WSIS misses. But media could make it a hit.

In some respects, as noted by the writer Hans Klein in an institutional analysis of world summits (www.IP3.gatech.edu), the WSIS was topical and had a certain legitimacy. On the other hand, its real jurisdiction was also limited in the sense that it had no powers to make a ruling that would compel the USA to hand the regulatory agency ICANN over to global control.

This limited jurisdiction fed into, and combined with, a low profile for WSIS. The result was to diminish the importance and impact of the Summit. But that is not to say that the event itself was inconsequential. In fact, it was a significant site of key struggles at a watershed historical juncture. And it was also the cradle of new thinking, vital debates, innovatory linkages and timely initiatives — all of which will indeed impact on the inhabitants of the planet. It’s just a pity that its consequences could have been even bigger, had the event attracted more attention.

To take stock about what is going to hit the as-yet-unsuspecting global public, let’s revisit WSIS as a site, and as a milestone, in a series of conflicts and tensions. The Summit and its preparatory sessions constituted an important battleground between various perspectives and pitches. These included:

? The International Telecoms Union vying with UNESCO and ICANN for premier status in regard to Internet regulation;
? The USA and others vs. the rest in opposing a digital solidarity fund;
? Business and governments opposing civil society groups on the need for a global information commons and participative mechanisms for Internet governance.

WSIS was also a watershed contest about directly media-related issues, coming after a long history of international and national divides on the issues of media freedom and responsibility, and on the issues of concentrations of media power in governments and companies. Thus:

? News media-stakeholders found – despite the international progress since the 1991 Windhoek Declaration - that they had to throw their weight against China and some Arab countries. These states wanted to turn the clock back and exclude free expression from the Summit’s vision of the Information Society - preferring to emphasise media responsibility instead;

? Second, a struggle had to be waged in order to get the mass media – the backbone institutions of broadcast and print - to be recognised as central players in an Information Society, and not be overshadowed by, or counterposed to, the newer ICTs;
? Third, activism was needed to secure the specificity of community media and also to signal the importance of combating media monopolies in the interests of diversity.

The good news is that these three battles were won. In varying degrees, no doubt. But the result ensured that WSIS did not become — as it could well otherwise have done — an enormous setback to media development.

The success achieved on these three media-related issues stands in contrast to the dismal media performance as regards reporting on the WSIS. The effect of journalists ignoring this part of the WSIS story is to reduce the strength of these victories. Media struggles on these matters, therefore, are far from over, although at least the reactionary tide has been turned back for now.

In the meantime, progressive stakeholders around the world should celebrate these media victories, as now enshrined in the WSIS Declaration and Action Plan, and use them to hold governments and others accountable to commitments to media freedom, diversity and importance of role.

How WSIS defined the Information Society:
If forces of reaction were held back at Geneva, the world’s media also needs to do a lot more than exploit the successful, but defensive, actions there. There is a whole proactive agenda crying out for attention and which will profoundly touch the lives of all humanity in one way or another. This is in regard to WSIS serving as a cradle for a basket of other matters that will be important for everyone, including the media itself.
Top of the pressing agenda list, the media needs to come to grips with how WSIS envisioned the emerging global Information Society. The concept is open to many different emphases (as well pointed out by academic Frank Wright). The one-sided stress in each of these approaches serves particular interests, and the WSIS could have fallen into any one of these traps:

? Technicist. In this view, the Information Society is reduced to the spread of ICT in social life. As some had wanted at WSIS, this interpretation would have concentrated solely on the spread of technology, leaving aside the critical issues of communications rights in such a society.
? Economistic. As business would have wanted at WSIS, this definition of the Information Society would have concentrated on commercialising and commoditising information, to the exclusion of building an information commons, indigenous knowledge, shared health information, and the ethical quality of information.
? Occupational. Many interpreters of Information Society concentrate on its character of changing skills and jobs – but in so doing, they also underplay the gender aspects of employment, international disparities and the global hierarchical division of labour. WSIS could have ended up with this emphasis.
? Spatial. Following Manuel Castells, the uniqueness of the Information Society is sometimes seen as its global networked character. This approach feeds into multinational business interests, and it underplays national policy and international governance issues. There were indeed those who wanted WSIS to leave these topics untouched.
? Cultural. The ubiquity of messages and symbols in everyday life, described as ‘information overload’, is sometimes taken as the primary evidence of the Information Society. This emphasis, however, ignores the mass of humanity outside the loop, as well as the millions who only receive and do not produce cultural products. The approach is also blind to the ignorance of the so-called ‘information rich’ about the so-called ‘information-poor’. With few voices from the margins at WSIS, there was a real danger that the Summit’ would see these sectors as simply ‘backward’ and focus on simply giving them access to the alleged information benefits of First World ‘modernity’.

In fact, WSIS did not do too badly in the way it dealt with these issues. For a start, it did not take the Information Society as something inevitable or already here — as some commentators do. Instead, in effect it took all the existing trends and emphases — technological, economic, cultural, etc. – and declared them to be shape-able.

It spoke of building an Information Society in which ‘everyone can create, access, utilize and share information and knowledge, enabling individuals, communities and peoples to achieve their full potential in promoting their sustainable development and improving their quality of life’.

As would be expected, technology was indeed a central focus of how the Summit’s Declaration and Plan of Action understood what was meant by this Information Society ideal. But the Summit also expressly described ICT as a means to an end (that end being the Millenium Goals). And it underlined ICT needed to operate within a people-centred and rights-oriented approach. The importance of a free and pluralistic mass media as a defining feature of an Information Society was also recorded in the event’s concluding documents.

Dodging the economistic pitfalls, WSIS recognised the private sector as a key driver of an Information Society, while also acknowledging non-commercial contributors such as free and open-source software. The Summit also endorsed the non-commercial concept of ‘digital solidarity’. A continuous theme throughout the Declaration and Plan of Action was the need to extend access to media and to Internet connectivity to the marginalised, and government action in the face of market-failures was legitimised.

In regard to the ‘Occupational’ and the ‘Networking’ conceptions of the Information Society, the WSIS Declaration also managed to avoid the traps of over-emphasising these aspects. It stressed capacity building and gender issues. And it grasped – at least in part - the thorny issue of governance. The Summit thus affirmed principles of transparent and multi-stakeholder involvement in developing an Internet governance system. It also highlighted the importance of e-Governance in each country — even though it steered clear of how (eventually) the entire global Information Society should be governed.

On the question of culture, the Summit called for local content development, diversity and multilingualism on the Internet as central to an Information Society.
In short, the WSIS managed to accommodate and synthesise the various competing interpretations of the features of an Information Society. This outcome reflected the long international process of participation that preceded the Summit. It happened through information and communication — and progressive struggle through discussion, argument and moral suasion.

While the Civil Society groups at WSIS came up with their own Declaration, highlighting the vested interests of their constituencies, much of their perspective still succeeded in being incorporated in the official Declaration and Plan of Action. The result was that intergovernmental, governmental and business interests were not left alone to produce exclusively self-interested documents. Instead, the outcome was — and is - a compromise that most parties could sign up to. As, importantly, it is what they have now pledged to pursue.

Of course, all these aspects of the agreed WSIS vision and plan for the Information Society remain open to further, and varying, interpretation — and to diverse prioritisation. ‘Internet Governance’ and ‘Digital Solidarity’ themselves are explicitly still up for grabs on the WSIS agenda. In addition, issues like commercialisation and Intellectual Property are inherently controversial matters, as is cultural imperialism within the Information Society. Lastly, all the progressive aspects in the WSIS statements are still hostage to uneven implementation and to unforeseen and larger developments.
Nonetheless, despite these qualifications, what is still impressive is that the WSIS final position avoided one-sided and exclusive emphases about the Information Society. Instead, the Summit produced a perspective that attempts to integrate different aspects into a holistic approach. It could have been a lot different – and far less progressive.
Another achievement to be noted about the WSIS documents is that they even temper one of the time-honoured myths that Information Society thinking tends to harbour. Thus the hype that information per se is a good thing was qualified by recognition of the problems of spam and cybercrime. Ethical problems such as the use of ICTs for racism, xenophobia and child abuse were also registered.

However, the false notions that information is the panacea for conflict and economic differences, and that ICTs are neutral, were not interrogated in WSIS outcomes. The Summit failed to recognise, for instance, that an unfair global trade regime is about interests, not information inadequacies. It was silent about the fact that computers and software are made for First World markets with built-in obsolescence and with features that price them for purposes and purchasers which exclude most of humanity.
Thus, the WSIS Declaration and Plan of Action perpetuate over-optimistic assumptions about the power of information to overcome problems, and they embed the idea of technological neutrality. However, despite this, the two documents nonetheless provide other useful pointers to how society could develop in order to benefit more from ICTs, and they do — at least on paper — commit role players to this direction.

What journalists need to know...
All these issues are not easy to cover, but they are still part of a story that media people nevertheless need to understand for effective tracking (and part-shaping) of what happens from here on. Yet, becoming familiar with the nature of WSIS and its version on the evolution of an Information Society, is not going to be enough. Journalists need to take further cognisance of the specifics in the WSIS plan of action.
Here are some of the more important points:

? The Summit participants — including the world’s governments — committed themselves to considering key connectivity targets by 2015. These are linking up education and health institutions, and getting governments online. Local content development and universal access to radio and television are also on this list. Are governments doing this, and is media holding them accountable?
? There are now supposed to be inclusive processes in each country (and at the international level) in order to involve all stakeholders in devising e-strategies. Again, media ought to be monitoring, and participating in, such processes.
? Efforts are supposed to be made to overcome the digital divide through mainstreaming ICTs in development strategies, and by encouraging investment for ICTs. There is a role here for journalists covering health, education, business, banking and donor activity.
? Governments are expected to publish a ICT development index showing progress. Interesting stories could be on the cards here.
Other items agreed for action at Geneva were:
? Broadband infrastructure and access to it should be promoted.
? Public domain information should be encouraged.
? Training programmes for information professionals and teachers are supposed to be designed.
? There is a call to promote ICT applications in government, business, health, education, environment, farming and science.
? Cultural and language diversity and identity are to be supported.
Progress on all this is supposed to be reported upon back at Phase Two of the WSIS, in Tunisia at the end of 2005. It won’t help for media to only get in on the monitoring act the month before!

Also up for reporting at Tunis are the two issues the UN is supposed to be working on in the meantime. First, a UN working group is required to develop multi-stakeholder proposals on Internet Governance, and second, there is to be a UN task force reviewing whether there is a need for a specific ‘Digital Solidarity Fund’ as an innovative financing mechanism.
Journalists have an obvious role to play in following these developments, in bringing them to public attention and in involving stakeholder contributions. That’s simply good journalism about important topics.
The danger, though, is that all this will simply become another important story squeezed off the news agenda by journalists lacking the creativity to get it to compete with more ‘sexy’ content. That would be a depressing sign of the role of media in the Information Society to come.
It would suggest that media have succumbed completely to the economistic variant of the Information Society, where commercialisation conquers all. On the other hand, it is likely that is media, like the WSIS itself, is a site of contestation and more mixed outcomes – and that there are possibilities.
Unfortunately, how stories like the WSIS Action Plan follow-up are being covered (or, rather, are not being covered) does not give immediate cause for hope. And, if we are therefore dis-informing audiences currently, then the Information Society that we come to tomorrow will not be worth the name. Certainly, it will be one lacking in knowledge and wisdom – thanks in part to media failure.

... And what journalists should do
Important as it is, coverage of WSIS issues post-Geneva as important stories for media audiences is just one challenge facing us. Recognition of media’s direct stake in these matters is another. From a narrowly media point of view, journalists have an intrinsic and institutional interest in the following WSIS points:

? The Action Plan recognises media as ‘an important contributor to freedom of expression and plurality of information’.
? It encourage laws that guarantee independence and plurality of media;
? There is a call to promote the use by traditional media of new ICTs;
? Support is urged for local media that combines the use of traditional media and ICTs in regard local languages and heritage, and in reaching remote communities.
? Partnerships in media training are encouraged.
In these matters, media is envisioned not just as a recorder of realities, but also as a direct actor – even an advocate.

Likewise, the issue of ‘Internet Governance’ is not external to media’s make-up. In an era of convergence, it should matter enormously to journalists as to who controls the registration of domain names for websites. Would you like national governments to do so? Let’s see then if Zimbabweans hold on to www.dailynews.co.zw — what would be the URL of their top-selling, but banned daily paper.

What would work best for media - the ITU – a UN bureaucracy or the existing set-up of ICANN — a Californian company ultimately under authority of the US government?
The only media-people not interested in this issue would be those working in the Zimbabwean government-controlled media — although even then, they would probably want to know who decides the fate of their opposition online.
Journalists ought also to consider the issue of Intellectual Property rights. What do the evolving debates mean for freelancing, or multi-platform repurposing of your content? What do they mean for online research and the definition of plagiarism?
Think too: Suppose your government has policies that restrain the roll-out of ICTs, a development that could be expanding the reach and richness of your journalism. Suppose your government is happy to leave local content to the mercies of the market. These are all issues that impact directly on the health of your enterprise and its role in society.

Journalists could do well to take a leaf from the WSIS Geneva experience. The concept of Information Society that emerged there could have easily benefited one sector more than another — corporations, or governments, or certain governments. That it did not was a result of combined involvement of diverse stakeholders.

By the same token, if media people do not engage in the WSIS process as it now unfolds, don’t expect other players to promote your specific interests. As media, we should not only be ensuring that the voices of marginalised countries and social groups are heard in the lead-up to Tunis, but also that our own institutional voices (private, public and community) resonate there as well.

WSIS Geneva is an absolute unknown for millions, and already a distant memory for many of those in the know. Yet, a ball has been set rolling, and at minimum its trajectory will make for a global news event when participants report back in Tunis. That occasion will assess stakeholder performance since Geneva.

Let us hope that if anyone is found wanting at that point, it is not the media – as a disseminator of important information, as a watchdog on public commitments, and as an actor in its own direct interests.

Guy Berger is head of Journalism and Media Studies, Rhodes University, South Africa Department of Journalism and& Media Studies, Rhodes University, South Africa. Ph: 27 (46) 603 8336/7. Fax: 27 (46) 622 8447. Email: G.Berger@ru.ac.za. Website: http://journ.ru.ac.za/staff/guy/ Email: G.Berger@ru.ac.za