet Censorship Report: Executive Summary

This executive summary aims to provide an overview of the state of internet censorship in the 10 countries covered under iMAP as a region. It serves to highlight the overall trend of internet censorship that includes the blocking of websites, instant messaging apps, circumvention tools and network tampering, its similarities and differences across 10 countries in the region, as well as key events that happened during the coverage period that could potentially affect the trend of internet censorship. 

Outline

This report is separated into the following sections:

• Executive Summary
• This section explains the purpose of carrying out the study into the state of internet censorship, and provides a general overview of socio-political situations across the 10 countries.
• Key findings in the region
• This section provides a general takeaway on the blocking of websites, internet censorship during elections, and summary of findings across different categories of websites: gambling, news media, pornography, political criticism, social networking, terrorism and militants, and government websites. Charts and graphs are available here as visualisation.
• Contribute to the study
• This section is created to help readers understand how they could contribute to the study and the gathering of evidence of internet censorship.
• Annex: Methodology
• Here the readers will find how the data is collected, measured and analysed for the purpose of iMAP 2023 country reports.

This executive summary is a good starting point for reference to gather a general understanding on what is being affected by internet censorship in the 10 countries. Our target audience includes researchers working on digital rights or network interference who are in search of ideas and materials for further research, digital rights defenders or civil society organisations looking for materials to support their advocacy work, journalists seeking to uncover internet censorship, among others.

Recommendations to audience:

• Supporting evidence of internet censorship
• Understanding what is the latest development of internet censorship in the country, in terms of methods of blockings and the websites affected by censorship
• Policy advocacy
• Call for action

The data collected relies on test lists that usually include some websites that are known to be blocked, but does not reflect the complete list of the blocked websites. The discovery of blocked websites is dependent on which websites are tested.

The Executive Summary can be downloaded at the link below.