Presenter: Geert Lovink
Abstract: ‘Civil Society and Internet Governance’
For some, the 2003-5 UN World Summit on the Information Society is just another moment in an ongoing series of intergovernmental jamborees, glamorizing disciplinary visions of global ICT governance. For others, WSIS revives 'tricontinentalist' hopes for a New International Information and Communication Order whose emphasis on 'civil society actors' may even signal the transformation of a statist system of intergovernmental organizations. Either way, WSIS continues to encourage the articulation of agendas, positions, and stakes in a new politics of communication and information. Yet not much is known among the general public about WSIS, even less about the role of 'civil society organizations' in WSIS negotiations.
Many of the social and political desires triggered by the rise of the so-called info-society are channeled through the concept and organizational vision of 'civil society', not least because of the lure of 'a seat at the table' in multi-stakeholder dialogues or at intergovernmental summits. What are the strengths and limits of 'civil society' strategies in the evolving organizational infrastructure of a new politics of communication and information? What are some of the pitfalls of 'civil society' strategies that have already supported the expansion of networks in the context of WSIS and facilitated a gradual hybridization of a largely white-and-male tech scene? Who introduced the 'multi-stakeholder approach', and what's the agenda behind (corporatist) consensus approaches? What happens to the users, communities and developers that sustain these movements when NGOs, often operating under the 'global civil society' label even without significant grassroots constituencies, become the dominant movement representatives?
What are the agendas of major NGOs and their network ‘campaigns', and why do so many of them approach WSIS-related issues by way of a politics of communication and information rights? When info-politics are approached in the general context of a politics of human rights, what happens to the tactical and interventionist perspectives and practices developed by new media activists? What is the role of autonomous efforts like ‘We Seize' in going beyond the official ICT for Development rhetoric, and what can be learned from the demise of the originally third-worldist project of a New World Information and Communication Order?
Media activists interested in the question of 'internet governance' are often presented with the following dilemma: either the internet will remain in the hands of US-led global capital (and their libertarian engineering class) or it will be taken over by censoring totalitarian regimes such as China. The 90s libertarian spirit of internet governance has resulted in a privatized decision culture, dominated by a hand-full of organizations and like-minded IT-engineers. Yet the 2003 World Summit on the Information Society has already put pressure on bodies such as ICANN and ISOC to democratize internet governance. With a majority of users soon living in the global South it will become increasingly difficult for backroom IT-managers and their consensus model to remain in control. Ultimately, they will challenge the Pentagon to give up its control over top-level domains. Given the dismissive responses to the UN-style governance alternatives that have been proposed so far, is it indeed true that a shift from ICANN to ITU (or a new UN body) would be an anti-democratic nightmare? What are the options for 'global civil society' - team up with Western IT-bureaucrats, take the side of Third World governments, or create an alternative choice? Can the 'multi-stakeholder approach' be democratized in such a way that it leads to more involvement of users and user communities?
Bio
Dr Geert Lovink is a lecturer/researcher at Amsterdam Polytechnic/University of Amsterdam and is an honorary research advisor in the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, University of Queensland.
Dutch-Australian, Geert is the co-founder of Fibreculture, the Australian network for new media research and culture. A leading figure in critical Internet culture internationally, he is author of Dark fiber: tracking critical Internet culture (MIT Press, 2002), Uncanny networks: dialogues with the virtual intelligentsia (MIT Press, 2003), and My first recession: critical Internet culture in transition (V2_Publishing, Amsterdam , 2003).