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[please excuse this instance of self-promotion...] Digital Media and Digital Culture Seminar Series Centre for Media Research, University of Ulster Coleraine Campus, Northern Ireland Tuesday 19 October, 2004 4.30-6pm, South Building: room C102 Ned Rossiter <[log in to unmask]> Centre for Media Research, University of Ulster Abstract "WSIS vs. Organised Networks: Information, Democracy and the Problem of Institutional Scale" This paper assesses the recent World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) held in Geneva last December. With disputes amongst various representatives over issues such as domain names, root servers, IP addresses, spectrum allocation, software licensing and intellectual property rights, the summit demonstrated that the architecture of information is a hugely contested area. As evidenced in official WSIS documents, consensus between governments, civil society groups, NGOs and corporations over these issues is impossible. Representation at the summit itself was a problem for many civil society groups and NGOs. As a UN initiative geared toward addressing the need for access to ICTs, particularly for developing countries, the problem of basic infrastructure needs such as adequate electricity supply, education and equipment requirements were not sufficiently addressed. Against this background, this paper argues that the question of scale is a central condition to the obtainment of democracy. Moreover, what models of democracy are global entities such as the WSIS aspiring to when they formulate future directions for informational policy? Given the crisis of legitimacy of rational consensus, deliberative models of democracy, this paper argues that democracy within information societies needs to be rethought in terms of organised networks of communication that condition the possibility of new institutions that are attentive to problems of scale. Such a view does not preclude informational networks that operate across a range of scales, from sub-national to supra-national; rather, it suggests that new institutional forms that can organise socio-technical relations in ways that address specific needs, desires and interests are a key to obtaining informational democracy. Bio Ned Rossiter is a Senior Lecturer in Media Studies (Digital Media) at the Centre for Media Research, University of Ulster, Northern Ireland. Ned is co-editor of Politics of a Digital Present: An Inventory of Australian Net Culture, Criticism and Theory (Melbourne: Fibreculture Publications, 2001) and Refashioning Pop Music in Asia: Cosmopolitan Flows, Political Tempos and Aesthetic Industries (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004). Ned is also a co-facilitator of fibreculture, a network of critical Internet research and culture in Australasia (http://www.fibreculture.org). Further enquiries: Ned Rossiter Senior Lecturer in Media Studies (Digital Media) Centre for Media Research University of Ulster Cromore Road Coleraine Northern Ireland BT56 1SA tel. +44 (0)28 7032 3275 fax. +44 (0)28 7032 4964 email: [log in to unmask]