New research uses Google search data to better understand who is thinking about human rights, and where those people live.
"Human rights aren't going anywhere, or at least the language of human rights isn't going anywhere," Geoff Dancy says. Refugee Children in Immigration Detention Protest Broadmeadows by John Englart (Takver) is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
"Critics say the 'human rights-based approach,' defined by the United Nations as a 'conceptual framework for the process of human development that is normatively based on international human rights standards,' is no longer useful for people struggling to bring about change.
"But that’s not the story Google tells, according to political scientists Chris Fariss of the University of Michigan and Geoff Dancy of the University of Toronto.
"Using Google search data from around the world, the researchers show that human rights are the most popular in the Global South, and that people in countries such as Guatemala and Uganda search the internet for information on human rights far more frequently than people in countries such as the United States or the United Kingdom. Their results appear in the American Political Science Review." - Morgan Sherburne-Michigan
Article: Google Searches: Human Rights Is Still A Popular Concept