New Internet Policy Journal
The Policy Studies Organization (PSO), the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), and Berkeley Electronic Press have established a new peer-reviewed academic journal dedicated to issues of Internet and Public Policy. The new journal is called simply “Policy and Internet” and it has a number of big names on its editorial board, including one of my committee memebers, Prof. Milton Muller.
Here is their first call for papers (PDF version here):
The Oxford Internet Institute (OII), the Policy Studies Organization (PSO), and Berkeley Electronic Press are proud to announce Policy and Internet, the first major peer-reviewed multi-disciplinary journal investigating the implications of the Internet and associated technologies for public policy.
The Internet is now embedded in social, economic and political life, bringing with it new practices, norms and structures. The societal shift enabled by the Internet enables new kinds of policy innovation and creativity: and raises new challenges and risks for policy-making and analysis. It requires rigorous empirical investigation, theoretical development and methodological innovation across academic disciplines. Policy and Internet will become the premier arena for advancing policy research and shaping the policy agenda in the digital era.
Policy and Internet invites papers reporting world class research and scholarship on any aspect of the relationship between the Internet and public policy. The journal is fully multi-disciplinary in scope. Topics will range across policy sectors and regions of the world, including generalised, sectoral or country-specific policy effects.
Find further details and make submissions at:
http://www.bepress.com/pso_internet/
I thought some of you may be interested.
“… and communication for all”
by Dima on January 26, 2009
in USA, communication, conferences, internet, policy, research, technology, telecom
Amit Schejter and a group of really impressive colleagues just released a new book titled “…and Communications for All: A Policy Agenda for the New Administration
The first video includes some introductory comments from Sascha Meinrath and Amit Schejter, followed by a keynote from an FCC commissioner, Jonathan Adelstein.
The first panel included the following speakers:
- Marvin Ammori (University of Nebraska) – Competition and Investment in Wireline Broadband;
- Richard Taylor (Penn State) – U.S. Cable TV Policy: Managing the Transition to Broadband;
- Sharon Strover (University of Texas) – America’s Forgotten Challenge: Rural Access;
- Heather Hudson (University of San Francisco) – The Future of E-Rate: U.S. Universal Service Fund Support for Public Access.
The second panel included:
- Jon Peha (Carnegie Mellon) – A Spectrum Policy Agenda;
- Rob Frieden (Penn State) – The Way Forward for Wireless;
- Ellen Goodman (Rutgers) – Public Service Media 2.0;
- Kathryn Montgomery (American University) – Creating a Media Policy Agenda for the Digital Generation
I think this video covers both panels.
I watched substantive parts of the conference and it sounds really interesting. According to Amit, the four commonly shared points in the book are:
- There is a need for deliberative government policy and for clear goals for telecommunication policy;
- The new policy direction should be technologically neutral, the segregation of media, information, and communication technology for regulation purposes has proved itself inefficient and obsolete;
- Telecom infrastructure should serve both, the commercial aspiration and the public interest; connectivity alone is not enough, it is important that people know how to use the technology in order to be able to acquire knowledge, innovate, and take part in pubic life;
- Telecommunication policy should be based on equal opportunity and non discriminatory practices; i other words, the idea of fairness is important for telecommunication policy.
To me it looks like an interesting reading. Also, the New America Foundation’s YouTube channel seems to have some interesting talks, so it is worth checking out.
Obama was not the first
There is a lot of conversation going on about Obama’s internet strategies. Even though his team seems to be pretty savvy on the technological side, there are still calls to use more information technology to further government transparency and direct communication. In an earlier post I have already mentioned change.gov and the intent of Obama’s administration to build on the online momentum they created during the election in order to maintain direct communication with the public. People seem to be excited about the move and about the innovation (not as much technological as political) associated with it.
Would you be surprised to discover that Obama was not the first to use that approach? I don’t mean the campaign and the massive online donation, but the direct communication between the president and the masses using the internet. Well, it seems like Russians were there first. Surprising isn’t it?
Not to suggest that Obama’s administration is copying the Russian strategy, but the germ of the idea emerged in the RuNet in the beginning of October (also RU1, RU2, and there is much more out there). I don’t think it ever made it to the Western media, but I find this rather fascinating.
I learned about it thanks to Grisha (RU) who puzzled me with a riddle about who was the author of the following quote:
Freedom of speech should be assured through technological innovation. Experience demonstrates that it is useless trying to convince the government officials to “leave the mass media alone”. We need not to convince, but to more actively develop the free spheres of the internet and the digital television. No government official can interfere with discussions in the internet or censor thousands of channels at once.”
(I really apologize for the quality of my translation :)
Apparently, this quote belongs to Dmitry Medvedev, the president of Russian Federation (RU1, RU2, and there is more). It went mostly unnoticed by the Western media and I think it really dissonances with the image of Russia as a place where most of the mass media are virtually under the government control. I was also really surprised and it prompted me to look more into it.
Medvedev turned out to be a fan of information technology and the internet. The Russian version of an entry about him on Wikipedia actually mentions this and through sources who are more immersed in Russian media and politics than me, I learned that he is actually reading blogs and answers his emails personally (not through his aids). Quite fascinating, isn’t it?
His presidential website, which I have never visited before, turned out to be rather interesting . It has both Russian and English versions and both are quite elaborate. It has a lot of information about the constitution, the government structures, news about the president and his travels, as well as related media travels, and much more including a dedicated website for school-age children (RU). It has a database of his speeches and even a video blog, where Medvedev explains “behind the scenes” of the government work (you can embed the videos or get their complete transcripts). From a quick glance over the two versions of the website I couldn’t notice starring differences.
Although the fact of Russian president utilizing the internet in such an innovative way is both interesting and surprising, the comparison to the platform offered by Obama during his campaign, is slightly artificial. The platform Obama offered during his campaign was highly interactive and included many of the social elements that made it so successful. Medvedev’s website is more of a one way communication. You have no option of leaving comments or feeding the administration back. It is more of the propaganda oriented vehicle that allows the president to bypass mainstream media, which I think downplays a lot of the strengths it could have for transparency and accountability.
Unfortunately, change.gov is closer to Medvedev’s model. Although there are feedback channels on the website that allow submitting ideas, job applications, etc., there is no space to have a discussion or even to comment on the blog posts. I do hope this will change and more of an open and interactive approach will be applied once the new government is in place. I hope it will be similar to what Obama had on his election website. But this is not the main point of this post.
This encounter with Medvedev’s website further pushed my thinking about the potential of personal perceptions and attitudes of policymakers to influence the actual outcomes. Grisha and I had a short email exchange raising the point about the difference in technology-related rhetoric of Putin and Medvedev. It seems that it is not only the rhetoric, but also practice is now becoming evident. It will be definitely interesting to watch how two technologically savvy and technologically enthusiastic presidents are going to utilize the cyberspace for their, probably different, purposes and interests.
What do you think?
Take part in ICANN discussions!
As you are reading these lines, ICANN is holding a meeting in Cairo to discuss a number of issues ranging from logistics of running the organization, to new top level domain names, to issues of internet governance. Apparently, a while ago ICANN started toying with allowing people direct participation in their debates.
Based on a post on their official blog, one of the options was logging into Adobe Connect at 11:15 Egypt time today. Too bad I saw this message when the meeting was over. For some reason, ICANN gave only about 24 hour note before the actual meeting, which I think prevented quite a lot of people from participating. I wonder why there is no record of the meeting being made public, it could actually help making its content more accessible.
Based on another post on their blog, another session in the current conference (Improving Institutional Confidence session on Thursday 6 November at 2pm Cairo time) is going to be public input using a chat. Moreover, they allow anyone embedding the chat window on their websites to allow broader access. So, I decided to try and here is the chat which you are welcome to use and if you do so, share your impressions:
(if you are reading this post through an RSS aggregator, you may need to visit my site to use the chat room).
I trully hope ICANN will post some reflections about how it was using these channels for public participation.
“Global Network Initiative”
by Dima on October 30, 2008
in communication, global, interesting, internet, policy, privacy, technology
Thanks to Veronica I learned about the “Global Network Initiative” a few hours before it hit my RSS feeds coming from all over the web. If you haven’t heard about it yet, it is a consortium of universities, NGOs, and industry players (noticeably Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo) that teamed up to suggest a code of practice to protect free speech as the flow of information becomes more global and more complex. Here is what they wrote on the initiative’s website:
“From the Americas to Europe to the Middle East to Africa and Asia, companies in the information and communications industries face increasing government pressure to comply with domestic laws and policies that require censorship and disclosure of personal information in ways that conflict with internationally recognized human rights laws and standards.
The Initiative is founded upon new Principles on Freedom of Expression and Privacy – supported by specific implementation commitments and a framework for accountability and learning – that provide a systematic approach for companies, NGOs, investors, academics and others to work together in resisting efforts by governments that seek to enlist companies in acts of censorship and surveillance that violate international standards.
For me, this announcement triggered a couple of thoughts.
First, I think this is an interesting example of the centrality of information in social and political processes. It is also a good example of the complexity of relationships between politics, law, and business on a global scale. International corporations acting in the field of media and information are caught in a situation where they have to navigate between the global nature of their business; the political, social, cultural, and legal characteristics of their country of origin (US in many cases); and the same characteristics and demands of the localities they are acting in. This is definitely not a simple task. There is also little doubt that initiatives such as this one reinforce (Western) principles of freedom of speech and privacy in debates with governments that do not necessarily approve those.
Second, I wonder what is the business interest of commercial entities in this initiative. Of course there is a chance that they join the initiative for ideological reasons, but I doubt they would do it if such a move would compromise their long-term strategic objectives. In Israel, in the 1960’s the journalistic community established the Israeli Press Council (HE), which since then focuses on two main issues: (1) guarding freedom of expression and (2) observing ethical behavior of its members. One of the main reasons behind establishing this voluntary organization was a preemptive strike against the political apparatus making ethical principles into laws. In other words, the media chose to regulate themselves instead of being regulated from outside. So, following this story, I wonder if there is a similar sentiment behind the “Global Network Initiative” – the companies volunteer to self-monitor themselves according to a set of values that they decide on (in consultation with other like-minded bodies), before they are forced to adhere to some sort of external regulation whether on the local or the global levels.
What do you think?
November 1 update:
Here is Micael Zimmer’s take on this initiative.
Making the “new” media “old”
by Dima on August 8, 2008
in internet, observation, policy
I have blogged before about the internet censorship law in Israel and it seems to become a rather worrisome trend. Here is a story about prospective Russian limitations on Internet in their country (thanks to “Information Policy” for the initial link). Every society seems to do it of their own interests, but the result is pretty much the same – suppressing the factors that made the “new media” “new”, such as interactivity, ubiquity, and openness.
Viral Net Neutrality
Although creating or reading these very lines is a result of technical and policy decisions made by third parties along the way, sometimes it seems to me that Net Neutrality is not discussed enough. Here is one viral video I got recently via FB. It presents the topic maybe not in the best, but rather creative way:
I wonder if the other side of the argument has its viral component on the web?
Net-neutrality through legislation?
by Dima on May 19, 2008
in USA, interesting, internet, policy
Now, this looks like an attempt to deal with questions of net-neutrality through legislation. John Conyers (D-MI) and Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) are trying to promote a new bill aimed at making it “unlawful for any broadband network provider … to block, to impair, to discriminate against, or to interfere with the ability of any person to use a broadband network service”. Apparently it is already second attempt to assure net-neutrality through legislation and it will be interesting to see how things evolve. Interestingly, there was practically no mention of this in the mainstream media…
In the meantime, in a kingdom far, far away…
While the Israeli legislators are passing laws for big-brother-like censorship of the Internet, the “developed” world is taking more complex, yet more thoughtful steps towards the same goal – online safety for children. For example, the EU is going to spend 55m Euros on educational efforts in the next four years to promote online safety. In the US there is a similar initiative fighting its way through the Senate, even though with some difficulties. Even Google is partaking in the educational effort, even though they are perfectly fine with promoting safety through better algorithms. It seems like everybody, but the Israeli lawmakers (together with their colleagues in other Middle Eastern countries and in Asia) realize that in order to keep the balance between openness and safety we need education. We can definitely create a very limited version of the internet, hoping it will be safe, but it is that openness of this platform that drives the internet as we know it today. Education may be a more expansive and a more demanding solution, but it appears as the most substantial one
It seems like there is a great distance between the rhetoric employed by proponents of the law and their action. If you read the linked articles you will see that even the definition of threat to the children is different. While the Israeli MK see their role as protectors in preventing the children from viewing naked bodies online, everybody else are actually concerned with more tangible issues such as utilization of online resources for child abuse. Maybe I am missing some highly philosophical part of an argument that suggests that child abuse originates in corrupted minds of those who consume porn (or any other sex related content for that matter), however I doubt that. There is actually a real threat for children actively participating online and it has to be addressed.
When put side by side, both types of efforts apply the same rhetoric for defining the goal. However when one is aimed at addressing a real problem rooted in contemporary issues, the other is taking advantage of people’s prejudges and fears in an attempt to promote one way of life at expanse of another. This later part is really warring and it results in different types of action with different types of broad repercussions. While following the censorship route brings with it limitations on creativity, openness, etc. thus hurting the long-term technology driven innovation, I cannot foresee similar difficulties with the education route. On the contrary, i believe that following the education route would bring additional benefits in terms of capacity building for the society and its economies. I hope that MKs will do some research before they register their votes in the second and the third rounds of hearings for the internet censorship law.
Israel is not alone
by Dima on March 17, 2008
in Israel, Middle East, internet, policy
It is believed that people who spend a lot of time together, tend to acquire characteristics of each other. It seems like countries that spend a lot of time side by side, tend to acquire similar policies. Here is a recent update about Iranian government now demanding the internet cafe users to register (including their ID numbers and specific times of using the cafes). Reminds me of earlier attempts of Shas to do practically the same in Israel and seems perfectly in line with the internet censorship initiative they are (unfortunately) successfully leading.
