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The struggle for communication rights: Global civil society and Internet govenance

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The struggle for communication rights: Global civil society and Internet govenance

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Content THE STRUGGLE FOR COMMUNICATION RIGHTS:
GLOBAL CIVIL SOCIETY AND INTERNET GOVERNANCE

by

Lauren B. Movius

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(COMMUNICATION)

May 2011

Copyright 2011 Lauren B. Movius
ii
DEDICATION

For Fynn.

iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I owe my gratitude to all the people who have made this dissertation possible and
because of whom my graduate experience has been one that I will value forever. My
deepest gratitude is to my advisor, mentor and dissertation chair, Manuel Castells. I have
been incredibly fortunate to have Manuel as an advisor, and I have benefited from his
guidance, understanding, and inspiration during my graduate studies at the University of
Southern California. His support and intellectual work motivated me to enter the PhD
program and will continue to inspire me throughout my career. I thank Jonathan Aronson
for his extensive feedback and constructive comments, which helped me focus my ideas.
I am thankful for his careful reading and commenting on revisions of the dissertation, as
well as his guidance during my years at USC. I thank Patricia Riley for graciously
agreeing to join my dissertation committee and for her support. Michael Cody, Geoffrey
Cowan, and Apichai Shipper have also been incredibly supportive during my graduate
years. I would also like to thank the interviewees who took time to speak with me for the
dissertation research.
I wish to acknowledge and thank my fellow graduate students for their comments,
support, and for making graduate school that much more enjoyable, especially: Amelia
Arsenault, Jade Miller, Drew Margolin, Janel Schuh, Joyee Chatterjee,Cindy Shen,
Deborah Hanan, Travers Scott, Eleanor Morrison, and Helen Wang. I greatly appreciate
other faculty and staff at USC that made this project possible, including: Christine
Lloreda, Anne Marie Campion, Melody Lutz, and Susy Garciasalas.
iv
Finally, and most importantly, I would like to thank my family. My parents have
been supportive throughout my graduate career and entire life. My husband, Fynn Prager,
has offered support and encouragement that made this dissertation possible. The birth of
our daughter motivated me to complete the dissertation and move on to new adventures
in my academic and personal life.

v
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Dedication ii

Acknowledgements iii

List of Tables vi

List of Figures vii

Abstract viii

Chapter 1: Introduction 1

Chapter 2: Historical Evolution of Internet Governance Models 14

Chapter 3: Globalization, Global Governance and Civil Society 59

Chapter 4: The Formation of an Internet-Oriented Global Civil Society 86

Chapter 5: Global Civil Society and Internet Governance: The United Nations and the
Grassroots 120

Chapter 6: Challenges of Regulating the Global Internet 175

Chapter 7: Conclusion 198

Bibliography 220

Appendices
Appendix A: Interviews 233
Appendix B: Computer and Internet-Related Public Interest Organizations 235

vi
LIST OF TABLES

Table 1.1: Methodological Strategies for Gathering Data on NGO Influence 9
Table 2.2: Public Policy Areas of Internet Governance 18
Table 4.1: Classification of Communications Advocacy Organizations by Decade 96
Table 4.2: Public Interest Organizations’ Advocacy Mode by Decade 100
Table 4.3: Number of Participants at WSIS Summits 110
Table 4.4: Typology of Civil Society Actors 111
Table 4.5: Inside / Outside Categorization of Actors 118
Table 5.1: Indicators of NGO Influence with Examples of Type of Evidence 124
Table 5.2: Overall Structure of Civil Society at WSIS 131
Table 5.3: Content and Themes Groups: Working Groups and Caucuses 131
Table 5.4: Civil Society Bureau: Families 132
Table 5.5: Civil Society Participation in WSIS 2003 138

vii
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 2.1: Number of Internet Users, 2000-2010 14
Figure 2.2: Global Mobile Cellular Subscriptions, 2000-2010 15
Figure 4.1: Number of Communication Advocacy Organizations 94
Figure 4.2: Number of Internet Advocacy Organizations 95
Figure 6.1: Belief That Internet Access Should be a Fundamental Right 196

viii
ABSTRACT
With over two billion users worldwide, the Internet is arguably the most
important communication infrastructure of the information age. Its near ubiquitous spread
has raised questions about who controls and how to govern the Internet. This study
analyzes the historical evolution of Internet governance institutions and discusses three
phases of governance approaches to the Internet. During the first phase, governance of
the Internet was self-regulatory and involved a community of users that made decisions
through rough consensus. During the second phase the technical issue of domain name
and addressing began debates over “Internet governance.” Larger issues of Internet
governance emerged during the third phase that was marked by the World Summit on the
Information Society, the existence of which illustrates the shift towards accepting the
need for a global, more formal framework of governance. A main theme is the conflicting
relationship between the global Internet and the traditional centralized system of
authority of the territorially bound nation state.
In the age of global governance, global political processes are no longer
exclusively the domain of governments. Civil society, while not as powerful as state
power, has become a more active player in international politics. This dissertation
documents how civil society organizations engage in global governance and analyzes the
influence of civil society organizations on international negotiations of Internet
governance.
The research involves a case study of Internet governance debates, with a focus
on the role played by civil society organizations during the World Summit on
ix
Information Society and Internet Governance Forums from 2001 – 2009. The exploratory
research involved multiple methods, including interviews, participant observation,
organizational ecology, and an analysis of primary documents.
There are three main ways in which civil society organizations influenced the
international Internet governance debates. First, they were involved with the
democratization of Internet governance processes. Evidence for this was seen in the
evolution of procedural rules regarding non-state actors. There was a qualitatively
different level of civil society participation during the WSIS, representing a move to a
multi-stakeholder model.
The second main influence of civil society organizations was their impact on the
concept of Internet governance. Civil society reframed the understanding of Internet
governance from a focus on technical and infrastructural issues to a humanistic
perspective based on human rights and civil liberties. Civil society organizations were the
main drivers of the shift in focus and the widening of policy parameters. The
international negotiations resulted in a fundamental reassessment of the scope and nature
of Internet governance.
The third main influence of civil society organizations involved how they
impacted substantive issues during the negotiations, notably human rights. This finding
was supported by analysis of civil society inputs reflected in the UN Summits’ final texts.
The international negotiations led to a formal recognition about the need to base an
Internet governance arrangement on the human rights framework. The study suggests that
civil society will increasingly win seats at the negotiation table, and this could impact the
x
practices and processes of international diplomacy on communication and information
policy issues, as well as broader international issues, in the future.
1
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

On January 29, 2011, the Egyptian government shut down the Internet. This had a
significant economic impact on the country, with direct costs of at minimum USD 90
million (OECD, 2011). Moreover, this unprecedented level of Internet disruption has
enormous implications for human rights. These actions intrude into Egyptian citizens’
right to communicate and are direct and serious violations of the rights of the Egyptian
people to freedom of expression and assembly. The right to freedom of expression is
enshrined in international law in Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights (ICCPR), which Egypt has ratified. This includes freedom to seek,
receive and impart information through any media, regardless of frontiers. The Internet is
central for the fulfillment of the right to freedom of expression. The Internet is also an
important tool for peaceful assembly online or offline, as protected by Article 21 of the
ICCPR.
The Internet is a global communications medium that fundamentally supports
empowerment, knowledge, innovation, and freedom. These values were embedded in to
the Internet’s design and have impacted how the Internet has developed and how it is
governed. The expansion of the Internet and other information and communication
technologies worldwide has brought unprecedented opportunities for the fulfillment of
human rights. These opportunities are challenged by efforts to control online
communication. Cutting off a nation’s access to the Internet only serves to fuel dissent,
and Egypt’s decision has led to intense controversy and debate worldwide about freedom
of expression, human rights, and the Internet. With the Internet shut down in Egypt,
2
recent revolutions across the Arab world, and the role played by the Internet and mobile
communication technology in facilitating protests, the communication rights movement
has come to the fore of the international agenda. How the Internet is governed gains new
relevance, as recent events make clear the link between the Internet and human rights.
Faced with government attempts to disrupt Internet access and put in to place practices
that violate international human rights norms, a free and open Internet could be better
protected by having human rights principles in place to govern the Internet. This
dissertation analyzes these struggles for communication rights and activism by social
movements to put in to place a human rights based framework for Internet governance.
With over two billion users worldwide, the Internet is arguably the most
important communication infrastructure of the information age. The Internet has
revolutionized trade, politics, and the very fabric of human communication. The Internet
has become an essential instrument of society in a relatively short time. The Internet was
deployed in 1969 and remained in specialized circles until the 1990s, when privatization
of the Internet and the World Wide Web made it accessible to a broader range of users.
This resulted in the incorporation of the Internet into virtually every aspect of modern
human life. As the Internet became increasingly global, the question arose: Who controls
the Internet? In short, no one runs or controls the Internet. Like the global economy, there
are many organizations, mechanisms, and processes involved. The Internet developed
largely through self-regulation, and the characteristics of the Internet have often led to
questions if it can be controlled or governed.
3
The increasing awareness of the impact of the Internet on social, economic, and
political spheres brought issues of Internet governance to the fore of the international
agenda. Internet governance may become as important and visible an international issue
as climate change and the environment are today. It is no surprise that how the Internet is
governed and by whom has become a highly controversial issue in international
negotiations and diplomacy of the 21
st
century.
This dissertation explores Internet governance and these issues of who governs
the Internet and how. As the Internet has become a subject of global governance, other
questions come in to play. In the age of global governance, global political processes are
no longer exclusively the domain of governments. Non-state actors, such as
nongovernmental organizations, also known as civil society organizations, are
increasingly influencing the dynamics and processes of global politics. Civil society
organizations have increasingly intervened into policy processes at the global level. How,
precisely, do civil society actors participate in global governance processes, and what
impact do they have? This project investigates if civil society groups are taking
advantage of these openings in the political process to become a player in global
governance. The dissertation documents how civil society actors engage with global
political processes and participate in global governance through an analysis of the role of
civil society actors in international Internet governance negotiations.
Communication and information policy, and Internet governance in particular,
represent new and internationalized areas of public policy and institutional change.
Mapping and analyzing the entire landscape of Internet regulation would be difficult, if
4
not impossible, in a single study, because of the range of actors, issues, and levels of
decision-making. This dissertation examines the process through which one type of actor
– civil society – attempts to influence the institutions, processes, and content of
international Internet governance negotiations in a particular context - the United Nations
World Summit on the Information Society and Internet Governance Forum. International
negotiations are one political arena in which civil society organizations attempt to shape
policy making. International negotiations provide an interesting arena in which to analyze
civil society organizations’ influence, since they are largely the domain of states.
Furthermore, the United Nations’ WSIS was chosen for study since it is a “landmark…in
the evolution of Internet governance as a focal point of international political contention”
and “an important inflection point in global Internet governance” (Mueller, 2010, p. 10 -
11).
Through an investigation of Internet governance debates and the role played by civil
society organizations, this study attempts to address some gaps in the literature. First,
advocacy to change the structures or practices of media, and/or the rules of media
governance, exists at local, national, and international levels. This study focuses on the
international level. There exists research at the national level (Hackett & Carroll, 2006;
Mueller, Kuerbis, & Page, 2004a), but little research investigates movements focused on
the Internet at the international level (Thomas, 2006). At the international level, NGOs
have started to mobilize around global media governance. Internet governance debates in
particular mobilized a broad segment of civil society organizations involved in global
media policy, as well as human rights and development issues.
5
Second, there are studies regarding the population of organizations involved in
communication policy with a focus on structural factors (Mueller et al., 2004), but less
research examines the framing of issues by advocates and how civil society actors
strategically communicate with their audiences. This project seeks to address this gap by
focusing on the framing of issues. Third, there is a large body of scholarship on the
relation between new communication technologies and advocacy. The focus for the
majority of this research is on how information technologies enable activism and social
movements. This study focuses on advocacy whose object of focus is communications
and information policy. With this focus, the study may contribute to the growing
literature on media activism and help fill the gap on research regarding communications
and media activism and global governance.

Research Questions
This research seeks to understand the structure, emergence, and effects of
collective action on Internet governance issues. The goals of this dissertation are to: 1)
document the participation and influence of civil society organizations on the
international negotiations on Internet governance, and to 2) analyze the characteristics of
these actors, including their practices in intervening in the policy process, their strategies,
and their results. Specifically, the dissertation will consider:
1. Who are these civil society actors? “Civil society” refers to a heterogeneous
group of actors, and the dissertation examines civil society that mobilized to
address communication and information policy advocacy issues, as well as the
6
specific sector of civil society that participated in Internet governance debates
at the WSIS and IGF.
2. How can we best describe or categorize this group? Do these groups represent
a social movement? A coalition?
3. What are the goals of this sector of WSIS/IGF civil society? Does civil society
share unified goals? What strategies do they employ in their advocacy?
4. How do some issues provide the basis for collective action over others? What
are the conditions under which issues trigger action?
5. How do civil society organizations frame an issue? Why do these frames
change over time?
6. Why do civil society organizations participate in these global debates? Do
political opportunity structures explain their action? If so, how? If not, what
does?
7. How effective are civil society organizations in influencing Internet
governance debates at the WSIS and IGF?

Methodology
In light of the complex and broad nature of the Internet governance field, which is
currently in a state of flux, this study adopted an exploratory approach. To answer the
research questions outlined above, the study utilized a multi- method approach. The field
of Internet governance is a relatively new area without defined policies and well-
established actors and institutions. I gathered multiple forms of data, including
7
interviews, observation, and documents, rather than relying on a single data source. I then
reviewed all of the data, made sense of it, and organized it into categories and themes that
cut across all of the data sources (Creswell, 2009).

Assessing NGO Influence
A central element of this study is the analysis of non-governmental organizations’
influence in international negotiations on Internet governance. The methodological
approach and analytical framework for this study were chosen because, despite the lack
of specific policy decisions or statutes to analyze in this context, NGOs can exert
influence on any number of stages in the broader policy process. These stages include
factors from problem definition and framing, to decision-making and negotiations, to
institutional frameworks and structural relationships between powerful actors, to policy
implementation (Lindblom, 1980; Sabatier, 2007). Because this issue area is still in a
“nascent” stage (Sabatier & Weible, 2007), there has not been any specific policy
enacted. However, problem definition has occurred in a number of specific issues areas,
from privacy to access, among other issues, and this framing of the problem tends to have
been performed by non-governmental actors. Institutional frameworks have also been
influenced, with the institutionalization of civil society in the UN WSIS and the
establishment of the IGF, for example.
Beyond these instrumental influences, many have looked in to the role that non-
governmental actors, and other institutional actors, have played on more “interactive”
elements of the policy process (Martens, 2005; Wildavsky, 1979). These would include
8
policy “learning” between different actors as issues are debated over time (Sabatier &
Jenkins Smith, 1993). NGOs have been found not to exert substantial influence on the
instrumental elements named above in many issues areas. However, civil society plays an
important role in the broader political process. An example of this in the sphere of
Internet governance can be seen with NGOs bringing issues to the fore and framing
problems that powerful institutional actors would not necessarily have observed.
Because of these complexities, a study requires a multi-methodological approach,
especially the exploration of more qualitative and interpretative methods where framing
and notions of learning and knowledge transfer come to the fore. This is why the project
studies the role of NGOs in Internet governance negotiations using a number of methods.
Table 1.1 summarizes methodological strategies for gathering data on the influence of
civil society organizations on international negotiations. Data was gathered along two
dimensions of influence: participation in international negotiations and subsequent effects
of such participation. Data regarding participation, such as resources, access to
negotiations, and activities, addresses the first dimension of influence. In order to address
the second dimension of influence, civil society organizations’ “goal attainment” (Betsill
& Corell, 2008; Keck & Sikkink, 1998) is evaluated, which includes a comparison of
goals with observed effects.

9
Table 1.1: Methodological Strategies for Gathering Data on NGO Influence (Adapted
from Betsill & Corell, 2008).

Data for the analysis of primary and secondary literature includes transcripts from
conferences and meetings, final agreement texts (Geneva Declaration of Principles,
Geneva Plan of Action, Tunis Commitment, and Tunis Agenda), drafts negotiated along
the way to the final version, NGO lobbying material, NGO internal documents, media
reports, and press releases.
Qualitative observations involve the researcher taking field notes on the activities
and behavior of individuals at the research site. Qualitative observers can engage in roles
ranging from non-participant to a complete participant. I was an “observer as
participant”, where the role of researcher is known (Creswell, 2009). This allows the
researcher to notice unusual aspects during observation and record information as it
occurs. A limitation is that private information may be observed that the researcher
Triangulation NGO Participation Goal Attainment/
by: Influence Other’s Behavior
Type of Data Activities: Outcome:
How NGOs communicated with others. Final agreement contains text from NGOs.
Access: Process:
Opportunitites to communicate w/ others. Issues proposed by NGOs were discussed.
Resources: NGOs coined terms that entered
Sources of leverage used. negotation debates.
NGOs shaped positions of states.
Source of Data Primary texts: Final text, draft decisions, position statements, lobbying materials.
Secondary texts: Press releases, media reports.
Interviews
Participant Observation
Gather data along two dimensions of influence:
10
cannot report. I participated in the European Dialogue on Internet Governance meeting
held in Geneva, Switzerland in September 2009, and the Internet Rights and Principles
Dynamic Coalition meeting in Geneva, Switzerland in September 2009, as well as
informal gatherings of the Coalition surrounding the event. I participated in the Internet
Governance Forum U.S.A. in Washington D.C. in October 2009. I also participated in
monthly conference calls and online discussions of the Internet Rights and Principles
Dynamic Coalition. I participated in the drafting of the Internet Rights and Principles
Dynamic Coalition’s Charter and contributed input to their discussions. For other events,
I acted as a complete observer, where I observed without participating. I observed the
ICANN meeting in Los Angeles in 2009, the 2008 Internet Governance Forum held in
India, and the 2009 Internet Governance Forum held Egypt
1
.
The bulk of the empirical data was gathered from semi-structured interviews to
understand how civil society actors operate, their goals, and strategies. Interviewees
included individuals involved with public interest organizations and networks, and other
civil society participants active at the WSIS and IGF. The purpose of a qualitative
interview is to elicit views and opinions from the participants (Creswell, 2009). The
interviews are a “semi-structured” type, where I had a topic guide to address certain
topics, while allowing the participants to talk about other topics. The interview
instrument was divided into several main sections, including basic information about the
organization, history of the organization and its development, organizational structure
and resources, advocacy strategies, among other categories. There was not a set of

1
I observed the 2008 and 2009 Internet Governance Forums remotely.
11
questions that had to be asked with the same words in a certain order. Instead, there was a
general plan of inquiry and topics to be covered. Thus, interviews were more like
conversations. Intensive interviews can be seen as “guided conversation[s] whose goal is
to elicit from the interviewee… rich detailed materials that can be used in qualitative
analysis” (Lofland & Lofland, 1994, p.18).
As I conducted interviews, I went back to the interview instrument and revised it.
Whereas surveys are rigidly structured, qualitative in-depth interviews are flexible.
Herbert and Rience Rubin (1995) describe qualitative interview design as “flexible,
iterative, and continuous, rather than prepared in advance and locked in stone” (p. 43).
They note:
Design in qualitative interviewing is iterative. That means that each time you
repeat the basic process of gathering information, analyzing it…and testing it, you
come closer to a clear and convincing model of the phenomenon you are
studying…The continuous nature of qualitative interviewing means that the
questioning is redesigned throughout the project (p.46-7).

Twenty-eight in-depth interviews were conducted between September 2009 and March
2010 (See Appendix A). Interviewees were “purposefully selected” (Creswell, 2009)
through background research on key civil society organizations.

Outline of the Dissertation
Chapter 2 deals with Internet governance concepts and the historical evolution of
the Internet and its governance mechanisms and institutions. First, it defines Internet
governance and discusses the issues involved. Second, it analyzes the evolution of
governance arrangements of the Internet. Three main periods of Internet governance are
12
identified. During the first phase, Internet governance was self-regulatory and involved
organizations and a community of users that made decisions through rough consensus.
The chapter explores the community of the Internet’s founders and analyzes how their
culture influenced technical and social practices of the Internet. The second phase of
Internet governance involved technical issues of domain name and addressing, which
resulted in the creation of ICANN. The third phase of Internet governance included a
broad range of public policy issues, which emerged during the WSIS. This phase brought
Internet governance issues on the international agenda.
Chapter 3 deals with theoretical and definitional issues. First, it discusses
globalization and global governance, since this lays the groundwork for understanding
the environment in which global communication policy occurs. Second, civil society
actors and the role they play in global governance are discussed. Third, social movement
theories are presented. Finally, global governance, as it relates specifically to
communication, is explored.
Chapter 4 introduces the actors who are the focus of the dissertation research.
First, it presents the results from the organizational ecology to provide context of the
sector of civil society organizations dealing with communication and information policy
issues. Second, it explores the emergence of a rights-based approach to communications
advocacy and traces the historical evolution of the right to communicate debate, which
most recently surfaced during the WSIS and IGF. Third, it discusses the specific sector of
civil society organizations that participated in Internet governance at the WSIS and IGF.
A typology of civil society actors is proposed.
13
Chapter 5 analyzes the involvement of civil society in the WSIS and IGF from
2000 – 2009. The chapter assesses the influence of civil society on the international
Internet governance negotiations and discusses their main impacts. In light of the
research presented in chapters 4 and 5, chapter 6 presents a broader assessment of
attempts to create a global governance framework for the Internet and addresses how a
comprehensive regulatory framework cannot be established due to the wide range of
stakeholder perspectives. The tensions between the global Internet and the territorially
bound jurisdiction of the nation state are emphasized. The concluding chapter provides a
summary of and reflection on the analysis.

14
CHAPTER 2: HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF INTERNET GOVERNANCE MODELS

The Internet has revolutionized many sectors of society and the fabric of human
communication. As of year-end 2010, there were over 2 billion Internet users worldwide
and nearly 5.3 billion mobile communication subscribers (International
Telecommunication Union, 2011).
Figure 2.1: Number of Internet Users, 2000-2010. (Source: ITU World
Telecommunication /ICT Indicators database).

394
495
677
785
914
1,036
1,159
1,393
1,611
1,858
2,084
0
500
1,000
1,500
2,000
2,500
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010*
Internet users (millions)
* Estimates
15

Figure 2.2: Global Mobile Cellular Subscriptions, 2000-2010. (Source: ITU World
Telecommunication /ICT Indicators database).

Many take the Internet and computer technology for granted today, but in the
1960s computers were expensive and cumbersome, and using them for communication
was nearly unthinkable (Abbate, 1999). As the Internet expanded internationally, its
governance arrangements evolved. This chapter explores the Internet’s history, with a
focus on how the developers’ culture influenced the Internet’s early technical design and
social practices, which in turn impacted the trajectory of the Internet’s governance
practices.

Internet Governance
First, the chapter discusses what exactly “Internet governance,” as understood
during the current phase of debates, entails. Defining Internet governance is not
739
962
1159
1418
1765
2,217
2,756
3,354
4,012
4,652
5,282
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010*
Subscriptions (million)
*Estimates
16
straightforward or simple. One of the major divisions during international debates
centered on a broad versus narrow definition of Internet governance. Some considered
Internet governance to be only a technical matter, whereas others believed a more holistic
approach was necessary to take into account social, economic, and legal aspects. This
analysis takes a holistic view of the Internet. The Working Group on Internet Governance
(WGIG) stated that Internet governance should include significant public policy issues. In
2005, the WGIG issued a report which defined Internet governance as “the development
and application by Governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective
roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programmes
that shape the evolution and use of the Internet” (p. 3).
Governance of Internet issues is multi-layered, fragmented, complex, and highly
distributed. Governance is not one process, but many processes at different levels and
overlapping arenas. The complexity of Internet governance partly stems from its
multidisciplinary nature. Internet governance is a broad term that is used in a variety of
contexts and applied to a range of activities, such as coordination of technical standards,
operation of infrastructure, development, regulation, and other issues. Different actors
and organizations provide various typologies of issues. Here, the definition and issue
areas proposed by the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) are used.
Different typologies
2
include different issues and conceptualizations of Internet
governance, and there is no agreement among all actors about which issues are included.

2
Other groups and scholars have proposed various typologies of Internet governance issues, such as the
Diplo Foundation, the Markle Foundation, the International Chamber of Commerce, and the Internet
Governance Project.
17
The UN Working Group on Internet Governance devoted much of its time to
identifying key public policy areas relevant to Internet governance and identified the
following: 1) Internet infrastructure and resource management, including physical
infrastructure and resource management; 2) issues relating to the use of the Internet,
including security of network and information systems, spam, and national policies and
regulations; 3) issues with wider impact than the Internet, including electronic
authentication, competition policy, consumer and user protection, privacy, intellectual
property rights, e-commerce, and freedom of information and media; and 4) issues with a
developmental impact, including affordable and universal access, education, human
capacity building, open-source and free software, and cultural and linguistic diversity
(See table 2.2).

18
Table 2.2: Public Policy Areas of Internet Governance (Source: Working Group on
Internet Governance Report, 2005).
There are a variety of organizations that participate in aspects of Internet
governance, although governance is fragmented and there is not one organization active
in all elements of Internet governance. Actors can be categorized into state and non-state
organizations, or more precisely, divided into the following five categories: universal
1. INTERNET INFRASTRUCTURE AND CRITICAL RESOURCES
"Issues relating to infrastructure and the management of critical Internet resources...matters
of direct relevance to Internet Governance falling within the ambit of existing organisations
with responsibility for these matters" (WGIG)
Physical & secured Telecommunications infrastructure VoIP
infrastructure Spectrum Policy Peering & interconnection
Technical Standards
Instituions: IEEE, IETF, ITU, W3C, Other private consortiums
Logical Administration of Internet names Administration of root zone files
infrastructure Administration of IP addresses Technical standards
Administration of root server Multilingualization of naming
Institutions: ICANN, IETF, ISO, ITU, RIRs, Root Server Operators, WIPO
2. ISSUES RELATING TO THE USE OF THE INTERNET
"While there issues are directly related to Internet Governance, the nature of global
cooperation is not well defined" (WGIG).
Applicable jurisdiction, cross border coordination
Critical infrastructure protection Spam
National policies and regulations Cybercrime
Institutions: APEC, Council of Europe, ITU, OECD
3. ISSUES WITH WIDER IMPACT THAN THE INTERNET
"Issues which are relevant to the Internet, but with impact much wider than the Internet,
where there are existing organisations responsible for these issues" (WGIG)
Competition policy, liberalization, privatization, regulations
Consumer, user protection, privacy Electronic authentication
Unlawful content and practices Intellectual property rights
Access protection E-commerce
E-Government and privacy Freedom of information and media
Institutions: APEC, CAHSI, Council of Europe, IETF, ITU, OECD, UN/CEFACT,
UNCITRAL, UNCTAD, UNESCO, WIPO, WTO, Private consortiums
4. ISSUES WITH DEVELOPMENTAL ASPECTS
"Issues relating to developmental aspects of Internet governance, in particular capacity
building in developing countries" (WGIG)
Affordable & universal access Education, human capacity building
Internet leased line costs National infrastructure development
Cultural and linguistic diversity Social dimensions and inclusion
Open-source and free software Content accessibility
Institutions: ITU, UN ICTTF, UNESCO, World Bank
19
membership state institutions, such as the ITU, WIPO, WTO, and UNESCO; non-
universal membership state institutions, such as the OECD and Council of Europe;
formal non-state institutions, such as ICANN; informal non-state institutions, such as the
IETF and a range of civil society organizations; and state actors (Mathiason, Mueller,
Klein, & Holitscher, 2004). Who is active in what area is often segmented by issues.

History of Internet Governance Models
There are three main phases of Internet governance. The first phase included self-
regulation by a scientific and technical community of the Internet’s developers, from the
1960s to the 1990s. During the second phase “Internet governance” became an issue in
regards to the scarcity of domain names and the subsequent establishment of ICANN in
the late 1990s. The third phase is marked by the “larger governance issue” (Mathiason,
2009, p. 3), which emerged during the World Summit on Information Society in the early
2000s, at which time global governance of the Internet was explored. Manuel Castells
(2009) notes, “the impromptu evolution of Internet regulation and management parallels
the serendipitous maturation of the Internet as the communication commons of the
network society” (p. 103). The history of this regulation and development of the Internet
informs the analyses of the current governance arrangements.

Self-Regulation by the Internet Community
The Internet has a rich history, particularly the decentralized, informal and
flexible governance arrangement of the Internet’s early development (Abbate, 1999). The
20
first phase of Internet governance, a military and academic phase, lasted from the 1960s
to the 1990s. The Internet began in a scientific and technical environment that was run by
the community of engineers and scientists who developed it, with little government
oversight or involvement. This epistemic community successfully managed and governed
the Internet, and this phase of self-regulation worked well during the early period of the
Internet’s development. This was a unique governance arrangement, since it was not
made up primarily of government or industry, but instead was “rooted in a technological
community that saw itself as global and as not shackled by conventional political and
market boundaries” (Cowhey & Aronson,2009, p. 208).
A paradox of the Internet’s history is that it developed as a libertarian space - one
that was designed within and funded by the U.S. Defense Department. The “apparent
contradiction” of the Internet being built and funded by the U.S. Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and today used as an interpersonal communication
system “goes to the heart of the Internet’s history, for the system evolved through an
unusual…alliance between military and civilian interests” (Abbate, 1999, p. 2). The
predecessor to the Internet was the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network
(ARPA), which began as a DARPA project. Through DARPA, the U.S. Department of
Defense funded various projects that may have defense implications. DARPA funded a
group of scientists, led by Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn, to develop the ARPANET,
which became the world’s first operational packet switching network and the predecessor
of the Internet. Since the ARPANET was developed by DARPA, military goals were
built in to the Internet’s technology, and military values of survivability, flexibility and
21
high performance took precedent over other concerns, such as consumer appeal or
commercial gain. The group of individuals funded by DARPA was made up of scientists
and academics that “incorporated their own values of collegiality, decentralization of
authority, and open exchange of information into the system” (Abbate, 1999, p. 5). The
early research on packet switching and the ARPANET design characterizes the first
phase of the Internet’s history, which is largely a story of technological evolution.
However, the social and cultural aspects of the developers are also important to consider,
since the culture of the Internet’s founders shaped the evolution of the Internet.
Despite being developed in the Department of Defense, the U.S. government
maintained a hands-off approach for most of the early development of the Internet. From
the 1970s through much of the 1990s, the US acted as an “absentee custodian”
(Goldsmith & Wu, 2006). The U.S. government did not show much interest in regulating
or controlling the Internet until the 1990s. The US ended up exercising control of the
Internet nearly two decades later, but it is somewhat paradoxical that a free and open
network with decentralized control was developed under the U.S. Department of Defense
by a community of technologists and scientists who shared libertarian values and
embedded such values in to the design of the Internet.
In 1972 the ARPANET was presented to the public at the International Computer
Communication Conference. The ARPANET was based on the concept that there would
be many independent networks of various designs. With an open networking architecture,
various networks could link up and the choice of one network’s technology need not be
dictated by another network. Individual networks could be separately designed and
22
developed. It is ironic that the concept of open architecture and decentralized control was
developed in DARPA. The funds came from the Defense Department, but they were
administered by academics, who were “more concerned with openness and innovation
than with rules” (Mathiason, 2009, p. 32).
To make the packet system work, an end protocol was needed. In 1973, Kahn and
Cerf proposed a new version of an end protocol that would be suited to the needs of an
open architecture network: the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). In 1978, Cerf and
other DARPA funded researchers split the function of TCP into two protocols – the TCP
and the Internet Protocol (IP), which work together and are know as TCP/IP. TCP/IP was
adopted as a defense standard in 1980, so that DARPA could share defense information
using the Internet technology. In 1983, the ARPANET host protocol was changed to
TCP/IP, which allowed the ARPANET to be separated into a network for military needs
and a network for research needs for the non-military community. By 1985, the Internet
was established as a technology that supported a range of developers and researchers.
Network architecture matters. Design features do not necessarily emerge because
they represent the best technical option. The architectural design of an information
system is a choice, which is shaped by political and economic forces. The architecture
affects what we can do with the information network and its uses. The Internet has
enabled new kinds of uses, modes of production, and exchange. Technology does not
dictate these uses. Technology creates possibilities, and social, political and economic
factors influence which possibilities will be used. A technological deterministic view is
not helpful, nor is a belief that technologies are just tools that can be used for whatever
23
purpose. The architecture of technology leads to the possibility of certain uses, and uses
may develop that were not intended by the creator of the technology.
The design principles of TCP/IP, which include network transparency and
application autonomy, are elements of the design philosophy of the end-to-end principle
(Saltzer, Reed, & Clark, 1984). The end-to-end principle is a key architectural feature of
the Internet and an example of an Internet design choice with governance implications.
Peter Cowhey and Jonathan Aronson (2009) point to the end-to-end principle as one of
the three guiding principles
3
of the Internet that underpinned its governance norms.
Saltzer, Reed, and Clark (1984) argued in their original articulation of the concept that
functions placed at low levels of a system can be redundant and that application-level
functions should not be built in the lower levels of a system. The lower levels of the
network should implement basic functions, and applications should be built “above”
these functions, at the edges.
The end-to-end principle involves where intelligence is placed in a network. This
is an important design decision, since intelligence in networks is a source of power and
control. For phone networks, the phone companies controlled the network, since they
owned the switches where intelligence lies. For the Internet, intelligence is at the edges,
which empowers innovators and allows for a decentralized and flexible network. In non-
technical terms, the Internet community designed a network that avoided centralized
control. The founders “built strains of American libertarianism, and even 1960s idealism,
into the universal language of the Internet” (Goldsmith & Wu, 2006, p. 23). The end-to-

3
The other two guiding principles are interoperability among networks and the open decision process.
24
end principle “grew over time to become a (if not the) foundation principle of the Internet
architecture” (Kempf & Austein, 2004). The main analytical point is that these were
conscious design decisions, which were influenced by the culture of the Internet’s
creators. Internet historians often credit this community and the values they embedded in
the Internet’s design as a source of the Internet’s growth.
The culture and values of the developers impacted the technical design of the
Internet, which in turn influenced the evolution of its governance. The Internet, like all
technologies, is a product of its social environment. The culture and social network of the
Internet founders played a pivotal role in the design of the early Internet. This community
was built on mutual respect and functioned on the logic of the open source community
(Weber, 2004). Steve Weber’s study of open source is more about how communications
are governed and how a technological community solved governance problems, than
about open source technology per se. Weber’s analysis of the importance of the
community and culture of technologists provides parallels to the community of Internet
developers. Weber notes, “Open source is an experiment in building a political economy
– that is, a system of sustainable value creation and a set of governance mechanisms. In
this case it is a governance system that holds together a community of producers around
this counter-intuitive notion of property rights”(p. 1). Like the open source community,
the community of technologists and academics who developed the Internet created a
governance system for the Internet and were united by common values, standards, and
decision-making procedures.
25
The early Internet community was driven by libertarian logic. The community
was not interested in controlling the network or the behaviors of the users. Unlike other
networks, where only certain uses and functions were available and the network was
created with specific uses in mind, the Internet was not designed to enable a pre-
determined range of uses. The creators thought it more sensible to keep the options open
for later network use and growth. This decision came to be an important factor favoring
the Internet design in the “standards war”.

Rough consensus and running code: New organizational forms. With the
design principles and standards in place, some governance of the protocols was needed.
In addition to the founder’s culture impacting technical choices, the culture also led to
certain social practices, one of which is the decision-making procedures and
organizational forms. The technical work of Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn are often
discussed in relation to the Internet’s history, but less mentioned are the organizational
innovations put in place by Cerf, Kahn, and other Internet players. The early Internet
community developed organizational structures and decision-making procedures that
were decentralized and driven by consensus. The community was international, and a
model of networked collaboration, using listservs and email to coordinate among a
distributed community, often facilitated governance activities. Cowhey and Aronson
(2009) note, “This organizing vision of decision making reflected the Internet’s
underlying principles and norms. The principles and most of the norms descended
philosophically from the expert community that designed the Internet.” (p. 208). During
26
the 1970s and 1980s, the Internet community, made up of the IETF, the Internet
Architecture Board, the Internet Society, and other organizations, was committed to the
principle of openness – both for the Internet and for the process of governance.
In the 1970s, a small group of researchers developed and managed the protocols.
In the late 1970s, they decided to open up the process to the larger research community
and created the Internet Configuration Control Board in 1979. Kahn said it “brought a
wider segment of the research community more directly into the decision-making aspects
of the Internet project which, until then, had been almost solely undertaken by ARPA”
(Kahn, 1994, as quoted in Russell, 2006, p. 50).
Due to the Internet’s growth, the Internet Configuration Control Board was
disbanded in 1984 and the Internet Advisory Board (IAB) was created. Researchers
created and presided over these governing bodies. There were no elections, and new
members were appointed with the advice of current members. The IAB oversaw TCP/IP
but had no legal mandate or enforcement mechanisms. Their protocols were de facto
standards, whose status depended on consensus and extensive implementation.
Sponsorship of the Internet Activities Board
4
was moved in 1992 to the Internet Society,
a non-governmental organization. This occurred as part of the Internet's transition from a
U.S. government entity to an international, public entity. With the establishment of these
groups, there was an increasingly formal structure to govern the protocols, led by a group
of researchers who were committed to preserving the culture and design principles of the
early Internet.

4
It was later re-named the Internet Architecture Board.
27
The IAB was made up of a number of task forces, one of which became the
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), which was created to manage the development
of technical standards for the Internet. The IETF represented a unique model of decision-
making, which had ramifications for the development and governance of the Internet. The
IETF is made up of a number of working groups. The IETF describes itself as a “large
open international community…It is open to any interested individual”
(http://www.ietf.org). Members suggest technical standards problems, and a working
group is established if there is enough interest. Anyone can propose a standard by posting
a draft, which is then tested and reviewed, and published again. A proposed standard may
be reviewed for about six months, when it then may become a draft standard. When a
working group later recommends the standard, there is a period of final objections before
it becomes an Internet Standard, which can be used throughout the Internet. The lengthy
process of coming up with standards is called “rough consensus.” The IETF (1998)
described the process as follows:
Working groups make decisions through a ‘rough consensus’ process. IETF
consensus does not require that all participants agree although this is, of course,
preferred. In general, the dominant view of the working group shall prevail.
(However, it must be noted that "dominance" is not to be determined on the basis
of volume or persistence, but rather a more general sense of agreement).
Consensus can be determined by a show of hands, humming, or any other means
on which the WG agrees (by rough consensus, of course). Note that 51% of the
working group does not qualify as ‘rough consensus’ and 99% is better than
rough. It is up to the Chair to determine if rough consensus has been reached
(IETF Working Group Guidelines and Procedures).

During an IETF conference in 1992, MIT professor David Clark stated what has
come to be known as the IETF motto: “We reject: kings, presidents, and voting. We
28
believe in: rough consensus and running code.” Lawrence Lessig (1999) argued that this
phrase is a “manifesto that will define our generation” (p. 4). Because the IETF does not
have formal membership, there can be no formal voting structure. Instead, members
contribute their expertise and suggest proposals, which are approved where there is broad
support and consensus within the group. “Rough consensus” means there is a high
enough level of consensus to show strong support, but it is flexible enough to function
without a unanimous decision. “Running code” refers to the IETF’s interest in practical
and working systems that can be implemented. In the IETF, a proposed standard must
exist and be demonstrated as working before it becomes a standard. The IETF community
rejects presidents and kings, but there are authority figures. Internet rulers have been
likened to a “council of elders” (Krol, 1993), whose authority is based on their merit and
contributions, versus a president who is voted upon.
These early structures were composed of a group of self-selected and experienced
individuals, many of whom were part of a close-knit network that had worked together
since the early days of the ARPANET. This group of Internet developers may be
described as a meritocracy. A meritocracy is a system of rule by those who are best
qualified to do so, based on their technical expertise or personal characteristics, instead of
who has most power. Skill is the ultimate determinant of acceptance in the community.
The IETF has no formal membership, but preference and authority is given to those with
demonstrated technical expertise. This standard of merit is similar to the “hacker ethic”,
which includes the belief that “hackers should be judged by their hacking” (Levy, 1984).
The hacker ethic is based on a meritocracy, where skill is the primary criteria. Other
29
criteria, such as degrees and qualifications, race, sex, or position, are seen as irrelevant in
the community.
With its decentralized decision-making process and involvement of a wide variety
of individuals and institutions, the IETF represents a unique form of governance of the
Internet. The dominant organizational method for the non-state actors involved in the
organizations, such as the IAB and IETF, was the horizontal network, versus a vertical
network often found in governments and intergovernmental organizations. The principle
of open decision-making supported the governance arrangement that existed outside of
government and companies. Akash Kapur (2005) argues that the IETF’s decision-making
process “remains in many ways the hallmark of Internet governance; it accounts for a
significant amount of resistance to any attempt by national governments to exert control
over the network” (p. 6).

Competing networks and standards. How the early Internet community’s culture
influenced the design of the Internet and its informal governing bodies is one element of
the Internet’s history. With competing networks, it was never inevitable that the Internet
would become the dominant network that gave rise to the modern communication
revolution. The “the very unexpectedness of its success” was a crucial ingredient for the
expansion of the Internet (Zittrain, 2008). The developers of the Internet did not design
the Internet with goals of mainstream dominance, and, as such, it was able to develop
“organically for years before it became widely known, remaining outside the notice of
those who would have insisted on more cautious stricture had they only suspected how
30
ubiquitous it would become” (Zittrain, 2008, p. 8). The serendipitous character of the
Internet’s expansion under self-regulation has nothing to do with technological
determinism. It is related to the culture of the Internet’s designers, who decided to build
an open and decentralized network.
There are many ways to build a network that vary from the Internet. Different
network configurations lead to different levels of control and regulability, as well as
different levels of innovation. In the 1990s there were several other networks being
developed, which if widely adopted instead of the Internet, would have led to a different
network than we rely on today. It is remarkable that the Internet, with “no CEO, no
master business plan, no paying subscribers, no investment in content, and no financial
interest in accumulating subscribers” (Zittrain, 2008 p.7) ‘beat’ the proprietary networks,
whose overt goal was mainstream dominance and who possessed a greater amount of
financial resources. The Internet was “so different in character and audience from the
proprietary networks that few even saw them as competing with each other” (Zittrain,
2008, p. 28).
The battle over standards demonstrates the unexpected nature of the Internet’s
development and the importance of the Internet community’s culture in influencing the
Internet’s trajectory. The Internet runs on TCP/IP, which is the de facto standard for
computer networking. Writing about the history of the Internet, John Naughton (1999)
argues, “the conception of TCP/IP was one of the greatest technological breakthroughs of
the twentieth century because, without it, the Net as we know it would not have been
31
possible” (p. 21). However, the dominance of TCP/IP was a result of an international
struggle.
It is often difficult to coordinate standards. As Cowhey and Aronson (2009)
explain, there is a classic coordination problem (as found in game theory) present with
standards setting. There are solutions that make everyone better off, but it is difficult to
achieve such solutions. This section summarizes the battle over standards, since
“standardization is technically and organizationally complex as well as deeply value-
laden” (Russell, 2006, p. 48).
Standards are “a political issue because they represent a form of control over
technology” (Abbate, 1999, p. 147). Users are empowered by open standards that allow a
range of devices and networks to interconnect. In contrast, a proprietary standard that is
not open favors manufacturers’ interests over users. William Drake (1993) notes that the
standards debate is “not merely about the comparative efficacy of two sets of standards,
but it is rather between two competing visions of how international standardization
processes…should be organized and controlled” (p. 643). On the one hand there are
decentralized decision-making processes and informal organizations representative of the
Internet community, and on the other hand, there are organizations based on centralized
authority that are interested in commercial values.
The ITU and the International Organization for Standardization were the formal
international standard-setting institutions, and it would have been reasonable in the late
1970s to assume that they would lead efforts to coordinate standards for information
services as they had for international telecommunications (Russell, 2006). In 1977 the
32
ISO oversaw an attempt to create a network architecture called Open Systems
Interconnection (OSI), which was endorsed by governments around the world and
became the architecture taught in computer science curricula between the late 1970s and
early 1990s. It was believed that “competing networks – including experimental TCP/IP
networks – were expected to fade away once OSI protocols were standardized and
implemented by users and manufacturers” (Russell, 2006, p. 48). However, by the mid
1990s, the Internet’s TCP/IP standard and the Internet’s architecture were deployed
internationally. How did TCP/IP become the standard over competing proprietary designs
and become the official standard?
While the Internet Architecture Board and IETF developed TCP/IP networks,
other groups were developing competing protocol architectures for networking. Many
different actors, such as technical experts, firms, and operators, were involved with
different aspects of the development of standards and fought among themselves about
how best to proceed. In the mid 1970s various corporations, such as IBM, Xerox, Digital
Equipment Corporation, Honeywell, Sperry, and Burroughs, began to develop network
systems. All used packet switching, as developed in the ARPANET context, but unlike
the ARPANET, all of these systems were proprietary, would only work with the
manufacturer’s own computers, and a license fee would be charged to use the protocols.
Proprietary standards favor large manufacturers and result in an incompatibility between
different products. Thus, oftentimes a national or international organization will issue
formal public standards. The ITU, specifically the Consultative Committee on
International Telegraphy (CCITT), and the International Organization for Standardization
33
attempted to create an international public network standard to provide an alternative to a
proprietary standard. Many carriers worried that IBM, which had a large share of the
computer market, would try to make its’ System Network Architecture the de facto
standard. Governments also worried about being locked in to buy computer equipment
from a single provider if a proprietary network became the standard. Thus, international
standards organizations sought to develop public network protocols.
In 1975 CCITT worked on public protocols and came up with Recommendation
X.25. By the late 1970s, X.25 was adopted by the following public data networks:
France’s Transpac, Japan’s DDX, the multinational Euronet, and the British Post Office’s
PSS, as well as by manufacturers, such as IBM, Digital, Honeywell, and other computer
firms. Some members of the CCITT had recommended that TCP/IP be adopted, but this
suggestion was rejected. X.25 and TCP/IP could have been combined, but many
functions would have been repeated, and “they were clearly meant to be alternative
approaches to building networks” (Abbate, 1999, p. 155). The two standards represent the
carriers’ and the Internet community’s differing views, values, and approaches to
networking.
One example of these different design decisions is whether control is centralized
or distributed. For X.25, a few large providers would control network operations, versus
TCP/IP, where individual computer sites had more control over network performance.
For TCP/IP, this decision was premised on the assumption that not all networks would
reliably transfer data, for example if they operated in a hostile environment and if a
usually reliable network suffered damage during a war. Here, we again see the influence
34
of military values in the ARPANET’s and TCP/IP’s design. If not all networks were
assumed to be reliable, then the host protocol would instead be relied upon. Thus, the two
standards represented different choices about the distribution of control between network
providers and computer owners. With TCP/IP, private computer owners had more control
over their own data communications activities and a wide range of networks could join,
versus the X.25 standard which meant that the carriers could more centrally control
network operations and which assumed the network would be homogenous and not open
to a diversity of networks. Computer owners realized that X.25 would limit their ability
to customize network service to meet their needs, and saw the Internet vision of
networking as conflicting with the CCITT’s X.25 vision of networking. X.25 was
adopted for most public and commercial networks, although the ARPA Internet and some
private networks continued to use TCP/IP. The conflict between X.25 and TCP/IP was
not resolved, and during this time a new network standard was developed.
The International Organization for Standardization objected that different
computer systems were incompatible, that manufacturers had a monopoly over products
for their system, and that users could not network different types of computers. In 1977
the International Organization for Standardization began development of a standard that
could be used by any computer; the project was called Open Systems Interconnection
(OSI). Thus, the OSI was much more aligned with TCP/IP. TCP/IP and the OSI model
differed from the proprietary networks in that they were open and allowed users more
flexibility, but they developed in different organizational contexts and were based on
different motivations.
35
In the late 1980s there were disagreements between the IAB and IETF over
addressing and routing problems. The IAB proposed using the OSI instead of IP to
address the address space problem, and this proposal was met with intense opposition
from IETF members and the Internet community, leading to a “standards war”. Russell
(2006) argues, “the fact that a mere proposal…would provoke such outrage from
hundreds of engineers and computer scientists reflects the passion and commitment of
engineers in the pitched battle of a standards war” (p. 54). The IETF members did not
anticipate that another group would make changes to the Internet’s protocol without
consulting the IETF, which had always played a role in standardizing protocols.
Furthermore, members of the IETF fundamentally disagreed with the culture and
organization of the OSI standard, which developed in a “complex and costly system,
driven by the political concerns of ISO” (Russell, 2006, p. 55). They viewed the efforts of
the International Organization for Standardization “as an effort to refocus computer
networking around telephone monopolies seeking to preserve their power” (Cowhey &
Aronson, 2009, p. 214).
During the 1992 IETF meeting, members protested the IAB decision to use the
OSI standard, and it was during this meeting that David Clark made his now famous
summary of the IETF approach, “We reject: kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in:
rough consensus and running code.” This statement was met with overwhelming
approval and support. Russell (2006) suggests this motto sustained such support because
it “framed the successful aspects of the IETF process in opposition to the ISO
process…To IETF participants, this process was vastly superior to the bureaucratic and
36
political approach of ISO” (p. 55). The phrase reveals some important differences
between the Internet standards process and the International Organization for
Standardization process. The organizational culture of the International Organization for
Standardization was a democracy based on voting and certain rule-making behaviors,
which stood in contrast to the meritocracy structure and culture of the founders of TCP/IP
who rejected voting, and relied on “rough consensus” decision-making. The governance
structure of the Internet community sought to preserve the design principles and culture
of the early Internet. The Internet community that had developed TCP/IP had established
informal mechanisms that were more effective in coordinating technical change than the
ISO’s slower standardization process, which accounts in part for the eventual success and
deployment of TCP/IP and the Internet’s architecture over competing networks.
However, at the time, the OSI model was favored. The International Organization
for Standardization, the official international standards body in which many government
representatives were involved and which was thus widely supported by governments,
developed the OSI standard. Even though the U.S. Department of Defense had sponsored
the development of Internet standards, they officially supported the OSI model in the
early 1980s, since they assumed the model would become the global standard. The
National Bureau of Standards published a version of OSI for U.S. federal agencies in
1988, and by 1990, federal agencies were required to use products that were compliant
with the standard. However, many administrators continued to operate TCP/IP networks,
which were more familiar and widely available. OSI was the official international
standard, and one would thus assume that it was the standard that would succeed.
37
Due to the bureaucracy of the International Organization for Standardization, it
took years to develop the final protocols. Meanwhile, TCP/IP was available and was
supported by the Internet community. In the end, the OSI model did not provide universal
compatibility between networks. The computing environment of the time was
heterogeneous and included a range of different networks. Thus, the Internet, which had
continued to use TCP/IP and which was explicitly designed to accommodate a diversity
of networks, had an advantage. The Internet community eventually got TCP and IP
sanctioned by the International Organization for Standardization, which largely ended the
standards war. The Internet community also received support from many firms, which
viewed the Internet protocol as an alternative to domination by IBM (Cowhey &
Aronson, 2009). In the mid 1990s, OSI began its decline and TCP/IP rose in prominence
as a network protocol, due in wide part to the popularity of the World Wide Web, which
took advantage of the Internet’s end-to-end architecture. In 1994 the National Institute of
Standards and Technology gave up the OSI model for TCP/IP. TCP/IP and the Internet
system of networking became the de facto standards.
The success of the Internet community “rested in part on persuading major
government agencies to support its efforts to ‘tip’ the marketplace toward Internet
protocols” (Cowhey & Aronson, 2009, p. 214). For example, the IETF sought the support
of the U.S. Department of Defense and persuaded them to include Internet protocols in
their options for the OSI architecture (Abbate, 1990). Internet advocates also persuaded
the U.S. military to fund translator gateways which interconnected Internet and non-
Internet networks, which “effectively made the ITU’s proposed protocol for data, backed
38
by phone companies, into a subset of TCP/IP for data networking” (Cowhey & Aronson,
2009, p. 214). The U.S. government did not officially delegate Internet standards
dominance to the IETF, but they “rejected a new formulation that would have moved pre-
eminent control over standards away from it” (p. 215).
Principal/agent theory is useful in understanding how the Internet community was
successful in maintaining its position and its standard as first choice, as well as in
understanding several of the Internet’s early developments (Cowhey & Aronson, 2009).
A government, “principal,” may delegate authority to their “agents,” since it is not
efficient for governments to do everything themselves. Power may be delegated in
complex technical areas in order to benefit from expertise. Agenda setting power may be
formally or informally ceded to experts. Delegation does not require deliberative
delegation by a principal. Three conditions are necessary to create a situation where a
principal may delegate to an agent (Cowhey & Aronson, 2009). These include: 1)
transparent decision-making, which strengthens an agent’s credibility; 2) commitment by
leaders and experts; and 3) verification of work by principals.
The U.S. government ceded authority to govern the Internet to a technological
community and “stacked the deck” in favor of a technological community “whose
fundamental beliefs rejected forms of industrial policy that the government opposed”
(Cowhey & Aronson, 2009, p. 141). This is seen in terms of the IETF and later with
ICANN. The IETF was a “virtual agent” and “de facto agent” of the U.S. government
(Cowhey &Aronson, 2009). A government did not create the IETF, but governments
decided not to displace it with more traditional institutions. Cowhey and Aronson (2009)
39
note, “remarkably, the technological leadership of the Internet community succeeded in
creating specialized governance arrangements that co-opted global support and largely
preempted roles for other international organizations” (p. 208). Their governance
arrangement was able to co-opt the international scientific community “so that the
Internet’s ‘made in the USA’ stamp did not doom it internationally” (p. 209). However,
the dominant role of the US did come under attack with more recent debates over
ICANN.
Technical standards are often assumed to be pure technical decisions and
“socially neutral”. However, the above discussion highlights that standards have
economic and social consequences and can change the balance of power between
businesses, providers, and users. Alternate networks to the Internet were developed, and
an adoption of a different network or standard would have greatly altered the way we
currently understand networking and communications. The history of the Internet, as with
any history, is often portrayed as continuous progress. However, as Naughton (1999)
notes in regards to how AT&T was not interested in the ARPANET
5
, assuming that
historical development of technology is inevitable “obscures the fact that at any moment
the future is unknowable. What seems obvious in retrospect may not have been at all
obvious at the time” (p. 110).
A final development, which accounts in part for the Internet’s success, is the
World Wide Web. Tim Berners-Lee developed the World Wide Web, which, combined
with the packet switching protocol, “produced the information revolution that now

5
The Defense Department offered to transfer the ARPANET to AT&T in 1970, but AT&T, not seeing any
commercial interest in ARPANET, declined the offer (Abbate, 1999).
40
constitutes the Internet” (Mathiason, 2009, p. 38). The Web, which allowed for
information to easily be exchanged, led to the Internet’s vast popularity. With the
invention of the WWW, the Internet changed from a technical communication tool into a
mass medium and business platform.
Janet Abbate notes the “computing tradition on which Berners-Lee drew was far
removed form the military roots of the ARPANET and the Internet: the hacker
counterculture of the 1960s and the 1970s” (Abbate, 1990, p. 214). This culture
encouraged ordinary people to learn to use computers, instead of leaving it up to experts.
A champion of this counterculture proposed a system of organizing information called
“hypertext”, a concept that Berners-Lee used to develop the WWW. Berners-Lee
envisioned the Web creating a “pool of human knowledge” that was easily accessible.
With the Web, people at different sites could share ideas as a common project. If two
projects were created independently, the two could still form into one cohesive piece of
work, instead of having a central figure make the changes. The Web was designed to
work with a range of different data formats. Therefore, in a similar vein to the
ARPANET designers, the designers of the Web chose to create a system that could
accommodate a range of diverse technologies. The Web led to the vast popularity of the
Internet and “completed the Internet’s transformation from a research tool to a popular
medium by providing an application attractive enough to draw the masses of potential
Internet uses into active participation” (Abbate, 1999, p. 217).
The World Wide Web Consortium, created in 1994, is the organization that deals
with organizing the various protocols and standards associated with the Web. Several of
41
the Internet developers, in a work on the history of the Internet distributed by the Internet
Society, note that, with the establishment of these governing bodies (IAB, IETF, W3C),
there was “a steady evolution of organizational structures designed to support and
facilitate an ever-increasing community working collaboratively on Internet issues.” The
IETF and W3C developed open standards, which was possible because the stakeholders
shared a common interest and vision for the Internet. In sum, the first phase of
governance of the Internet was self-regulation by a community of scientists and
academics. The agencies that were developed to manage aspects of the Internet were
developed on an ad hoc basis and were established to address the needs of users.
During this phase of the history of the Internet, the Internet developed without
much oversight from formal regulatory agencies. Governance of the Internet was largely
self-regulated by a community of technologists who relied on consensus and
transparency. This governance arrangement allowed for innovation, growth of the
network, user choice, user empowerment, and decentralization. This governance
arrangement worked well; however, it must be understood in the political economic
context of the time, and in light of the libertarian culture of the Internet founders. This
self-regulatory framework worked well during this early period of the Internet, when the
user community largely shared the same values and the Internet was not yet
commercialized. As the Internet grew in importance in cultural, political, and economic
realms, a variety of actors sought to exercise control over the Internet.

42
Internet Governance and the Domain Name Issue
For the most part, governance of the Internet was decentralized, yet there was still
a need for central administration of some of the Internet’s technical aspects, such as the
assignment of IP addresses. Janet Abbate (1999) notes, “although the Internet could
afford to grow in a decentralized and spontaneous way, there were still certain functions
for which central coordination seemed to be needed to prevent chaos” (p. 188).) The view
of the Internet as decentralized and flat is oversimplified, since hierarchical structures are
needed to manage internetworking (Cowhey & Aronson, 2009). Hierarchy and
centralization in networks vary because complexity increases faster than growth – a linear
increase in network users can result in an exponential increase in the number of possible
interconnections, thereby requiring more hierarchal control in managing this complexity.
In regards to the Internet, “the need for unique names produced a major coordination
problem that only elements of a hierarchy could solve” (Cowhey & Aronson, 2009, p.
218). Domain names and IP addresses are resources
6
, like telephone numbers, and there
needs to be ways to assign these resources. Indeed, many of the policy issues are
analogous to coordination of the telephone system (Mueller, 2002). Addresses must be
unique, and unique values needed in a large-scale network cannot be assigned in a totally
decentralized way, since this could lead to the selection of the same names or numbers by
different people. Therefore, coordination is needed. Thus, an important decision in the
Internet’s history was setting up a common system for assigning domains and IP

6
The domain name space became a resource with the growth and commercialization of the Internet
(Mueller, 2002). Specifically, the domain name space is a common pool resource, since a practice of first
come/first served determined who got a name assignment. Ostrom (1990) discusses common pool
resources and how they often result in battles over the assignment and allocation of resources.
43
addresses. The governance of the domain name system marks the second phase of
Internet governance.
In the Internet’s early days, running the naming system was simple. In 1977 Jon
Postel, a computer scientist, took on the job of keeping the early Internet naming system
running. Jon Postel has been called the “God of the Internet”. Manuel Castells (2009)
notes, “that one person, without financial profit for himself, and without direct control
from a higher authority, created the Internet domain name system unchallenged because
of the trust deposited in him by the user community, is one of the most extraordinary
stories of the Information Age” (p.104). Goldsmith and Wu (2006) note “despite being
vested with what at the time was an inglorious and largely administrative job, Postel
devoted himself to building and running the Internet’s naming and numbering structure.
It was these early years of quite labor that built Postel’s reputation for dedicated service
and fair dealing” (p. 33). The community placed so much trust in Postel that individuals
were willing to follow his instructions even if their actions could possibly land them in
jail, an event described below. A fellow engineer said of Postel, “We always knew that
his views came from legitimate beliefs and we never had to worry that he was somehow
considering political or personal advantage. We might not agree with him, but we always
knew he was driven first by a concern that the right thing be done” (Crocker, as quoted in
Goldsmith and Wu, 2006, p. 33).
The modern Domain Name System (DNS) was developed in the mid-1980s. Jon
Postel, by contract with the U.S. Department of Defense and in affiliation with the
Stanford Research Institute, assigned IP addresses from his office at the Information
44
Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California. Thus, the U.S. government’s
formal contract with Postel gave him the authority to continue doing what he had done
for a decade. Postel became “the” naming and numbering authority, and his authority was
uncontested for quite some time.
Meanwhile, DARPA ended its interest in the Internet by 1992. The ARPANET
sites were connected to the National Science Foundation’s networks and the NSFNET
took over as the backbone of the Internet. With the ARPANET dismantled and the
Internet moved to the NSF, the military operation of the Internet came to an end.
However, the Internet was still under control of a government agency and meant only for
education and nonprofit research. To open the Internet to all users and types of activities,
the NSF decided to shift the operation of the Internet from the NSF to the commercial
sector and end all government subsidies of the network. ARPA managers tried to get
AT&T to take over the ARPANET in 1972, but AT&T declined. With hindsight, it is
easy to ridicule AT&T’s decision, but at the time AT&T’s engineers did not understand
how digital technology and computer switching would affect telecommunications in the
coming decades (Naughton, 1999). In 1991 the NSF issued a plan where Internet service
would be taken over by Internet Service Providers (ISPs), each of which would operate
its own backbone. Prior to 1993, the NSF prohibited anyone from making commercial
use of the Internet. When the NSF decommissioned the Internet backbone and the
Internet became privatized, it was opened up to a much larger segment of the public and
was available for a broader range of uses.
45
With the privatization of the Internet, there were questions about who would
manage technical aspects. Although ISPs were each responsible for their own operations,
Internet names and addresses required central coordination. Since the NSF could no
longer provide these services, in 1993 the NSF transferred operation to Network
Solutions Inc. (NSI), a private U.S. company, with whom NSF signed a 5-year contract
for the administration of the Domain Name System. Postel shared authority over the
naming system, with Network Solutions being the registrar for domains of dot-com, dot-
net, dot-org, and dot-edu, and Postel maintaining authority to decide the content and
number of top-level domains. This was the first time that the Internet’s naming system
was in part under the control of a for-profit company, which may have interests at odds
with the founding vision for the Internet. In the mid 1990s the “DNS wars” began when
Network Solutions was instructed to begin charging for domain names. This was
extremely profitable, with Network Solutions’ revenue growing at an annual rate of 110
percent. Charging for site registration was unpopular among many people who believed
that the Internet should be a free good. Many worried that Network Solutions was a
potential monopoly. Due to these concerns, as well as problems arising from intellectual
property issues and domain registration, the Internet’s founders sought to provide
alternatives to private firms such as Network Solutions. The founders also sought to
formalize their control of Internet policy, which they had exercised uncontested up until
this point. However, their plans led to conflict with the U.S. government.
Cerf, a close friend of Postel’s, who was a doctoral student with him at UCLA,
announced plans to found the Internet Society in 1991. The Internet Society’s members
46
mainly consisted of the Internet’s founders, and its purpose was to provide a governing
structure for the Internet independent of the U.S. government. The Internet Society
thought they should take over root authority. The Internet Society “saw itself, a
nongovernmental and international body with technical expertise, as the natural authority
over the name and address space” (Mueller, 2002, p. 135). The president of the Internet
Society, along with Postel and others, prepared an Internet Draft, which proposed that the
Internet Society “should take a formal role in the oversight and licensing of competitive
registries for the international Internet name space” (as quoted in Mueller, 2002). These
goals did not go unnoticed by the U.S. government, and an engineer at the U.S.
Department of Energy wrote a message to the Internet Society in 1995, asking about who
had legal authority over the Internet. The message stated, “Is [the Internet Society]
claiming that it has jurisdictions and overall responsibility for the top-level address and
name space? If yes, how did [the Internet Society] obtain this responsibility; if no, then
who does own it?” (Aiken, 1995, as quoted in Mueller, 2002).
Cerf responded that although the U.S. government had a historical role in the
development of the Internet, the Internet had become international and the Internet
Society, as a non-governmental body serving the community, would be better suited to
manage the Internet’s core functions. The Internet Society, along with some
telecommunications companies and a number of Internet Service Providers, developed
the International Ad Hoc Committee (IAHC) in response to what they viewed as
problems with domain registration that were affecting the procedures of the Internet and
because the contract with Network Solutions was due to expire in 1998. The International
47
Ad Hoc Committee was in line with the founders’ tradition of informal governance. The
Committee created a proposal, the Memorandum of Understanding on Top-Level
Domains, which sought to internationalize Internet governance in terms of its central
functions, move control away from the U.S. government, and add seven new top-level
domains. The Memorandum assumed that the Internet Society had de facto authority to
set Internet policy. A member of the Internet Society, in responding to critiques that the
Internet Society did not have such authority, said, “such concerns miss the reality of [Jon
Postel’s] 10+ years of oversight and authority and miss the unavoidable reality that the
Internet is now global” (Crocker, as quoted in Goldsmith & Wu, 2006).
The Memorandum of Understanding, supported institutionally by the ITU, was
formally signed by 215 parties in May 1997 at ITU headquarters in Geneva. No
governments were invited to the signing ceremony. The lack of government participation
was consistent with the founders and Internet community’s belief about the nature of
Internet policy. Since the US had not exercised any regulatory control over the Internet in
the past, why would they not concede to transfer naming and numbering authority? The
U.S. government, aware of the commercial potential of the Internet, did care about
Internet policy, and felt the U.S. government should be the authority. Ira Magaziner,
President Clinton’s Internet policy advisor, said, “The United States paid for the Internet,
the Net was created under its auspices, and most importantly everything Jon Postel and
Network Solutions did were pursuant to government contracts” (as quoted in Goldsmith
& Wu, 2006, p. 41). Magaziner was successful in stopping the Memorandum of
Understanding’s plan to transfer authority to the Internet Society in January 1998, as well
48
as its plan to add seven new domain names by instructing Network Solutions to ignore
any commands from Jon Postel to add new domains.
Postel came up with a plan to demonstrate that he could transfer root authority,
whether or not the US gave approval, thereby highlighting that control still rested with
the Internet’s founders. On January 28, 1998, Postel gave instructions to eight of the
twelve regional root serves to recognize Postel’s server at the University of Southern
California as the authoritative root, instead of the master root owned by the U.S.
government. The operators were loyal to Postel and recognized his authority over the
naming system. One operator arranged to have someone look after his kids in case he was
arrested for this action (Mueller, 2002), but complied nonetheless. The eight regional
servers followed Postel’s request, and the root authority was divided, thereby creating in
effect two networks: one headed by the U.S. government’s computer and the other by
Postel’s computer at USC. Postel had the power to add new domains, per the
Memorandum of Understanding’s plan, or to completely eliminate domains such as dot-
com or dot-net, which could have created chaos for the Internet’s users. However, Postel
had his computer replicate Network Solutions’ computer, and users of the Internet were
unaware of what had occurred.
Postel’s move was more symbolic to demonstrate that he could maintain control
and to challenge U.S. authority (Mueller, 2002), although Postel publicly claimed that it
was simply a technological “test”. The U.S. government quickly reacted to Postel’s stunt,
and Magaziner called Postel and his supervisor in the middle of the night, threatening
him with legal force. Magaziner told Postel he did not have the authority or legal right to
49
conduct a test, and that as long as he restored the root authority, Magaziner would agree
to call this only a “test”. Postel soon restored full root authority to the U.S. government
servers, and the U.S. government told reporters that it had only been a test. However, the
US made clear that any future unauthorized changes would be considered a criminal
offense.
The day after Postel’s actions, the US released a Green Paper, a draft policy
statement that proposed the establishment of a non-profit public corporation in the US to
take over domain name management, thereby ignoring all proposals in the Internet
Society’s Memorandum of Understanding. The Green Paper marks the beginning of a
new phase in the Internet’s history, when governments began to exert their control over
the Internet and use threats of force. Nine months later, Jon Postel died of a heart attack.
Thus, “the once-god of the Net was dead, and an era was over” (Goldsmith & Wu, 2006,
p. 46). The U.S. government issued their final decision in the 1998 White Paper, which
made few changes to the proposal in the Green Paper. The resulting institution was called
the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
7
. ICANN is
considered an international institution, and it is formally a not-for-profit public
corporation chartered in California. The IANA function was transferred to ICANN in
1998, and the Department of Commerce entered into an agreement with ICANN in 2000
to perform the IANA functions.

7
This chapter does not discuss ICANN at length since an in-depth analysis of technical Internet
governance issues is outside the scope of this project. See Mueller (2002) and Cowhey and Aronson (2009)
for a thorough discussion of ICANN.

50
Principal/agent theory and delegation is again useful in understanding the creation
of ICANN. The institutional response of creating ICANN to manage the allocation and
assignment of names and numbers is an example of delegation
8
. ICANN is a partial “de-
nationalization’ of a system of U.S. control that relied on delegation to global decision-
making arrangements” (Cowhey & Aronson, 2009, p. 220). A “chain of delegation” was
established, where the US delegated authority to ICANN, which allowed other actors to
participate. Such delegation was done in order to create a policy approach that favored
U.S. interests. By focusing on the views of the private sector and technical community,
this approach was able to “co-opt enough expert support in Europe and other
technological centers to sustain control of ICANN over the root” (Cowhey & Aronson,
2009, p. 220). However, ICANN governance came under great attack during the WSIS,
when many countries demanded greater authority and criticized U.S. dominance.
Discussions about “Internet governance” began with ICANN and the technical
issue of domain name and addressing. Mathiason (2009) argues that “governance of the
Internet had become a policy and institutional issue only in 1998, when the United States
government decided that it had to establish an institutional basis for maintaining order in
the core functions” of the Internet (p. 49). Milton Mueller (2002) argues that the creation
of ICANN and the institutionalization of the root “produced an institutional innovation
rather than incremental modifications or adaptations of existing institutions”, and that this
therefore “raises important questions about the relationship between technology and
institutional change, the role of nation-states, and the tendency of the Internet to globalize

8
Specifically, ICANN is a classical example of discretion-based delegation (Cowhey and Aronson, 2009).
51
institutions” (p. 59). Cowhey and Aronson (2009) suggest that ICANN, as well as the
IETF, both of which have different practices than other international institutions, are
“significant experiments in global governance” and “provide exactly the form of
innovation that should be expected at the inflection point” (p. 231). ICANN is one
example of how Internet governance has produced institutional innovations in the global
regulation of information and communications. The WSIS, which is later explored in
depth, is another example of how the Internet has fostered institutional change (Mueller,
2010).
Even though ICANN dealt with technical policy of administering IP address, the
distinction between technical coordination and public policy-making in practice is less
clear than in theory. This question has led to considerable controversy over the role of
ICANN, with many political debates over its U.S. centric nature. The latest development
occurred in September 2009, when ICANN gained some autonomy from the U.S.
government. The U.S. Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and
Information Administration and ICANN signed an “Affirmation of Commitments”,
which ended the eleven-year relationship between the U.S. government and ICANN. The
unilateral U.S. oversight of ICANN has been diluted, but this does not mean that ICANN
is completely independent of U.S. control, since there is still the IANA contract, VeriSign
contract, and California law.

52
Global Governance of the Internet
ICANN was established to manage critical Internet resources, but the
intergovernmental system also became interested in Internet governance issues. The
International Telecommunications Union (ITU) sought to become involved in Internet
governance issues, since the new technological landscape threatened to make much of the
ITU’s work obsolete (Mathiason, 2009). The ITU’s role was challenged by ICANN and
the WTO, but the ITU was eager to take a lead role, prove its legitimacy, and expand its
range of activity. The ITU attempted to become involved through the Memorandum of
Understanding, but was not successful when the US defeated the project. Thus, during its
Plenipotentiary Conference in 1998, the ITU suggested holding a World Summit on
Information Society (WSIS). The United Nations General Assembly endorsed the
proposal for the WSIS in January 2002.
The Internet governance debates that emerged during the WSIS represent the third
phase of Internet governance. Mathiason (2009) argues that although the Internet and its
problems grew significantly over the years, “the international political dimension of
Internet governance did not emerge until the World Summit on the Information Society”
(p. 97). Internet governance decisions were made at the international level prior to the
WSIS, with intergovernmental organizations such as the International
Telecommunication Union (ITU), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO),
and the World Trade Organization (WTO) having made decisions about certain aspects of
Internet governance. Furthermore, the international non-governmental organizations
ICANN and the IETF also had made decisions affecting Internet governance. However,
53
these decisions were made on a fragmented basis, without an overarching policy
framework. The WSIS addressed for the first time all aspects of Internet governance,
such as technical, regulatory, public policy, and development. Furthermore, it established
a set of principles and recognized all stakeholders as having a legitimate role to play. The
WSIS led to a reflection on what types of institutions and governance arrangements are
needed on the Internet and also led to a new type of governance approach that involved
all actors - known as multi-stakeholderism.

World Summit on Information Society. The first phase of WSIS was held in
Geneva from December 10-12, 2003. During the beginning of WSIS, Internet governance
was a marginal issue, but it quickly moved to the center of debates and became one of the
most controversial issues in the WSIS process. During the first summit, participants were
unable to agree on a definition of Internet Governance. Definitional debates centered on
the distinction between a narrow definition that encompassed only ICANN-related
functions (Internet resource allocation and assignment), and a broad definition that
included various public policy issues.
Another main area of contention revolved around Internet resource administration
models. On one side, there were those who argued for maintaining the status quo, and on
the other side, some argued that the functions of ICANN should be transferred to an
intergovernmental organization. Governments such as the United States and the European
Union argued that ICANN should remain as the central organization in Internet
governance. They supported private sector control and the role of the ITU in Internet
54
governance. Many developing countries did not feel represented in ICANN and criticized
the role of the U.S. government. They argued for moving management of the Internet to
the ITU, basing this argument on a broader definition of Internet governance, which
encompassed domain names as well as public policy issues. Kleinwachter (2004) argues
“the conflict between ITU supporters and ICANN supporters pulled the subject into the
spotlight of global policy” (p. 32). This “ICANN vs. ITU” controversy was one of the
main debates at the first WSIS.
During the WSIS, no agreement could be reached on a single organization to be in
charge of Internet governance or even on a definition of Internet governance. In response,
the UN mandated the establishment of a Working Group on Internet Governance
(WGIG), whose objective was to provide a working definition of Internet governance and
provide input to the second phase of the World Summit, held in Tunis in November 2005.
The Working Group released its report in July 2005 and provided the aforementioned
definition of Internet governance, which was broad and included public policy issues.
Governments and other stakeholders embraced the definition. Therefore, the effect was
to put a broad range of issues on agenda.
The first phase of the WSIS resulted in the adoption of two documents that
represent a non-binding framework for global Internet governance: the WSIS Geneva
Declaration of Principles and the Geneva Plan of Action. The Declaration of Principles
set out a number of Internet governance goals, specified the roles and responsibilities of
governments, the private sector, civil society, intergovernmental and other international
organizations, and established norms to guide cooperation involving these different
55
actors. The Plan of Action set out time-bound targets by which to achieve the stated
goals.
The second summit occurred in Tunis from November 16-18, 2005. The objective
of the second phase was to put Geneva's Plan of Action into motion and to reach
agreements in the field of Internet governance. During this summit, there was wider
international debate on policy principles and discussion of the global networked
economy. The meaning of governance in the online environment was debated, as well as
the role of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in
Internet governance. After the 2005 Tunis Summit, the Tunis Commitment and Tunis
Agenda for the Information Society were produced, with included some general
principles on Internet governance. The existence of World Summit on the Information
Society and the establishment of the Working Group on Internet Governance illustrate the
shift towards accepting the need for a global, more formal framework of governance and
a “new paradigm for global governance” (Raboy, 2004a, p. 347). Furthermore, the WSIS
signals agreement that the Internet is a valuable tool and can be used for social and
economic transformation and development. The WSIS represents the largest effort to
develop Internet policies at the global level. The WSIS was the “most public symptom of
the Internet’s profound impact on the global politics of communication and information”
(Mueller, 2010, p. 253).

Internet Governance Forum. Tensions emerged during the WSIS process as the
contradiction of trying to govern complex transnational issues with mainly
56
intergovernmental institutions became evident. Thus, the UN established the Internet
Governance Forum (IGF), an international organization where various stakeholders could
engage in policy dialogue. The IGF brings together various actors to see how governance
can be organized in to transnational policy networks and provides the framework of an
institutionalized international dialogue on Internet governance. The IGF was established
to accommodate multi-stakeholder policy discussions and its mandate is limited to that of
a discussion forum. The Tunis Agenda describes the IGF as a nonbinding, “lightweight”
organization (Tunis Agenda, para 72). The five themes around which the IGF was formed
are: openness, access, security, diversity, and critical Internet resources.
The first IGF meeting was held in September 2006 in Greece. A significant
outcome of the first IGF meeting was the establishment of a number of Dynamic
Coalitions, which allow anyone interested in contributing to participate. During the 2
nd

IGF, which was held in Rio in November 2007, many speakers highlighted the notion of
multi-stakeholderism. Issues of development, bridging the digital divide, and Internet
security were key issues discussed during the 2
nd
IGF meeting. The 3
rd
IGF meeting was
held in Hyderabad in November 2008, and the 4
th
IGF was held in Sharm El Sheikh,
Egypt, in October 2009, with the main theme of “Internet Governance – Creating
Opportunities for All”.
A recent phenomenon is the emergence of national and regional IGF meetings.
Regional IGFs are modeled after the IGF, meaning that they are multi-stakeholder and
encourage the participation of civil society, government, industry, and academia.
Regional and national IGF meetings are taking place globally, including gatherings in
57
East Africa, Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, West Africa, Spain and Italy. These
events are organized on a local level and do not have direct ties to the international IGF,
however “the UN Secretariat recognizes the importance of the regional and national
events and reports from these meetings are shared at the international gatherings”
(www.igf-usa.us).

Conclusion
Internet governance is still evolving and the future direction for global governance
of the Internet is unclear. Vinton Cerf (2005) argues, “one of the central reasons for the
Internet’s success thus far has been its largely apolitical management” (p. v) and suggests
that any future changes to the oversight and operation of the Internet should avoid
unnecessary politicization. However, although Internet governance is in a state of flux,
the thing that is almost certain is that Internet governance will remain the subject of high-
level political controversy.
The future governance model is unclear, but there has been an evolution in
governance approaches to the Internet. In summary, the first phase was marked by self-
regulation by a small community of scientists and researchers. Although the Internet was
developed and funded under the auspices of the U.S. government, there was no direct
government-led regulation. Instead, there was governance, although the technical
community may not have even thought of themselves as engaging in governance
activities. This phase of self-regulation worked well for two main reasons. First, although
the early Internet was developed and funded by DARPA, the U.S. government
58
maintained a hands-off approach. Second, the community involved in the development
and management of the early Internet was small and homogeneous, so decision-making
could be done through consensus. This community’s culture influenced the technical
design and organizational processes of the Internet, as reflected in their commitment to
maintaining the end-to-end principle and the governance organizations and decision-
making procedures they created to manage functions of the Internet. The decision-making
processes and governance structures set up during the early phases of Internet governance
influenced the evolution of the Internet and still have repercussions for how the Internet
is governed today.
The second phase of Internet governance marked the beginning of “Internet
governance” as an issue, which was explicitly debated among a range of actors outside of
the Internet founders. The growth of the Internet led to the need to develop more formal
governance structures, such as the domain name system and IANA. However, the U.S.
government also became interested in governing the Internet and took actions to define a
new approach to governance, which differed from the self-regulatory model of the
Internet’s early days. Finally, a third phase of Internet governance began when the
Internet’s impact as a global technical as well as socio-economic phenomenon was fully
realized by a diverse group of actors. More actors became involved and more issues came
to be included under the umbrella of Internet governance. As a result, “the politics
involved have become more critical, more global, and more diverse” (Dutton & Peltu,
2009, p. 392). The processes and politics of this phase of Internet governance are
analyzed in the following chapters.
59
CHAPTER 3: GLOBALIZATION, GLOBAL GOVERNANCE, AND CIVIL SOCIETY

The main theoretical concepts that inform this study are globalization and global
governance, which lay out the environment in which global communication policy
occurs. The chapter also discusses the concept of civil society and presents its main
characteristics and organizational forms before returning to global governance issues, and
focusing on the specific issue area of communication.

Globalization and Global Governance
Globalization is a key research field in the social sciences and continues to be a
debated topic. Few contemporary phenomena elicit such academic, as well as political,
controversy as globalization. No single definition of globalization exists; as with all core
concepts in the social sciences, its precise meaning remains contested. This study uses
David Held and Anthony McGrew’s definition of globalization, which “denotes the
expanding scale, growing magnitude, speeding up and deepening impact of
transcontinental flows and patterns of social interaction” (2002, p.1)
Held and McGrew (1999) provide a useful framework for analyzing globalization;
they discuss three main schools of thought in globalization research: the hyperglobalists,
the skeptics, and the transformationalists. Hyper-globalists argue that we live in an
increasingly global world. Globalization is seen as a threat to the nation state, which
diminishes in power as the global marketplace comes to rule. The focus is on economic
globalization, which is argued to denationalize economies and result in a global market.
Because global markets transcend state control, the state loses autonomy and sovereignty.
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The second school, the skeptics, argues that globalization is a myth (Hirst & Thompson,
1996). They are more cautious in their conclusions, and argue that what the
hyperglobalists describe as economic globalization is just a heightened level of economic
interdependences. They do not think the current global situation is unprecedented.
Skeptics also question what exactly is “global” in globalization, and argue that if there is
not a universal phenomenon, then the concept is not valid and lacks specificity. For
example, skeptics point out that much of the economic interdependence is between
OECD countries, and not really global.
A synthesis between these two approaches is the approach of the
transformationalists, who argue that globalization has structural consequences and is a
driving force in society which influences political, social, and economic change (Castells
1996; Giddens, 1991; Held & McGrew, 1999). This study is situated in the
transformationalist line of thought. The transformationalist perspective differs from the
hyperglobalists and skeptics in two important regards. First, they do not believe there to
be a single cause of globalization. Globalization is not just a shift in the intensity of
exchange, but leads to a re-articulation of political, cultural, and economic power.
Second, the outcomes of globalization processes are not determined. This approach takes
a broader, or less determinate, view of the factors driving globalization and of the
processes of globalization. Whereas hyperglobalists see the power of the nation state as
eroding, and skeptics argue that the power of the nation state is growing, the
transformationalists discuss how the nation state is changing. I agree with
transformationalists, such as Held and McGrew, who see the debate between the
61
hyperglobalists and skeptics as a false debate. There are important changes in the
relations of states and markets, but these changes do not necessarily undermine or
strengthen states, but transform states. This view, that the power and nature of the nation
state is changing, provides a more useful approach for this study. A central issue raised
by the transformationalist approach, which is particularly relevant to this study, is the
organization and distribution of power. There is a structural transformation and a global
shift in how power and authority are organized (Held & McGrew, 2007). Globalization is
not a debate about either convergence or divergence, but represents a dialectical process,
which can both integrate and fragment, and create both winners and losers. Debates in
globalization have examined the changing power dynamics and power relations in
society, and the globalization debate highlights the changing structural power relations on
the supranational level. These theoretical debates, notably the transformationalist
approach, help make sense of the Internet governance debates and the questions raised
about the power of the state and the influence of other non-state actors.
After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and the Iraq war, there were
debates about the end of globalization. Skeptics argue that in the aftermath of 9/11, there
is a return to geopolitics, and therefore globalization is not an existing condition. Several
scholars have discussed post-globalization: Ferguson (2005) discusses “sinking
globalization”, Saul (2005) writes of “the end of globalism” and Gray (2002) argues, “the
era of globalization is over” (as cited in Held & McGrew, 2007). Declines in global trade
and foreign direct investment, in addition to geopolitics and unilateralism, represent to
skeptics “the erosion of the liberal global order which underwrote the intensification of
62
globalization, and the continuing primacy of the state, territorial power, geopolitics and
even empire (Held & McGrew 2007, p. 6). In regards to Internet governance debates,
some have questioned if the new model of multi-stakeholderism had any success, or if
nation states remained the only relevant actors in decision-making. This study finds that
non-state actors played a significant role in the international Internet governance debates.
Despite questions of the end of globalization, globalization continues to be an
important concept and description of our current state. Held and McGrew (2007) note
that the enduring nature of globalization deals with “some foundational questions of
political life: who rules, in whose interests, to what ends, according to what ethical
principles, and by what means?” (p. xi). The question of how to govern globalization is
key, and societies must confront the future trajectory of social change. Scholars have
continued to deal seriously with globalization and engage with questions of how
globalization can be governed to lead to a more just and stable world. Internet
governance engages with these questions of who controls a global resource and how
control can or cannot be exercised.
A key element of the globalization debate is the issue of nation state autonomy
and sovereignty. Many arguments claim that globalization challenges the state’s ability to
exercise control and authority over a territorial space. Globalization, and specifically
global communication, changed the power balance among states, firms, and
nongovernmental organizations. Jonathan Aronson (2004) notes “just as the cold war
ended and bipolar competition gave way to new, more complex policy challenges, the
rise of global communications augmented the loss of control of governments over
63
traditional foreign and economic policy issues” (p. 622). In an era of increasing media
globalization, the role of the state has changed. I agree with authors, such as Price (2002)
and Castells (2002), who stress the role that media and communication have played in
bringing about this change in state power.
In an era of globalization, there was a rise of international institutions, regimes,
multilateral agreements, and international summits. Changes include “the thickening
institutional density, expanding jurisdiction, intensifying transnational politics and the
deepening impact of suprastate regulation” (Held & McGrew 2002, p.8). But do these
changes represent a qualitative and structural shift in governance? In short, yes. Scholars
disagree on the types and amount of change, but it is largely agreed upon that there has
been a transformation of the nation state brought about by globalization (Castells 2004,
2007; Held & McGrew, 2007; Keohane & Nye, 2000; Price, 2002). The shifting power
dynamics in the international arena have brought to the fore the concept of global
governance.
Governance at the international level is discussed in international relations, public
administration, and political science literatures because, in an increasingly interdependent
world, there are problems that transcend the boundaries of nation states. Governance thus
refers to the rules and procedures that parties agree to use to order their treatment of a
common issue. International relations scholars Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye see
governance as “the process and institutions, both formal and informal, that guide and
restrain the collective activities of a group” (2002, p. 202). Global governance has arisen
as a concern of both academics and policy makers in the last decade of the 20
th
century.
64
In 1992, the UN Commission on Global Governance was formed in order to “articulate a
vision of global cooperation that may inspire nations’ leaders and people to intensify their
collective endeavors.” The term governance was given prominence by the Commission of
Global Governance, which issued the report “Our Global Neighborhood” in 1995. In
1995, the Commission arrived at a definition of governance as:
the sum of the many ways individuals and institutions, public or private, manage
their common affairs. It is a continuing process through which conflicting or
diverse interests may be accommodated and co-operative action may be taken. It
includes formal institutions and regimes empowered to enforce compliance, as
well as informal arrangements that people and institutions either have agreed to or
perceive to be in their interest.

Another definition of global governance that informs this study comes from
William Drake, in his input for the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG)
2005 background report. Drake defines global governance as “the development and
application of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programs
intended to shape actors’ expectations and practices and to enhance their collective
management capacities in world affairs”. A few notes can be made in regards to this
definition. First, governance includes “shared principles.” Shared is understood as
applicable to and acknowledged by, but not always agreed by, a globally significant
range of actors. The phrase “principles, norms, rules and decision making procedures”
refers to international regimes, as understood in international relations (Krasner, 1983).
Regimes are an integral part of global governance, but it is also possible to have
governance that occurs from freestanding principles and norms. The formation of a
regime for Internet governance is discussed in later chapters. “Intended to shape actor’s
65
expectations” notes intentionality and intersubjectivity. This definition understands that
governance occurs with intentionality and purpose.
The word governance is derived from the Greek word Kyberman, which means
“to steer”. Kybmetes means pilot or helmsman. These two meanings are often conflated,
but the difference between the verb, which connotes the process, and the noun, which
focuses on the actors, is important. Some writers refer to a domestic analogy in regards to
governing globalization and think of global governance as global government. A world
government does not exist, and I disagree with equating global governance with
government. Instead, I see global governance in line with scholars such as Robert
Keohane and Joseph Nye, who discuss how the nation state is supplemented by other
actors in a more complex geography of global politics. A world government is not
feasible, and leaving everything to market mechanisms will lead to backlash (Keohane &
Nye, 2000); therefore, some regulation and means of governance are needed to deal with
the effects and processes of globalization, and these practices of governance will include
a range of actors – from governments, the private sector, and the third sector (Keohane &
Nye, 2000). Governance can occur through law, norms, markets, and architectures
(Keohane & Nye, 2000). So, governance is a process, and can exist with or without
government authority.

New Actors in Global Governance
The concept of global governance does not only connote a change of policy
making from the nation state level to the global level. Another important transformation
66
is the change in agency; global governance involves the participation of new actors,
namely the private sector and civil society. Josselin and Wallace (2001) note “in contrast
with the 1970s-80s, debates no longer focus on whether non-state actors play a role in
world politics, but rather on how they do so” (p. 13). Global governance encompasses
networks and policy-making fora where new actors have “transformed sovereignty into
the shared exercise of power” (Held & McGrew, 2003, p. 11). Global policy processes
are no longer the exclusive domain of governments, but have opened to include other
actors. Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye (2000) discuss how private and "third sector"
actors supplemented the nation state. It is not only intergovernmental bodies that engage
in global governance; instead, global governance is a “multi-actor complex in which
diverse agencies participate in the formulation and conduct of global public policy” (Held
& McGrew, 2007, p. 152). There is also involvement by a range of civil society actors;
the corporate sector, such as the International Chamber of Commerce and trade
associations; and mixed public-private organizations.
This dissertation focuses on civil society actors. However, a brief discussion of
the role of the private sector in governance is needed before moving on to a discussion of
civil society. Transnational corporations may respond to an absence of governance by
providing their own governance arrangements that are not controlled by states. Computer
firms or airlines may form alliances with other firms to gain a competitive advantage, and
many standard setting exercises are private (Keohane & Nye, 2000). Many industries are
self-regulated. For example, in the US, the private sector took a leading role in e-
commerce, and the Clinton/Gore 1997 Framework for Global Electronic Commerce
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encouraged self-regulatory solutions to privacy concerns. Companies sought to regulate
themselves through various mechanisms, such as industry codes, organizations such as
the Online Privacy Alliance developed in 1998, and third-party privacy seal programs
such as BBBOnline and TRUSTe (Fromholz, 2000).
The private sector may also work with government, in a cooperative or
competitive relationship, to provide governance for issues in global politics. Private
actors, who may compete with or complement state actions, may supplement States’
responses. Transnational corporations can replace legislative functions of states, such as
when Nike and Mattel imposed codes of conduct on their subcontractors that would not
have passed the Indian legislature (Keohane & Nye, 2000). Private rating agencies may
create ratings that result in foreign corporations following standards that are not in
domestic law. There has been a privatization of many aspects of global governance, such
as the establishment of standards. The International Accounting Standards Board
establishes global accounting rules, for example, and this type of private governance may
“occur in the shadow of global public authorities” (Held & McGrew, 2007, p. 155).
Triscetoral partnerships are also becoming more common, where transnational
corporations and NGOs work together with IGOs. In the area of Internet governance, the
U.S. government created ICANN, which is an NGO that works with private companies.
Non-state actors largely ran the Internet in its early years, and the private sector played a
key role in dealing with application standards. A majority of members of the IETF and
the World Wide Web Consortium are from private sector corporations. During the WSIS
debates on Internet governance, the private sector was one of the three main stakeholders
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involved, alongside government and civil society. In short, private sector actors operate
in various networks, and their role has become increasingly important in the governance
of global issues. Such changes in agency are an important feature of changes in global
governance.

Civil Society
The other important change in agency is the increasing role of civil society. This
study focuses on the structures and actors of civil society, and understands civil society to
represent a sector of society that includes non-state and non-business entities. This
structural understanding of civil society differs from earlier understandings that included
civil society and the private sector in one category. The concept of civil society has
changed meanings over time and place. The sixteenth-century use of the term referred to
the state, whereas today civil society is seen in contrast to the state. In the eighteenth
century civil society referred to societies ruled on the basis of social contract, versus
those based on coercion (Anheier, Glasius, & Kaldor, 2001). In the nineteenth century,
Hegel and Marx defined civil society as the arena between the state and family, and the
economy was included in this definition, whereas current understandings of civil society
refer to the non-profit arena and do not include the market (Scholte, 2002). The rise of
business actors in the 20
th
century challenged the binary which distinguished between the
state and of civil society, and led to a three sector model, which includes three spheres:
the state, market, and civil society. Rules regarding the consultative status of NGOs at the
United Nations also exclude for-profit organizations. In particular, the UN WSIS
69
Secretariat defined civil society as covering “the entities of the third sector (distinct from
the State and from the private sector)” (WSIS Executive Secretariat, 2003). Thus, this
study’s understanding of civil society corresponds to that used in the context of the
WSIS/IGF Internet governance debates.
Civil society has increasingly worked on international issues, in parallel to the
expansion of globalization. Transnational civil society is not new, but in the second half
of the twentieth century, the complexity and density of their linkages has grown (Keck &
Sikkink, 1998). The notion of “global civil society” emerged to refer to the increasing
network of transnational non-state actors. Global civil society here refers to non-state
actors, which are developing and advocating a conception of the public interest across
national borders. In regards to Internet governance, the specific sector of global civil
society involved in the debates is advocating for a public interest approach to Internet
governance.
When studying global civil society, scholars often focus on a particular
organizational form to deal with the complex nature of global civil society. Khagram,
Riker and Sikkink (2002) propose a typology of four types of transnational collective
action: 1) international nongovernmental organizations, 2) transnational advocacy
networks, 3) transnational coalitions, and 4) transnational social movements. Khagram et
al. argue that the form of collective action influences its goals and effectiveness. Non-
governmental organizations (NGOs) will be discussed in this section. NGOs represent
only one type of civil society actors, but they are widely seen as one of the most
important (Warkentin, 2001).
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Literature from international relations, political science, and communications,
among other disciplines, has noted the increasing role of NGOs on the world stage
(Castells, 2005; Held & McGrew, 2002; Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Keohane & Nye, 2000).
Regarding the increasing role of NGOs in global governance, Leon Gordenker and
Thomas Weiss (1996) discuss the “pluralization” of governance, which occurs as NGOs
are incorporated in to the governance process. “Constituent NGOs working in different
sectors can interact in these bridging organizations that furnish what otherwise would be
absent - a forum for discussion and cooperation. As a consequence, grassroots groups get
a voice and attempt to influence policy-making” (Gordenker &Weiss, 1996, p. 27).
It is not disputed that NGOs play a prominent role in world politics. One way to
assess the evolving participation of NGOs in international politics is to track their
involvement in and impact on United Nations conferences (Ó Siochrú & Girard, 2002).
The UN system is the quintessential inter-governmental organization on the global level,
but NGOs have become an integral part of the UN. Intergovernmental organizations, like
the UN, have realized the benefits of working with NGOs (Martens, 2005). Involvement
is not the same as influence, yet the increasing participation of civil society organizations
in international politics is a significant development nonetheless. International UN
conferences have become an important feature in global governance, and civil society has
recognized them as an opportunity to participate in global governance and influence the
global policy agenda.
There are three phases of UN-civil society relations. The first phase occurred
during the context of the Cold War, when some large international NGOs were granted
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UN consultative status. In 1968 a limited and formal mechanism for NGO consultation
was established. The second phase occurred at the end of the Cold War, when there was a
convening of a series of major UN conferences, which led to a renewed relationship
between the UN and NGOs. The adoption of ECOSOC Resolution 1996/31, which
allowed a more diverse and larger sector of NGOs to participate, changed the consultative
status of NGOs.
Since the first phase, an evolution of the quantity and quality of NGO
participation can be traced. The number and influence of NGOs has grown, with NGOs
first having a tangential role, to their influence spreading to other areas and sectors (Ó
Siochrú & Girard, 2002). The 1990s saw the development of unprecedented connections
between global civil society and international conferences, with a series of UN
conferences providing civil society the opportunity to participate in international
negotiations on global issues. For example, in 1992, 27,000 NGO representatives
participated in the Earth Summit in Rio. This marked a “watershed for NGO participation
and coincided with a dramatic increase in both the numbers and activities of international
NGOs” (Ó Siochrú & Girard, 2002, p. 149). The number of UN conferences held during
this period rose to deal with issues that could not be solved from a national perspective
alone. Alongside the increase in global conferences, there was a growth of civil society
during the 1990s from about 13,000 international NGOs in 1981 to over 47,000 by 2001
(Anheier & Themudo, 2002), an increase which was due to the links with globalization
and the increase in flows of capital, technology, and trade as well as the
interconnectedness between states (Anheier, Glasius, & Kaldor, 2001). After the series of
72
conferences in the early 1990s, many NGOs applied for consultative status to become
formally accredited to the UN. From the 1940s, when consultative status was introduced,
to the 2005, the number of accredited NGOs increased from 40 to 2614 (Martens, 2005).
The UN also began to work more closely with NGOs and provided more possibilities for
interaction with NGOs. The series of conferences in the early 1990s have been described
as the “turning point” in NGO-UN relations (Martens, 2005).
During this time period, sectors of civil society mobilized and held a visible
enough position to gain public attention and demand action on issues. The environmental
movement and the women’s movement played significant roles in the UN Conference on
Environment and Development in 1992, the International Conference on Population and
Development in 1994, and the World Conference on Women in 1995. One well known
example of the influence of international NGOs is the campaign to ban landmines, where
NGOs put the issue on the international agenda, gained the support of governments and
international institutions, and eventually created the Convention Banning Landmines,
which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997. A 1996 UN Resolution elaborated on the
NGO consultative status, and gave NGOs access to resources of the UN Secretariat.
NGOs from developing countries have also increased their participation, so the number,
as well as the geographical and ideological scope, of NGO participation has increased.
The increasing role played by NGOs may be attributed in part to the transnational
problems that nation states face and their crisis of legitimacy. By associating with NGOs,
nation states and intergovernmental organizations try to regain legitimacy. One factor in
particular that contributed to the increased opportunity for NGO participation in UN
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summits and global politics was the widely publicized protests about international
organizations in the 1990s, which challenged their legitimacy (Mueller, Kuerbis, & Page,
2007). As a result, decision-makers were pressured to include NGOs and civil society
actors to a greater extent. The summit protests “signaled the opening of a legitimation
crisis affecting both states and the institutions of global governance” (Cox & Schechter,
2002, xix). In light of a series of protests at international organization conferences, from
Seattle to Genoa, “international bodies realize that they ignore civil society at their own
risk. The days of relegating the most important participants to an off-site venue, so as to
not disturb the real summit…are clearly over” (Moll & Shade, 2004, p. 53).
There is an emergence of a third phase of UN-civil society relations, made
possible by the evolution of the international governance system. NGOs play a more
significant role in decision-making processes, and new models of decision-making have
been explored, such as the multi-stakeholder approach. The WSIS and IGF represent the
most recent conferences that have incorporated new forms of multi-stakeholder
approaches. The WSIS and IGF are new models for global governance and representative
of this third phase of UN and NGO relations.
NGOs have become more involved in all areas of conferences, and have moved
on from their limited role in lobbying government. Traditional studies of NGOs
understand the role of NGOs as lobbying or interest groups, which must work through
states or international institutions (Warkentin, 2001). More recent scholarship places
NGOs in a broader social context and notes their larger range of political functions.
Scholars focused on the impact of civil society at UN summits identify three channels of
74
influence: 1) consultations, information and lobbying; 2) surveillance; and 3) policy
making and decision making (Weiss, 1999).
Although NGOs occupy a larger role on the world stage, their influence on
politics is debated. Realists argue that the nation state has ultimate control, and NGOs
play minor roles in decision-making, which can largely be dismissed. Ó Siochrú and
Girard (2002) acknowledge that NGOs have grown in their number and ability to
influence decision-making, but note the limit of civil society: “the invitation of civil
society participation will never go so far as to threaten the core tenets of liberalization
and capacity of the global private sector to extend and enforce its interests” (p. 156).
Drezner adds that states remain the primary actors in world politics and that NGOs play a
role in global governance “only under certain constellations of state interests” (2004, p.
484). He notes that NGOs do play roles in global governance, sometimes as agenda
setters, but mostly as “agents of state interests” (p. 479). Thus, there is skepticism over
the ability of NGOs to influence policymaking that is not in line with government
priorities.
It is important to evaluate the influence of NGOs not only by policy changes.
NGOs can instigate changes in international institutions, influence policy outcomes,
frame and change the nature of debates, and promote norm implementation (Keck &
Sikkink, 1998). NGOs are not powerful in the traditional sense, so they “use the power of
their information, ideas and strategies to alter the information and value contexts within
which states make policies” (Keck& Sikkink, 1998, p.16). NGOs gain influence by being
alternate sources of information and by uncovering information, and they most often
75
affect governance processes through their technical expertise and agenda-setting abilities.
There are five levels by which to assess influence: 1) issue creation and agenda setting; 2)
influence on discursive positions of states and international organizations; 3) influence on
institutional procedures; 4) influence on policy change in target actors; and 5) influence
on state behavior (Keck & Sikkink, 1998, p. 25). Some scholars conclude that NGOs
have limited influence, but alternative conclusions can be reached if influence is assessed
through various levels, and not just the level of influence on state behavior. This study
applies these various levels of influence to civil society interventions during the WSIS.
Much of the current literature now refers to civil society entities as “civil society
organizations” instead of “non-governmental organizations.” Over the last decade, this
change in terminology represents a shift in the status of these actors in the international
policy arena. Audrey Selian (2004) notes, “it appears that civil society organizations,
once characterized by international relations theorists as ‘nonstate actors’ are beginning
to be evaluated for what they are, as opposed to what they are not” (p. 201). Instead of
concluding that civil society has no influence if policy changes cannot be attributed to
their actions, other criteria may be used to highlight areas that civil society impacted.
Social Movement Theory
Returning to Khagram’s typology, other organizational forms of civil society
include transnational advocacy networks and coalitions. Transnational advocacy
networks are the most informal organizational form of non-state actors. They are united
by shared values, discourses, and dense exchanges of information (Keck & Sikkink,
1998). A coalition has a higher level of coordination than a network, and actors are linked
76
by common strategies or tactics – identified as a transnational campaign. These
organizational forms are seen in the context of civil society actors at the WSIS/IGF
debates.
The fourth category of civil society actors is transnational social movements. A
transnational social movement is a “set of actors with common purposes and solidarities
linked across boundaries that have the capacity to generate coordinated and sustained
social mobilization…” (Khagram et al., 2002, p. 8). The analytical and theoretical
concepts in social movement research are helpful in better understanding the involvement
of civil society in Internet governance debates.
Scholars have noted that communication studies on communication policy often
fail to incorporate literature on social movements (Mueller et al., 2004), but social
movement theory may provide a solid intellectual understanding of current debates and
can be usefully applied to understandings of communication advocacy
9
. Application of
social movement theory to media activism is a relatively recent phenomenon, with earlier
analyses of media activism grounded in other analytical frameworks, such as analysis of
the policymaking process and chronicling of particular policy issues (Galperin, 2004;
Napoli, 2007). Recent research has applied social movement theory to media reform,
with several recent studies on the media reform movement coming from sociology
(Atton, 2003; Klienenberg, 2004, 2007), cultural studies (Calabrese, 2004; Ó Siochrú,
2004) and communication studies (Hackett & Carroll, 2006; McChesney, 1993; Schiller,
2007). Recent studies have conceptualized media advocacy as a social movement

9
See, for example, Hackett & Carroll (2006) and Thomas (2006).
77
(Calabrese, 2004; Hackett & Carroll, 2006; Mueller et al., 2004; Opel, 2004; Thomas,
2006). This study builds on these approaches and views collective action around Internet
governance debates as one piece of this larger field of media activism.
There are various definitions of social movements. A straightforward and
inclusive definition of social movements is “any sentiment or activity shared by two or
more people oriented toward changes in social relations or in the social system” (Ash
Garner & Zald, 1987, p. 293). Many social movements are focused on institutional
change, which are adjustments in the “rules-based processes that channel social
interaction” (Mueller et al., 2004). Charles Tilly (2004) defines a social movement as “a
sustained, organized public effort making collective claims on target authorities” (p. 3-4).
Two paradigms within the social movement literature, which are relevant for this
study, are resource mobilization theory and new social movement theories, both of which
offer insights into the dynamics of Internet advocacy. Resource mobilization theory
focuses on how movements form and engage in collective action; new social movement
theory focuses on why specific forms of collective identity and action appear and their
political significance (Melucci, 1989). McCarthy and Zald’s (1977) model has three
requirements of social movement emergence: 1) the aggregation of resources, 2) some
form of organization, and 3) support by outside individuals and organizations. Resource
mobilization theory focuses on the ability of a movement's members to acquire resources
and to mobilize people. The emphasis on resources offers an explanation why some
individuals are able to organize while others are not. Resource mobilization scholars
78
analyze the shape and form of social activism, and the changing “repertoire of collective
action”.
Alberto Melucci is a theorist of new social movement theory. Melucci (1996)
defines a social movement as the mobilization of a collective actor characterized by a
sense of solidarity and engaged in a conflict over the control of resources. Melucci
proposed four characteristics of new social movements. First, they are information based
and focus on creating cultural codes instead of fighting for access to resources. Second,
new social movements have a planetary perspective and span nation states and regions.
Third, they focus more on building community than on protesting. Fourth, they have an
awareness of the global nature of society.
New social movement theory involves understanding the production of social
relationships and the analysis of identity-based struggles based on challenging codes and
meanings in society, rather than with the details of organizational survival. For Melucci
(1996), the construction of collective identity, which is an interactive process that
addresses “the question of how a collective becomes a collective” (p. 84), is integral to
movements. Melucci locates new social movements in the rise of a “complex society”,
whose center of social life has seen a replacement of material production by the
“production of signs and social relations” (1989, p. 45). Power is not concentrated in the
dominant class, but is more dispersed and is found in symbolic codes. Melucci argues,
“In contemporary societies signs become interchangeable and power operates through the
languages and codes which organize the flow of information. Collective action, by the
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sheer fact of its existence, represents in its very form and models of organization a
message broadcast to the rest of society” (1996, p. 9).
New social movement theory suggests that these movements establish “symbolic
challenges” to the dominant codes in societies. William Carroll and Robert Hackett
(2006) argue that democratic media activism is located on the cutting edge of such praxis
of posing symbolic challenges to the organizing codes of societies. They note “media
activism contests not only the ‘codes’ of communication but the entire complex of social
relations and practices through which the codes are produced and disseminated…The
democratization of communication would seem to be at the forefront of progressive
movement politics in our times” (p. 95). The same may be argued for Internet advocacy,
which is located within the broader realm of media activism. Media activism may be seen
as an “archetypically new social movement: a reflexive form of activism that treats
communication as simultaneously means and end of struggle…” (Hackett & Carroll,
2006, p. 96). This form of advocacy, where the Internet is seen as an object of focus and
not simply a tool by civil society actors, is the focus of this study.

Global Communication Governance
Having discussed the general processes of globalization and global governance,
the chapter now discusses these processes as they relate to communication. Globalization
has led to important changes in communication and information. Processes of
globalization have coincided with the electronic revolution, and together have
transformed communication media. Many scholars have studied the link between
80
globalization and media, and “most theorists agree that there is practically no
globalization without media and communications” (Rantanen, 2005, p. 4). Terhi
Rantanen (2005) highlights the role of media and communications in globalization by
defining globalization as a “process in which worldwide economic, political, cultural and
social relations have become increasingly mediated across time and space” (p. 8). The
breaking up of space and time, brought about by electronic media, led to individuals
being able to interact with one another and within frameworks of mediated interaction,
regardless of spatial disparities. This altered contemporary methods of communication,
leading to new phenomena such as participatory journalism, online communities, and
transnational activism organized through online networks.
Just as global governance has seen the inclusion of new actors, policy levels and
institutions, these developments are also seen in the communication sphere. The focus of
this study is Internet governance, but introducing governance principles to information
and communication is not new or specific to the Internet. The topic of international
information flows was discussed for decades, notably in the NWICO debate, where cross
border information flows and the need for a legal framework were debated.
Given the important role that global media and communication may play on
culture, economics, and politics, it is no surprise that the regulation and governance of
global media and communication is an important issue. Governance of media and
communications has always been of interest to governments, both internationally and
nationally. Media and communications play a key role in the infrastructure and culture of
society. Therefore, it is “no surprise that governments and those governed have a deep
81
and enduring interest in the freedom and constraints that affect their media and
communications institutions” (Ó Siochrú & Girard, 2002, p. viii). Given the important
role of communication, it is regulated by political institutions in all countries (Castells,
2009). Regulation of media and communications has largely moved from the national to
the international level, and has given way to international and global governance
structures. The globalization of media and communications produces challenges for
nation states to control and regulate these areas. With globalization, there is an increasing
trend toward the incapacity of a state to maintain control over images and to keep out
unwanted content, signals, and information (Price, 2002).
Ó Siochrú and Girard (2002) propose three broad phases of global media
regulation, characterized by the rationale for regulation. During the first phase, which
occurred from the mid-19
th
century to the early to mid 20
th
century, regulation was based
on state interests. Intellectual property rights and the need for multilateral cooperation
provided the first impetus for international regulation. International regulatory
institutions were needed to set up an environment where the media industry could operate
internationally. During this phase, the main rationale for international regulation was
based on economic concerns. The second phase of global media governance began after
World War II, during which time the international agenda was focused on human rights.
During this time, a number of international governance organizations were established
under the United Nations, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights set the
normative agenda. With the emergence of the UN system and the increasing participation
of developing countries, human rights and social aspects were high on the international
82
agenda. The New World Information and Communication Order debates of the 1970s and
1980s highlighted the normative issues of media and communications, such as equity
concerns with international communication flows, the democratizations of
communication structures, and communication for development.
Following the NWICO debates in the mid 1980s, the third phase of global
communication governance began. Since this time, the “normative, human rights, and
societal aspects of international media regulation have been increasingly silenced” (Ó
Siochrú & Girard, 2002, p. 123). This phase is characterized by a shift in regulatory
mechanisms towards a market-dominated model. In this phase, there is a trend worldwide
towards liberalization, privatization, and “regulated deregulation” (Castells, 2009, p.
100).
This general model of regulation has been challenged in the last two decades.
Analytically, there is a change from inter-national regulation to multi-actor governance,
typified by the Internet. Whereas organizations such as the ITU, WIPO, and UNESCO,
played a key role in the regulation of international communication flows for several
decades, there has been an opening in the past decade to business and civil society
participation. Hintz (2009) argues:
A vacuum has emerged in which neo-liberalism has been thoroughly demystified,
while a new convincing paradigm is not yet visible. Taking place in this
ideological and historical environment, a summit like the WSIS has the potential
to suffer from lack of orientation but also to develop new visions, create
discourses, and set a framework within which future governance can be ‘thought’
(p. 58).

83
Global communication governance has expanded over a range of areas and has
created networks of multiple actors and policy venues. With the rise of the Internet, the
need to create a global framework for regulation again came to the fore. However, one of
the main misconceptions about the Internet is that governance of the Internet does not and
cannot exist. When the Internet first emerged, many celebrated its borderless nature and
argued that it would transcend state control. The cyber libertarian dream of a completely
borderless Internet that is not subject to traditional regulation is encapsulated in Barlow’s
(1996) “Declaration of Cyberspace Independence,” which declares
Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come
from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the
past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty
where we gather…I declare the global space we are building to be naturally
independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose in us. You have no moral right to
rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement…Cyberspace does not lie
within your borders…Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we
will identify them by our means. We are forming our own Social Contract. This
governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our
world is different.

Barlow wrote the above “Declaration” one day after the U.S. Congress enacted the
Communications Decency Act of 1996. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, founded by
Barlow, and the ACLU challenged the Communications Decency Act as violating the
First Amendment. The case (ACLU v. Reno) made its way to the Supreme Court, which
found the Act to be unconstitutional. The court embraced the notion of cyberspace as a
space with its own rules. Justin Stevens wrote that the Internet “constitutes a unique
medium – known to its users as ‘cyberspace’…No single organization controls any
membership in the Web, nor is there any centralized point form which individual
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Websites or services can be blocked from the Web.” Stevens concluded, “As a matter of
constitutional tradition, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we presume that
governmental regulation of the content of speech is more likely to interfere with the free
exchange of ideas than to encourage it” (ACLU v. Reno, 1997).
During the early period of the Internet, various scholars in a range of disciplines
took up Barlow’s ideas of the independence of this new space. The notion of cyberspace
appears in early literature on cyber law and concepts of sovereignty and jurisdiction. One
of the most well known articles during this time period was David Post and David
Johnson’s Law and Borders: The Rise of Law in Cyberspace (1996), which argued that
the Internet represents a legal paradigm shift. Post and Johnson argued that the Internet
operates independent of real space, and therefore, cyberspace should be considered a
separate space that is governed by its own legal framework – a self-regulatory approach
that is decided upon by the users. Others were also influenced by Barlow’s concept of
cyberspace. It was assumed that the Internet was a new and independent “province” that
was not subject to or governed by laws in a legal sense, but was governed by “code”
(Lessig, 1999). The director of MIT’s Media Lab, Nicholas Negroponte, said in 1995
“The Internet cannot be regulated. It’s not that laws aren’t relevant, it’s that the nation
state is not relevant.” (as quoted in Higgins & Azhar, 1996).
During the early period of the Internet, the view that the Internet was a different
“province” or “space” also prevailed as a concept. However, it is clear that cyberspace
cannot be divorced from real space, and what one does on the Internet impacts physical
space. With time, scholars began to criticize the notion of the independence and lack of a
85
legal framework in cyberspace. As evidenced by legislative activities during the last two
decades, governments are clearly concerned about their legal interests in cyberspace
(Weber, 2010). There are more discussions about the legal merits of structuring and
regulating the Internet, and discussions about the “governance” of the Internet have
greatly increased.
Today, that the Internet is subject to governance mechanisms is no longer
challenged in principle, although what Internet governance means continues to be
debated. When speaking about the Internet the central questions include – who rules, in
whose interests, by which mechanisms – all key elements of governance.

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CHAPTER 4: THE FORMATION OF AN INTERNET-ORIENTED GLOBAL CIVIL
SOCIETY

Researchers have investigated the role of information and communication
technology as enabling activism, but fewer studies look at communications and
information policy as an object of activism. Similarly, scholars have examined media in
relation to social movements, but only as part of the political landscape that is used
instrumentally by movements. There is a paradox of the historical relations between
movements, media, and democracy, and the current literature on social movements that
neglects the emergence of media activism (Hackett & Carroll, 2006). Recently, research
has documented an increase in collective action focused on communication and policy, as
well as an increase in policymaking in these areas (Mueller et al., 2004). Researchers
have begun to investigate whether collective action around media and communication
issues constitutes a social movement (Hackett & Carroll, 2006).
Before analyzing the influence of civil society organizations in Internet
governance debates, the object of analysis is discussed. The previous chapter introduced
civil society as a new actor in global politics and discussed characteristics of civil society.
The study now turns to civil society organizations involved with Internet issues. The
chapter begins by discussing the role of networked communication for advocacy groups.
There is a distinction between civil society organizations that use the Internet and ICTs as
a tool for mobilization and organization, and civil society organizations that consciously
seek to shape the uses and regulation of the Internet. This study focuses on the latter.
However, civil society organizations whose aim is to shape Internet policy are
characterized by their extensive use of the Internet. Therefore, a brief discussion of these
87
characteristics is warranted. Next, the chapter presents results of the organizational
ecology study. This introduces the population of organizations involved with information
and communication policy issues, and documents the emergence of a rights-based and
Internet-oriented sector of civil society. Next, the chapter focuses on “WSIS/IGF civil
society” – the collection of organizations, networks, and campaigns that participated in
the WSIS and IGF. A typology is proposed to categorize this range of organizations.

Networked Communication
The diffusion of the Internet, as well as digital technologies in general, led to the
development of horizontal networks of communication. Indeed, “the communication
foundation of the network society is the global web of horizontal communication
networks” (Castells, 2007, p. 246). In a networked word where the functioning of society,
economy, and politics has changed, so, too, has advocacy and activism. Under these
conditions of horizontal communication networks, the Internet has enabled new forms of
transborder activism (Keck & Sikkink, 1998). The Internet enhances the speed,
flexibility, and global reach of communication flows, and provides the technological
infrastructure for the operation of contemporary transnational social movements. With
the networking logic of the Internet, social movements are increasingly organized around
flexible, distributed network forms (Castells, 1996).
Social movements have always existed, but there are now social movements with
a networked form that participate in the arena of global communications in order to
challenge prevailing norms. Castells (2007) states, “for new social movements, the
88
Internet provides the essential platform for debate, their means of acting on people’s
mind, and ultimately serves as their most potent political weapon” (p. 250). Similarly,
Hackett and Carroll (2004) argue “internet activism introduces a qualitative change in
scale as communication networks cross borders, opening up new opportunities for
transnational activism and publics, while it enables movements to bypass mass media and
to implement more dialogical forms of communication” (p. 48).
When scholars discuss “internet activism”, they usually refer to the Internet as a
mobilizing resource (Hackett & Carroll, 2006). As a mobilizing resource, the Internet
facilitates mobilization and participation in traditional forms of protest, such as national
demonstrations, and it also gives protests a more international character by diffusing
mobilization efforts and communication. Jeroen Van Aelstand Peter Van Aelst (2010)
propose that the Internet has impacted the tactics and strategies available to organizations
in two main ways: 1) by supporting traditional offline action, and 2) by creating new
online forms of action, such as such as online petitions, protest websites, and virtual sit-
ins.
The Internet has allowed campaigns to link the local to the global, with the
Zapatista uprising as a case in point. The Zapatista movement began as a local struggle in
southern Mexico, but gained widespread support of other local and national struggles.
The Zapatista case is the “first informational guerilla movement” (Castells, 2004, p.79),
and it was the Internet that was “decisive to the global diffusion of protest and solidarity”
(Van Laer & Aelst, 2010, p. 230). The Internet is used as a tool by many civil society
organizations and social movement organizations, and has helped civil society advance
89
their causes. Regarding the influence of civil society on the landmines campaign,
Axworthy (2000) notes, “I have seen first hand the power of the new communications in
the landmines campaign, where the Internet gave international civil society a new say in
pushing forward shared objectives” (p.18). Craig Warkentin (2001) catalogs six ways in
which civil society organizations use the Internet: facilitating internal communication,
shaping public perception, enhancing member services, disseminating information
resources, encouraging political participation, and realizing innovative ideas.
Another type of Internet activism is where the Internet is a resource as well as
object of struggle. This type of advocacy is also characterized by its use of the Internet as
a mobilizing and organizational tool. Many advocacy networks that participated in the
WSIS/IGF were composed of individuals from all over the world, who only met face-to-
face during one of the WSIS summits or at an Internet Governance Forum. The vast
majority of their discussion, organizing, mobilization, coordination, and dissemination of
work occurred via the Internet. The chapter now focuses on who are involved with this
other type of Internet advocacy. The organizational ecology presents the population of
organizations involved with Internet policy. This study analyzes a segment of this
population – the organizations, as well as more informal networks and groups,
collectively known as WSIS civil society – that participated in the WSIS and IGF.

Organizational Ecology
Advocacy has impacted communication and information policy, yet
communication and information policy is not usually cited as an area that mobilizes
90
activism (Mueller et al., 2004). Literature often references ICTs enable activism, as
explored in the above section, but not much literature investigates communication policy
as an object of activism. Mueller at al. (2004) ask “If information and communication are
as critical to modern life as everyone seems to think they are, where is the public
contention over the politics of communication and information?” (p. 170). They sought to
answer the question with exploratory empirical research using organizational ecology.
Data shows that communication and information policy issues now represent a distinct
policy domain
10
, one that “should be considered equal in status to trade and the
environment” (Mueller, 2010, p. 12). The civil society actors involved with Internet
governance issues are part of this broader transnational advocacy network engaged with
communications and policy advocacy. A discussion of this broader population provides
context for the specific sector of civil society engaged with Internet policy issues.
An organizational ecology was conducted to quantify the public interest groups
focused on Internet policy. Organizational ecology looks at organizations as a population
and investigates the conditions under which organizations emerge, grow, and die
(Hannan & Freeman, 1977). Data on the birth and disbandment of organizations engaged
with Internet issues provides descriptive and systematic information about the main
actors. Organizational ecology has been used to study social movement structures such as
women’s suffrage, equal rights, and civil rights. Organizational ecology provides a
starting point to map the population of organizations involved in these issues areas. This

10
Mueller et al. (2004) analyzed U.S. congressional hearings on communication and information policy
issues. They found that communication and information policy exceeds other social issues, such as women,
civil rights, and the environment, as a concern of Congressional activity.
91
data is primarily descriptive and does not explain how civil society interacts with the
Internet policy domain. In order to answer that type of question, quantitative data about
organizations must be linked to qualitative analysis about the evolution of policy issues.
This study seeks to do just that. Mueller et al. (2004) note in regards to their study, “An
important limitation of the study is that we do not examine the framing of CIP issues by
advocates; we are more interested in the structural factors that influence the population of
advocacy organizations than in the ways the organizations strategically communicate
with their intended audiences” (p. 170). This study is primarily interested in the framing
of issues and utilizes organizational ecology to describe and map the actors involved in
this area.
Organizational Ecology Method
The Encyclopedia of Associations was the main data source for the organizational
ecology. The Encyclopedia of Associations includes information of over 400,000
domestic and international organizations and has collected information on organizations
for about 50 years with the same procedures, which enables longitudinal analysis. The
sample was from Encyclopedia of Associations from 1990 to 2009.
First, I retrieved organizations related to computers, telecommunications, privacy,
and the mass media. Next, I went through the selected organizations and determined if
they were public interest organizations or another type of organization, such as
commercial and professional groups. Mueller, Kuerbis, and Page (2004) provide the
following criteria to determine if a group is a public interest advocacy group:

92
• The organizations must be attempting to influence communication and
information public policy.
• The organization and its members must not receive material or selective
benefits from the adoption of its policy goals.
• Organizations that solely provided funding to other organizations or were
pure publishers were not included.
• Pure producers of content were not included, unless production was
somehow integrated with an activist agenda and activities.
• Government operated or funded organizations were not included.

The Encyclopedia of Associations usually provides a founding date for entries. When a
date existed and was confirmed, it was used as the founding date. If a date was not listed
and could not be found otherwise, the date the organization first appeared in the
Encyclopedia of Associations was used as the founding date. For disbandment dates,
historical data that confirms when an organization died was used. If this information was
not available, the year the organization disappeared from the Encyclopedia of
Associations was used as its disbandment date.
Once the list of organizations was compiled, they were classified according to
which type of organization they are (public interest, professional), which media they
focus on (Internet, print, television, mass, all), and which type of activism was employed.
In classifying the mode of activism, Mueller et al.’s (2004) typology was used: criticizing
content or messages, trying to influence the economic conditions of supply, and
advocating individual rights.
There are limitations involved with the organizational ecology method. First, by
only including organizations that are coded as focusing on communication issues,
organizations with a more general cause that may participate in communication policy
issues are not included. Including these organizations in the data set presents problems
93
with counting the founding and disbandment data if the organization only participated in
communication policy issues for a short period. This may distort the data set.
Another limitation of the Encyclopedia of Organizations is that it relies on self-
reporting. Organizations may be active, but not be listed in the Encyclopedia for several
years. Furthermore, as groups work more in the online environment, they may not think it
is important to register in such a directory. To address this problem, data from the
Encyclopedia of Organizations is supplemented with data identified by nonprofit
databases and organizational web sites. Because there is no exhaustive database or list of
organizations, public interest advocacy groups engaged with Internet policy issues may
exist that are not included in the data set.
Organizational Ecology Results
Eighty organizations involved in public interest advocacy on Internet related
issues over the 48-year period were identified (see Appendix B). Figure 4.1 shows the
cumulative total and number of foundings of organizations involved in all
communication and information policy from 1961 to 2009. Figure 4.2 shows the number
of organizations involved with Internet issues.

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Figure 4.1: Number of Communication Advocacy Organizations

95
Figure 4.2: Number of Internet Advocacy Organizations
11

To assess the population of Internet related groups in comparison to the
communication and information policy advocacy population, organizations were coded
according to the type of media they focus on. In the 1960s, broadcasting represented the
focus of most advocacy groups. In the 2000s, computers and the Internet represented the
largest percentages of media focused on by organizations.

11
A number of organizations formed before the Internet, yet have since engaged in Internet advocacy.
96

Table 4.1: Classification of Communications Advocacy Organizations by Decade
1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s
# % # % # % # % # %
All 4 8.5 14 13.9 18 13.5 21 13.3 18 14.1
Arts,
Net,
Mass
0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 1 0.6 0 0.0
Film 1 2.1 1 1.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0
Govt 0 0.0 0 0.0 3 2.3 4 2.5 3 2.3
Mass 23 48.9 45 44.6 45 33.8 40 25.3 28 21.9
Mass,
Net
1 2.1 2 2.0 4 3.0 5 3.2 6 4.7
Mass,
Print
1 2.1 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0
Mass,
Tele
1 2.1 1 1.0 1 0.8 1 0.6 1 0.8
Mass,
Tele,
Net
0 0.0 1 1.0 1 0.8 1 0.6 1 0.8
Net 1 2.1 4 4.0 9 6.8 31 19.6 36 28.1
Print 5 10.6 12 11.9 12 9.0 9 5.7 6 4.7
Print,
Mass
4 8.5 13 12.9 22 16.5 21 13.3 10 7.8
Print,
Mass,
Net
0 0.0 1 1.0 2 1.5 2 1.3 2 1.6
REM 0 0.0 0 0.0 2 1.5 2 1.3 1 0.8
REM,
Mass
0 0.0 0 0.0 2 1.5 3 1.9 3 2.3
Spectr
um
0 0.0 0 0.0 1 0.8 1 0.6 0 0.0
Speec
h
1 2.1 1 1.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0
Tele 4 8.5 5 5.0 7 5.3 8 5.1 4 3.1
Tele,
Mass
1 2.1 1 1.0 1 0.8 1 0.6 1 0.8
Tele,
Mail
0 0.0 0 0.0 1 0.8 1 0.6 1 0.8
Tele,
Net
0 0.0 0 0.0 2 1.5 6 3.8 7 5.5
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This trend began in the 1980s with the founding of several key organizations:
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR), the League for Programming
Freedom, the Free Software Foundation, Public Cryptography Study Group, and the
Public Internet Computer Association. CPSR has grown into an international
organization involved in a range of issues, such as Internet governance, freedom of
speech, Internet access, and intellectual property. The Free Software Foundation was a
leader of the open-source movement, and the Public Internet Computer Association
evolved into the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which remains active in current
Internet governance debates, among other issues.
The founding of these organizations represents a change in the organizational
ecology that led to a new type of communications advocacy. These organizations were
involved with new issues and policies related to computers, and they represented a new
constituency of computer-literate professionals. They constituted a new epistemic
community (Haas, 1992), which had libertarian ideas about computers and
telecommunications. This new constituency of computer professionals created an
infrastructure of support and online communication, which was used during computer
privacy activism in the early 1990s and current Internet governance debates.
Digital technology became the focal point of institutional change in
communications and information in the 1990s. As the Internet altered institutional
patterns, and a new generation of advocacy groups became active, and the mode of
advocacy shifted. The concepts of “cyber-rights” emerged, and communication and
information activism began to come into its own as a movement (Mueller et al., 2004).
98
New organizations were founded in the 1990s that engaged in rights-oriented advocacy,
often in regards to the Internet. The Electronic Frontier Foundation was founded in 1990,
Privacy International was founded in 1990, the Electronic Privacy Information Center
was founded in 1994, the Center for Democracy and Technology was founded in 1995,
and the Internet Free Expression Alliance was founded in 1997. This trend continued in
the 2000s, with the founding of Public Knowledge in 2001, the Center for Digital
Democracy in 2001, and the European Digital Rights Initiative in 2002. Recently formed
organizations that focus more on rights than content reflects the nature of the core policy
issues surrounding the Internet. These organizations helped develop an international
community that focused on the defense of civil liberties in networked environments.
These organizations continue to be involved in such advocacy, and most of the
aforementioned organizations were active in the WSIS/IGF.
The establishment and mobilization of an international community formed around
the defense of privacy and civil liberties in the digital environment can be explained by
the founding of the above organizations and by institutional changes in the 1990s. The
liberalization of cryptography and the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement
Act of 1994 mobilized privacy and civil liberty groups. The Telecommunications Act of
1996 accounts in part for the increase in media and communications advocacy (Drake,
1997; Hackett & Carroll, 2004; Mueller et al., 2004). The Communications Decency Act
was an early attempt to control the Internet. It mobilized activists and oriented groups
away from a focus on content and towards issues of infrastructure regulation and rights.
The 2001 U.S. Patriot Act also attempted to censor the Internet, and it further mobilized
99
this community. Many of these groups continued advocacy work in the ICANN arena,
and later in the wider Internet governance debates.
The rise in media advocacy in the US can also be explained by the FCC’s 2002
and 2003 media ownership proceedings, which greatly stimulated public attention and
protests. The FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein described the proceedings as
awakening a “sleeping giant” and sparking citizen attention and influence on media and
communication policy issues (Newman & Scott, 2005, p. 25). Robert McChesney (2007)
describes the FCC public hearings and protests as a time when “the light switch went on
for millions of Americans. They did not have to accept all the problems with media as an
‘unalterable’ given. The media system was not natural; it resulted from policies” (p. 159).
The importance of the policy dimensions of communication became more evident and
gained attention. When other Internet policy issues emerged in the 2000s, such as
network neutrality and Internet governance, there was an informed citizenry ready to
enter policy debates.

The Emergence of A Rights Based Approach to Advocacy
Data on the communication and information policy population shows a shift in the
mode of advocacy over the decades. There is a trend towards an increase in rights and
economics-oriented approaches to advocacy and a decrease in content-oriented advocacy.
This can be explained by two changes in the population: first, organizations that were
focused on content died off in large numbers, such as anti-pornography and social
responsibility organizations; and second, new organizations were founded in the 1990s
100
and 2000s that engaged in rights-oriented advocacy, often in regards to the Internet. In
communication and information policy advocacy population, rights-oriented advocacy
rose to 38% in 2009, the highest level since the 1960s, and content-oriented advocacy
feel to its lowest level of 32% (see table 4.2). Although the total number of organizations
did not significantly change in the 1990s and 2000s, it is noteworthy that the composition
of the advocacy population changed to one that focused increasingly on the Internet and
digital technologies and on rights-oriented advocacy, such as privacy rights, free speech
rights, and civil liberties. These changes in the organizational ecology represent the
beginnings of an Internet oriented and rights-based approach to advocacy.

Table 4.2: Public Interest Organizations’ Advocacy Mode by Decade
1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s
# % # % # % # % # %
CONTENT 24 52.2 55
51.
9 67 48.6 63
39.
1 40 31.5
ECONOMICS 8 17.4 18
17.
0 25 18.1 29
18.
0 25 19.7
RIGHTS 11 23.9 22
20.
8 34 24.6 55
34.
2 49 38.6
COMBINATIO
N 3 6.5 11
10.
4 12 8.7 14 8.7 13 10.2

The sector of civil society focused on rights represents an active civil society
issue network in the Internet governance debates. This section of civil society is
interested in a people-centered and human-oriented concept of the Internet and pushes for
a humanistic conception of Internet governance. The Communication Rights in the
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Information Society (CRIS) campaign is an example of collective action in the WSIS that
was based around rights issues – namely the right to communicate. The CRIS campaign
and the three-decade evolution of the right to communicate debates is discussed below to
provide context around this issue of communication rights and provide some reasons as
to why the debate has continued for over three decades.

The Struggle for Communication Rights
The evolution of the right to communicate debate may be categorized into two
phases: intergovernmental and global civil society debates. Based on the primary actors
involved in the right to communicate debates globally, the debate can be categorized in
two phases: intergovernmental and civil society (Calabrese, 2004; Mueller, et al., 2007;
Roach, 1996). The second phase is less distinct, but evolved from the first phase
(MacBride Round Table Statements; Mueller et al., 2007; Roach, 1996). Throughout the
35-year time period, the goals of the right to communicate remained fairly constant.
However, the actors involved changed from government to civil society (Mueller et al.,
2007).
The first time media and communication issues were debated on the global stage
began in the mid 1970s. The debate was limited mainly to governments and ran for a
decade. During this time, the right to communicate was “at the centre of an international
diplomatic row that lasted several years and still reverberates today” (Ó Siochrú, 2005,
p.15). The right to communicate was later taken up by activists during the 1990s, and the
issue gained international attention during the WSIS.
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Why is the right to communicate so important? Throughout history,
communication and information have been fundamental sources of power (Castells,
2007). Communication, human rights, and communication technologies are tightly
linked, and the issue of communication rights is fundamental. Communication rights
include democratic media governance, linguistic rights, participation in one’s culture, and
rights to privacy. These rights are questions “of inclusion and exclusion, of quality and
accessibility. In short, they are questions of human dignity” (Ó Siochrú, 2005, p.13).
Communication is so fundamental, that a right to communicate is a prerequisite to the
exercise of other human rights. Sean MacBride noted that the right to communicate is
“the very foundation of other human rights” (Roach, 1996). By recognizing
communication rights, all other human rights are also validated.
Researchers point to Article (19) of the United Nations 1948 Universal
Declaration of Human Rights as the basis for a right to communicate (McIver, Birdsall &
Rasmussen, 2004; Raboy, 2004a). However, Jean d’Arcy, director of Radio and Visual
Services in the UN Office of Public Information, is credited with being the first to coin
the term “right to communicate” in 1969, when he argued “the time will come when the
UDHR will have to encompass a more extensive right than man’s right to
information…This is the right of man to communicate” (d’Arcy, 1969, p.14).
Although the analysis of d’Arcy has “galvanized an intellectual movement around
a ‘right to communicate’” (Mueller et al., 2007, p. 270), d’Arcy never provided a precise
definition of the right, and this led to various organizations and individuals struggling to
define the concept. The International Institute of Communication strove to define a right
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to communicate during its annual meetings, in hope of incorporating the right into the
UN Declaration of Human Rights (McIver et al., 2004). Interest in the right to
communicate spread among government officials, legal experts, and academics in various
countries, but the central debate took place in intergovernmental platforms. During the
1974 UNESCO General Conference, progress was made on exploring the concept when
Sweden introduced the right to communicate. As a result, a resolution was adopted that
authorized the Director-General to study the concept of the right to communicate
(UNESCO Resolution 4.121: Right to Communicate). Consequently, UNESCO worked
on several initiatives, and the Division of Free Flow of Information and Communication
sponsored a series of meetings: Stockholm in 1978, Manila in 1979, London and Ottawa
in 1980, Strasbourg in 1981, and Bucharest in 1982.
With the issue moving from the International Institute of Communication to the
auspices of UNESCO, the right to communicate debate became consumed by east/west
and north/south ideological differences present in the 1970s and 1980s (McIver et al.,
2004). In particular, the right to communicate became associated with the 1970’s non-
aligned nation’s movement and the debate over a New World Information and
Communication Order (NWICO). Linked both ideologically and institutionally to
NWICO, the right to communicate became politicized and was brought to the fore of
geopolitics (Alegre & Ó Siochrú, 2005; Mueller et al., 2007).
NWICO represents concerns over media and information issues, and it refers
broadly to the debate in UNESCO over the imbalance of media flows (Preston, Herman,
& Schiller, 1989). Global flows of information were the subject of intense debate in
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international fora in the 1970s, mainly fought out at UNESCO. Influenced by the Cold
War, the West supported the principle of “free flow of information,” while the Eastern
bloc stressed the need for state control. The concept of free flow of information is that no
national frontiers should hinder the flow of information between countries. Those in
favor of NWICO argued against the free flow of information doctrine, which reflected
Western and mainly U.S. interests and was part of the free-market discourse.
Investigating the flows of media products, Nordenstreng and Varis (1974) documented a
clear imbalance in media products that favored the West and argued that such an
imbalance could cultivate cultural imperialism. The issues of cultural imperialism,
increasing media concentration, and controversy over the free flow doctrine led to intense
debates in UNESCO.
In 1977 the MacBride Commission was established to deal with controversy
surrounding the concerns raised during the NWICO debates. In 1980 the MacBride
Commission published a report, Many Voices One World, which articulated the right to
communicate.
Communication needs in a democratic society should be met by the extension of
specific rights such as the right to be informed, the right to inform, the right to
privacy, the right to participate in public communication – all elements of a new
concept, the right to communicate. In developing what might be called a new era
of social rights, we suggest all the implications of the right to communicate by
further explored (UNESCO, 1980, p. 265).

The Commission’s findings were endorsed, but this success was short-lived. The
MacBride Report was interpreted politically as an endorsement of NWICO and met a
hostile reception. Developing countries saw the right to communicate as a way for
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Western media to expand their market share by expanding in to their countries, whereas
Western media saw the right to communicate as an attempt to control their expansion
attempts (Hicks, 2007). There was international controversy over the call for a new order,
which resulted in conflict between developing countries who supported NWICO and the
U.S. government and its allies. The US pulled out of UNESCO in 1984, followed by the
UK in 1985. With the right to communicate so politicized, the issue was taken off the
agenda by 1989 (McIver et al., 2003). This brings the first phase of the right to
communicate debate to an end.

Second Phase: The Cultivation of a Global Movement for Communication Rights
Although the issue dissolved in intergovernmental platforms, this did not end the
international debate on the right to communicate. The debate was picked up by non-
governmental organizations and civil society (Calabrese, 2004; Mowlana & Roach, 1992;
Mueller et al., 2007; Raboy, 2004). Two key forums mark the second phase of the right to
communicate debates: 1) the MacBride Roundtable and 2) the Communication Rights in
the Information Society (CRIS).
After removal of the right to communicate from the UNESCO agenda, the debate
continued in the form of the MacBride Roundtable, a communications rights advocacy
group, which was created in 1989 to discuss issues from the MacBride report (Calabrese,
1999; Roach, 1996). The Roundtable explicitly reiterated the principles on which the
NWICO was based (MacBride Roundtable Harare Statement, 1989). The roundtable met
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annually for ten years, and attempted to articulate issues related to the use of media and
communications for democratization and empowerment (Calabrese, 1999).
An analysis of the participants involved and the rhetoric used highlights the
transition of the debates from governmental to nongovernmental organizations. For
example, there was no government participation during the second MacBride Roundtable
meeting in 1990. This lack of government attendance “reinforced the efforts of some
NWICO backers to steer the movement in a grassroots, people’s direction” (Mowlana &
Roach, 1992, p. 11). The 1992 Roundtable meeting explicitly called for a reinvigoration
of civil society and of the media reform movement. The right to communicate was central
in this context, and the Roundtable argued that it “should be viewed not just as a right
citizens demand of governments, but rather as an inalienable right held by them as
members of civil society” (MacBride Roundtable São Paulo Statement, 1992). In 1997
the MacBride Roundtable explicitly discussed the shift to civil society and the formation
of a social movement:
The MacBride Round Table reflects…a power shift from governments towards
civil society… The various components of an international movement on media
and communications, that can challenge the current neo-liberal orthodoxy, seem
to be emerging. The creation of a global social movement - largely absent from
the NWICO - requires a number of factors, among them a core constituency of
on-the-ground activists who recognise their affinities and can mobilise in
concerted actions; an understanding of the key global issues of the day and of the
arenas in which they are fought out; and the capacity to get their message out both
to natural allies in progressive movements and to the general public (MacBride
Roundtable Boulder Statement, 1997).

Communication rights surfaced as one of the larger dynamics underlying a
diversity of groups and concerns. In the 1990s there was an increase in organizations and
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interest groups interested in a variety of communication issues, and these issues
coalesced into umbrella groups in the 1990s, such as the People’s Communication
Charter and the Platform for Democratization of Communication. A civil society
constituency emerged to engage with the issues raised at NWICO. Many of these civil
society groups came together in the CRIS campaign. The CRIS serves as a case study of
a campaign organized around the right to communicate. It is the most visible, global
expression of the communication rights movement (Thomas, 2006). CRIS can be
understood as an offshoot of the 1960s and 1970s communication scholarship and the
aforementioned debates; the concepts driving CRIS are part of a broader political and
intellectual movement.
The Communication Rights in the Information Society was launched in 2001 in
response to the ITU’s announcement of the WSIS. Marc Raboy (2004), a member of the
organizing committee of the CRIS campaign, notes that in June 2001 the general
secretary of the World Association for Christian Communication wrote a letter on behalf
of the Platform for Democratization of Communication (which later launched CRIS) to
the WSIS coordinator requesting a meeting to “clarify the opportunities for civil society
involvement.” The letter stated “Our WSIS NGO Working Group is beginning to
formulate ideas on the participation of civil society, and also on the Themes under
consideration at this important summit.” When the Platform for Democratization of
Communication did not receive a response, they decided to hold a meeting in November
2001 to decide how to best organize the efforts of civil society at the WSIS. At the
meeting, the Platform for Democratization of Communication was renamed the Platform
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on Communication Rights, and they launched a campaign for Communication Rights in
the Information Society (CRIS) in order to “ensure that communication rights are central
to the information society and to the upcoming World Summit on the Information
Society”. The CRIS campaign notes that central to their mission is that:
Civil society organizations come together to help build an information society
based on principles of transparency, diversity, participation and social and
economic justice, and inspired by equitable gender, cultural and regional
perspectives. The World Summit on the Information Society offers an important
forum to promote this objective. We aim to broaden the WSIS agenda and goals
especially in relation to media and communication issues, and to encourage the
participation of a wide spectrum of civil society groups in the process.

Before continuing with an analysis of CRIS, it is useful to conceptually define the
object of study, using concepts from social movement theory, since the CRIS campaign
was widely referred to as a social movement. Alain Touraine’s typology, as adapted by
Castells (2004), proposes three elements by which to categorize and define a social
movement: the movement’s identity, which refers to the self-definition of the movement;
the movement’s adversary, which refers to the movement’s main enemy; and the
movement’s societal goal, which refers to the movement’s vision of the type of social
order they wish to attain through their collective action.
Applying this typology to the CRIS campaign, the first characteristic to consider
is the movement’s identity. CRIS participants are “civil society activists” who established
an “open campaign, drawing together existing groups and activists” to ground the right to
communicate in society (CRIS, 2005). CRIS’s adversaries include trends of monopoly,
private ownership, and consumer-driven media and communications, since these trends
may weaken the public sphere and efforts to use communication for greater social good.
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CRIS’ goal is to make communication rights central to the information society. They
state that their vision “is grounded in the right to communicate, as a means to enhance
human rights and to strengthen the social, economic and cultural lives of people and
communities” (Media Development, 2002).
The activities of the CRIS campaign and their influence on Internet governance
debates are analyzed later. The discussion of CRIS here serves as an example of a
campaign focused on communication rights, which can be understood in the broader
context of the rise of rights-based activism. The right to communicate issue began in
intergovernmental platforms but was pushed forward on the international stage by civil
society actors. The role of civil society actors in setting the agenda and raising awareness
of issues, as seen in the CRIS example, is a theme highlighted in this study.

WSIS Civil Society
The above sections document the emergence of an Internet-oriented civil society
that focused on rights-based advocacy. The WSIS was a platform for a range of groups
and networks to come together to focus on international Internet governance issues. This
section presents this sector of WSIS civil society
12
.
Civil society organizations represented a large constituency at the WSIS (table
4.1). Civil society defined their sector as including organizations and networks “which
are autonomous from the State, are not intergovernmental or do not represent the private

12
The main issue areas and organizations are identified from my observations and interviews. Other
scholars have identified similar issue areas and have highlighted many of the same organizations as being
the key actors during the WSIS and IGF (Hintz, 2007; Kurbalija, 2005; Mueller et al., 2007; Weber, 2010).
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sector, and which in principle, are non-profit making” and which support “social,
economic and cultural interests for mutual benefit” (Civil society listserv). This
conception of civil society corresponds to the definition proposed earlier.

Table 4.3: Number of Participants at WSIS Summits

Civil society has converged around “issue networks.” These issue networks were
also referred to as social movements, movements, and communities by interviewees. The
key issue networks include: the Access to Knowledge movement; digital rights, which
include civil liberties and human rights networks; alternative and community media
groups; and information and communication technology for development.

Typology of WSIS/IGF Civil Society Actors
The civil society sector engaged in Internet governance is diverse and includes
sub-groups that overlap in terms of interests, goals, and membership. The components of
this sector differ based on several criteria: framing of issues, policy priorities, and
strategic activities.

# of # of entities # of # of entitites
participants represented participants represented
States 4590 175 5857 174
Private Sector 514 98 4816 226
Civil Society Organizations 3310 481 6241 606
International Organizations 225 50 1508 92
WSIS 2003 WSIS 2005
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Table 4.4: Typology of Civil Society Actors
Frame Issues Key CS Groups and Networks Institutional
Venue
Communication
Rights
Human rights,
digital rights, civil
liberties, privacy,
censorship
EPIC, APC, EDRI, Internet
Rights and Principles Dynamic
Coalition, Human Rights Caucus,
Internet Governance Caucus
WSIS, IGF,
National
governments
Information and
Communication
Technologies for
Development
(ICT4D)
Development,
digital divide,
access
IT for Change, APC, African
Civil Society Caucus
WSIS, IGF, UN
Global Alliance
for ICTs and
Development
(GAID)
Access to
Knowledge (A2K)
Open access to
information,
intellectual
property, open
source software
Creative Commons, EFF, Free
Software Foundation
WIPO, National
governments,
IGF
Community Media Creation of
alterative media
structures and
content, access,
intellectual property
World Association of Community
Broadcasters, Media Caucus,
Community Media Working
Group
(Most often
operates outside
of institutions)
WSIS, IGF

Framing. Different frames correspond to different issue areas. The main frames,
or issue networks, that have emerged are access to knowledge, community media,
ICT4D, and communication rights (Interviews; Kurbalija, 2005; Mueller et al., 2007).
Some of the different frames employed by the communication rights issue network are
the “right to communicate”, “communication rights”, “human rights”, and “freedom of
expression”. The communication rights movement employed various frames in different
contexts and time periods. Even the same frame was understood differently in different
times, such as the right to communicate. During the early period of the struggle for
communication rights, the right to communicate was seen as a new right. The 1980
MacBride Commission report recommended “Communication needs in a democratic
society should be met by the extension of specific rights such as the right to be informed,
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the right to inform, the right to privacy, the right to participate in public communication –
all elements of a new concept, the right to communicate” (p. 265). During the WSIS, the
right to communicate was understood as an existing right, although this was a point of
contention within civil society.
There are three worldviews on the right to communicate (Mueller et al., 2007).
Viewing the right to communicate as a new right can be understood in the legalistic
worldview. This contrasts with the liberal worldview, which sees the right to
communicate as a new label for traditional but evolving communication civil liberties.
The third worldview is the normative-tactical worldview, which views communication
rights as a banner, where rights language is used to frame the debates. During the 1990s
and 2000s, “communication rights” was used as a frame more often than “the right to
communicate.” The term “communication rights” embraces a variety of issues in one
conceptual framework. This strengthens the potential for collective action, since the
umbrella concept of communication rights may link groups internationally and allow
various groups to connect their issues with the work of other networks. This worldview
dominated debates during the WSIS and IGF, although the CRIS campaign continued to
recount the history of the right to communicate debate and the NWICO battles in their
internal meetings and documents (Interviews 16, 19).
The Internet Rights and Principles Dynamic Coalition spent significant time
during their internal meetings discussing which frames they should use, since there are
tradeoffs with different frames. In European regional IGF meetings, the human rights and
communication rights frames are used, since there is general consensus about the need for
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a human rights based approach to Internet governance. When the Dynamic Coalition
participates in the international IGF meetings, or when they engage with certain
governments, the coalition uses the frame of “freedom of expression” or “open Internet”,
instead of referencing human rights, since some governments perceive the human rights
approach as too legalistic (Interviews 10, 16, 19). Governments and companies have
expressed that their interests are in line with the human rights approach and that they are
in agreement with many principles and proposals put forth by the Internet Rights and
Principles Dynamic Coalition, but they note that referencing human rights is too
complicated because it is seen as legalistic (Interview 10). The chair of the dynamic
coalition does not feel it is necessary to talk about human rights in international contexts
if the coalition is trying to achieve an end goal and have others make behavior changes.
Talking about an open Internet or freedom of expression tends to achieve better results
(Interview 10). The right to communicate frame is never used by the dynamic coalition or
by other groups in the IGF context, since it carries too much political baggage and evokes
NWICO debates (Interviews 10, 16).
In addition to the strategic use of framing, the variation in frames used by groups
illustrates that members of groups perceive differences between themselves and those
who are part of allied groups. Research on the media reform movement in the US, UK,
and Canada found that agreeing on a collective identity is more difficult for media and
communications advocates than other social movements, because the identity of “media
reformer” is not as resonant as “environmentalist” (Hackett & Carroll, 2004).
Interviewees echoed this sentiment and said there is no label that can be used for their
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work that parallels the identity of other movements, such as the label of environmentalist
or feminist.
A single overarching frame is not a precondition for a successful social
movement. Multiple frames present advantages because different frames can appeal to
different constituencies. This is seen in the strategic use of different frames by the
Internet Rights and Principles Dynamic Coalition when speaking with different groups
and trying to gain broader support. This practice of using different frames for different
constituencies corresponds to research conducted with leaders in the broader media
reform movement, which concluded that leaders of various sectors “do not think they
need an over-arching term, or way of articulating a common goal to their work…These
leaders also reveal little sense that their work would benefit from having all their efforts
fly under one banner” (Belden, Russonello & Stewart, 2006, p. 5).
In contrast to scholars who feel multiple frames may be a benefit, others argue
that a unified frame is needed. Ó Siochrú (2005) states, “An overarching, unifying frame
is needed in order to build the kind of broad movement that alone can be successful” (p.
304). Ó Siochrú proposes that a “high level” frame of the right to communicate would be
appropriate, with “sub-frames” such as public sphere, information commons, civil rights,
and political and cultural diversity. Most interviewees noted that a single frame may not
be necessary, but the Internet governance civil society arena could benefit from more
coherence than is currently present.

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Outcome priorities. Demarcations across the various actors involved in Internet
governance advocacy can be drawn along outcome priorities, which are different areas of
emphasis in terms of outcomes. Broadly, action may be directed at two different types of
outcomes: 1) efforts aimed at impacting the existing communication systems and
institutions, and 2) efforts aimed at developing new or alternative systems. For the first
outcome priority, efforts may be directed at content or structure, although these
categories are not always mutually exclusive. The second outcome priority of developing
new systems refers to alternative media, which are media controlled by independent and
self-organized groups.
This study is interested primarily in the first outcome priority. By focusing on this
type of activism, this study may contribute to the growing literature on media activism
and to help fill the gap on research regarding communications and media activism and
global governance. There is a good deal of scholarship focused on alternative media
(Couldry & Curran, 2003; Downing, 2001), but less scholarship on “organized collective
action which seeks not simply to create ‘alternative’ and/or autonomous spaces, but
directly to challenge and remake the hegemonic public communication system and its
nexus with political governance – and thereby, to transform the terrain on which all
movements contest established power” (Hackett & Carroll, 2006, p. 14). The majority of
civil society actors at the WSIS and IGF fall in to the first outcome priority category
13
, as

13
Actors whose outcome priority was to build alternative communication systems include community
media and alternative media groups, such as the Media Caucus and the Community Media Working Group
(Hintz, 2007).

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their advocacy focused on the regulations and governance of the Internet, and they sought
to engage with and impact existing international institutions.

Strategies. A third criteria to distinguish between the various actors involved in
the different components of Internet governance advocacy is strategies employed. Here,
the concept of repertoire of collective action is useful, which is defined as the “array of
collective actions that people employ” (Tilly, 1979, p. 134). These actions, or strategies,
are “well defined” and “quite limited in comparison to the range of actions that are
theoretically available to them. In that sense, particular times, places, and populations
have their own repertoires of collective action” (Tilly, 1979, p. 131). Building on Tilly’s
concept of collective action repertoire, Tarrow (2005) defines three modes of action:
conventional, disruptive, and violent.
Strategies used are based on the different outcome priorities. If action is primarily
oriented towards existing institutions, then conventional tactics are most often used, such
as meetings and negotiations, protests, program monitoring, and direct participation in the
policy-making processes. If action is primarily oriented towards developing alternative
media, then more disruptive strategies may be used, such as exerting pressure from
outside the policy-making process, through counter summits or outside events.
One way to make analytical sense of this division is through the concept of
“insider” and “outsider” strategies, which represents a classical distinction in social
movement research (Tarrow, 2005). A similar pattern of that discussed in social
movement research is reproduced by Internet policy advocates (see table 4.5). Insider
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strategies involve efforts to impact the system from within, and outside strategies involve
efforts outside of the policy making process. The “inside” sector’s strategies involve
active engagement in policy making through participation in the multi-stakeholder
process. Outside strategies usually involve direct action and protest, versus advocacy, and
include creating alternative self-organized structures. Instead of engaging with global
institutions and participating in the policy processes, this type of intervention often seeks
to stop institutions. For example, there were large mobilizations and protests surrounding
the meetings of global institutions such as the G8, IMF, WTO, and World Bank.
Regarding engagement with the WSIS process, grassroots media activists interviewed by
Hintz and Milan (2009) noted, “we want to maintain a certain distance from this
institutional and falsely ‘democratic’ internet [regulation]” (p. 31). This sector of civil
society is largely characterized by grassroots networks that are less structured than
“inside” groups. Outsider strategies typically favor more disruptive practices.
During the WSIS 2003 summit, alternative and grassroots media activists set up
spaces to discuss WSIS issues and to intervene from the outside. These actors challenged
the structure and content of the WSIS summit. Activists set up a series of events to
coincide with the WSIS in Geneva – “WSIS?WeSeize!”, which included meetings,
protests, and a video stream. Arne Hintz (2007) notes, “rather than influencing the
official process, they opted for autonomously developing communication concepts ‘from
below’” (p. 254). These “outside” actions are briefly noted here, but this study analyzed
“inside” actors, since the focus is on civil society organizations’ engagement with the
policy process.
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Table 4.5: Inside / Outside Categorization of Actors
Type of
Actor
Strategy Examples Organizational
Form
Repertoire of
Action
Inside Directed at existing
institutions. Active
engagement in policy-
making process.

Advocacy
organizations,
networks; formal
NGOs; Issue
networks
Structured;
usually
formalized
Conventional
tactics

Outside Directed at creating
new structures/spaces.
Pressure from outside
policy-making
process through
counter events.

Activist groups and
individuals;
Alternative media
groups
Less structured;
informal
Disruptive
tactics

The distinction between insider and outside actors is a useful starting point, but as
with most categories, there are overlaps between the two dimensions. Coalitions between
these two realms exist, and insiders and outsiders are increasingly cooperating around
international institutions and conferences (Tarrow, 2005). During the WSIS, there was
cooperation between the insider and outsider groups at points, such as when they tried to
agree on and draft common principles and policy suggestions to submit to the WSIS
official negotiations.

Conclusion
This chapter discussed the civil society actors involved in Internet governance
debates at the international level. The typology proposed several main issue networks
within the civil society sector and criteria by which to categorize the main groups and
issues. With an understanding of who the actors are, the projects, demands, and proposals
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of this group and how they relate to governmental actors and the institutions involved in
Internet governance can now be analyzed. It is this interaction of civil society with other
forces that produces the current system of Internet governance. How Internet governance
debates have evolved and under what conditions actors have influenced the process is
analyzed next.

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CHAPTER 5: GLOBAL CIVIL SOCIETY AND INTERNET GOVERNANCE: THE
UNITED NATIONS AND THE GRASSROOTS

This chapter analyzes the influence of civil society actors in Internet governance
debates during the WSIS and IGF. First, the chapter discusses why the United Nations
convened the WSIS, suggesting reasons why civil society was able to play such a
prominent role in Internet governance debates. Next, the chapter analyzes the influence of
civil society in Internet governance debates and negotiations. Civil society, while not as
powerful as state power, has become a more active player in international politics. What
are the other types of power and influence that civil society may wield? How and under
what conditions is civil society able to effectively participate? How do the processes and
practices of civil society in global governance function? To address these questions, the
chapter applies an analytical framework to analyze the role of civil society actors in
international negotiations. By looking for evidence of specific indicators of different
dimensions of influence, this analysis provides a more nuanced understanding of the type
of influence exerted by civil society in Internet governance debates.

The United Nations and the World Summit on the Information Society
Manuel Castells’ three-volume work on the Information Age (1996, 1997, 1998)
popularized the term global information society. The global information society is the
subject of declarations and initiatives by governments, businesses, civil society
organizations, and academics. It also became the focus of the WSIS. Given the
prominence of the term global information society in policy discussions, it is no surprise
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that a world summit was convened on this issue. How did the WSIS come in to existence,
and how and why did Internet governance issues come to dominate the international
discussions?
As discussed earlier, the early Internet was mainly self-regulating. Later, specific
bodies, such as ICANN, managed critical Internet resources. In the late 1990s, Internet
governance rose in importance. ITU interest in Internet governance grew, but in 1997 the
U.S.-backed Memorandum of Understanding turned back ITU involvement. The ITU
then sought a role in Internet governance through other means. During its quadrennial
Plenipotentiary Conference in 1998, to increase its prominence, the ITU again tried to
carve out a role for itself in Internet governance. An ITU background report suggested:
As the world stands on the brink…of a powerful new age of information and
communications capabilities, the world’s pre-eminent telecommunications
organizations also finds itself at a crossroads...The challenge facing the ITU is
stark and simple: re-adapt quickly to a rapidly changing telecommunications
environment, or find itself marginalized or at worst irrelevant in the future
development of the world’s communications networks…Any further ITU
involvement in the management and governance of the Internet and other new
communications systems is therefore certain to be a hot topic…(ITU, 1998).

Following a proposal by the Government of Tunisia, the conference adopted a resolution
that the ITU Director General would place the issue of holding a World Summit on the
Information Society on the United Nations’ Agenda. The UN General Assembly
Resolution 56/183 authorized the World Summit on Information Society on December
21, 2001.
The WSIS did not result in the creation of a regulatory framework for the Internet.
It was not decided if the Internet should be regulated, and if so, by whom and in what
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manner. This lack of agreement on policy can be attributed in part to the contradictions
within the UN – between those countries that wanted a regulatory framework under
which they could exercise control of the Internet, and those countries that wanted the
WSIS to be a platform to affirm freedom on the Internet. There also were debates about
whether a new framework should be established. One group, including the United States
and other industrial countries, argued against efforts to create a new regime for Internet
governance, and instead supported private sector leadership, where Internet resources
would continue to be managed by ICANN. Another group of mainly developing
governments favored the creation of an intergovernmental regime for regulation of the
Internet – where Internet governance would be under the umbrella of an
intergovernmental organization of the UN. With different stakeholder groups
representing divergent priorities and goals, predictably, no policy could be agreed upon
during the WSIS. The politics of the WSIS can be understood as “clash between two
models of global governance: one based on agreements among sovereign, territorial
states; the other based on private contracting among transnational nonstate actors”
(Mueller, 2010, p. 55).
Failure to enact policy can also be attributed to the early stage of Internet
governance issues. Agreement on norms and principles must first be reached before
solutions can be agreed upon. Internet governance is a new and complex policy area,
which may require more time before policies are enacted. However, the stage of Internet
governance debates investigated in this study – the stage of reaching agreement on norms
and principles - represents an important stage in the governance process. The main
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product of the WSIS was the production of texts and agreements - the Declaration of
Principles and the Plan of Action. These lacked strong regulatory power, but are still
significant since they serve to frame current and future policy discussions. Indeed, these
agreements shape policy discourse, lay out agreements on issue identification, define the
agenda, and suggest possible solutions.

Analytical Framework for Civil Society Influence
The contradictions between governments that led to an inability to reach
consensus on key issues created an opening for other actors to participate in and
potentially influence the summit negotiations. Civil society was ready to enter this space.
As previously discussed, there is literature on the influence of civil society in
global politics, but there is less analysis on the question of under what conditions civil
society organizations exert influence. There is often a lack of specification about how
influence is defined in a political arena. Policy change is not the only indicator of
influence. Indeed, NGOs may change the nature of debate, set the agenda, promote norm
implementation, influence discursive positions of organizations, and initiate changes in
international institutions (Keck & Sikkink, 1998). There are two dimensions of civil
society influence on international negotiations: participation in international negotiations
and the effects of such participation (Betsill & Corell, 2008). To asses the influence of
civil society on Internet governance debates, I adapt and apply the analytical framework
proposed by Michele Betsill and Elisabeth Corell (2008), who suggest a set of indicators
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for analyzing the effects of civil society on both negotiation processes and outcomes:
agenda setting, issue framing, procedural issues, and substantive issues (See table 5.1).

Table 5.1: Indicators of NGO Influence with Examples of Type of Evidence. (Betsill &
Corell, 2008).

Agenda setting is often used to support claims of the influence of NGOs in global
politics. An agenda is defined as “objects accorded saliency in the media content or in
people’s consciousness” (Takeshita, 1997). Agenda setting highlights the agency and role
of civil society organizations in international politics by showing how NGOs place issues
on the international political agenda, which may result in governments addressing the
issue in certain ways. Analysis of agenda setting illustrates the process of creating norms
and how they are placed on the international political agenda, which often occurs through
NGOs’ policy and advocacy work to bring international attention to issues. One clear
Indicator Behavior of actors… ...as caused by NGOs
Influence on Issue framing - How were issues understood - What did NGOs do to
process of prior to negotiations? bring about this understanding?
negotiations - Was there a change in how
issues came to be understood?
Agenda setting - How did issues come to - What did NGOs do
the attention of actors? to shape the agenda?
- What items were put on
or taken off the agenda?
- What were the terms of debate?
Influence on Procedural issues - Does agreement create new - What did NGOs do
outcome of institutions to facilitate NGO to promote such changes?
negotiations participation?
- Does agreement acknowledge
role of NGOs?
Substantive issues - Does agreement reflect NGO - What did NGOs do
positions? to promote such issues?
Type of Evidence
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case of NGO influence is the landmine ban issue, where NGOs promoted a ban by
placing the issue in the international political agenda. The role of the International
Campaign to Ban Landmines was recognized by the Nobel committee and was awarded
the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for its role in creating a new form of diplomacy.
Issue framing refers to how an issue was conceptualized prior to or during
negotiations. A frame is “an interpretive schemata that simplifies and condense the
‘world out there’ by selectively punctuating and encoding objects, situations, events,
experiences, and sequences of action within one’s present or past environment” (Snow &
Benford, 1992, p. 137). Framing refers to the selection of certain elements within an
issue, which are used to promote a certain interpretation, evaluation, or definition of an
issue. The assumption is that actors will think about an issue in a certain way depending
on how the issue is framed. Civil society may frame or re-frame issues. If civil society
has an impact on issue framing, then there is a correlation between frames used by civil
society and frames used in the draft agreements and/or final agreements.
The second two indicators - procedural issues and substantive issues - focus on
the effects of civil society organizations on the final agreement. Procedural issues relate
to how decisions will be made in the future, and may include the establishment of new
institutions or procedures for greater participation of NGOs. NGOs participating in
international negotiations are interested in strengthening their role in future decisions,
either by securing a role in implementation of decisions or by creating new institutions.
The indicator of substantive issues refers to how civil society organizations shape
particular issues and final agreements. Civil society organizations often suggest what
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should be done to address a problem, and these positions may be included in the final
agreement of a negotiation. Evidence for the indicator of substantive issues includes
specific text found in the final agreement that was suggested by civil society
organizations and elements or ideas that are in line with civil society positions.
The chapter applies this analytical framework to civil society’s interaction with
the Internet governance negotiations chronologically. There are three main elements of
civil society influence during the UN summits and forums: 1) the democratization of
Internet governance processes through increased civil society participation; 2) the
evolution of Internet governance concepts and definitions; and 3) influence on certain
issues, namely human rights.

Struggles Over Participation
The WSIS led to institutional change in global governance of communication and
information. Milton Mueller (2010) analyzes the high politics of WSIS and argues, that in
addition to the debates over ICANN, WSIS “pushed against another frontier of global
institutional change” by experimenting with ways to make international organizations
more democratic. The inclusion and participation of non-state actors helped democratize
international institutions. This resulted in the long-term effects of the creation of a new
transnational advocacy network on Internet governance and the creation of a new UN
organization, the IGF. This section analyzes how this institutional change was fostered
during the WSIS. The participation in non-state actors helped make Internet governance
processes and institutions more open and democratic.
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The incorporation of new actors in to global decision-making processes is what
makes the WSIS an innovative approach to global communication governance. Marc
Raboy (2004a) argues that WSIS exemplifies “the important trends emerging in global
governance, encouraging civil society to participate more actively in defining a new
global public sphere and to integrate more deeply to developing transnational public
policy” (p. 357). WSIS represents an evolution from a purely intergovernmental process
of decision-making to a multi-stakeholder model. However, the inclusion and full
participation of civil society in the summit processes was a constant struggle. Non-state
actor participation often took as much time during the negotiation phase as did
substantive issues. The politics of the WSIS were marked by conflict among governments
and by a politics of definition of participation, where government was most often set in
opposition to civil society. The WSIS was a “collision between those who saw national
governments as the proper agents for defining and implementing international
communication and information policy, and those who pursued a more open, pluralistic,
and transnational policy-making framework” (Mueller, 2010, p. 10).
These struggles over participation and democratization played out in terms of the
procedural rules governing participation of non-state actors. Analyzing the evolution of
these rules provides evidence for the gains made by civil society in terms of new
participation rights. ITU resolution 73, which initiated the WSIS process, referred to
“various partners concerned (Member States, Sector Members, etc.),” and did not
mention civil society. The WSIS process thus began as a conventional summit, but in
December 2000 a senior ITU staff member told the Global Community Networking
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conference, a civil society conference being held in Barcelona, that there would be “full
participation” of civil society in the summit and that NGOs and civil society would be
key to the success of WSIS (Ó Siochrú, 2004a). Activists at the meeting began to
organize themselves in response.
In December 2001, the UN General Assembly began work on a framework for
participation at the WSIS. Each UN Summit decides on its own Rules of Procedure. Most
Rules of Procedure are similar, with differences involving the participation of the NGO
and business sector. The draft resolution for the WSIS read:
Encourages effective contributions from and the active participation of all
relevant United Nations bodies, in particular the Information and Communication
Technologies Task Force, and encourages other intergovernmental organizations,
including international and regional institutions, non-governmental organizations,
civil society and the private sector to cooperate actively with the Secretary-
General of the International Telecommunication Union in preparing for the
Summit (General Assembly draft resolution 56/183).

The draft resolution shows efforts to establish the ITU as having a predominant role. The
Communication Technologies Task Force
14
, which included governments and
nongovernmental actors, was involved in drafting the resolution. The only major changes
to the draft resolution concerned the above paragraph. The final text lessens the role of
the ITU and strengthens the role of nongovernmental actors. It reads:
Encourages effective contributions from and the active participation of all
relevant United Nations bodies, in particular the Information and Communication
Technologies Task Force, and encouraged other intergovernmental organizations,
including international and regional institutions, non-governmental organizations,

14
The task force was established in 2000 during a ECOSOC ministerial conference. The membership
structure, which included representatives from government, the private sector, and civil society, went
beyond traditional practices of the ECOSOC rules. The Task Force reflected the contention between the
ITU and other UN secretariats (Mathiason, 2009),
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civil society and the private sector to contribute to, and actively participate in, the
intergovernmental preparatory process of the Summit and the Summit itself”. (UN
General Resolution 56/183).

Thus, civil society and business were invited to cooperate in the planning and to actively
participate in the summit process. The first concrete step of this inclusion was the
establishment of a tripartite WSIS Secretariat that included three separate divisions – one
for each stakeholder: intergovernmental, business, and civil society. The Civil Society
Bureau was established by the WSIS Secretariat to serve as a “parallel structure” to the
Intergovernmental Bureau. It sought to institutionalize civil society. The creation of the
Civil Society Bureau set a precedent for creating a more institutionalized role for civil
society and highlights the official recognition of civil society as a participant in
international summits.
The UN institutionalized this tripartite distinction between governments, the
private sector and civil society, yet tensions in the institutionalization of civil society
participation remained. Milton Mueller (2010) examines the contradictions inherent in
this institutionalization and notes, “multistakeholder governance raises many institutional
issues, and WSIS civil society learned this the hard way as it stumbled into them” (p. 83).
The tripartite structure called for coordinated and unified responses from civil society,
which demanded some level of institutionalization. Thus, to deal with some of these
tensions, civil society created their own organizational structures and decision-making
procedures, which facilitated their entry in to the WSIS and strengthened their ability to
effectively participate.
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Organizational structures and processes matter. The inclusion of various
stakeholders in an institution does not determine how power is distributed and the extent
to which groups may participate in decision-making processes. Civil society wanted to
impact the institutions of Internet governance and the political process and chose to
institutionalize themselves into the WSIS. The structures and procedures facilitated the
production of proposals and recommendations. By creating formal organizational
structures, civil society “countered governmental efforts to deny direct communication
with civil society representatives by referring to the confusing and chaotic diversity of
[civil society organizations] and the illegitimacy of their spokespersons” (Kleinwachter,
2008, p. 555).
Furthermore, because diverse civil society organizations were present at the
WSIS, most of which had never worked with each other before, there was a need to
create organizational structures for the civil society sector. Civil society advocates knew
that unless they presented a unified voice, they were many individual NGOs with a
variety of uncoordinated proposals, which would be much easier for governments to
ignore (Interviews 8, 13, 16, 20).
The Civil Society Plenary was established as an open structure that had “ultimate
civil society authority in the WSIS process” (www.wsis-cs.org). The Content and Themes
Group involved a number of self-formed regional and thematic caucuses and working
groups, which produced statements as official civil society input to the negotiations.
Table 5.2 shows the general structure of WSIS civil society, table 5.3 shows the specific
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caucuses and working groups within the Content and Themes Group, and table 5.4 shows
the specific families within the Civil Society Bureau.
Table 5.2: Overall Structure of Civil Society at WSIS

Table 5.3: Content and Themes Groups: Working Groups and Caucuses

Procedural Body Content Body
Civil Society Bureau Civil Society Content and Themes Group
Civil Society Families Civil Society Working Groups and Caucuses
Decision-Making Body
Civil Society Plenary
Thematic Caucuses Regional Multi-Stakeholder
and Working groups Caucuses Caucuses
Cities and Local Authorities Caucus Africa Gender Caucus
Community Media Caucus
Cultural and Linguistic Diversity Caucus Asia Pacific Youth Caucus
E-Government/E-Democracy Caucus
Education and Research Caucus Europe
Environment and ICTs WG
Finance Caucus Latin America
Health and ICT WG
Implementation and Follow-Up WG North America
Human Rights Caucus
Indigenous Peoples Caucus Western Asia
Internet Governance Caucus and Middle East
Media Caucus
NGO Gender Strategies WG Arab Countries
Patents, Copyright and Trademarks WG
Persons with Disabilities Caucus
Privacy and Security WG
Scientific Information WG
Trade Union Caucus
Values and Ethics WG
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Thematic Families Regional Families
Creators and Promoters of Culture Africa
Cities and Local Authorities Asia and Pacific
Education, Academic and Research Europe and North America
Gender Latin American and Caribbean
Indigenous People Middle East and Western Asia
Multistakeholder Partnerships
NGOs
Networks and Coalitions
People with Disabilities
Philanthropic Partnerships
Science and Tecnology Community Media
Think Tanks
Trade Unions
Volunteer
Youth
Table 5.4: Civil Society Bureau: Families

Despite the wide-ranging interests, issues, and viewpoints present in the civil
society sector, civil society actors established structures and procedures to develop
bottom-up proposals and statements that represented a civil society voice. The internal
governance agreements of civil society are important characteristics, which may impact
the success and functioning of civil society (Perkin & Court, 2005). It is difficult to
achieve consensus in civil society, given the broad range of issues, groups, and political
stances. This underlines the need for clear agreements on issues, such as how decisions
are made, how disagreements are dealt with, membership, and other issues (Perkin &
Court, 2005). Internal network governance is important for civil society:
It is clear that at the global level ideals of ‘democratic’ communication – or
democratic anything – are not very meaningful until and unless the advocates of
democracy are able to propose and enact institutional mechanisms that can
facilitate deliberation, aggregate preferences, formulate norms and rules, elect and
depose legitimate representatives at a global level (Mueller et al., 2007, p. 292-3).

The WSIS/IGF civil society sector enacted such mechanisms, which facilitated their
participation in negotiations and legitimated their proposals.
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How did the WSIS civil society sector successfully self-organize and create a
workable internal governance arrangement? Individuals who emerged as civil society
leaders largely drove this process. There usually are no orders and directives issued from
the top, and there is little top-down strategizing. Action is largely based around
individuals, the basic unit of action, but collective action still takes place. A network of
actors from the Communication Rights in the Information Society (CRIS) campaign and
the Association for Progressive Communication (APC) emerged as the leaders in
coordinating civil society during the WSIS
15
(Interviews 10, 16). The APC covers the
broadest range of issues, compared to other civil society groups and organizations, and
this breadth may account for the centrality of APC in the network. The breadth of human
rights and communication rights provides advantages in framing issues and may account
for why these types of organizations are more successful than other groups with a
narrower focus.
CRIS led the effort to create bottom-up structures for civil society, and two CRIS
members coordinated the Content and Themes Group. CRIS principals and a member of
APC chaired the Civil Society Plenary. With CRIS activists serving in leadership
positions in the key civil society bodies, CRIS pushed forward their norms and agenda to
promote communication rights. Many of the ideas presented in civil society’s statements
and input to the official negotiations came from CRIS and APC. CRIS members were
also hired as consultants by the WSIS Secretariat to act as intermediaries and develop

15
The centrality of CRIS and APC actors is confirmed by Mueller et al.’s (2007) social network analysis
of individuals involved in the WSIS civil society. CRIS and APC actors were structurally dominant in the
WSIS civil society network. APC was a common link between almost all actors in the social network
analysis, and many organizations and groups had strong horizontal ties among themselves.
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proposals for civil society, thereby given the opportunity to enact their ideas of
participatory governance. Mueller (2010) comments on the role of CRIS organizers:
“Underscoring the interdependence of international institutions and international politics
and advocacy, the CRIS campaign’s principal actors…played an important role in
proposing, defining, and operating the very structures through which civil society
participated in the WSIS” (p. 87).
Despite the leading role of these actors, there was often disagreement among civil
society, and consensus could be difficult to achieve. For example, the World Press
Freedom Committee strongly opposed the CRIS campaign on the right to communicate.
Due to the organizational structure of civil society, which was open and decentralized,
actors could autonomously mobilize and participate, and this often constrained the ability
of leaders to put forward their ideology as the voice of the civil society sector. This
highlights some of the challenges inherent in the institutionalization of civil society
participation. Civil society were “forced to walk a fine line between, on the one hand, the
openness, diversity, and informality that are the hallmarks of civil society, and on the
other hand, the need for formal mechanisms for representation and decision making to be
effective in governance processes” (Mueller, 2010, p. 83). Problems of representation
affected all of civil society. For most of the bottom-up structures, there were no
formalized rules to elect representatives, replace or remove them. For example, the chair
of the Internet Rights and Principles Dynamic Coalition was the first person to get in to
the position and a new chair was elected only when the original chair decided to leave.
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This model of decentralized decision-making, facilitated by networked
communication, and based largely on individuals volunteering for positions, is an
example of network organization. This form of organization worked well for a small
group who shared ideological goals. The same was true of the early Internet and their
form of self- regulation, as analyzed above. For WSIS civil society, when the “structures
were confronted with larger-scale participation and real ideological and political
differences, they proved unwieldy or broke down” (Mueller, 2010, p. 100). An often-
cited example among WSIS civil society is the incident that occurred during PrepCom2
of the Tunis WSIS. In response to WSIS civil society’s criticisms of Tunisa’s human
rights and the government’s suppression of political dissent, a large number of Tunisian
organizations filled the Civil Society Plenary and challenged the legitimacy of WSIS civil
society’s decision to nominate a Tunisian speaker who was from a banned human rights
organization. The plenary chair was shouted down by the Tunisian news organizations. In
short, the under-institutionalized nature of civil society structures vis a vis government
structures led to conflicts. Nevertheless, the level of consensus and institutionalization
achieved demonstrates an “impressive level of ‘internal’ civil society cooperation,
organization, and dialogue” (Selian, 2004, p. 207).
Civil society organizational structures were created, but other problems remained,
and it was unclear what form contributions from civil society would take. Debates over
how civil society would participate in the WSIS continued throughout the Preparatory
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Committee (“PrepCom”) meetings
16
leading up to the WSIS. The first PrepCom was held
in July 2002 in Geneva. The focus was on process, not content, and the main debate
revolved around the rules for non-state actor participation. The role of nongovernmental
actors in the WSIS process was a controversy from the first day of the first PrepCom.
Government delegates debated for three days about whether non-governmental actors
could speak during sessions. There was general consensus among governments on the
principle of multi-stakeholderism, and public statements often praised multi-
stakeholderism as an innovative approach. When discussion moved from the concept of
multi-stakeholderism to concrete measures, many governments had reservations. Some
countries were hostile to civil society participation throughout the process. For example,
at a WSIS regional conference, China objected to the presence and participation of
Taiwanese NGOs. Pakistan also was hostile to the discussions and promotion of a greater
role for civil society at WSIS.
During PrepCom1, governments agreed on Rule 55 of the Rules of Procedure, which
stated, “Non-governmental organizations, civil society and business entities…may
designate representatives to sit as observers at public meetings of the Preparatory
Committee and its subcommittees.” Civil society organizations could now attend
meetings, but their role was reduced to “observers”. Two options for Rule 55 were
proposed; the first option gave NGOs limited status as observers, and the second option
gave NGOs a larger participatory role. The EU and U.S. preferred the latter, and the
majority of governments favored the more restrictive option, with Pakistan arguing on

16
Preparatory meetings are key events for intergovernmental summits. During these meetings most
procedural and substantive issues are solved, so that a final text may be brought to the final summit event.
137
behalf of developing countries. The EU and US eventually joined the majority and the
first option for Rule 55 was adopted.
Some governments, which had favored civil society participation, allowed civil
society to speak during sessions despite the official rule. In a 2002 European meeting, EU
governments allowed all sessions to be open to all stakeholders. In a 2002 Asian meeting,
the Japanese government bypassed WSIS procedures by not having a formal vote on the
Tokyo Declaration, and instead adopted the Declaration “by acclamation” of all those
present in the room, which included civil society and the private sector. These types of
practices also occurred in other regional meetings: the African meeting in 2002, the Latin
American meeting in 2003, and the West Asian meeting in 2003 (Kleinwachter, 2008). A
different practice than the procedures set forth in Rule 55 emerged as governments
encouraged this process of bypassing official procedural regulations. Because most of the
time during PrepCom2 was spent on procedural issues, work on the summit documents
was not started, so an additional WSIS intersessional meeting was held in July 2003.
During this meeting, one hour was reserved for non-state actor statements during each
plenary session, and nongovernmental delegates were allowed to stay in the room. Rule
55 stated that observers could be in “public meetings,” but it did not specify rules for
subworking groups. When the first working group on Internet governance met during the
intersessional meeting, no one monitored or enforced who came in the room. Thus, rule
55 was slowly implemented in a more flexible manner. Government participants raised
questions during the first meeting of the working group on Internet governance about IP
addresses and domain names. The president of a nongovernmental network that manages
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IP numbers for the Asian Pacific region took the floor and explained these basic
processes, thereby demonstrating how civil society may contribute expertise to Internet
governance debates.
PrepCom3 was well attended, with an increase of more than 100 participants
compared to PrepCom2, an increase that can be explained almost entirely by the rise of
NGO participation (see table 5.5). During PrepCom3 civil society were given broader
speaking rights, and in response to pressure from civil society, the WSIS Bureau decided
that “observers could attend the discussions in the Plenary and Working Group Meetings
and would be invited by the Chairperson to make brief statements.” Giving non-
governmental actors the right to speak and access to negotiations in UN meetings was
unusual (Mathiason, 2009). Civil society could now provide official inputs to the final
WSIS texts. This extends beyond the processes and practices of most UN summits,
highlighting the gains made by civil society in participating in international negotiations.
Table 5.5 Civil Society Participation in WSIS 2003. (Source: ITU).
Event Civil Society
participants
PrepCom 1 223
PrepCom 2 398
PrepCom3 537
Geneva Summit 3,418

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Why was civil society able to gain greater entry into the WSIS, as compared to other
summits? The WSIS presented an opportunity for civil society due to several factors.
Internal contradictions in the UN emerged because countries had different understandings
of key issues. Because intergovernmental negotiations depend on consensus, many key
issues would never be reached, since some countries wanted a regulatory framework that
would enable them to control the Internet, and other countries wanted a regulatory
framework that would promote and enforce free expression and a free and open Internet.
No consensus or compromise could be reached, and states were limited in making
progress on many key regulatory issues. A space was open to civil society, who had
fewer constraints and were able to internally agree on many issues. Furthermore, civil
society had to be included in Internet governance negotiations, if the negotiations were to
be seen as legitimate, since civil society has participated in governance of the Internet
from its earliest days.
The inclusion of civil society and the process of multi-stakeholder governance helped
democratize Internet governance international organizations by making them more open
and democratic. Indeed, global civil society and multi-stakeholder governance are two
common responses to the problem of democratizing international institutions (Mueller,
2010). What does the inclusion of non-state actors in the WSIS mean for wider
governance processes? The participation of civil society organizations represents a
“procedural revolution”(Kleinwachter, 2008, p. 538) that divided governments into those
that supported and those that rejected the participation of new actors. Rules regarding
participation of non-state actors are often controversial in international organizations,
140
since governments are reluctant to give access to organizations that may be antagonistic
to them (Mathiason, 2009). The controversy over nongovernmental participation in the
WSIS was more than a technical issue of “rules of procedure.” Wolfgang Kleinwachter
(2008) argues “governments began to realize that the opening up of the negotiation doors
for nongovernmental actors to an intergovernmental process represented a fundamental
political watershed with far-reaching consequences for the future of diplomacy in the
twenty-first century” (p. 548-9). The WSIS process introduced new principles and
procedures, which may be applied to other areas in global governance.

Civil Society Influence on Defining Internet Governance
The second area of civil society influence is on the definition of Internet
governance. This is important because how issues are defined impacts the solutions that
may be proposed and defines the range of issues to be dealt with. Civil society re-framed
(Snow & Benford, 1998) Internet governance debates in humanistic terms and broadened
the understanding of Internet governance from a focus on technical and infrastructural
issues to include human rights, civil liberties, and social issues. The WSIS process
resulted in a holistic view of Internet governance.
During the three PrepComs and Geneva summit, a definition of Internet
governance was not agreed upon, so a new body was established to define Internet
governance. The 2003 WSIS resulted in the adoption of the WSIS Declaration of
Principles and Plan of Action, both of which requested that the United Nations set up a
working group on Internet governance to define the concept and study the issues in more
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depth. Civil society advocated for a multi-stakeholder group and opposed a purely
intergovernmental model, and they submitted a statement to the WSIS Summit, arguing,
“Only a truly open, multistakeholder, and flexible approach can ensure the Internet’s
continued growth.” Aware that precedents were being set, the UN Secretariat held an
open consultation to gain consensus on the structure of the group in September 2004. The
consultation was attended by 165 governmental representatives, 52 intergovernmental
organizations, 19 businesses, and 44 NGO participants. After “a long diplomatic battle
about its composition” (Kleinwachter, 2008, p. 567), a multi-stakeholder body was
created – the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG). The WGIG was
composed of forty members, with over a third coming from civil society. The agreement
to have a multi-stakeholder body, instead of an intergovernmental body, was a
“revolutionary” decision (Mathiason, 2009), since working groups established by world
summits are traditionally an intergovernmental group composed of member states.
The mandate for the WGIG, as laid out in the Geneva Plan of Action was to:
i) develop a working definition of Internet governance,
ii) identify the public policy issues that are relevant to Internet governance;
iii) develop a common understanding of the respective roles and responsibilities
of governments, existing intergovernmental and international organizations
and other forums as well as the private sector and civil society from both
developing and developed countries;
iv) prepare a report on the results of this activity (Article 13, paragraph B).

The WGIG held a series of meetings and open consultations between November 2004
and July 2005. Stakeholders working together to reach consensus was a constant tension
during the WGIG meetings. In traditional UN working groups, the positions of
governments are for the most part known. However, in the WGIG, there was conflict
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within and among stakeholders, as well as tensions caused by the different decision
making procedures of governmental and nongovernmental groups. Governmental “law-
making culture” is more of a top-down process, whereas nongovernmental “code-making
culture” is more of a bottom-up process (Kleinwachter, 2008).
The main debate in the WGIG revolved around a definition of Internet governance
and the scope of governance. Debates over a broad versus narrow view of what is
covered by governance took place, and consensus emerged to take a broader view and see
governance as more than government activity. Comments were solicited from
stakeholders. Thirty-four comments were received – four from governments, six from
international organizations, eight from private sector organizations, nine from NGOs, and
seven from individual contributors. Civil society put forward suggestions that a definition
of Internet governance be broad and encompass public policy issues.
The WGIG issued its final report in July 2005. The working definition of Internet
governance is: “the development and application by governments, the private sector and
civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making
procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet.” The
definition makes clear that Internet governance includes a wider variety of actors than
just governments. Civil society and the private sector are also key stakeholders. The
WGIG agreed that Internet governance required collaboration and coregulatory models.
The overarching principle of the Internet governance definition is multi-stakeholderism,
which reflects the understanding of the WGIG members that neither governmental top-
down regulation nor nongovernmental bottom-up self-regulation alone can manage all
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Internet issues. The WGIG report defined roles and responsibilities of the stakeholders,
but did not recommend specific procedures for interaction.
The definition also includes more than technical decision-making, and Internet
governance “includes other significant public policy issues, such as critical Internet
resources, the security and safety of the Internet, and development aspects and issues.”
The WGIG outlined four policy areas that were objects of Internet governance, as
discussed earlier. This agreement on the broader definition illustrates an evolution of the
concept of Internet governance from only technical issues to including public policy
issues that affect Internet users. Prior to the WSIS, Internet governance was equated
mainly with Internet identifiers, ICANN, and technical issues. This definition
“overlooked the fact that there are various internationally shared private- and public-
sector principles, norms, rules, procedures, and programs that shape both the Internet’s
infrastructure and use for communication and commerce” (Drake & Jorgensen, 2006, p.
34). As the importance of the Internet in people’s lives has grown, a variety of actors
realized that the Internet transforms many activities. As a result, actors demanded to
widen the policy parameters of Internet governance, and the WSIS was a “significant and
controversial recognition of this growing global importance” (Dutton & Peltu, 2009, p.
384). The prior technical focus of regulation, the “old technocratic politics” of the
Internet (Dutton & Peltu, 2009), shifted to acknowledge the political dynamics that shape
the Internet.
Civil society helped shift the focus from infrastructure to people and public policy
issues. Civil society participants were often the “best informed and most active and
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influential members” (Mueller, 2007). Civil society drove WGIG discussions by
influencing the internal agenda, dominating online discussion groups, and producing the
majority of background issue papers (Kleinwachter, 2008). The WGIG and working
definition resulted in a “fundamental rethinking of the character and scope of Internet
governance” (Drake & Jorgensen, 2006, p. 34). Indeed, the WSIS was a turning point for
Internet governance, and one of the most significant impacts of the WSIS is on how
people think about the field of Internet governance. The WSIS process made
governments, international organizations, the private sector and civil society consider
Internet governance holistically. Because of the WSIS, “the Internet and its governance
were considered in a way that cut across multiple policy domains and multiple
international institutions. This was new” (Mueller, 2010).

Civil Society Influence on Internet Governance Issues: Promoting Human
Rights
The third area of civil society influence on Internet governance negotiations is on
specific Internet governance regulatory issues, namely creating a governance framework
for the “humanization” of Internet governance through the acknowledgement of human
rights
17
. The Human Rights Caucus and the CRIS campaign are two groups that put
communication rights on the WSIS agenda. Both tried to bring about a new
understanding and re-frame the issues by linking human rights to communication, which

17
Weber (2010) identifies four main Internet governance regulatory issues: critical resources and access;
the protection of civil liberties and humanization of Internet governance; security issues; and the digital
divide.
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was a connection that many government delegates “would have been hard pressed to see”
(Drake & Jorgensen, 2006, p. 6). Some actors saw human rights in terms of access to the
Internet and communication, but civil society was advocating for much more – that
communication be seen as a fundamental human right. Human rights are the only
universally recognized system of values. They are seen as fundamentally important as
well as a framing device to garner support for a humanistic approach to communication
policy.
Before continuing with an analysis of civil society’s influence on the human
rights agenda, this section discusses existing legal frameworks for human rights, the
connection between human rights and communication, and the relationship between
human rights and the Internet. Human rights are global in scope and deal with the dignity
of all people and their equal rights. As the 1993 Vienna Declaration and Programme of
Action states, human rights are “universal, indivisible, interdependent and interrelated”
(UN Doc. A/CONF.157/23). Prior to World War II, human rights were seen as a
domestic concern. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948,
“universalized the global concern for a set of inalienable human rights” (Weber, 2010, p.
209). This institutionalization of human rights standards is “one of the most important
normative shifts in world politics since World War II (Drake & Jorgensen, 2006, p. 7).
Human rights provide a “universally available set of standards for the dignity and
integrity of all human beings” (Hamelink, 1994). These standards are based on the
principles of freedom, equality, inclusiveness, diversity, and participation. The right to
communicate is often seen as a prerequisite for other human rights – a sentiment found in
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the MacBride Report (1980). The MacBride Report considers free expression as the most
important human right and notes that it implies three principles: the right to impart and
publish news and information, the right to seek and to obtain information, and the right to
be informed. Reviews of the status of human rights support the link between human
rights and communication. Ank Linden (1996) argues that the frequency of the
occurrence in human rights documents of the rights to freedom of expression, freedom of
association, and political participation, which are seen as representative core human
rights, “has led scholars to call for the original human right of freedom of expression and
information to be expanded into a human right to communicate (para. 13)”
Communication rights are linked to several types of human rights. These include
rights promoting public participation, such as freedom of expression, the right to
information, and the universal access to information and knowledge. Communication as a
basic human right is recognized in Article 19 of the UDHR, which declares that
“everyone has the right to freedom of expression and opinion; this right includes the
freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart
information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” Article 19
recognizes communication as a social process that has an impact on political, cultural,
and economic life.
The Internet provides opportunities and challenges for individuals to exercise
human rights. The Internet challenges traditional conceptions of information rights, such
as freedom of speech, copyright, universal access, cultural, lingual, minority diversity,
and privacy (McIver, Birdsall, & Rasmussen, 2004). In the context of the global Internet,
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protecting freedom of expression “regardless of frontiers” takes on new meaning, for
example.
The Internet may be used to promote human rights. Research shows how the
Internet enables further promotion of human rights, since it can be used as a tool to obtain
and disseminate information (Halpin, Hick, & Hoskins, 2000). The Internet allows
human rights organizations to work together more effectively using the Internet, it allows
groups to exchange messages, and it enables networks and new constituencies to form.
Aside from the Internet acting as a tool for human rights advocacy and protection, there
are efforts to incorporate human rights in to a policy framework for the Internet. During
the WSIS, civil society advocated for a regulatory approach that uses human rights as a
yardstick to judge and create policy. These activities and inputs to the international
negotiations are now addressed.
Civil society formed the Human Rights Caucus in 2002 in preparation for the
WSIS to ensure that human rights be part of the WSIS agenda. The Human Rights
Caucus submitted a report through the Civil Society Coordination Group and proposed
that the theme of “Rights, Responsibilities, and Governance” be included on the agenda
(Civil Society Statement to PrepCom 2 on Vision, Principles, Themes and Process for
WSIS.) Placing human rights on the WSIS agenda was novel, given the initial focus on
technical matters.
The Human Rights Caucus also submitted a report, “Towards a Respectful
Information and Community Society,” which recommended that the international human
rights embodied in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the
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International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, both of which were
adopted by the international community in 1966, be translated into precise guarantees
defined in the WSIS Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action. The Caucus proposed
that references be made to how the rights relate to information and communication
technologies, and highlighted the following rights as relevant for the development of an
information society: the right to privacy, the right to freedom of expression, the right to
be protected against discrimination, the right to a fair trial, the right to peaceful assembly,
the right to take part in public affairs, the right for minorities to enjoy their own culture
and use their own language, the right to education and knowledge, and the right to
participate in cultural life.
The CRIS campaign played a role in placing rights on the WSIS agenda and
framing issues to include a human rights dimension. The CRIS campaign created the
foundations for a human rights based approach to governance (Interviews 1, 10, 16),
which has remained a core theme for civil society and which gained momentum during
the Internet Governance Forums. Shortly after the launch of the CRIS campaign, the
Platform on Communication Rights organized a meeting of civil society in Geneva in
November 2001 to discuss the issues and process of WSIS. The meeting’s theme was
“Communication as a Human Right in the Information Society: Issues for the WSIS.”
Participants critiqued the original WSIS agenda for being primarily concerned with
technical and infrastructure issues and for not including the rights of users. Before WSIS
began, civil society attempted to frame the discussions to include communication rights
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and human rights. Representatives from the ITU and UNESCO came to the second day of
the meeting, which represents the first WSIS civil society consultation.
The CRIS campaign was a key agenda setter of the right to communicate and
communication rights. The CRIS campaign brought communication rights on to the
global agenda. When the right to communicate was dropped as an agenda item from
UNESCO in the 1980s, the debate continued only inside of NGO meetings. When CRIS
raised the issue during WSIS, the right to communicate re-entered the international scene.
Efforts to shape the agenda included holding various workshops and seminars on the
right to communicate. These events allowed CRIS to influence the planning and agenda
of WSIS. CRIS developed proposals for content and themes for the WSIS, put together a
series of short presentations of major themes that were translated into multiple languages,
and developed a communication rights “handbook” that was translated into multiple
languages and distributed at the WSIS and to a broader audience in multiple countries. As
evidenced by the inclusion of the right to communicate in many of the formal and
informal debates during the WSIS, the CRIS campaign placed communication rights on
the agenda (Interviews 5, 10, 16, 23).
The CRIS campaign did not influence the outcome of negotiations, since the right
to communicate was not included in the final text of the WSIS Declaration, which reads,
“Communication is a fundamental social process a basic human need and the foundation
of all social organization.” CRIS did influence discursive positions. During the WSIS
process, the right to communicate was endorsed by key actors. The European
Commission said, “The Summit should reinforce the right to communication and to
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access information and knowledge” (European Commission, 2002, para. 6). On World
Telecommunications Day in 2003, Kofi Annan, UN Secretary-General, said “millions of
people in the poorest countries are still excluded from the ‘right to communicate’,
increasingly seen as a fundamental human right” (United Nations, 2003). Such statements
provide evidence that communication rights were put on the agenda and supported by
actors within civil society and government. The broader framing of human rights, versus
the right to communicate, was more successful in terms of being reflected in final
negotiations, as discussed below.

The Constitution for the Information Society
In addition to influencing the agenda and framing of issues, civil society
influenced the outcome of the negotiations, as evidenced through the inclusion of civil
society positions in the final texts or drafts of the texts. The agreements that resulted from
the WSIS are the Declaration of Principles and the Plan of Action. Swiss President Pascal
Couchepin called these documents a “constitution for the information society”, and
scholars have called them the “first political Constitution of Cyberspace” (Jorgensen,
2006). The agreements also represent the lowest common denominator, since concessions
and compromises were made for the final drafts. Nonetheless, they have discursive
effects and shape policy discourse. Raboy (2004a) argues that the WSIS represented a
“politics of definition” and provides a “lexicon for speaking about the information
society” (p. 348). Defining issues, identifying problems, articulating an agenda, and
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suggesting solutions are all relevant elements for future policy prescriptions and the
creation of an Internet governance regime.
Several civil society issues and positions are reflected in the final agreements,
such as: the notion of the Internet as a public good, the position that civil society should
be an active participant in Internet governance and the principle of multi-stakeholderism,
the perspective that Internet governance should be “people centered”, and the importance
of human rights. Civil society strongly advocated for viewing the Internet as a public
good, and this explicit term was included in the first revised draft of the Declaration of
Principles
18
: “The Internet has evolved into a global public [good]/ [infrastructure]/
[resource] and its governance should constitute a core issue of the Information Society
agenda”. As negotiations continued and governments argued over nearly every
significant wording choice, the term “public good” was removed from the draft, because
governments and the private sector were concerned about regulation if the Internet was
labeled as a public good. The final text reads: “The Internet has evolved into a global
facility available to the public and its governance should constitute a core issue of the
Information Society agenda.”
The Civil Society Coalition’s position on the need to have an open process and
involvement from civil society was included in the Plan of Action. It read, “Multilateral,
transparent and democratic Internet governance should form part of this effort, taking
into account the needs of the public and private sectors, as well as those of civil society.”
The principle of multi-stakeholderism, which civil society had supported and advocated

18
In the United Nations, texts that are not yet agreed upon as shown in square brackets ([]).
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for throughout the PrepComs, was included in the Declaration of Principles. The first
principle of the Geneva Declaration reads “Government, as well as private sector, civil
society and the United Nations and other international organisations have an important
role and responsibility in the development of the Information Society and, as appropriate,
in the decision making process.” Paragraph 3 of the Plan of Action discussed the role of
various stakeholders. Paragraph 48 of the Geneva Declaration states “International
management of the Internet should be multilateral, transparent and democratic with the
full involvement of governments, the private sector, civil society and international
organizations.”
Another example of civil society influence on outcomes is the inclusion of key
civil society concepts such as “people-centered” in the final WSIS Declaration. The first
paragraph describes a “common desire and commitment to build a people-centered,
inclusive and development-oriented Information Society” that would be “premised on the
purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and respecting fully and
upholding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” Thus, people and their rights are
placed at the forefront of the information society, and civil society was successful in
shifting the focus from infrastructure to people and in giving the Declaration of Principles
a people-centered orientation.
Civil society sought to place human rights on the agenda and frame issues so that
there was an understanding of the connection between communication and human rights.
The final agreements reflect these positions, and the WSIS Declaration contains
references to the importance of human rights. Paragraph 3 of the WSIS Declaration of
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Principles references the universality of “all human rights and fundamental freedoms”,
and communication as a “fundamental social process”. Complete reference to the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 19 was made in the Declaration of
Principles, but this occurred only after many efforts by civil society and lobbying to
include this reference, and was only agreed upon in the last few days before the Summit.
A leader of an active civil society group explains the process. He notes how the
original text was “rather spongy without anything substantial” (Interview 28), and did
not reaffirm what is already internationally approved by the UDHR. The Civil Society
Media Caucus edited a draft and submitted it to the Swiss delegation, and the Swiss
delegation introduced it as their official input to the PrepCom3 negotiation process. The
interviewee notes, “this, to us, was the first visible success of our lobbying efforts”
(Interview 28). The Swiss proposal sought to strengthen freedom of expression, a
position supported by the United States and Norway. Other countries, such as China,
Saudi Arabia and Cuba, objected to such initiatives. These countries did not want
unqualified support for human rights in the final documents. Specifically, they wanted
references to Article 19 and freedom of expression or information to be qualified by a
phrase such as “subject to national law” or “culturally appropriate.” Cuba suggested the
following text:
The exercise of the right to freedom of opinion and expression carries with it
special duties and responsibilities, and it may therefore be subject to certain
restrictions provided by law for respect of the rights or reputations of others and
for the protection of national security or public order, or of public health or
morals (Cuban Delegation, 2003).

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Such a qualification to national law nullifies a universal right. All of the essential
assertions from the Swiss proposal were set in brackets again, marking others’ objections.
It took days of negotiations (through PrepCom3 and supplementary back-to-back
meetings prior to the WSIS) to agree on the final text (Interview 28). There was broad
agreement from most governments, except from the aforementioned countries that
continuously blocked meaningful wording. With pressure from western countries, all
governmental delegations finally agreed to a reference of UDHR in the WSIS Declaration
of Principles.
Civil society also focused on the right to privacy, but efforts to include the right to
privacy were less successful. The Privacy and Security Working Group and the Human
Rights Caucus advocated for the insertion of a paragraph specifically devoted to privacy.
Debates in the intergovernmental drafting group focused on security, and no delegation
wanted to insist on privacy language (Bendrath & Jorgensen, 2006). Privacy was later
mentioned in the summit declaration, but only as a minor reference. Privacy received
limited formal recognition in the Declaration compared to other civil liberties, such as
freedom of expression.
This can be explained in part because the WSIS summits occurred in the context
of the “war on terror.” In such a climate with a heightened focus on security, the issue of
security versus privacy gained new prominence. Security and privacy are often discussed
in a zero-sum paradigm. Some have questioned the dichotomy between privacy and
security and suggest that giving up privacy does not necessarily result in greater security,
and greater security need not require a loss of privacy. Nevertheless, the tension between
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privacy and security may explain why privacy did not receive as much attention in the
WSIS, despite efforts by civil society groups to advocate for strong protection of privacy.

The Civil Society Declaration
Many members of civil society felt that their initial interventions into debates
were successful, but became frustrated when their positions and thematic proposals were
removed from drafts. During PrepCom3, governments redrafted and circulated the
official documents. A comparison of the redrafted documents with the civil society
recommendations showed that 80 percent of civil society recommendations were ignored
(Kleinwachter, 2008). As a result, some civil society participants called for a counter
summit, protests, and for civil society to leave the summit (Interview 16). In September
2003, civil society released a statement “Does Input Lead to Impact?” in which they
discussed how civil society provided much input but had little impact on the official text.
As dissatisfaction rose, the impossibility to have one final document negotiated by
governments and endorsed by civil society, as intended by UN Resolution 56/183, was
made clear. Civil society announced during a press conference in 2003 that they would
make no further contributions to the texts. Instead, they developed their own document –
the Civil Society Declaration.
PrepCom President Adama Samassekou referred to plans of civil society
organizations to issue their own version of the official WSIS declaration as “blackmail.”
On December 8, 2003, a day before governments finalized their documents, civil society
adopted a Civil Society Declaration, “Shaping Information Societies for Human Needs,”
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which called for a people centered communication society, versus a business oriented
information society.
Civil society agreed upon this declaration and a shared set of principles in two
months, compared to the stalled governmental process, demonstrating the higher level of
coherence and shared agendas within civil society. Some governments encouraged civil
society to work on their own declaration and establish positions on human rights, which
was an area where consensus among governments could only be reached at a low level.
Consensus is needed for intergovernmental final negotiations, and governments were
only able to agree on a number of issues, and more often had to agree to disagree on key
issues. Civil society had more flexibility to agree on a text.
Civil society issued their own declaration despite critiques of blackmail, showing
their strength and commitment (Selian, 2004). There are different approaches to intervene
in advocacy issues; some civil society organizations tend to operate outside of official
international negotiations and other civil society organizations seek to interact directly
with international institutions. In this case, there was a middle ground within this
inside/outside dichotomy. Civil society sought to engage directly with and influence the
global institutions and governance processes during the WSIS process, but as their
frustration grew, they stopped providing input to the official declaration and issued their
own declaration, which critiqued the government and business agendas.
The Civil Society Declaration argued that an information and communication
society should be based on human rights and human dignity. The declaration “rejects at a
fundamental level, the solely profit-motivated and market-propelled promotion of
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information and communication technologies for development”. Civil society also
released a statement on the outcomes of WSIS and said, “much more could have been
achieved” (Civil Society Plenary, 2005). The statement notes that WSIS did not
adequately address issues of funding ICT4D, gender equality, community media, free
software, cultural diversity, and public service.
More was not achieved because of the power of governments and disagreements
among governments. Civil society provided inputs and had more involvement in
negotiations than previous UN summits, but the dominance of traditional government
was still strong. A civil society member closely involved in the eighteen-month struggle
to keep references to Article 19 in the WSIS Declaration notes the frustration of civil
society when they realized that their expectations did not line up with the global reality of
governments that were not interested in an open Internet (Interview 16). Nonetheless, the
final agreements reflect some of civil society’s key positions, providing evidence for civil
society’s influence on the outcome of the negotiations.

The 2005 Tunis Summit
The WGIG report became the basis of the final negotiations for the Tunis summit.
The broader definition of Internet governance as laid out in the WGIG report facilitated
connections between human rights and Internet governance. Human rights received more
attention during Phase 2 of WSIS than Phase 1. Human rights standards were noted in the
WGIG internal debates and in the WGIG background report, which made two specific
references to human rights. The WGIG main report states, “Measures taken in relation to
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the Internet on grounds of security…can lead to violations of the provisions for freedom
of expression as contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the
WSIS Declaration of Principles.”
During the PrepComs leading up to the 2005 WSIS, the Human Rights Caucus
continued making interventions to frame Internet governance as including human rights.
Governments mentioned human rights principles on occasion, a new development from
the 2003 summit. Just as there were conflicts during the first WSIS, many of the same
were repeated during the Tunis Summit, with some countries pushing for stronger
freedom of expression proposals and others seeking to qualify any references to free
expression. No consensus could be reached with divergent understandings of rights, and
the deadlock meant that neither side was able to strengthen their positions. A last minute
compromise was reached, and the Tunis Commitment pointed to the agreed text of the
Geneva Declaration. There were no restrictions or qualifications to freedom of
expression, but there were also no references to more substantive proposals on freedom
of expression. The Tunis Commitment reaffirmed the Geneva Declaration’s paragraph 4
on freedom of expression. Governments agreed on the following statement:
We reaffirm our commitment to the freedom to seek, receive, impart and use
information, in particular, for the creation, accumulation and dissemination of
knowledge. We affirm that measures undertaken to ensure Internet stability and
security, to fight cybercrime and to counter spam, must protect and respect the
provisions for privacy and freedom of expression as contained in the relevant
parts of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Declaration
of Principles (Tunis Agenda, 2005).

Paragraph 4 of the Tunis Commitment references the universality and interrelation of all
human rights and freedoms. Paragraph 2 of the Tunis Commitment confirms States’
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“desire and commitment to build a people-centered, inclusive and development-oriented
Information Society premised on the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United
Nations, international law and multilateralism, and respecting fully and upholding the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights” (Tunis Commitment, 2005).
Human rights took center stage at the Tunis Summit. Not only were human rights
placed on the WSIS agenda in regards to Internet governance, but human rights in the
host country itself were a source of much controversy. The decision to hold the second
WSIS summit in Tunisia is noteworthy for the country’s human rights record. Long
before the actual 2005 summit, dozens of free speech groups and Internet activists
questioned the suitability of Tunisia to hold the WSIS. During the summit, these concerns
were proven justified in light of attacks on freedom of expression, harassment of
delegates, attacks on Tunisian and international journalists and human rights defenders,
denial of entry to the country, the blocking of websites, the censorship of documents and
speeches, and the prevention and disruption of meetings.

Internet Governance Forum
The issue of how to govern the Internet was not solved during the summits, and
there was consensus that a forum was needed to grapple with Internet governance issues.
The forum’s structure was contentious, as was the case with the WSIS and WGIG
structure, reflecting the continued battles over power distribution and participation of
various actors. Predictably, governments proposed an inter-governmental structure where
civil society would have an advisory role. With opposition from civil society, as well as
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from the United States, which sought continued oversight of ICANN, the notion of an
intergovernmental council died out. A proposal was agreed upon to “examine the
establishment of a new space for policy dialogue – the Internet Governance Forum
(IGF).” The IGF was the result of a compromise solution between the political positions
of four parties active in the WSIS (Mueller, 2010). First, state actors from the developing
world wanted state-centric changes to Internet governance arrangements. Second, state
and private sector actors from the developed world wanted an end to U.S. unilateral
control, but did not want a traditional intergovernmental institution to take over
governance. Third, civil society actors wanted to institutionalize their participation in
international Internet governance. Fourth, U.S.-led state and private actors wanted to
maintain the pre-WSIS arrangement. All groups agreed to the formation of the Internet
Governance Forum to promote “multi-stakeholder policy dialogue.” The Tunis Agenda
set out a mandate for the Internet Governance Forum (Tunis Agenda, Paragraph 72):
• Discuss public policy issues related to key elements of Internet governance in
order to foster the sustainability, robustness, security, stability and development
of the Internet;
• Facilitate discourse between bodies dealing with different cross-cutting
international public policies regarding the Internet and discuss issues that do not
fall within the scope of any existing body;
• Interface with appropriate inter-governmental organizations and other institutions
on matters under their purview;
• Facilitate the exchange of information and best practices, and in this regard make
full use of the expertise of the academic, scientific and technical communities;
• Advise all stakeholders in proposing ways and means to accelerate the availability
and affordability of the Internet in the developing world;
• Strengthen and enhance the engagement of stakeholders in existing and/or future
Internet governance mechanisms, particularly those from developing countries;
• Identify emerging issues, bring them to the attention of the relevant bodies and the
general public, and, where appropriate, make recommendations;
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• Contribute to capacity building for Internet governance in developing countries,
drawing fully on local sources of knowledge and expertise;
• Promote and assess, on an ongoing basis, the embodiment of WSIS principles in
Internet governance processes;
• Discuss, inter alia, issues relating to critical Internet resources;
• Help to find solutions to the issues arising from the use and misuse of the Internet,
of particular concern to everyday users;
• Publish its proceedings.

The Tunis Agenda mandated a decentralized, nonbinding and lightweight multi-
stakeholder structure to be created – the Internet Governance Forum. A founder of an
active civil society organization and member of various civil society and
intergovernmental organizations suggests that “without the expertise of the former Civil
Society Internet Caucus and many of its members (like Jeanette Hofmann, Adam Peake,
Wolfgang Kleinwächter, Avri Doria, Bill Drake, Milton Mueller, Hans Klein and many
more), there would not have been such a concept of a new Internet Governance Forum”
(Interview 28). According to the analytical framework proposed earlier, the establishment
of an institution that facilitates civil society participation provides evidence for influence
of civil society on the outcomes of negotiations.
The IGF represents a new type of institution. It constitutes “a clear departure from
sovereignty-based forms of international organization” and is notable because all
governments, even the most authoritarian, “agreed to abandon a privileged and exclusive
role for themselves and to participate in Internet policy discussions on roughly equal
terms with civil society and business participants” (Mueller, 2010, p. 107). With the
formation of the IGF, the WSIS process “launched an audacious experiment in multi-
stakeholder governance at the international level for which there is little precedent”
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(Mathiason, 2009, p. 127). There is no clear model for the IGF, with the closest models
being the OECD, the IETF, and the UN Forestry Forum (Mueller, 2010). Theoretically,
the IGF can be understood as a network organization, and specifically as a “global public
policy network” (Reinicke, 1997). Both of these concepts are often used by international
relations scholars to describe civil society advocacy involvement in global governance
and new forms of government transnational cooperation (Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Mueller,
2010).
Civil society continued to advocate for a human rights based approach to Internet
governance during the IGF. The transnational policy networks formed around WSIS were
consolidated during the IGF (Interviews; Mueller, 2010). There was an increase of human
rights on the IGFs’ agenda (Interviews 10,18). There were several workshops on freedom
of expression, human rights, and privacy and data protection during the 2006 IGF in
Athens. The number of workshops and meetings which focused on freedom of expression
and human rights issues increased during the 2007 IGF in Rio, the 2008 IGF in
Hyderbad, and the 2009 IGF in Sharm El Sheikh. A range of stakeholders in the 2009
plenary sessions reaffirmed the importance of upholding human rights in the Internet age
(Interviews 27, 28). The WSIS and IGF provided opportunities for the human rights
community to interact more with the technical and media community, which prior to the
WSIS, was a “missing link” (Drake & Jorgensen, 2006; Interviews 2, 18, 23, 24). The
WSIS and IGF also provided opportunities to place these issues on the agenda and to
form broader networks of advocates.

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Internet Rights and Principles Dynamic Coalition
A well-known initiative to strengthen human rights on the Internet is the approach
taken by the Internet Rights and Principles (IRP) Dynamic Coalition. The dynamic
coalition organized events at the IGF meetings to discuss human rights and develop
concrete proposals for an Internet Bill of Rights. The IRP sought to include Internet
rights and principles as a main session during the IGF, since human rights were
previously discussed only in workshops. The IGF secretariat and the Multi-stakeholder
Advisory Group (which is responsible for convening the Internet Governance Forums)
heard calls for a main session on Internet rights in the open consultations leading up to
the IGF in 2008 and 2009. Desai Nitin, the Special Adviser to the United Nations
Secretary-General for Internet Governance, commented on the need to incorporate human
rights discussions further into the agenda (Interview 19). A main session was not
allocated to human rights, but human rights received more attention in recent meetings.
The IRP built alliances with related IGF coalitions and the secretariat to achieve a
more prominent position for rights in IGF discussions (Interviews 2, 11). The coalition
seeks to form alliances between issue networks and organizations. Much of the IGF is
divided into “silos”, with academics, human rights experts, privacy advocates and other
actors all working separately. The dynamic coalition seeks to “build bridges between
these different stakeholders” (Interview 10). Just as the CRIS campaign was successful
during the WSIS in bringing together a range of actors and issues under the umbrella of
communication rights, the IRP was successful in working with a range of actors, because
so many issues and organizations’ work falls under the banner of human rights. Small
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civil society organizations, aware of their inability to influence the agenda on their own,
joined the IRP to give them a larger collective voice (Interview 13).
An initiative of the dynamic coalition is the establishment of an Internet Rights
Charter. The Charter is a collaboration between the Association for Progressive
Communication (APC) and the IRP. The APC created a Charter in 2006, and joined
forces with the dynamic coalition in 2009 to update the Charter. The Charter builds on
the WSIS Declaration of Principles and aims to build a people-centered information
society, which upholds fundamental human rights that are enshrined in the UDHR. The
Charter points to UDHR articles and principles, which are proposed as criteria to uphold
and protect human rights on the Internet, and to ensure that the Internet continues to
evolve in a way that supports and expands these rights. The charter may guide how policy
recommendations are formulated in the IGF.
In order to draft the Charter, rights from the existing UDHR were selected that
participants found to be meaningful for the online environment. After listing articles from
the UDHR, they were discussed in an online context. Finally, principles were discussed,
since principles “are necessary to enable users to enjoy their rights” (APC wiki, 2009).
All members of the IRP were asked to contribute to the Charter. There were occasional
conference calls and discussions via mailing lists to coordinate activities. In practice, a
few key members worked on making changes, despite pleas from the chair for others to
help (Interviews 1, 18, 22; IRP mailing list). As is the case with most civil society
organizations, IRP members volunteer their own time, so it can be difficult to coordinate
and accomplish tasks such as this. At the time of this writing, the Charter is being
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reviewed by a group of human rights experts. The expert group will review the Charter to
ensure that it is consistent with existing human rights agreements, and will take inputs
from the Internet Rights and Principles dynamic coalition members, the broader Internet
governance community, and the human rights community.
In addition to the international IGFs, there are regional IGFs, such as the
European Dialogue on Internet Governance, which held its second annual meeting in
Geneva in September 2009. At the European Dialogue on Internet Governance, human
rights were a European priority, shared by civil society and government. During the two-
day meeting, numerous references were made to human rights by civil society groups, the
private sector, and government officials. The Council of Europe produced a summary
document of the meetings, in which the key messages were discussed. It notes, “these
messages are not a negotiated text but are seen by EuroDig organizers as the key
messages from Europe into the global debate” (Council of Europe, 2009, p. 3). The
importance of human rights was one of these key messages:
Human rights and the rule of law were considered to be fundamental issues in
Internet governance with attention given to how best to implement and
consolidate existing human rights standards in this context. The public value of
the Internet as an infrastructure on which citizens increasingly rely for their
social, economic and political development was highlighted as well as
governments’ key responsibilities in guaranteeing their citizen’s rights and
freedoms online.

There is general agreement among Europeans that human rights should be included as
key criteria of Internet governance policy. This consensus is not shared among other
regions and countries. Despite putting human rights on the agenda, there is still
disagreement about human rights, due to the political sensitivity of issues and because
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some consider human rights to be too legalistic (Interviews 1, 8, 19, 23). There are also
differences in goals between the north and the south, which lead to divisions among civil
society (Interview 8, 23). Among developing countries, access is a key concern, and the
notion of how human rights may be applied to or enforced on the Internet is not a
priority.

Conditioning Factors
Civil society influenced the agenda and substantive issues of final agreements,
and the most significant effects are seen in the incorporation of human rights and
references to a people centered Internet. Why have these issues gained more attention and
attracted greater mobilization over other issues (such as disability, gender, and youth, for
example)? There are several factors that condition civil society influence. Factors are
distinguished between those that focus on the characteristics of civil society organizations
(agency), and those that focus on the context (structure). Agent based and structure based
conditioning factors are connected and cannot always be clearly separated.
Agent based factors that condition civil society organizations’ influence include
the use of certain strategies or the availability of resources. First, insider strategies were
more effective than outsider strategies. The distinction between direct insider strategies,
such as lobbying and engagement with policy-making processes, and indirect outsider
strategies, such as protests, was previously discussed. Some sectors of civil society
participated in outside events, such as WSIS?WeSeize!, the Citizens Summit, the World
Electronic Media Forum, and the Community Media Forum (Hintz, 2009). These events
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led to stronger ties within civil society, but did not lead to influence on official debates or
the policy process.
Second, the availability of key resources is related to influence. Funding is an
important resource, but time and expertise are also key resources. Many of the
interviewees noted that civil society action occurred when individuals had time to work
on projects. Most civil society actors are volunteering their time, and there are often more
worthy projects and campaigns than time available to devote to them. Expertise and
professionalization are other resources, and civil society actors who are familiar with the
procedures and language of international negotiations are more likely to successfully
influence the negotiations. Members of the APC had much experience in dealing with
government and with such type of forums, and they were able to influence the agenda and
framing of issues in ways that organizations new to such meetings and types of
negotiations were not. APC members were instrumental in guiding other civil society
actors through the bureaucratic process.
The scope of an organization or network was also related to influence. Groups
which had a narrow focus, such as working on Internet access for people with disabilities,
were able to exert less influence than groups whose work included a broader scope, such
as the APC, whose mission is to “empower and support organizations, social movements
and individuals in and through the use of information and communication technologies”
(www.apc.org). The APC worked with smaller groups to support Internet access for
people with disabilities, but they framed their work as communication rights. When
issues were framed under a larger umbrella concept, they were more likely to garner
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support and lead to coalition building. Additionally, the organizational structure of APC
“gave it the strongest capacity to span all of the issue areas” and account for its rise to
prominence in WSIS civil society (Mueller, 2010, p. 93).
Coordination of civil society organizations is another conditioning factor.
Coordination among actors can increase influence by “amplifying their voice and
promoting greater efficiency in gathering and disseminating information” (Betsill &
Corell, 2008, p. 39). Civil society actors were aware of the need to coordinate their
actions and present a unified voice. Interviewees who were members of a small national
organization noted that if they worked alone, they were not able to exert any influence on
the agenda or outcomes, but if they coordinated their actions with other, larger groups,
then they had a greater impact (Interviews 13, 20). Selian (2004), in questioning who
represents civil society at the WSIS, notes “There is a definite tendency for higher
profile, transnational, foundation-supported CSOs like the Association for Progressive
Communications or the Communication Rights in the Information Society to be in the
spotlight” (p. 207). As such, many smaller organizations, individuals, and networks
coordinated their efforts with larger organizations.
Structural factors account for why civil society organizations have different levels
of influence. This type of factor is known as a political opportunity structure. The concept
of political opportunity structure in social movement theory helps to understand why
movements arise and grow (Tarrow, 1998; Tilly, 1978). A political opportunity structure
includes “dimensions of the political environment that either encourage or discourage
people from using collective action” (Tarrow, 2005, p. 23). A political opportunity
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represents a change or opening in the political process that activists may use to advance
their agenda. The theory argues that social movements are significantly affected by
outside political opportunities. A political opportunity is specified through a number of
variables external to an organization: opening up of institutional access, shifts in political
alignments, presence or absence of influential allies, and prospect of repression or
facilitation (Tarrow, 2005; Tilly, 1978). Compared to resource mobilization theory,
political opportunity theory stresses mobilization of resources external to the movement
and argues that the emergence of a social movement depends upon the broader political
environment.
The political opportunity concept can be applied to many of the campaigns and
organizations active in the WSIS and IGF, especially since many of them were formed
explicitly in preparation for or during the meetings, such as the CRIS campaign and the
dynamic coalitions. Many interviewees noted that the WSIS and IGF provided “the”
platform to engage with international Internet policy issues. The WSIS was a mobilizing
structure for a range of civil society groups focused on communication policy issues and
served as a political opportunity structure for them to work together on issues. The WSIS
“played a greater role than any other event in connecting transnational civil society actors
involved in different communication-information policy issues” (Mueller, 2010, p. 90).
Selian (2004) argues that civil society organizations “have come to the collective
realization that normative influence on governments can be achieved more effectively
through supranational international entities than through direct action within their home
countries” (p. 203). Whether or not this is a true generalization for all civil society
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organizations, it applies to Internet governance, and the WSIS and IGF created this
opportunity to interact with international entities.
For many civil society organizations, participation in international conferences
“gives a domestic visibility and moral stature that lends credibility and protection to their
domestic work. At the same time, these conferences act as focal points for networking
and identity creation.” (Uvin, 1994, as cited in Selian, 2004, p. 203). Interviewees noted
this dual function of participation in the WSIS and IGF. NGO members said that it was
beneficial to return to one’s home country and argue that one’s position was supported at
the international level. Almost all interviewees noted one of the most important functions
of the WSIS and IGF was to network with other organizations, meet new actors, and
build coalitions. There is evidence that a shared identity began to be created. Human
rights groups and media groups rarely worked together before the WSIS and IGF, but
participation in these meetings allowed for these groups to meet up and develop a shared
agenda. The WSIS “constituted the first serious encounter between human rights
advocacy and policy debates on the [global information society] as a whole (Drake &
Jorgensen, 2006, p. 7). The WSIS was a mobilizing structure for transnational civil
society groups focused on communication and information policy issues and “became the
catalyst of…a new transnational policy network around Internet governance” (Mueller,
2010, p. 83). In addition to human rights issues, the WSIS led to the convergence of a
number of distinct issues networks that had previously focused on separate aspects of
communication policy (Mueller, 2010).
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Political opportunity structure can be applied to the WSIS/IGF as well as to the
right to communicate movement. The right to communicate has a long history. The
question arises: why did the right to communicate emerge in 2001 as a driving force
around which a movement formed? First, global dynamics give communication rights
significant relevance today. In an information age and network society where
communication and information are central to the social structure, various
communication rights and issues re-emerge and must be examined and understood in this
new context. One such issue is civil rights in the digital environment, which were eroded
under the pretext of the war on terrorism through Internet surveillance and control.
Trends of corporate media dominance and the importance of media and communications
in sustaining cultural diversity and its role in cultural processes also explain in part the
relevance of communication rights in today’s age. The structure of international politics
has changed as well. Tarrow (2005) attributes two factors to the rise of new transnational
activism: globalization and the changing structure of international politics. International
politics “offers activists focal points for collective action…and brings them together in
transnational coalitions and campaigns” (2005, p.5). The WSIS/IGF, which represented a
change in international politics through its multi-stakeholder approach to global
governance issues, served as a focal point for activists and brought a range of groups
together under the umbrella of communication rights. In this sense, WSIS served as a
political opportunity structure, which offers an explanation for why a communication
rights movement formed when it did.
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The CRIS campaign was established in response to a political opportunity. With
the announcement of the WSIS by the ITU, the Platform for Communication Rights
established the CRIS campaign. The purpose of CRIS was to “ensure that communication
rights are central to the information society and to the upcoming World Summit on
Information Society” (Raboy, 2004b, p. 229). WSIS provided the first opportunity for
international organizations to gather to discuss various issues, which came together under
the umbrella of communication rights. Just as the 1996 Communications Decency Act
was a political opportunity for a range of activists to unite, so too was the WSIS, and
CRIS saw the WSIS as an opportunity to raise the debate on the right to communicate.
The political opportunity structure represented by WSIS served to encourage
transnational links between groups and the emergence of new networks.

Conclusion
This chapter analyzed the interaction of civil society with the international institutions
of Internet governance and assessed the influence of civil society along two dimensions:
participation in the international negotiations and debates, and the effects of such
participation. There are three main elements of civil society influence: 1) influence on the
type of civil society participation in Internet governance decision-making, a processes
known as “multi-stakeholderism”; 2) influence on the concept and definition of Internet
governance; and 3) influence on specific substantive issues, such as human rights.
An important result of the WSIS process was the inclusion of civil society. The WSIS
mobilized an intense level of collective action at the international level, and a “global
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movement arose through a shared focus on ensuring that the diversity and importance of
civil society concerns and their voices were recognized in the WSIS deliberations” (p.
56). The Internet, and the WSIS/IGF, encouraged the emergence of a transnational
advocacy network focused on influencing the uses and regulations of the Internet. The
WSIS brought together previously fragmented advocacy networks around Internet
governance issues. The WSIS process also created stronger interpersonal and
organizational relationships and resulted in the creation of new networks. In short,
“WISIS put a new transnational policy network on the map” (Mueller, 2010, p. 95). The
role of civil society was institutionalized during these UN summits and forums, which
sets precedents for future civil society interaction in international decision making
processes.
In regards to substantive issues, there were points of convergence and points of
divergence. Given the lack of agreement between governments, and to a lesser extent the
occasional lack of agreement within civil society, the only thing for the UN to do was to
produce statements. Many of the agreements that made it in to the final texts were devoid
of regulatory power. However, the establishment of policies is not the only indicator of
influence. The analytical framework used in this chapter allows for a more nuanced
assessment of civil society influence in international negotiations. The analysis of civil
society engagement with the UN summits highlights how civil society intervened in the
policy process and explores their agendas and strategies.
A governance framework for the Internet was not decided upon, but there was an
introduction of new norms. When the UN decided to convene the WSIS summits, “it was
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not clear that it was a deliberate attempt to challenge the existing Internet governance
order” (Cogburn, 2009, p. 404). However, this is exactly what occurred. Internet
governance began as a discussion about technical issues, but new ways of understanding
Internet governance were introduced and adopted. The WSIS/IGF resulted in a
fundamental reassessment of the scope and nature of Internet governance. Civil society
advanced the notion that public interest criteria should serve as an evaluative baseline for
governance frameworks and that there should be more democratic participation in
policymaking. The WSIS/IGF led to a formal recognition about the need to base an
Internet governance arrangement, as well as the development of the information society,
on the framework of human rights. The establishment of norms and principles may frame
future policy discussions and may serve as the basis for an establishment of an Internet
governance regime.

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CHAPTER 6: CHALLENGES OF REGULATING THE GLOBAL INTERNET
Self-regulation of the early Internet contributed to its success and allowed the
Internet to permeate social, commercial, and organizational life. This model of
governance fit both the ideals of the early Internet’s developers, as well as the practical
realities of relatively small and decentralized networks that characterized the early
Internet. Certain characteristics of the Internet appeared to make it borderless, and
libertarian thinkers in the 1990s suggested that the Internet could not be controlled and
would inevitably erode national authority. National governments did indeed become
increasingly interested in exercising control over the Internet, and some scholars argued
that a bordered Internet could be a positive development (Goldsmith & Wu, 2006).
However, the problems and issues of Internet governance challenge the
institutional capacity and jurisdiction of the nation state. The basic problem is that there
is a conflicting relationship between the global Internet and the regulatory power of the
nation state. This conflict calls for new governance institutions to deal with these
conflicts and calls for governance at the global level. Milton Mueller (2010) characterizes
this problem as tensions between networks and states - that is, contradictions between
peer-produced, distributed governance networks and the nation state with its claims to
sovereignty. The next sections explore the contradictions that emerged as states sought to
exercise control over the Internet and analyzes why global governance is a preferable
governance arrangement.
The Internet can be viewed as a global network of networks, but legal systems
remain delineated in terms of sovereign nations. Individuals and companies acting on the
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Internet are subject to the laws of the jurisdiction in which they are based. Nations do
regulate the Internet (Goldsmith & Wu, 2007; Wilske & Schiller, 1997) both explicitly
and implicitly. The most prominent example of explicit regulation is China’s Golden
Shield Project – also known as the Great Firewall of China – which censors websites
judged to contain obscene or subversive content. Most countries employ some level of
censorship, with numerous Middle Eastern countries censoring Internet content at levels
close to those of China (Reporters san Frontiers). It is possible to create borders around
the Internet (Goldsmith & Wu, 2006), but such efforts are difficult and very costly.
Additionally, there are many ways to circumvent such controls. Despite the level of
censorship in China, the existence of the Internet still brings more access to more
information, which moves the locus of policy away from the government and more
toward the global community (Mueller, 2010). Therefore, to deal with certain problems
on the Internet, the approach must become more globalized.
National governments have different views on the kind of information that should
be lawfully available. This creates contradictions, exacerbated by the different
approaches nations employ in their attempt to regulate the Internet. Regulatory
differences are problematic when countries face a cross-border spillover. Regulatory
spillover occurs when the impact of regulation extends beyond the originating
jurisdiction. Unilateral national Internet regulations may affect users in other jurisdictions
and the regulatory approach of other nations.
Problems arising from the collision of countries’ laws and norms are highlighted
by the following three examples. Each highlights the unique governance problems posed
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by the Internet. The first example is the 2000 French court case against Yahoo. Yahoo’s
online auction site was selling Nazi memorabilia, the sale of which is prohibited in
France. Yahoo claimed that because it is a U.S. company and its servers were located in
the US, the auctions were conducted under the jurisdiction of the US, where the First
Amendment guarantees freedom of speech. Yahoo argued there were no technical means
to prevent French residents from accessing the online auction site. Yahoo’s general
counsel feared that a ruling against it would force the company to operate their sites to
the lowest common denominator of laws and content. Evidence presented during the
case suggested that Yahoo could screen and block French users, and the French court
ruled that Yahoo was violating French laws and ordered the company to take measures to
ensure that French users could not access the illegal Yahoo auction sites.
A second example involves the Australian citizen Joseph Gutnick versus the Dow
Jones News Service. Gutnick was accused of tax evasion and money laundering by the
U.S. magazine, Barron’s. Gutnick read of these accusations online at www.wsj.com, a
website on a U.S. server. Australia has one of the toughest libel laws in the world, and
Gutnick sued the parent company, Dow Jones, for libel. The legal arguments in the case
paralleled those in the Yahoo case. Dow Jones argued that Australian courts did not have
jurisdiction to rule on the legality of information on a computer in the US. Like the
French court, the Australian court disagreed and argued that the place where an
individual downloads material is where defamation occurs. Dow Jones paid Gutnick for
damages and legal fees to settle the case. The case attracted negative attention, like the
Yahoo case, because Australia’s libel laws are inconsistent with the Internet’s First
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Amendment approach to freedom of expression. As we have seen, national variations in
content regulation and stances on freedom of expression are problematic on the global
Internet and point to the need for a more global approach.
The third example of conflicting regulatory approaches concerns data protection
and privacy issues. Digital technology affects privacy in new ways by making it easier
and cheaper to collect, search, store, aggregate, and market information. The issue of
national sovereignty and control of data protection is exacerbated by the Internet, as
personal data easily crosses borders in digital form. As more online transactions are
conducted via more networks, new electronic privacy problems emerge in this networked
environment. National governments have different views on the regulation of private
information and to whom it should be available. Concerns arise about how personal data
and identifiers should be handled on the Internet. The US and EU follow different
approaches in their attempts to regulate personal information and the digital economy.
Whereas the EU has proactively regulated uses of personal data, the US has refrained
from regulation to protect personal data (Fromholz, 2000; Schwartz & Reidenberg,
1996). Such different approaches became problematic in terms of regulatory spillover in
the case of privacy of personal data, namely the case of personal information and
passenger names records collected for international travel (Movius & Krup, 2009).
In the aftermath of 9/11, the U.S. Congress enacted legislation that authorized the
U.S. Customs and Border Protection to access passenger data, which were originally used
for commercial purposes by airlines. In Europe, access to and transfer of passenger name
records fall under the purview of 1998 European Data Protection Law, which attempts to
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protect the data privacy rights of Europeans regardless of where data are transferred and
processed. The U.S. government passenger name record disclosure requirement put in
place following 9/11 directly conflicts with the EU Data Directive. The US and EU were
in negotiations for years over this matter, but the situation was one where companies
must break one country’s law or the other. It was difficult to reach agreement since the
two countries have different approaches to and conceptions of privacy and data
protection. This problem is exacerbated when more countries enter negotiations, as
illustrated in this study of Internet governance debates.
What do these cases tell us about international regulation? For the Yahoo case, the
most restrictive regulation won out, but only in the nation where the legal case occurred.
Here, companies must meet the local regulation but can continue alternative practices
elsewhere. The Wall Street Journal case is more ambiguous, but does show the potential
for increased costs caused by foreign regulations. The data protection case shows the
potential for one country’s regulation to dominate another country’s regulation.

Motivations for Global Governance of the Internet
The three cases presented above are all examples of when conflictual domestic
policies create regulatory spillover. No explicit agreement was reached between the
national governments and non-state actors in question, leaving space open for a more
efficient and beneficial agreement to be made through a global governance approach. The
actions of individuals within countries on both sides of the regulatory spillover are
influenced by the lack of agreement between the relevant actors. Even under conflictual
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circumstances, there can be motivations to engage in global governance from different
actors at different levels. Transnational companies such as Yahoo and those in the
tourism industry would prefer a level playing field in order to reduce the transaction costs
that regulatory spillover can create. Civil society actors which favor a particular ideology
would wish to see those principles upheld at the global level; for example, those
supporting freedom of speech would wish to uphold the libertarian ideals on which the
early Internet was developed.
When domestic regulations are not in conflict, the motivations for global
governance are clear. In these cases global governance efforts appear where mutual gains
are achieved through solving mutual problems. The Internet is certainly not the only area
of global governance where such mutual benefits can be achieved, as highlighted by the
multitude of global agreements that have emerged since the International
Telecommunication Union, the first international organization, was established in 1865.
Like many other areas, global governance is motivated because of the global
nature of Internet. Content flows on the Internet reside in a network and a “space of
flows,” not a “space of spaces” (Castells, 1996). Also like other global issues, such as
international trade, telecommunications, and airlines and shipping, the Internet is
dependent on national infrastructure. The Internet is an infrastructure for many societies,
and as such, has to be managed at some level just like the power grid, shipping, drinking
water, and other industries that are vital to the public good. Infrastructures have many of
the features of a public good, and the information infrastructure may be viewed the same
way. Public goods are goods that are non-rivalrous and non-excludable. Non-rivalrous
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means that consumption or use by one person does not preclude consumption or use by
another person. Non-excludable means that it is difficult to prevent people from using the
good without paying for it. In some regards, as with any public infrastructure, there are
instances when the Internet can be considered rivalrous and excludable. The Internet can
be considered more of a public good along the public to private spectrum
19
. As a result of
these characteristics, international governance is needed to deal with this tension between
the existence of national regulatory bodies and an international network.
Despite such similarities with other areas of global governance, there are a
number of characteristics that set the Internet apart from other issue areas. All of these
characteristics put pressure on the nation state and provide reasons as to why global
governance is preferably to state regulation. First, the scope and scale of information
flows on the Internet are of a different order of magnitude compared with other cross-
border flows. This makes enforcement of national regulation especially difficult. The
recent controversy around WikiLeaks highlights this characteristic, especially when
compared with the case of the “Pentagon Papers” in the 1970s, where hard copies of
classified documents were communicated to the New York Times, leading to substantial
judicial debate about whether the release constituted a First Amendment right or whether
it could be punished under espionage laws. In contrast, the WikiLeaks example is far
more complex. WikiLeaks is based in Sweden and hence the US has limited influence
over publication. Even if WikiLeaks were blocked, mirroring of the site on other host
domains across the Internet means that the information would remain accessible

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Specifically in terms of global governance, the work of Ostrom (1990) on common pool resources has
notable implications here.
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worldwide. The scale of information released and its global spread could only occur in
digitized networked form.
Second, the newness and pace of change of the Internet presents a unique
challenge. When compared with other issue areas, the Internet has emerged relatively
recently and continues to expand and evolve rapidly. For example, at the national level,
online bullying and identity theft are ongoing problems on the Internet, yet laws in both
areas have been slow to emerge; the “e-personation” bill in California only came into
force in January 2011. Hence, Internet policy is necessarily reactive.
Third, the increasing omnipotence of the Internet in all areas of social, economic,
and political life sets it apart from other international policy areas. Many areas are
already regulated, as the three cases highlight above. The complex range of issues that
relate to the Internet make a comprehensive regulatory approach difficult, especially in
light of the broad range of existing regulations around each issue. As we have seen, since
countries have different free speech standards, different privacy protections, and different
laws on a range of issues, contradictions emerge. When governments exert control over
the Internet, their actions may be challenged by competing legal norms and standards,
potentially leading to a “balkanization” of the Internet (MacLean, 2004) or to a “race to
the bottom,” where the most restrictive law takes precedent. Governments cannot assert
authority over the Internet without undermining the value of the Internet’s global
connectivity, which again highlights the conflict between the global Internet and the
nation state as a source of authority.
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Content regulation and freedom of expression on the Internet are especially
problematic in a state sovereignty framework. There are extremely wide variations in
standards concerning content regulation among states. As the above example described,
the US gives Nazis the right to freedom of expression as all citizens have, but France
does not. Mueller (2010) explains why the range of states’ content regulation epitomizes
the tension between networks and states and why freedom of expression is at the core of
Internet governance debates, often leading to the “most wrenching policy debates”:
In a state sovereignty framework, no distinctions can be made between these
policies…National laws, no matter their intent, are equally binding within their
respective territories. So if one accepts the principle of national sovereignty, one
has no choice but to try to force the Internet to abide by all local taboos and
regulations. (p. 186)

Therefore, the only way to deal with these content regulation issues on the Internet is to
question “the legitimacy and inevitability of state sovereignty over Internet-based
expression” (p. 187). Global governance of the Internet presents a more appropriate
governance approach.
Fourth, there is an inherent decentralization to Internet regulation, with non-state
actors playing a substantial role in Internet infrastructure and development, and hence in
policy and enforcement. Private companies play a particularly important role here, even
at the international level. For example, Google’s approach to China is as important to
international policy regarding free speech as anything that the US could say to China.
Similarly, Facebook’s policy regarding privacy and the manner in which the company
has approached the issue is arguably more influential than privacy law in the US.
Companies have control in other areas of international policy, and there has always been
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an enforcement problem with regulation such that the costs to government for
enforcement can outweigh the benefits to society of regulation. Yet with the Internet the
costs of enforcement are higher than other policy areas. Because companies have the
expertise to achieve lower enforcement costs, there are clear incentives for governments
to allow companies to be the arbiters of policy enforcement.
Fifth, unlike other areas of international policy, the Internet was built upon
libertarian ideals and the first governance models were open and decentralized. Since,
nation states have moved in and global governance arrangements have emerged
concomitant. In international trade and monetary policy the state dominated initial
international relations yet global governance emerged subsequently through international
organizations such as the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary
Fund. This feature provides a different quality to Internet global governance negotiations,
with an ethic of libertarianism and openness playing an influential role.

Institutional Framework for Internet Global Governance
There is a conflict between the nation state as a source of authority and the global
Internet. Due to the limited jurisdiction of the nation state, governance institutions and
transnational forms of governance are needed to deal with these conflicts about who
controls the Internet. However, there was an institutional void for creating a global
governance framework for the Internet. No single institution existed which could deal
with all of the issues involved with Internet governance.
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If Internet policy included only technical aspects, then the existing institutions
would have sufficed, such as ICANN. ICAAN is generally recognized as an international
institutional, although formally set up as a private entity. It employs a unique governance
model, including governments, the private sector, and individuals. John Mathiason (2009)
notes “there are precedents for international institutions that function as private entities
while providing public services, but none as radical in design as ICANN” (p. 71).
However, ICANN could not serve as the international institution to deal with Internet
governance. First, ICANN deals with domain names, and it was not established to deal
with policy issues. Technical issues do involve elements of public policy, and ICANN
became involved with policy issues including country-code domain names, the WHOIS
database, and the debate about creating a top-level domain for adult content (.xxx).
Nonetheless, ICANN deals with a relatively narrow area of Internet governance. Because
Internet governance includes more than technical issues, an institution other than, or in
addition to, ICANN was needed. The second problem with ICANN was the controversy
resulting from countries’ objections to the unilateral oversight of domain names and key
technical issues by the U.S. government. Many have challenged the notion of the US as a
regulator for other countries, and ICANN was not seen as a true global regulator.
Thus, there was an institutional void for global governance of the Internet. Given
the complexity of issues involved in Internet governance, there was no clear institutional
basis for all of the issues. Internet governance came to be dealt with in the United Nations
at the WSIS and the IGF. The United Nations is the “only legitimate body with
responsibility for global governance” (Castells, 2009, p. 113) and is the best institution to
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manage global problems - in this case how to govern the global Internet. John Mathiason
(2009) notes, “organizing a world conference or summit has been a favorite vehicle for
launching new or revised international initiatives to solve global problems” (p. 97).
World summits have been held to address global issues such as the environment, housing,
and food.
The United Nations is not a supranational institution; it is international. The UN is
grounded in the nation state system, and national governments are the main participants.
The WSIS included non-state actors, but states retain the ultimate decision-making
power. Decisions at UN summits are made by nations on a one-country, one-vote basis.
Creation of a comprehensive regulatory framework depends on agreement of
governments. As this dissertation analyzed, consensus could not be reached on Internet
governance.
The Internet governance debate is more than a classical interest conflict among
governments. It is a “fundamental conceptual and philosophical conflict between
different stakeholders about the question how the global Internet should be organized, or
more, how the global information society, which is based on the Internet as its main
infrastructure, should be governed” (Kleinwachter, 2004, p. 235). The WSIS redefined
the Internet governance policy agenda and began the process of regime formation. Given
the complexity and number of issues included under the umbrella of Internet governance,
it is unsurprising that a coherent global framework for regulating the Internet was not
established.
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Civil society employed a defensive strategy to ensure government or business
interests did not control the Internet. For issues such as human rights and civil liberties,
the majority of debates centered around ensuring that steps were not taken backwards to
limit such rights. Governments blocked progress on these issues, and civil society’s main
intervention was ensuring that minimum levels of rights were kept in place.
The tensions involved in global Internet governance are not unique to the Internet
or to WSIS and IGF. For UN summits, the Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action
try to be all encompassing, and as a result, are general. UN summits describe the final
product as a “vision”, not a “policy”. UN summits tend to define the issues more so than
propose solutions. Contributing a “vision” may lead to further debate. One world summit
has resulted in a major policy; the 1992 Earth Summit produced the UN Framework
Convention on Climate Change. Other world summits have not produced such clear-cut
results.
This study shows the tensions of trying to create a global regulatory framework
for the Internet and the incompatibility of regulation due to the range of interests
involved. Global governance of the Internet is desired but is inherently limited. Is it
impossible to achieve institutionally? No; the institutional framework is not the problem
per se. With competing interests, there is no global consciousness about a vision for
Internet governance. Civil society made progress in achieving consensus about the need
for a people-centered, or pubic interest approach, to Internet governance, but there still
lacks a collective vision.
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There is a parallel between the current stage of Internet advocacy and the early
environmental movement. For both, there were a range of complex issues and competing
interests, with no common or shared identity to unite the various stakeholders. James
Boyle (1997), in discussing information policy issues notes:
We are at the stage that the American environmental movement was at in the
1950s. There are people who care about issues we would now identify as
‘environmental’…There [were] flurries of outrage over particular
crises…Lacking, however, [was] a general framework, a set of analytical tools
with which issues should—as a first cut—be analyzed, and as a result a perception
of common interest in apparently disparate situations—cutting across traditional
oppositions.

With the common identity of “environmentalist”, the environmental movement
made progress
20
. The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro elevated a complex set of
environmental issues, which were debated in other forms for decades, to the highest level
of the international policy agenda –as the WSIS did for information and communication
issues. For environmental issues, prior events such as the 1972 UN Conference on
Human Environment in Stockholm and the 1987 World Commission on Environment and
Development Report, paved the way for the 1992 Rio conference. Similarly, there were
prior conferences and debates on ICT and development, communication rights and other
issues, and the WSIS brought these issues on the international agenda. Both the Earth
Summit and WSIS were intergovernmental conferences that included a range of
stakeholders. As is common practice for UN world summits, both produced a Declaration
and Agenda. However, the Earth Summit produced a Framework Convention on Climate

20
Many other complex factors played a role in the success of the environmental movement. However, the
formation of a common identity is a key factor in the development of a social movement.
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Change, whereas the WSIS did not produce any binding agreements. The Earth Summit
represented a watershed moment in elevating climate issues on the international agenda.
Like the 1992 Earth Summit, the WSIS may represent a turning point for information and
communication technology policy issues.
The environmental movement provides further parallels to Internet governance.
Like the Internet, climate change is “borderless”, making it difficult for governments
alone to regulate and provide solutions to these issues. Instead, a multi-stakeholder
approach is needed. Just as an epistemic community played a significant role in the
WSIS/IGF process, an epistemic community of scientists provided the basis for much of
the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This epistemic
community contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. Civil society was a key stakeholder in the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which includes a network of more than
2,000 scientists. The private sector was the third major stakeholder, mirroring the major
stakeholders involved in Internet governance negotiations.
There was a gradual institutionalization of the environmental movement, with the
creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States and the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This institutionalization set the stage for the
subsequent development of policy. Through the WSIS and IGF, the same process of
gradual institutionalization is happening in Internet governance arena. Milton Mueller
(2010) argues that communication-information policy constitutes a public policy domain
that should be considered in equal status to trade and the environment. He explains how
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trade and environmental policy have produced regimes and organizations specific to
those sectors, and how advocacy follows sectoral clustering and develops its own
identities, specialized networks and leading organizations. He notes, “the same is
becoming true of Internet governance” (p. 12). Indeed, these processes are beginning to
occur in the field of Internet governance, but the arena is still in a state of flux, unlike
trade or environmental policy, which have been developed for many more years.
Just as global governance is difficult to achieve in the context of Internet
governance, there are tensions in global governance processes for the environment.
Working towards global governance of the environment has been a long process, and in
the early stages there was no shared identity or agreement on facts or solutions. More was
achieved in environmental issues, in part because the issues have evolved for decades and
in part because a collective identity of environmentalists has emerged to unite
participants of a social movement. Media reform advocates Robert McChesney and John
Nichols (2002) drew parallels between the media reform and the environmental
movement, and they argue that media reformers have much to learn from the strategies
and tactics that contributed to the growth of the environmental movement.
Global regulation of global issues, whether for the environment or the Internet, is
difficult. At present, we are left to deal with the non-regulation of the Internet at the
global level. However, there are two significant results of the WSIS/IGF process: the
beginnings of a creation of a regime for Internet governance and the strengthening of a
human rights approach to Internet policy.

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Regime Theory
There is an emerging global regime, or set of regimes, for the Internet. The WSIS
process resulted in an increased understanding of the importance of information and
communication policy issues and in a convergence of agendas and ideas. These
developments may be analyzed in terms of regime theory.
Regime theory explains the current manifestation of Internet global governance
better than other theories in international relations because the nature of the Internet, as
described above, fits better with the core assumptions of regime theory. The realist school
of international relations is good at explaining zero sum international conflicts, like fights
over resources between two neighboring states or global power struggles leading up to
major wars. The liberal internationalist school is good at explaining the motivations for
international cooperation, such as international trade or international communications
infrastructure, where there are clear mutual gains to be had between states. Regime
theory provides the most parsimonious explanation of current global governance of the
Internet because it includes non state-actors, it features cross level cooperation between
states, private companies and non-governmental organizations, and actors coalesce
around issues. As we have seen above, the role of non state actors is critical to Internet
governance because they play a much greater role in governance of information flows
than their counterparts in other issue areas play. Moreover, the complexity and
overlapping nature of the issue areas within Internet governance calls for a regime
approach.
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A regime is a “set of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-
making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge in a given area of
international relations” (Krasner, 1983, p. 2). Krasner focuses on states, but Internet
governance calls for a broader perspective to include non-state actors in a multi-
stakeholder regime formation process (Cogburn, 2009). The creation of a regime follows
a sequence of agreements. First, there must be agreement on principles (the facts and
nature of the problem); then agreement on norms (obligations of stakeholders); and
finally, agreement on rules and procedures for implementing them. Mueller, Mathiason
and Klein (2007) argue the lack of progress during the WSIS was caused by
policymakers’ “ill advised attempt to shortcut regime construction” by attempting to
“define regime rules and procedures without first defining underlying principles and
norms” (p. 237). Agreement on norms and procedures are important foundational tasks in
constructing a regime. The analysis of the WSIS and IGF shows that agreement on
principles and norms are beginning to emerge.
This section discusses these initial stages of agreement on norms and principles.
The ITU Secretary General described the task for WSIS participants during the PrepCom
in July 2002 as creating a “common understanding of the information society and the
action plan needed to harness the power of ICTs to eradicate poverty and to create a more
just, prosperous and peaceful world” (ITU, 2002). Thus, participants were asked to agree
on principles. Such a task entails “an advanced form of cooperation,” the outcome of
which is “an agreement on principles and a statement of common political will” which
are meant to serve “as the foundation for the articulation of an international regime of
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information society values and principles” (Selian, 2004, p. 202). International
conferences are focal points for discussion of norms, principles, values and decision-
making procedures of an emerging regime. Cogburn (2009) argues,
The formulation of an equitable international regime requires the active and
effective participation of multiple stakeholders who can adequately represent their
own interests. One key to this may be active membership in transnational policy
networks and significant linkages with like-minded epistemic or knowledge-
producing communities (p. 403).

The WSIS and IGF provided a focal point for discussion of norms and principles and the
space where civil society actors created broader networks.
There was a progression of understanding about the Internet and Internet
governance during the WSIS process. At the first WSIS summit, many people didn’t
know what “the Internet” meant (Dutton & Peltu, 2009). Throughout the process, almost
all actors came to understand the underlying technology and issues, and discussed these
issues with each other, even if they disagreed on them. Understanding the underlying
issues “is critical to reaching agreements at the international level” (Mathiason, 2009, p.
147). A consensus on some of the principles and norms is beginning to be reached in
Internet governance, such as agreement on the scope of Internet governance and broad
recognition of the importance of human rights and the public interest.
How long it takes to set up a regime depends on how long it takes to agree on all
stages. The WSIS was the first time that governments from developed and developing
countries came together to attempt to agree on a comprehensive framework for Internet
governance. For the environment, the first step was to agree on the factual belief that
human behavior could affect climate change before solutions could be reached. For the
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Internet, there first needed to be agreement on what Internet governance entails. The
WGIG and WSIS made progress with a definition of Internet governance. Mathiason
(2009) suggests that the pace of agreement on Internet governance issues has been
relatively rapid, given that most international agreements take decades to reach. The
process was facilitated by the open nature of discussions and negotiations. Since the IGF
process was not for decision-making but was set up as space to discuss issues, political
constraints were reduced, allowing for easier consensus on some norms and principles. It
is unclear if or when the process will move from agreement on norms and principles to
attempts to formalize governance of the Internet.

Increased Awareness of Human Rights
The second result of the WSIS/IGF process is the increased awareness of and the
reinforcement of human rights. Civil society stopped efforts by certain governments to
limit freedom of expression and ensured that reference was made to human rights and
freedom of expression in the official summit documents.
Connection between the Internet and human rights was recognized outside of the
WSIS and IGF. In January 2010, Secretary of State Clinton described a new U.S. policy
that encourages the world's governments to ensure their citizens have open access to the
Internet. Clinton noted the connection between the Internet and human rights, and how
the Internet may advance human rights. In an address on Internet freedom, Clinton said,
“We want to put these tools in the hands of people who will use them to advance
democracy and human rights” (http://www.state.gov/statecraft). Clinton stressed the
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importance of freedom of expression and privacy protection as fundamental rights in the
digital age and highlighted the ongoing importance of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights.
Efforts to promote universal human rights provide a conducive environment to
promote communication rights. The public is more aware of communication issues
through their experience with global electronic media, and there is evidence of a global
movement for human rights. A 2007/2008 World Public Opinion survey, which included
over 47,000 respondents in twenty-five nations, found that “most of the general principles
of the UDHR receive universal support in all nations polled” (p.57). Large majorities in
all nations endorsed the importance of freedom of expression and “all public polled
support the principle that the media should be free of government control.” The majority
of respondents believed that government should not limit access to the Internet. Similarly,
a 2010 global poll conducted across 26 countries by GlobeScan for the BBC World
Service found that 87% of Internet users felt Internet access should be the “fundamental
right of all people,” and 79% of respondents either strongly agreed or somewhat agreed
with the description of the internet as a fundamental right, whether they currently had
access or not (see Figure 6.1).

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Figure 6.1: Belief That Internet Access Should be a Fundamental Right, Average of 26
Countries (Source: GlobeScan 2010).

The surveys provide evidence of the increasing awareness of the link between
human rights and global communication, in particular the Internet. Further public opinion
data would provide a stronger argument in this regard, and systematic long-term studies
are not available. Nonetheless, there is the emergence of increased global awareness
about these issues. Dr. Hamadouri Toure, the secretary-general of the International
Telecommunication Union (ITU), told the BBC, “The right to communicate cannot be
ignored,” and said that governments should view the Internet “as basic infrastructure -
just like roads, waste and water” (BBC News, 2010). Some countries, such Costa Rica,
Estonia, France, Finland, and Greece, have recently passed laws or constitutional
amendments to specify Internet access as a basic human right.
In conclusion, the WSIS/IGF put in to place a human rights approach to Internet
governance and helped increase public awareness about the link between human rights
and communication. The WSIS/IGF led to a new form of multi-stakeholder governance.
Strongly
agree
50%
Somewhat
agree
29%
Somewhat
disagree
9%
Strongly
disagree
6%
Don’t know
6%

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These processes may have implications for other global governance areas. This “new
frontier” (Mathiason, 2009) of global governance may change how the Internet, as well
as other global issues that transcend state borders, are dealt with. The conclusion chapter
discusses some of these lessons learned from the WSIS/IGF and implications for other
global governance arenas.

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CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSION

This study analyzed civil society’s influence on Internet governance debates
during the United Nations WSIS and IGF. Drawing upon interviews with advocates
active in the WSIS and IGF, participant observation, and an analysis of primary and
secondary documents, this study underlines the dynamic role played by non-state actors
and the complex process of trying to govern a global network. In the following pages, I
highlight the main findings, discuss the implications of the study, and conclude with a
discussion of future research and policy implications.

Summary of Findings
As the Internet spread globally, and its economic, political, and cultural influences
increased, it became necessary to develop appropriate policy to govern it. The chapter on
the historical evolution of Internet governance institutions discussed three phases of
governance approaches. During the first phase, governance of the Internet was self-
regulatory and involved a community of users that made decisions through rough
consensus. During the second phase the technical issue of domain name and addressing
began debates over the issue of “Internet governance.” Larger issues of Internet
governance emerged during the third phase that was marked by the WSIS, which was
a focal point of international political contention. Internet governance debates during the
WSIS process highlighted the problems and incompatibility between the global Internet
and government by the territorial nation state. The WSIS shows how governance is
moving beyond nation state governance towards transnational forms of governance.
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The study documented the civil society actors involved in Internet governance
debates at the WSIS and IGF. The WSIS was as a mobilizing structure for a range of civil
society groups focused on communication policy issues and served as a political
opportunity structure for them to work together. The WSIS brought together preexisting
but fragmented civil society groups and networks working on a range of communication
policy issues and connected them, resulting in the establishment of a transnational
advocacy network focused on Internet governance. The IGF then provided an
institutional venue to strengthen the transnational advocacy network established during
the WSIS. Civil society organizations active at the WSIS and IGF were a heterogeneous
sector, and a typology categorized the actors. The typology included three criteria:
framing, policy priorities, and strategic activities.
A research question asked how some issues provide the basis for collective action
over others. Framing answers this in part. Fame theory explains why people with
different values and experiences join the same organization to work toward a common
end. Snow et al. (1986) observe, “participating in social movement organization activities
is contingent in part on alignment of individual and social movement organizations
interpretive frames” (p. 476). If successful in framing, a civil society organization can
connect its language and activities to people’s perspectives, influence their thinking on
issues, and motivate them to take action. This study found that when issues were framed
with an umbrella concept, such as communication rights or human rights, they were more
likely to garner support and lead to coalition building. How an issue is framed explains
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why some organizations are more successful in mobilizing actors and resources and
influencing the agenda than other organizations.
The frame of rights was prevalent in Internet governance debates. This rights-
based advocacy was mirrored in larger advocacy efforts concerning communication and
information policy in general, as shown by the organizational ecology analysis of the
population of public interest organizations involved with communication policy issues.
The frame of “communication rights” was successful because the concept embraced a
variety of issues in one conceptual framework. This strengthened the potential for
collective action since the frame linked a broad range of groups under the umbrella
concept. Both the frames of right to communicate and human rights on the Internet are
larger umbrella frames that include a range of issues, such as education, privacy, access
to knowledge, and freedom of expression.
The importance of a broad frame was also seen in the success of certain NGOs in
mobilizing a range of actors, setting the agenda, and proposing coherent policy
recommendations. The centrality of the Association for Progressive Communication
(APC) during the Internet governance negotiations may be explained in part by the broad
framing of their mission, which allows them to network with a range of groups and be
involved in a variety of issues and networks.
The second criteria for the civil society typology was outcome priorities.
Consistent with social movement literature, two broad types of policy priorities were
identified among civil society organizations active in Internet governance debates. The
first outcome priority was to impact the existing communication system, and the second
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priority was to develop a new communication system. This study focused on civil society
organizations that view information and communication technologies as an object of
focus for their advocacy work, in addition to an enabling tool. This represents an
emergent area of collective action focused on communication policy. The third criteria
was strategic activities, or in theoretical terms, “repertoires of collective action”. Most
civil society organizations used conventional tactics. Internet governance advocates
reproduced the classical distinction in social movement research between “inside” and
“outside” actors and strategies.
The organizational ecology explored the larger population of civil society
organizations involved in Internet policy issues. Communication and information policy
have become a distinct policy domain with a population of organizations that make up a
broad transnational advocacy network. This domain may be considered equal in status to
trade and environmental policy (Mueller, 2010). In the domain of communication and
information policy, this population of public interest organizations seeks not only to use
new information and communication technologies, but also to explicitly change or impact
the system of communication. Thus, the Internet is not only a tool to enable advocacy,
but also a target of political action. There were several findings of the organizational
ecology study. First, there was a trend towards an organizational focus on computers and
the Internet. Second, the mode of advocacy shifted over the decades, and there was a
trend towards a rights-based approach to advocacy beginning in the 1990s. This was
caused by the birth of several key organizations that engaged in rights-oriented advocacy
and by institutional changes. The creation of an international network and community
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that focused on defending civil liberties and rights in the networked world resulted. These
changes in the mode of advocacy represent the emergence of an Internet oriented rights-
based approach to advocacy and the creation of an international civil society mobilized
around Internet policy issues.
The focus on rights was seen in the context of international Internet governance
debates, where communication rights was one of the main issue networks and frames.
The CRIS campaign was investigated as a case study of transnational collective action for
communication rights, since it is a visible example of a global expression of the “right to
communicate” movement. The dissertation analyzed the historical evolution of the right
to communicate debate over three decades and identified two main phases:
intergovernmental and global civil society. Once the domain of governmental actors,
when the right to communicate was no longer on the agenda in intergovernmental
platforms, civil society stepped in to promote communication rights. Nongovernmental
organizations came together under the umbrella of communication rights, and the CRIS
campaign is an example of the role played by civil society organizations in placing issues
on the global agenda.
With an understanding of the main actors in international Internet governance
debates, the dissertation assessed how they function and under what conditions they exert
influence. The analytical framework for assessing civil society influence on international
negotiations proposed two dimensions of influence (participation in international
negotiations and effects of such participation) and four indicators (agenda setting, issue
framing, impact on procedural issues, and impact on substantive issues). There are three
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main elements of civil society influence on international Internet governance
negotiations. First, civil society organizations were involved with the democratization of
Internet governance institutions and processes. The inclusion of civil society was an
experiment in making international institutions more open and democratic. Evidence for
this was seen in the qualitatively different role played by civil society in international
negotiations and in the evolution of procedural rules regarding non-state actor
participation in UN summits. There was a “revolutionary” level of civil society
participation during the WSIS, representing a move to a multi-stakeholder model. The
multi-stakeholder principle was legitimized and put in to practice during the WSIS.
The second influence of civil society organizations was their impact on the
concept of Internet governance. Civil society fostered a holistic view of Internet
governance. Civil society organizations re-framed the debates from a focus on
infrastructure to one that was people-centered, resulting in a “humanization” of Internet
governance and acknowledgement of the social and political dimensions of Internet
governance. Civil society organizations were the main drivers of the shift in focus and the
widening of policy parameters. How people think about Internet governance was one of
the most significant impacts of the WSIS and one reason why the WSIS was an
“important inflection point” (Mueller, 2010) in global Internet governance.
The third influence of civil society organizations involved how they impacted
substantive issues during the negotiations, notably human rights. This finding was
supported by analysis of civil society inputs that were reflected in the UN Summit’s final
texts, an indicator of influence according to the analytical framework. Communication
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rights were brought on the global agenda by civil society organizations, which reframed
issues by explicitly linking human rights and communication. Through the insistence of
civil society actors, the international Internet governance negotiations resulted in a formal
recognition by all stakeholders that the information society must be based on a human
rights framework.
Prior to the WSIS and IGF, the human rights perspective was marginalized in
global information society debates and communication policy discussions. With the
increase of the “global information society” term in global ICT discourse, other
perspectives were pushed to the side, such as the perspective of promoting development
as a baseline for evaluating policy, and the perspective of using public-interest criteria as
a baseline (Drake & Jorgensen, 2006). The international human rights perspective was
even more marginalized than the above two perspectives until the WSIS, when civil
society introduced a public interest and human rights perspective. The WSIS provided an
opportunity for the human rights community to link with the ICT community and form a
larger civil society coalition involved with human rights issues and Internet policy. The
challenge now is to sustain this momentum and translate human rights principles into
policy requirements. This study presented some recent attempts to accomplish this, such
as the work performed by the Dynamic Coalition of Internet Rights and Principles and
their Internet Rights Charter.
Civil society influence on the WSIS and IGF outcomes produced mixed results.
Civil society’s main intervention was to block government attempts to weaken current
protections or set up new controls of the Internet. Civil society actors were often
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frustrated by government attempts to block meaningful change, but participants noted
other impacts of their participation. These included norm change, building coalitions,
development of denser networks with other civil society actors, learning about the policy
process and international issues, and developing initiatives. Previously isolated groups
had an opportunity to network and converge their agendas with other groups. Global civil
society advocating for a user-centered Internet was strengthened, and a transnational
advocacy network focused on Internet governance and communication rights was
established. Seán Ó Siochrú (2004b) argues that the main achievement of the WSIS was
that “civil society came together around communication issues, interacted constructively,
and reached consensus on a broad agenda” (p. 219). Similarly, Milton Mueller (2010)
notes one of the main results of the WSIS was institutional change, notably the inclusion
of non-state actors in international organizations to make them more open and
democratic.
This study asked if the collective action around Internet governance constitutes a
social movement. It does not at this time, but this stage may represent an emerging social
movement. The current stage is similar to the early days of the environmental movement,
when a variety of issues that seemed unconnected existed. Although there has been a
convergence of agendas and agreement on the scope of issues involved, the Internet
governance arena is complex with a diverse range of organizations involved. The main
challenges are to establish a shared identity and better coordinate among advocates. Civil
society groups developed a network and are approaching a common discourse. They
pushed forward a user-centered approach and advocated for a free and open Internet.
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Civil society was united by their desire to promote “people centered” objectives and the
public interest in policy outcomes.
If there is an emerging social movement, then concepts from social movement
theory may be applied to understand its trajectory. Resource mobilization theory posits
that movements emerge and have an effect based on: 1) socially constructed grievances,
2) mobilized resources, and 3) structural opportunities (Hackett & Carroll, 2006). First,
grievances exist, such as the erosion of communication rights, including challenges to
privacy and free expression in the online context. Civil society advocates were often
reacting to developments, such as the corporate dominance of media markets and the
measures taken in response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, which triggered
concern among advocates. These shared grievances led to the goal of promoting
communication rights.
Second, civil society organizations are mobilizing resources, including money,
expertise and time. Interviewees noted that these resources are limited and often represent
an obstacle to further collective action. A broader constituency was formed during the
WSIS and IGF, and many interviewees noted that this growing constituency held promise
for mobilizing and enabling future collective action. Third, the WSIS and IGF presented
a structural opportunity to mobilize. During the 2009 IGF meeting, it was decided that the
mandate of the IGF would be extended and that the forum would continue. The
continuation of the IGF may provide further opportunities for this emerging movement.
At a minimum, the IGF has consolidated the transnational advocacy networks created
during the WSIS.
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Collective action around Internet governance may not develop into its own
movement per se. The emerging movement may expand beyond Internet governance
issues and link up with other movements and advocacy efforts, such as efforts to uphold
human rights and freedom of expression. All of these movements are united in their
efforts to democratize communication and uphold communication rights. Collective
action around communication and information policy issues may support mobilizations
within various movements and serve as a nexus between different movements.
An advocacy coalition may be a more precise concept than an emerging social
movement to describe the collective action around Internet governance. The advocacy
coalition framework (Sabatier & Jenkins-Smith, 1988, 1993) explains advocacy coalition
structure and behavior, and it has often been applied to environmental organizations. The
framework is for policy change and policy subsystems in existence for a decade or
longer, so Internet governance would not be an ideal case. However, the existence of
nascent coalitions is discussed (Sabatier & Weible, 2007). Nascent coalitions were not
often studied for the environmental movement, only fully developed coalitions that had
been involved in policy change. Analysis of nascent coalitions may contribute to the gap
in literature on this stage of coalition formation and policy issues. Since Internet
governance is a new policy area, there is the opportunity to study emerging policy issues
and advocacy coalitions and to analyze the characteristics of these emerging networks.

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Implications
The organizational ecology study and analysis of the emergence of a global civil
society formed around Internet policy issues supports the notion that global civil society
is not only a transnational forum for debate, but influences the framework for global
governance as well. The relevance of civil society as a significant actor in global politics
is seen in a report to UN Secretary-General on how to strengthen the UN system,
prepared by a panel led by Fernando Henrique Cardoso. The report concludes:
The rise of civil society is indeed one of the landmark events of our times. Global
governance is no longer the sole domain of Governments. The growing participation
and influence of non-State actors is enhancing democracy and reshaping
multilateralism. Civil society organizations are also the prime movers of some of the
most innovative initiatives to deal with emerging global threats (Cardoso, 2004, p. 3).
The Cardoso report highlights the trend of developing politics rooted in a notion of
broader participation, and the WSIS/IGF is an example of this trend. The WSIS and IGF
suggest that civil society, as well as the private sector, will increasingly win seats at the
negotiation table, and this could impact the practices and processes of international
diplomacy on communication and information policy issues, as well as broader
international issues, in the future.
The debates on Internet governance provide a case to explore globalization issues,
since the Internet is a global network of networks, it is not controlled by a single entity,
and it is international in nature. The contradictions between the global Internet and
government by the territorial nation state make Internet governance a unique issue area
(Mueller, 2010). Because of the international nature of the Internet and because no one
nation exercises control over it, the international Internet governance debates were the
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“ideal test bed to figure out how a new trilateral relationship among governments, private
industry, and civil society could be developed” (Kleinwachter, 2008, p. 536).Specifically,
the WSIS “inaugurated an explicit debate over the role of the nation-state in Internet
governance” (Mueller, 2010, p. 60). Indeed, Internet governance debates during the UN
summits provide an interesting case because summits and international negotiations
“present an interesting empirical puzzle” (Betsill & Corell, 2008, p. 6) since they are
largely the domain of states, yet non-state actors increasingly participate in and attempt to
influence negotiations. Governments sought to assert their authority over Internet-related
public policy issues, and civil society sought to limit such controls. Internet governance
debates during the WSIS process highlighted the problems and incompatibility between
the global Internet and government by the territorial nation state and reflect the complex
balancing and rebalancing of power occurring between states and non-state actors.
Scholars have criticized the amount of bad international relations theory and
assessments of globalization and the nation state, specifically in relation to the Internet,
which assert that the Internet overcomes all territorial boundaries, rendering the nation
state powerless (Drezner, 2004; Goldsmith & Wu, 2006). These claims are overly
simplistic; however, that does not mean that the nation state remains the only actor or that
governance of the Internet does not present new issues in international relations or global
governance (Drezner, 2004). Both cyberlibertarians who argue that the Internet
transcends state control and realist political scientists who argue that the Internet does not
change state control rely on overly simplistic arguments that set up false dichotomies and
distort Internet governance debates (Mueller, 2010). The question if globalization and the
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Internet have displaced the central role of governments is not one that can be answered
by generalizations. We cannot conclude that government power has disappeared, nor can
we conclude that it has not been augmented. More nuanced analyses are needed to
understand under what circumstances non-state actors play a role on the world stage.
The role of non-state actors has risen in global politics, but their presence alone does not
equal influence or impact. This study analyzed how and under what conditions non-state
actors influence global politics. Non-state actors were just as, if not more, important in
the development of the Internet and played a fundamental role in current international
negotiations. The WSIS was the first UN summit where civil society was officially
invited as a partner, and this was the first time that a formal structure – the Civil Society
Bureau - was created for civil society participation. During the WSIS, the role of civil
society was institutionalized. The institutionalization of civil society creates a precedent
for other processes of international decision-making and highlights how global
governance is becoming increasingly multi-stakeholder. Through the inclusion of civil
society and the multi-stakeholder approach, the WSIS “transformed” global governance
by “sanctifying the place of global civil society as an organized force in the process”
(Raboy, 2004b, p. 225).
The struggle over participation of non-state actors in the WSIS reflects the underlying
battle for distribution of power between actors. Power is not distributed equally among all
actors, and states maintain leverage and power, but national sovereignty is not an
absolute. In regards to multi-stakeholderism, Mueller (2010) argues that the “mere fact
that the world’s governments had to find a verbal construct defining some acceptable
211
division of responsibility between state and nonstate actors…is an indication of the
degree to which the problem of Internet governance really has challenged sovereign
control of communications” (p. 80). The greater inclusion of non-state actors represents a
move towards more participatory governance and away from a model that is limited to
government decision-making with firm rules about limited non-state attendance. Because
of the WSIS process, “the multistakeholder principle achieved a degree of legitimacy,
acceptance, and elaboration in Internet governance that goes well beyond other
sectors…The overall effect was not just an endorsement, but an implementation of the
multistakeholder model of governance within the UN system” (Mueller, 2010, p. 105).
As the purely inter-national system of decision-making shifted to a multi-stakeholder
model, governance moved beyond nation state governance towards transnational forms of
governance. The findings of this study indicate that civil society will increasingly be a
participant in international decision-making processes.

Policy Implications
Lessons learned and policy implications can be drawn from the analysis of this
study. First, no comprehensive policy framework for the Internet was established, and the
challenges inherent in attempting to establish global governance were discussed. The
range of topics included under the umbrella term Internet governance will continue to
defy simplistic solutions that are based on one institution, involve one type of actor, or
are based on one categorization.
212
Second, the underlying political and cultural differences of the stakeholders will
continue to challenge attempts to reach consensus on Internet governance issues. The
three stakeholder groups represent fundamentally different perspectives: governments
seek to control the Internet most often for security related concerns; the private sector is
interested in regulation to protect their business interests; and the civil society sector
promotes a public interest perspective. There are often contradictions and disagreement
within these stakeholder groups. The contradiction between two models of governance -
one that is based on agreement between sovereign states and one that is based on a more
pluralistic and transnational framework – is not readily solvable.
Third, there were often disjunctures in policy discourse during the WSIS and IGF.
Progress was made in agreeing on what Internet governance entails, and future policy
discussions must begin with a clear acknowledgement of the boundaries of Internet
governance to avoid such disjunctures in policy discourse, since different understandings
of the meaning of Internet governance trigger different policy approaches.
In terms of future policy recommendations, it is important to first note that Internet
governance continues to be in a state of flux, with uncertainty about how best to proceed.
The Internet involves and impacts a range of stakeholders, and none of these individual
stakeholders alone can effectively govern the Internet. This project has highlighted the
tensions between the global Internet and government by the territorial nation state. These
contradictions make Internet governance a unique topic and call for forms of Internet
governance that are transnational instead of national, or as Milton Mueller (2010) argues,
for governance arrangements that favor networks over states. Governance institutions
213
should be structured to be transnational and involve all parties, thereby continuing the
multi-stakeholder model of governance. An open and inclusive policy discourse and a
multi-stakeholder model, where power is shared among participants, will facilitate buy-in
from different groups and help create a transparent and legitimate process.
Continuation of the IGF represents one way to continue the multi-stakeholder
approach. During the 2009 IGF meeting, one of the main items on the agenda was
whether the IGF should continue past its 5-year mandate, due to expire in 2010. It was
decided that the IGF would continue. This study supports the continuation of the IGF and
recognizes its importance as an opportunity to promote debate and dialogue between
stakeholders. Additionally, it is recommended that regional and national IGFs continue,
since these forums provide opportunities to define regional priorities and enable a broader
range of participation at the regional level. The development of thematic IGFs is also
proposed as a way for participants to engage with specific issues in greater depth.
The WSIS and IGF were praised for incorporating the multi-stakeholder model,
but the process highlighted some barriers to participatory governance, which may be
considered for future policy processes. There were access barriers to developing countries
and to certain types of civil society that were not accredited organizations. Structural
reform could include changing the rules for registration and participation at meetings to
allow for the inclusion of non-formal organizations and networks. Another potential
solution to bolster participation is to better integrate collaborative technologies.
Collaborative technologies, such as wikis, blogs and a range of social media, may be
214
more formally integrated into the policy process to better include developing countries
and civil society participants.
This dissertation argued that the success of the Internet can be attributed in part to
its development in open and democratic decision-making cultures. Previous chapters
highlighted this model of “rough consensus and running code,” and the analysis of the
WSIS and IGF noted the importance of an inclusive and open policy dialogue. Internet
governance structures should continue to cultivate such cultures and processes of
decision-making. Such a goal presents challenges, since it is not in line with many
business practices and because many governments would prefer a more top-down
regulatory approach – more in line with government than governance. It is most likely
that Internet governance will involve both top-down regulation as well as bottom up
governance, and these two approaches require careful balancing.

Future Research
This dissertation focused on the role of civil society actors in Internet governance
debates in the context of the UN-sponsored WSIS and IGF. Future research may expand
the scope of analysis to include other policy forums dealing with Internet governance
issues, since these governance issues are discussed in a range of forums and international
contexts.
The dissertation made the distinction between two levels of influence: influence
on the process of negotiations and influence on the outcome of negotiations. Future
research may further analyze this distinction between dimensions of influence and may
215
theorize how success in this field may be defined, given the lack of policy. In a new
policy area that is still in flux, how can outcomes best be traced and analyzed? What is
the relationship between power and outcomes?
The range of issues to be dealt with under the Internet governance umbrella
continues to expand. Two specific issues may be investigated in future research. First,
future research may analyze the cloud. What is the role of the cloud in Internet
governance and what should be done about it? The cloud provides another example on
the attack of sovereignty and the tensions between human rights, civil society, and
governments. Second, mobile communication has greatly expanded, with there being
more than 5 billion mobile subscribers. How should mobile networks be considered and
how do they figure in to Internet governance debates? Mobile is particularly important in
social struggles, and future research may analyze the role that mobile technology plays in
social movements on communication rights,
The Internet and human rights have recently made headlines around the world.
Freedom of expression and censorship have become hot button issues worldwide, such as
censorship issues in China, the use of social media during protests in Iran, and Internet
cuts and media disruptions in Egypt. Civil society organizations and networks in
numerous countries are working to protect users’ rights and the values of freedom of
expression and communication rights in light of increasing restrictions imposed on the
Internet and other information and communication technologies. This project investigated
freedom of expression issues as they related to Internet governance debates, and future
research may investigate in more depth the mobilizations of civil society actors
216
advocating for freedom of expression and a free and open Internet. How have these
movements changed and evolved since the WSIS? What do the recent mobilizations and
revolutions across the Arab world tell us about communication rights and human rights
on the Internet?

In conclusion, media and communication policy issues are not on par with other
global movements, such as the environmental movement or the women’s movement, in
terms of the formation of a social movement (Mueller et al., 2004; Thomas, 2006).
However, the role played by civil society organizations in international Internet
governance debates may represent a tipping point in elevating communication policy, and
specifically Internet governance issues, on the international agenda. The WSIS and IGF
created opportunities for a range of organizations, networks, and movements to work
together on Internet governance issues and to bring global visibility to a range of Internet
governance issues.
There is an ever-shifting balance of communication rights on the one hand and
government control over communication on the other hand. The Internet was hailed in the
1990s as a force for democratization and freedom, but it can be used as a tool for freedom
or repression, as a tool of anonymity or surveillance. Governments continually seek to
control communication, since control over communication is power. But wherever there
is power, there is counter-power (Castells, 2007), and struggles to regain control over
communication rights continue, as evidenced through this study of civil society
engagement with Internet governance debates. More recently, WikiLeaks' publication of
217
sensitive U.S. government files focused new attention on Internet governance and raised
questions about state power and Internet freedom.
As Manuel Castells argues in Communication Power (2009), power resides in the
control of communication. The WikiLeaks “cablegate” and governments’ reactions to it
supports this claim. WikiLeaks challenged state power, and in response, states sought to
exercise control over information flows. State secrets or other information have been
leaked in the past, but now the channel through which information is released is beyond
state control. WikiLeaks published leaked documents in a way that was not previously
possible without going through a major media outlet. For example, the Pentagon Papers
in the 1970s depended on the approval of the New York Times. In contrast, WikiLeaks
put out information directly, so there was no choice about the information being released
or not. This impacts government power and how diplomacy is conducted.
The WikiLeaks example illustrates two points that have been discussed in the
dissertation. First, it shows governments’ concern of not being able to control the
Internet. Second, it shows increasing tensions between governments trying to control the
Internet and advocates trying to defend it. Regarding the first point, the WikiLeaks case
led to an extremist reaction by some governments, provoking them and large corporations
to attack WikiLeaks’ web site, its financial base, and its founder, Julian Assange.
Assange was called a “terrorist” and WikiLeaks was said to be “at war” with the US.
With pressure from the U.S. government, companies stopped services to the site for terms
of use violations. Such actions run contrary the U.S.’s rhetoric and policies about Internet
freedom and free access to information. In a January 2010 speech on Internet freedom,
218
Hillary Clinton called the Internet the “iconic infrastructure of our age”, adding the
following warning: “As in the dictatorships of the past, governments are targeting
independent thinkers who use these tools.” Clinton was referring to countries such as Iran
and China, but the tactics the U.S. government used to stifle WikiLeaks has also led to
concern.
The actual content of the leaked documents has received less attention than the
fact they were leaked, raising questions about governments’ ability to control
information. The hysteria and debates around WikiLeaks may be less about the leaked
diplomatic documents and more about the tradeoff between Internet freedom and state
power. The WikiLeaks case differs from other times diplomatic information has been
released in terms of the principles underlying the leak, which are based on access to
information and the right of citizens to receive information, principles which are
promoted by the access to knowledge and open source movements. It is not necessarily
progressive to defend WikiLeaks per se, but the defense of the freedom of WikiLeaks and
of people’s right to know continues to gain momentum.
Regarding the second point about the tension between governments seeking
control of the Internet and civil society defending Internet freedoms, as the U.S.
government and companies attempted to close down WikiLeaks, a group of hackers
retaliated, leading to a cyber war and the “first sustained clash between the established
order and the organic, grassroots culture of the net” (Townsend, Harris, Smith, Sabbagh,
& Halliday, 2010). Many have anticipated a cyber war between states, but this is a clash
between states and civil society. The WikiLeaks case also highlights how, although
219
institutionally oriented movements have become discouraged and lost momentum since
the WSIS, there is an increase in defensive tactics by civil society. Therefore, this opens a
new field of research to investigate this aspect of confrontation.
Civil society networks active in the WSIS and IGF have been calling for a
framework of principles for Internet governance that would comply with existing human
rights standards and be developed through an open and democratic process since the first
WSIS in 2003. The WikiLeaks example focuses new attention on Internet governance
and the need for cross-border Internet governance issues to be subject to a due process of
law and informed by political frameworks, including those of human rights. To ensure
that the Internet is a communication space that continues to fulfill social, cultural, and
political needs of individuals and groups, public policy should be created within a rights
based framework. The theme of the conflicting relationship between the global Internet
and the territorial bound jurisdiction of the nation state continues to occur. Thus, the work
of civil society to defend Internet freedoms and the struggle over communication rights
continues.

220
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233
APPENDIX A: INTERVIEWEES

No. Organization Date
1 London School of Economics; Lawyer 9/12/09
2 European Research Centre for Human Rights 9/13/09
3
ICANN At-Large Advisory Committee; Various
civil society networks
9/13/09
4 Government Delegate 9/13/09
5 Internet Rights and Principles Dynamic Coalition 9/13/09
6 Internet Rights and Principles Dynamic Coalition 9/14/09
7 Internet Rights and Principles Dynamic Coalition 9/14/09
8 Centre for Internet and Society 9/14/09
9 Internet Rights and Principles Dynamic Coalition 9/14/09
10
Global Partners; Internet Rights and Principles
Dynamic Coalition (Chair, 2010)
9/15/09
11
Internet Rights and Principles Dynamic
Coalition; Multistakeholder Advisory Group
(IGF)
9/15/09
12 One Web Day (Director) 10/2/09
13 Association for Technology and Internet 10/28/09
14 One Web Day 10/29/09
15
Internet Rights and Principles Dynamic
Coalition; Youth Coalition; Diplo Foundation
11/2/09
16
Commuica; Internet Rights and Principles;
ICANN
11/8/09
17
Internet Rights and Principles; European School
Net
11/19/09
18
Internet Rights and Principles Dynamic Coalition
(Chair)
11/23/09
19 Internet Rights and Principles Dynamic Coalition 11/24/09
20 Internet Rights and Principles Dynamic Coalition 11/24/09
21 Consumers International 11/24/09
22 Internet Rights and Principles Dynamic Coalition 11/25/09
23
Association for Progressive Communication
(Executive Director)
12/7/09
24 Association for Progressive Communication 12/13/09
25 Internet Governance Caucus; Diplo Foundation 12/31/09
26 Electronic Privacy Information Center 1/19/10
234
27 Internet Rights and Principles Dynamic Coalition 2/24/10
28 Internet Rights and Principles Dynamic Coalition 3/3/10

235
APPENDIX B: COMPUTER AND INTERNET-RELATED PUBLIC INTEREST
ORGANIZATIONS

Organization Name Founding Disbandment
American Civil Liberties Union 1920
Freedom House 1941
National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee 1951
Morality in Media 1962
American Conservative Union 1964
Alliance to End Repression 1970 1995
Media Access Project 1971
Public Citizen 1971
Committee on Public Doublespeak 1972
National Coalition Against Censorship 1974
Americans for Decency 1975 1999
Eagle Forum 1975
Media Alliance 1975
Alliance for Community Media 1976
The Media Institute 1976
Women Against Violence Against Women 1976 1993
World Press Freedom Committee 1976
Free Congress Research and Education Foundation 1977
DC Feminists Against Pornography 1978 2001
Commission for Social Justice 1979
Educational Fund for Individual Rights 1979 1987
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee 1980 2001
People for the American Way 1980
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility 1981
Union for Democratic Communication 1981
Rutherford Institute 1982
Communications Era Task Force 1983 1987
Public Cryptography Study Group 1983 1987
Public Interest Computer Association 1983 1987
Free Software Foundation 1985
World Association for Christian Communication 1986
Reference Point Foundation 1987 1997
Alliance for Public Technology 1989
Center for the Community Interest 1989
League for Programming Freedom 1989
Association for Progressive Communications 1990
236
Electronic Frontier Foundation 1990
National Campaign for Freedom of Expression 1990 1999
Privacy International 1990
Center for Media Education 1991 2007
Computer Users for Social Responsibility 1991
Freedom Forum 1991
Center for Civic Networking 1992
Internet Society 1992
Privacy Rights Clearinghouse 1992
United States Privacy Council 1992 2003
Progress and Freedom Foundation 1993
Electronic Privacy Information Center 1994
Enough is Enough 1994
About Face 1995
Center for Democracy and Technology 1995
Consumer Project on Technology 1995
CryptoRights Foundation 1995
Digital Future Coalition 1995 1999
Families Against Internet Censorship 1995
Feminists for Free Expression 1995
Voters Telecommunication Watch Center for
Internet Education 1995 2003
Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection 1996
CypherNet 1996
DNRC 1996 2001
GILC 1996
NetAction 1996
NetAction 1996
Peacefire 1996
U.S. Internet Council 1996
Coalition Against Unsolicited Email (CAUCE) 1997
Internet Free Expression Alliance 1997 2001
The Censorware Project 1997 2003
Anti-Child Pornography Organization 1998
People for Internet Responsibility 1999
Online Policy Group 2000
Center for Digital Democracy 2001
Chilling Effects 2001
Creative Commons 2001
Public Knowledge 2001
237
SpamCon Foundation 2001
European Digital Rights 2002
IP Justice 2002
Teletruth 2002

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Asset Metadata

Creator Movius, Lauren B. (author)

Core Title The struggle for communication rights: Global civil society and Internet govenance

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Communication

Publication Date 04/27/2011

Defense Date 02/23/2011

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag civil society,communication rights,Internet governance,OAI-PMH Harvest,right to communicate,social movements

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Castells, Manuel (committee chair), Aronson, Jonathan (committee member), Riley, Patricia (committee member)

Creator Email lauren.movius@gmail.com,lmovius@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m3791

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Rights Movius, Lauren B.

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Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

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