NGOs and the Information Society: Grassroots Advocacy at the UN - a cautionary tale

Abstract

This article looks at the United Nations-brokered World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in light of nongovernmental organization participation as a full partner in consultations and decisions. Combining participation-observation fieldwork, interviews, and eye-witness accounts with a selective content analysis of key WSIS documentation, official and dissenting, the article presents the occupational hazards of this sort of encounter between civil society participants, government, and business sectors as global information and communication technologies (ICTs) and media agenda-setting partners. It focuses on the hazards of key word strategies in what are now irrevocably computer-embedded domains for action and access. Hyperlinked textual production and related key word search functionalities are now, I argue, integral to global agenda-setting in the intertwined areas of ICT, media, and sociocultural policy. This formal encounter between multilateral institutions and social justice and ICT advocacy, online and on the ground, raises new questions for policy research in these domains, questions that require fresh approaches. Copyright 2007 by The Policy Studies Organization.