Reflections on the Civil Society Agenda

About

The 2003 World Summit of the Information Society (Geneva, 2003) generated a ‘Civil Society’ declaration that emphasized a commitment to: ‘building information and communication societies that are people-centred, inclusive and equitable’, defined by a set of more specific principles.

This agenda-setting seminar will reflect on questions such as: How are these broad aims being translated into specific policy goals relating to such areas as access, connectivity, and content regulation? Are these principles and the policies they subsume enabling a productive (or conflictual) engagement with other stakeholders in the process? Why did some civil society groups who would share the declaration’s aims decide not to participate in the WSIS process?

This seminar is the first of a series of four seminars and one small conference focusing on civil society participation in the World Summit on the Information Society funded by the ESRC. The events will be held in the run up to the 2nd summit in November 2005. A final seminar will be held early in 2006, to allow for an informed and reflective discussion of the whole WSIS process.

Biographies: http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/collaboration/seminars/20041210_Abstracts.pdf

Agenda

Time	Session
09:30	Registration and Coffee
10:00	Welcome and Introduction by William Dutton and Sonia Liff
10:30	Claudia Padovani: WSIS as a World of Words
11:00	Respondents and Discussion (Jackie Davies and Maria Bakardjieva)
11:30	Coffee
11:45	Bart Cammaerts and Nico Carpentier: The Unbearable Lightness of Full Participation in a Global Context: WSIS and Civil Society Participation
12:15	Respondents and Discussion (Sonia Liff and Corinna di Gennaro)
12:45	Lunch
14:00	Cross-Cutting Themes and Issues (Chair: William Dutton)
15:00	Summary of Key Issues: A Webcast Participants will design and produce a 15-30 minute summary of the key issues in a webcast enabling wide participation in the proceedings of the seminar series
15:30	Issues for Future Seminars (Chair: Sonia Liff)

We are grateful to the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for their support of this seminar series.