By Muhammed Bello Buhari
The Mozilla Festival (Mozfest) is an annual convention hosted by the Mozilla Foundation to harness the collective power of partnerships. The festival brings together artists, public interest technologists, policymakers, and activists to creatively work together with the aim of creating trustworthy artificial intelligence and a healthy internet.
This year’s virtual event took place from 20th to 24th March 2023, with registrations to the various sessions open to the public. Digital Grassroots (DIGRA) hosted a workshop session on its Digital Rights Monopoly Game. This session was facilitated on March 23, 2023, by our founder and Chief Strategist, Esther Mwema, and our Co-founder and Global Lead, Uffa Modey, and moderated by Chrystal Bonzo. We gamified digital rights concepts through our ‘Digital Rights Monopoly’ and mapped the globe’s internet infrastructure to show why we need to ‘localize internet governance’ to maintain an open and equal internet. We built upon Mozilla Festival 2018, in which we showcased the Digital Rights Monopoly game to bring awareness to digital rights issues affecting the young people we are working with. In this session at MozFest 2023, we had open consultation on the game.
Our Global Lead, Uffa Modey, gave the background of the session. She introduced the participants to Digital Grassroots, and the Digital Rights Monopoly Game, where she mentioned that “the game was co-created by Digital Grassroots as a simulation game of Monopoly based on digital rights, abuses, and data breaches currently affecting youth living in marginalized regions. The digital rights issues featured in the game will represent the streets and utilities that are usually included in a Monopoly game. This version of web literacy engages players in a game to recognize global internet issues through our version of Digital Rights Monopoly by bringing to light Digital Grassroots’s work to bring internet governance to young people in over 40 countries. Digital Rights Monopoly is a game that reflects core digital rights issues affecting youth in marginalized regions and offers pathways to build a healthier internet in local communities. We are raising awareness of the varying digital rights circumstances across the globe through a reenactment of the game of Monopoly.” And then added that the MozFest session seeks to get input from the community on the Digital Rights Monopoly game.
Chrystal moderated the Roundtable Discussion for the community input on the Digital Rights Monopoly Game. Participants shared their thoughts on the game. One participant said, “in the age of Artificial Intelligence, games like DRM increase accessibility and community-centered contributions to the digital ecosystem.” Uffa talked about how games can reach underrepresented communities and how community-centered games shape understanding of AI. Then Esther closed the session by reviewing the recommendations made during the open consultation and collected the contacts of the participants who were interested in staying involved.
Digital Right Monopoly Game is a reenactment of the traditional game of Monopoly that adapts gamification and edutainment as a method for digital literacy for newcomers from the global majority to identify and address issues relating to the digital rights and internet governance space. In a game session, the participants will engage with an overview description of the common digital rights issues and encounter highlights and lowlights of digital rights real-life scenarios in Monopoly Chance and Community Chest.
Read about the session here, and if you’re interested in getting involved with this, you can contact us here.