ICTlogy

Abstract:

The World Summits on the Information Society (WSIS) in 2003 and 2005, including the establishment by the United Nations of the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) after the first Summit, signalled the growing global significance of the opportunities and threats (e.g. see Dutton 2004) created by the development and use across the world of the Internet and related information and communication technologies (ICTs). The formation of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), following the WGIG (2005) report, was an important step in creating a flexible procedural structure for identifying, discussing and addressing key issues through a growing multistakeholder policy dialogue. This paper outlines a framework for agenda setting that could help the Forum to ensure these processes identify and attend to the key substantive issues that merit discussion at the Forum. It is anchored on the view that most issues of Internet governance for development are being grappled with by many separate but interdependent actors and agencies at various levels. However, this creates a need to identify issues that are not ‘owned’, or not well understood, in order to facilitate the creation of bridges between actors and agencies trying to tackle the same or similar issues. It draws on various research initiatives at Oxford University’s Oxford Internet Institute (OII), particularly an international forum on Internet governance2 (see Dutton and Peltu 2005) and a series of seminars reflecting on civil society participation in the WSIS3.

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