NGOs and the “Information Society”: Grassroots Advocacy at the UN—A Cautionary Tale

Abstract

This article looks at the United Nations‐brokered World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in light of nongovernmental organization participation as a full partner in consultations and decisions. Combining participation‐observation fieldwork, interviews, and eye‐witness accounts with a selective content analysis of key WSIS documentation, official and dissenting, the article presents the occupational hazards of this sort of encounter between civil society participants, government, and business sectors as global information and communication technologies (ICTs) and media agenda‐setting partners. It focuses on the hazards of key word strategies in what are now irrevocably computer‐embedded domains for action and access. Hyperlinked textual production and related key word search functionalities are now, I argue, integral to global agenda‐setting in the intertwined areas of ICT, media, and sociocultural policy. This formal encounter between multilateral institutions and social justice and ICT advocacy, online and on the ground, raises new questions for policy research in these domains, questions that require fresh approaches.

Transnational Communications in Action: A Critical Praxis

“…These ideas were taken further by Latin America‐based Dependency scholars and undergirded calls for a New World Information and Communication Order in the 1970s to 1980s (Gerbner, Mowlana, & Nordenstreng, 1993; Vincent et al, 1999). They continue to resonate in subsequent United Nations consultations such as the World Summit on the Information Society and Internet Governance Forum (Franklin, 2007; Jørgenson, 2006). The underlying bone of contention, then and now, is not just over the best way to educate but also to what ends and for whose benefit, particularly when predominant practices and models of excellence continue to be Euro‐Anglo‐American.…”

Who Controls the Internet? Beyond the Obstinacy or Obsolescence of the State

“…A great variety of types of actors may control various aspects of the Internet—notably governments, businesses, and NGOs (especially civil liberties organizations such as Privacy International) (Herrera 2002; Giacomello 2003, 2005; Dunn et al. 2007; Franklin 2007a; Mathiason 2007). All three types of actors simultaneously operate domestically as well as internationally, which makes it intriguing to observe their interactions.…”

“…Cyber‐based, on‐the‐ground, and supraterritorial technological and political realities have been co ‐constructing one another for some time now. For instance, global agenda‐setting or protest is very much a hyper textual, computer‐generated affair (Franklin 2007a), Internet access and “computer literacy” are integrated into Human Development ideas as the latter are effected by and through ICTs, multilateral institutions consummately create and replicate online content, the Internet is becoming a global repository for human memory and site for neuro‐marketing (Lazuly 2003; Bénilde 2007; Lévy 2007).…”

“…This more thorough notion of discourse folds the thing‐ness of the Internet into ideational contestations, the “immateriality” of virtual domains into the nitty‐gritty of media law, physical access, uses, palpable albeit diffuse “media effects,” activities, and functionalities. The Internet and its constitutive practices and structures need to be construed not just as‐a‐technology but also as‐an‐idea, integral to the “scriptural economies” that reproduce the “modern mythical practice” (Certeau in Franklin 2007a:315) of the Westphalian Imaginary and its representational regimes— machineries (Hall in Franklin 2004:15–16). The Internet, its so‐called governance or control, is integral to such meaning‐making practices, and vice versa.…”

Multilateral Approaches to Deliberating Internet Governance

“…See, for example, M. I. Franklin, 2007, andMilton Mueller, Brendan N. Kuerbis, andChristiane Page, 2007. Also see, Johann Eriksson, et al, 2009. intersubjective meanings regarding the appropriate form of global governance.…”