Access to Knowledge 2008

The Global Public Sphere: Media and Communication Rights

New technologies enable communication that transcends the boundaries of the nation state, creating the possibility of a public sphere that also transcends the nation state. The A2K movement itself takes advantage of the digital facilities - such as wikis, blogs, mobile devices, and social networking tools - that might produce a global public sphere. At the same time, the technologies that enable the possibility of a global public sphere also create mechanisms for censoring, blocking, and restricting access. Restrictive mechanisms range from traditional forms of censorship to digital filtering through to media concentration.

This panel will assess how the networked public sphere both engenders new opportunities but also places new limitations on methods of public mobilization and protest.

The questions to be addressed will include:

• What is the relationship between the global public sphere as exercised through the Internet and the promotion of the democratic space, either nationally or internationally?
• Does it yet make sense to talk about a global public sphere or is the idea itself premature or unlikely to come to pass?
• How could the production of a robust global sphere featuring information and opinion from diverse and antagonistic sources help contribute to development?
• How do technological design choices underlying widely deployed multimedia devices like mobile phones and emerging software approaches such as so-called Web 2.0 both enable and restrict access to a global publicsphere?
• What is the role of technologists in creating the global public sphere?

Sean O Siochru

1. Is there an emerging global public sphere?

Is there a space in which the general public (meaning the esp. the global poor) are able to collectivley engage in issues of importance? The short answer, is now.

There is a space for elites. But this, by itself, is not even an incipient public sphere. It is too heavily biased in favor of powerful speakers (including those in this room).

Zapatistas in Chiapas coming in around WTO debates is perhaps the one example of the kind of engagement that I am looking for.

2. Is a global public sphere important to achieve?

Yes! It is a necessary ingredient if we are going to adress the global crises we are confronting. Massive global inequality. War. Climate crisis.

3. Is the concept of the global public sphere adequate?

No. Not to mobilize sufficient groups around it to make it happen.

The reality is that there are more and deeper issues that have to be adressed before there is any possibility of a global public sphere.

Coming from the CRIS campaign, I prefere the idea of “Communication Rights”

The Cycle of Communications: the ability to generate ideas and to speak don’t mean anything without some right to be heard and some right to be understood. this allows recipients to learn, enhance, create, to respond, and share. creating a virtuous cycle.

4. Do Web 2.0, blogosphere tools, etc. have a role?

Unfortunately, I think the answer is no. These are great, but they are currently restriced to elites. We are too far away from widespread broadband access, e.g.

5. SO what technologies will build a global public sphere?

Radio, email, mobile, TV. I think you get 90% of the value of the internet with email.

Whatever works!!

6. Is there a role for technologists in all this?

I think that linking the technologies to connect different groups and different debates is a critical role for technologists.

Natasha Primo

APC: a membership based organization, mainly in Africa, Asia, LAC, and the CEE countries.

Every 4 to 5 years we get together and set strategi priorities. We met last year just before the IGF in Rio, and came up with a list of priorities.

Main questions:

1. Where is the “global” in the global public sphere?
2. Who is the “public” in the global public sphere?
3. And how to get closer to the promise of development using tools of communication?

Start from the premise that economic, social, and political life will be increasingly digital, and you must be connected to be a part. There is evidence that access to the internet can contribute to the emerge of democratic spaces, and over time, to GPS.

Want to spend some time on access to connectivity. We often jump this step too quickly. 2008 is the year of access for many organizations CSTD, GAIDD, ITU…

Which brings us to the first question. There may be an emerging global public spere, but certainly premature to declare its existence.

To date just over 1 bil. out of 6 bil. is on the internet. But current prediction by GSM assoc. is that they will be able to reach 5 bil. by 2015. There is thus a lot of excitement about the promise of mobiles to connect the poor. (See, e.g. Richard Higgs (sp?)

If you believe this hype, the remaining challenges are:

- what about the last billion?
- how do we get internet enabled handsets out?

Which is to the second questions. The internet is shaped by the people who use it. The connected are predominantly in the global north.

Africa, the poorest continent, has the highest connectivity costs.

We are kicking off an affordable broadband campaign. To get some of the physical infrastructure declared as essential facilities, which would require incumbents to make them available at cost.

Authoritarian state authoritarian. Language. And the skills to use technology effectively are all also important barriers.

Another obstacle that is frequently overlooked is cultural. If 3 billion+ poor people enter the public sphere, will we be ready to engage them as equals?

Scaling these barriers requires business developed tools to promote online freedom,

Nenna Nwakanma

For there to be a global public sphere on the internet, you would need to see the hardware, software, bandwidth, electricity, appropriate content everywhere you go. There are infopoor all over the world.

I would propose that we talk about the global public space rather than the global public “sphere.” We must not forget the human element. It must include everyone, including women, the blind, so on.

Am going to tell quick stories about technological convergence.

“Radio Browsing”: In many parts of Arica, you can call into a radio show, ask, say, for information about diabetes. The radio broadcasters browse the internet, get the information, and then broadcast it over the radio in the local language.

“The Human Technology Chain”: I was at a conference where our delegation was spread across the world, without access to translators. But people would call in, we would get it translated by other people on our netwrk, and then we would be able to present translated interventions the next day.

We are moving to the Age of Handhelds. Can we get the technology for the global public sphere? It will be a long journey, and it will be certainly be different from whatever we thought it was going to be.

Gwen Hinze

I want to talk about a series of proposals to change the way the netowrk works, esp. to allow monitoring for copyright.

Comparing YouTube videos to hollywood. A lot more videos, a lot more views.

Remember after the tsunami, when the best sources were blogs.

The explosion of the internet has created incentives to put pressure on the intermediaries. At the governmental level, Wikipedia and YouTube both face widespread blocking by governments.

Pushes toward:

- Requiring ISPs to monitor (Bono report on Cultural Industries in Europe, IFPI lobbyist memorandum on European Parliament, France - Olivennes draft bill, EU Telecoms reform package, Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement (rightsholders submission))

- Three strikes proposals (France - Olivennes proposal, UK Agreement (2008), Japan Agreement (2007), Under discussino in Australia, Canada Denmark, European Community rejected (Bono Report amendment), ACTA (USTR submissions))

- Requiring ISPs to devulge personal information to rights holders

These proposals will impair communication rights, stifle innovation, increase the class of information have-nots

Questions

Should A2K be focusing more just on ICT build-out? On basic education?

Can you talk about the language problems in the creation of a global public sphere?

Illiteracy a presupposition of A2K — we need to talk more about basic literacy

[I didn't understand the last question]

Natasha: I think it would be useful if we build knowledge about the connections between access to infrastructure and access to knowledge. APC is very involved in access to connectivity. But when it came to first Internet governance forum, APC had to jump through a lot of works to get the rest of civil society to see access to infrastructure as an essential issue. I think if more people get involved in this issue, we might some faster results.

And so what about educational policies? I think there is a link to access to educational institutions. In the last panel, there was a lot said about universities in developing country contexts.

On literacy — it is an important area where we need to work, but it is not the main or the only problem. In most developing countries, literacy is above 50%, but connectivity is much below that.

Nnenna: Literacy in what language? One problem is that we sometimes declare people who cannot read and write English illiterate.

Moreover, the cell phone has made it easy for you to engage in communication wheter or not you can read and write.

Sean: In Cambodia, we are working on community radio. One point in Cambodia is that illetracy is very high among older people. And as literacy is increased, something is lost too — younger generations have lost a lot of verbal culture.

I would not call A2K a movement — A2K as a concept is exceptionally broad. It hink the question is strategic — who are our members, how can we have an impact? I haven’t necessarily seen that kind of thinking, but that’s OK — becuase A2K is also a forum.

The last questioner raised some very fundamental issues about the relationship of knowledge to truth and the commodification of knowledge.

Gwen: I also don’t think of this as a movement so much as a gathering of a specific group of activists. There are other people working on basic issues of literacy and infrastructure access, but that’s not us.