Human rights, technology and social change: the story of the right to communicate

Abstract This paper revisits debates about the right to communicate from the late 1960s to early 2000s, examining how different actors engaged with this concept in reaction to imminent technological changes and their implications for society. It explores how these actors advocated for or contested this concept at different international forums such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to advance different agendas for the international order. In telling the story of the right to communicate, this paper adopts a historical-materialist approach, examining discursive struggles as reflective of and conditioned by material and social relations and their contradictions, and reflects on the question of the promise and perils of human rights for social change, considering not only the malleability of rights language but the material conditions of which human rights concepts are reflective and constitutive.