Call for submissions: Articles and short essays on digital rights and privacy issues

Submissions are currently: OPEN

Round 1 

The OPTF is calling journalists, researchers, and writers from around the world to propose articles and short essays (approximately 750 to 1500 words) about digital rights, digital privacy, and cyber security issues. We’re particularly interested in stories with a personal angle or which cover issues that haven’t received mainstream media exposure.  

Examples of topics which your pitch may cover: social or human impact of data breaches, digital attacks on human rights defenders, use of cyber laws to target journalists and activists, social or human impact of de-anonymisation or doxxing. We also welcome pitches from other topics you would like to write about, but hopefully these examples give you an idea of the kinds of pitches we’re looking for.

Selected proposals will be published on the OPTF website, under a Creative Commons attributable license. Contributors will receive an honorarium fee of AUD $350 for their writing. In the first round, we expect to commission and publish 10 pieces.

Submissions for round one close on March 14 2022.

Why are we doing this?

In our 2021 Ground Safe report, one of our recommendations was to increase awareness of digital threats and vulnerabilities. This call for articles and short essays aims to contribute to this recommendation. Having more stories about digital rights in the public domain will: generate public discourse; further increase awareness about digital rights issues; encourage action to prevent the use of digital technologies by both state and non-state actors against human rights defenders.

We also believe there’s a need to broaden the pool of writers around this topic, and while the honorarium fee may be modest, we hope it will attract proposals for articles about the topic from around the world.

How to submit your pitch

You can submit your article pitch through this Google form or by sending us an email. Pitches should be no more than 100 words in length. 

About OPTF

The OPTF is an Australian digital rights not-for-profit organisation. Our mission is to equip every digital citizen with technology which upholds their right to privacy. We are actively implementing technology projects that help us achieve our mission, such as the active development of Session messenger and Lokinet, and outreach and education programs facilitated by the foundation.

More information

If you have any questions, or have an idea that doesn’t fit the guidelines of this call, please send an email to sam@oxen.io or alex@optf.ngo to discuss further.