We promote values of openness, equity, privacy, and diversity for a healthy media economy.
Today, half of the world’s 10 largest companies are U.S. based tech companies: Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet and Facebook. These and other major publicly-held tech companies are growing at an unprecedented scale as they urge consumers around the globe to embed digital technologies in almost every aspect of everyday life – no matter the cost.
Open MIC – the Open Media and Information Companies Initiative – works with investors who have both shareholder value and social impact in mind — investors who are concerned that the growth of the tech industry often comes at the expense of social, political, economic and environmental well-being. Though they have long espoused values of innovation, ease and openness, the most profitable players in the tech sector have in fact frequently facilitated social divergence on a global scale, resulting in massive unintended harms and discriminatory outcomes. This has amounted to an existential failure across the industry, posing great risk to society, the economy, and shareholder value. Tech companies are facing legal, reputational, financial, and regulatory risk over enabling the spread of racism and white supremacy online, facilitating election interference and the erosion of democracy, allowing governments to engage in censorship and mass surveillance, and neglecting human rights for vulnerable people using the internet around the globe.
At Open MIC we provide investors with the education, tools, and networks needed to hold tech companies accountable for the impact of their policies and practices on people’s lives and to build a more open and accountable tech and media landscape.
How Open MIC Works
We identify how the media and tech companies impact key social justice concerns.
Open MIC’s work is rooted in research and a practice of following the leadership of frontline communities who are most directly impacted by corporate harms. We connect with and learn from a range of stakeholders — researchers, elected officials, grassroots organizers, tech policy strategists, etc. — to understand how tech companies are implicated in a range of social issues, from government surveillance to the digital divide to censorship, and to identify the role of investors in these efforts.
We engage investors who share the values of a more open and democratic media and tech landscape and identify the role of investors within broader efforts for corporate accountability.
Open MIC engages with shareholders to understand tech policy concerns and to identify strategies to make investor voices heard by company leadership.
We provide education, tools and networks to support shareholder advocacy campaigns to change corporate practices across the media and tech sectors.
Joining with shareholders, our corporate accountability work plays out in various ways, including:
We reach agreements with companies directly about how they can change, and ensure that companies implement those changes.
We file comments with government agencies and Congress to pursue policy changes around issues impacting the tech industry.
We coordinate with stakeholders in a variety of sectors who have shared goals.
We file proposals to be voted on at annual shareholder meetings that pressure company leadership to make change.