[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]
