Apc Issue Papers

2004

Promoted by the United Nations organisations, the World Summit on the Information Society was initiated to interrogate the global issues and challenges resulting from the widespread use of ICTs and the growth of the information economy.

Global Media and Communication, 2005

Tunis, March 1976: the Non-Aligned Symposium on Information prepares a programme for safeguarding national cultures and overcoming global imbalances in information flows and communication systems in order to 'obtain the decolonization of information and initiate a new international order in information'. The mandate came from the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Summit in Algiers in 1973 which had declared that 'the activities of imperialism are not confined solely to the political and economic fields, but also cover the cultural and social fields' calling for 'concerted action in the fields of mass communication'. The Tunis Symposium's call for a New International Information Order, with mechanisms such as the Non-Aligned News Agencies Pool, was endorsed by the NAM Summit in Colombo later the same year. This NAM campaign, supported by the socialist countries, led to an historic media debate at the UN and UNESCO as well as in media professional associations and among communication scholars around the world. The concept of a New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) became a central element in this debate, with landmarks such as the MacBride Commission (1980) and its well-known report Many Voices, One World. The great media debate and its historical experience is well documented in communication literature (Gerbner et al., 1993; Golding and Harris, 1997; Vincent et al., 1999; Carlsson, 2003), but an awareness of its relevance to contemporary communication debates is restricted to a narrow sphere of academia and some non-governmental organizations. Tunis, November 2005: information and communication issues are once again debated in an international forum. The second phase of the UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), following the

2016

The world experienced great scientific and technological changes at the end of the 20th century. Since the importance of information, many scientists presented Information Society related theories. By developing ICTs and increasing importance of information World Summit on Information Society (WSIS, a pair of United Nations sponsored conferences about Information and communication, held in Geneva in 2003. The present study aims to study history of Information Society, WSIS and United Kingdom measures regarding on Information Society and WSIS agendas. Also the researcher considers future priorities of the UK in the field of Information Society.

Canadian Journal of Communications, Vol. 37(3): 539-542., 2012

2000

2007

GLOBAL INFORMATION SOCIETY WATCH is the first in a series of yearly reports covering the state of the information society from the perspectives of civil society and stakeholders in the global South. GLOBAL INFORMATION SOCIETY WATCH has three interrelated goals: • survey the state of the field of ICT policy at the local and global levels • encourage critical debate, and • strengthen networking and advocacy for a just, inclusive information society. The report discusses the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) process and a range of international institutions, regulatory agencies and monitoring instruments. It also includes a collection of country reports which examine issues of access and participation within a variety of national contexts. GLOBAL INFORMATION SOCIETY WATCH is a joint initiative of the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) and the Third World Institute (ITeM), and follows up on our long-term interest in the impact of civil society on governance processes and our efforts to enhance public participation in national and international forums.

Telecommunications Policy, 2003

This paper combines a theoretical perspective on globalization and the information society with a critical usage of international regime theory in order to better understand the current historical period of transition from an international telecommunications regime (Cowhey Int. Organiz. 45 (1990) 169) to a new and complex regime aimed at providing governance for the Global Information Infrastructure and Global Information Society (GII/GIS). The paper employs a case-study approach to explore some of the specific national responses (i.e. South Africa) to this regime transition, with an analysis of potential best practices and lessons learned for other emerging economies.

In M. Bailie and D. Winseck (Eds.) Democratizing Communication? Comparative Perspectives on Information and Power. , 1997

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

Heinrich Böll Foundation, 2005

Chapter title: Tracking the development agenda at WSIS

Third World Quarterly, 2001

In a recent article in this journal Linda points to two opposing scenarios regarding the impact of the internet on inequality between rich and poor countries. On the one hand, 'The hope has arisen that this internet … will ultimately evolve into a Global Information Infrastructure (GII). The vision is that the GII will enable a massive acceleration of economic and social development that will narrow the poverty gap and eliminate many of the geographic obstacles to prosperity and equality' (Main, 2001: 85). On the other hand, however, given the tendency of the internet to concentrate activity in one particular group 'there is a real risk that we are moving towards a two-tier technology society that perpetuates the old distinctions between North and South' (p 83). Which of these scenarios is the more likely, depends, as Main rightly points out, on the availability to developing countries of the technological infrastructure that the internet requires. In this regard, however, she focuses almost exclusively on just two types of enabling technologies, namely, undersea cable systems and satellites. And in so doing, I will argue, she neglects a wide range of other forms of information technology that-on account of their low cost-may enable at least some developing countries to lessen the digital divide that separates them from the advanced countries. The purpose of this paper, accordingly, is to describe these other technologies and, on the basis thereof, to suggest that there may indeed be more hope than Main allows for the internet to evolve ultimately into a Global Information Infrastructure. 1 It is well to emphasise at the outset, however, that, although they may differ in a number of other respects, the tech-