The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> ROXANA RADU: I think we are good to go. I'm not able to see the room just yet. You will be confirming if that's already on your side?
>> YIK CHAN CHIN: Yep, we are ready to go. Can we start?
>> ROXANA RADU: Yes, please do.
>> YIK CHAN CHIN: And welcome back to the site again, and we had a very good, you know, morning sessions. And afternoon, because there were some delays from the session. So we were late for about 10 minutes okay? So in afternoons, welcome back. We have one panel which is on the perspective of date, governance around the world. So we five papers as well, and the panel will be chaired by Professor Jan. And so we have Dmitry, so we will have the discussant as the panel ax that, we will have a break, a 20 minutes break and then most importantly, we will have our GigaNet business meeting, at half past 3:00.
So we would like to invite all of you who stayed online and on site if possible to join our business meeting. It's important for us to have a discussion about the future development and also some important issues, you know, about the GigaNet. Without any delay, I would like to give the time to our Chair, to chair the panel. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. Yeah, so my name is Jan Schulter. I'm in the Netherlands but also at the center of global cooperation research at the University of Duisberg‑Essen? Germany, where there is a program on Internet Governance. So my Duisberg‑Essen affiliation is maybe even more relevant for today.
Welcome, everyone. We have four papers this afternoon. We have the pleasure of having the first paper delivered on site. So Stephanie Teeuwen is here along with her sleeping colleagues in North America, Robert Rogowsky and Katarina Zomer. So you will speak on trade diplomacy implications of data sovereignty and data localization. So off you go.
>> STEPHANIE TEEUWEN: Just waiting for the presentation.
One second.
>> MODERATOR: Okay. It looks like we have a technical issue. Pilar, would you be okay to come in a little bit earlier and we switch the order?
>> Yes. I have your title as east wind west wind, avoiding a new technological Cold War. That sounds engaging. Off you go.
>> MARIA DEL PIlAR RODRIGUEZ PITA: I'm going to share my screen. I think you can see well now?
>> ROXANA RADU: Week see it very well.
>> MODERATOR: We don't see it on site.
>> MARIA DEL RODRIGUEZ PITA: Oh, you don't see it?
Okay, now I'm not sure what I have to do.
>> MODERATOR: Hold on just a second.
Yep, we're all set. Go ahead.
>> MARIA DEL PILAR RODRIGUEZ PITA: My paper is called "East Wind, West Wind, Avoiding a New Technological Cold War." I'm the chair of the youth Internet Governance Forum in Spain. And I will be presenting today.
What we are going to do, we will analyze the European digital position and compare it to the United States and China. We have seen through the sessions of today, that Europe, Africa, we are the battleground between the United States and China and that's what we don't want. We are seeing how these two countries are engaging in this technological Cold War, blocking between each other, and trades between each other. And Europe should use the position not just to mediate, but to become involved as one of the key players. We see that it's working with both sides of the balance, we have the data alliance with the United States.
Today there was a merging because we launched the new digital partnership with other Republic of Korea and we are trying to join both sides. Throughout this paper, we followed very traditional methodology. We did a test to see the context in which Europe was. And we highlighted the technological environment. I'm an engineer and I'm very focused on technology. The regulatory environment, we were comparing digital regulations and one of the things we are looking at here, is with all of this, we have specified some key digital enablers, and 5G and blockchain and then we have summoned it all in a SWOT analysis and then see how it impacts Internet fragmentation.
So let's get into the detail. This are the patents of the technology. This is how Europe lags behind a lot. This is not big news because we all know that we are driving a lot and investing in becoming digital leaders, but we are very different from Huawei and Google but it's important to keep in mind what we are measuring here. We are measuring digital communications. Europe is very, very strong other sectors. We have one of the strongest automobile, and pharmaceuticals and cosmetics with L'Oreal.
So what we propose in the paper, we have to base our digitalization into these sectors. So instead of trying to compete with this big, Big Tech, we should like we are doing right now, we can try to focus ‑‑ we are very strong at and from this, the others will follow them and create the industrial digital drive that will lead to more patents.
As we change this, and the way that digitalization is measured, if we include this fourth Industrial Revolution into the way that digitalization is measured, Europe will increase a lot in these indexes. Here we have a rather similar graph, only this time, it's with research and development. We can see again the Big Tech giants. We have Huawei and Europe industries in the top ten and we have the automobile sector. We have companies that are investing a lot in research and development. We have the European Commission investing a lot in research and development.
So it's important to focus our strengths instead of trying to increase our weaknesses because our competitors will have that advantage compared to us. We need to focus on what sectors are strong and invest in the other sectors that the others will follow. Here we can see our big weakness. Europe is hand in hand when it comes to start‑ups. You have the image ‑‑ I don't want to make this too long.
With create a lot of start‑ups. These start‑ups don't become scale ups. They are bought by US companies before that. So what Europe should try to focus is create start‑ups in the sectors we have been mentioning and trying to help them become scale ups and become digital uniforms, using the three enablers that we tell, and using the meta verse, that we are seeing in the world these days. We should use the digital technologies helping to create the scaleups, instead of them being bought by the United States or Chinese companies.
Yes, okay. Where is the value chain for the 5G that can be extrapolated. What we wanted to show was the interdependencies between the countries. So we have a huge American dominance in cloud. We have Google, Amazon Web Services and Oracle, but if we take a slightly deeper look, we have them in China. We have one Chinese, one American, but Europe is beginning to enter this mark and we are seeing European countries. We have Meta and Google and Amazon Web Services, but Europe is starting to enter these markets. Why? Because we have strong operators, like for instance, Deutsche Telekom that we are seeing is starting to appear in all of these key value chain components.
Again, we see China becoming ‑‑ well, China has become one of the key factories in the world. They are starting to develop a little bit more towards innovators, but we all know that they are the main cheap exporters in the world. Again, Europe is trying to change this with the Chips Act. We are developing key alliances with safe providers to try to ‑‑ let's say, reduce our dependencies because we have seen when a pandemic comes, this whole value chain gets disrupted.
>> MODERATOR: Pilar, just to warn you that you have a minute left.
>> MARIA DEL PILAR RODRIGUEZ PITA: Yes, only one slide left. There are very big dependencies, and they are starting to get broken. We have seen in the United States with security concern and they are blocking Chinese products and blocking their companies from becoming involved with China and blocking the sale of artificial intelligence but we see China blocking this and Europe in the middle trying to mediate and let's say, creating alliances on both sides. Finally, we have the digital sovereignty. We have Europe with regulation, the United States with companies and China with it state of protectionism. We ‑‑ the United States is trying to achieve more regulatory sovereignty, but most of these are just the introduction to Congress and we all know that that doesn't really go very well because I'm running out of time, I'm just going to stop here.
You have a lot more details on the paper and thank you very much.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you so much, Pilar, that gave us a lot of good debate. Stephanie, I think your slides are now operative. So let's go ahead and go back to your session. Go ahead.
>> STEPHANIE TEEUWEN: Well, thank you. So my name is Stephanie and I will be presenting ‑‑ oh, yes, that works.
My name is Stephanie, and I will be presenting on trade did I low massy is implications of data sovereignty and data localization which is a paper that I coauthored with Dr. Robert Rogowsky and Katie Zomer who couldn't be here today.
So some of the main questions in our paper were what are the diplomatic implications of data sovereignty and what ways are countries shaping national data regulatory frameworks? And how are these various data regulatory ‑‑ for data localization regulations influencing the trade agreements. We look at United States, Europe and China. And we look at the economic partnership agreement between Japan and the EU and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership in Asia.
So over the past few years, as so societies have becoming more and more aligned. We are increased ecommerce, which increasing the flow of cross‑border data and data is becoming ‑‑
(No audio).
As a result of these calls for data sovereignty, there's a lot of regulations being implemented but these act as nontariff barriers to international trade. And since there's not a global comprehensive agreement on how to deal with issues of cross border data flow, we're seeing a regulatory vacuum, which is being filled by national and regional trade agreements or national and regional regulations so most notably within the European Union with the data protection regulation which was implemented in May 2018 and has a strong focus on creating a privacy framework ‑‑ oops. Creating a privacy framework and sort of enabling trust within digital society in Europe, the GDPR has a strong focus on individual rights and privacy, which is in stark contrast to the Chinese initiatives which are more focused on collective sovereignty. Over the past few years there's a lot of regulation in China.
Starting in 2017 with China's cybersecurity law which focuses on data and cyber sovereignty and under this law, the CCP may seize data for national security reasons. Also more recently, the data security law which was implemented in September of 2021, which focuses on national security data storage and the personal information protection law which was implemented in November of 2021, which could fusses on regulating online data and so within China, the cybersecurity administration makes a distinction between important data and core data and depending on what kind of data it is, they can say that it pertains to national security and with it sort of take ownership of the data. And then in the United States, it's interesting because there actually hasn't been any federal regulations on privacy and on data protection yet. And so in the absence, we have the California Consumer Privacy Act which was implemented in June of 2018 and modeled heavily upon the GDPR.
Over the summer, the US did start negotiations on a federal level to get the American data privacy and protection act, and it's being sent to the full House. China focuses on national security and the EU focuses on individual rights, the US sort of seeks to find a balance between privacy, security, but at the same time, companies and trades. So in terms of ‑‑ in terms of how these data ‑‑ how these frameworks influence trade agreement, we looked at the economic partnership between Japan and the ex U. And back in 2019, the European Union decided that Japan had an adequate level of data protection, but actually, over the summer the European data supervisory board argued that despite this adequacy, further negotiation of cross‑border data flows will be needed. And so this is yet to take place these negotiations also we looked at the regional comprehensive partnership which is one of the largest free trade agreements in ‑‑ within Asia and it's most notably without India and it was implemented in January of 2022, and it includes broad provisions on cross‑border data flows.
And it was interesting because India was involved in negotiations for this from 2011 to 2019 but in the end decided to opt out and that could be because they have a long history of nonalignment or their worriness of data colonialism.
So globally, there's a lack of any sort of global agreements on how to regulate the data and how to regulate the cross-border flow of data and it's unlikely that any global agreement will merge. And so therefore, we recommend setting up an international structure that can still be a place where negotiates can take place on this. And so it could be useful to have formal agreements on regulatory cooperation, and this could be done setting up high level technical officials of the relevant regulatory agencies across nations.
And additionally creating a small Secretariat that can establish an international agency presence to ensure that formal institutional collaboration takes place and push an agenda and support implementation. So given that there's no globally accepted sovereignty framework and no bilateral agreements, it's likely that for reaching national regulations will emerge. In order to prevent fragmentation in terms of regulations, it is important to at least stay in touch and stay in negotiates to tort of try to converge these different regulatory frameworks because currently with all the different regulations emerging, this sort of stifles the trade and formal growth. And so this must be based on shared values and respect the sovereignty of the different nations and the national regulations, but, yeah, it also accommodates to the transnational nature of cross border data flows.
Thank you very much. And if you have any questions, please let me know.
>> MODERATOR: Great. We will move on to a third paper, Carla, this is for coproduction for artificial intelligence project implementation, lessons from Latin America. You are speaking from the UK at the University of Surrey and your colleagues, Maria Esther Cervantes and Fabrizio Scrollini.
>> CARLA BONINA: Yes, and today, I'm just presenting on behalf of my coauthors, that yeah, it's an interesting project that happens at the layers of the applications. So basically what we have done here and I'm going to walk you through very briefly on the paper, we know there's a lot of interest to solve all sorts of problems, especially public problems.
But we don't know yet what works best and how to do it and so on. So basically, what we want to ask here, as, you know, overall is how do multiple stakeholders such as citizens, the private sector, work together in designing and implementing artificial intelligence projects in the public sector in Latin America, right?
So the in the context of this research, we take AI, basically as machine learning tools, very much and apply the idea of artificial intelligence, very much tapping into how to analyze cluster and eventually predict activities again in the context of governments, right?
So how we look into this and how do multiple stakeholders collaborate? We use this very much from the public sector, the public administration, as an analytical tool to allow us to discuss how are these projects coming together?
In a nutshell, it's an umbrella concept that captures a wide variety of activities in any phase of the public service cycle and in which state actors and lay actors, as I said sometimes NGOs, sometimes cooperatives, sometimes private sector, and sometimes citizens, work together to produce benefits. I won't go into a lot of details but when we say the different phases of the service cycle, we differentiate among co‑commissioning, co‑design, and co‑delivery and co‑assessment, right? And you can read it from there, but they have different implications in how these actors come together and also for the projects we are studying, it also has consequences in some of the findings that we encounters in this empirical project.
So let me go a bit further to explain. EmpatIA. We study seven projects funded by this program called EmpatIA, financed by the Canadian Center, IDRC, and so some of you might be familiar and other bodies in the region. It's very small scale collaborative projects in the region. So this means that it was an AI applied projects that had the public sector and another actor and so we interviewed them and it lots of project sectary data like proposals and financial reports, transcripts and some other comments. And we had privileged access to this data. And then using that framing that I showed you before, in the four phases of service cycle and let me move this. It's interrupted me here. Sorry. And then you can go and look more details, but they were basically happening in different countries in Latin America and in different industries.
So for example, Dinagua or CONAE, and Dinagua, they are in Uruguay. We have one project happening in Chile, and it was very much on pollution and we found that a lot ‑‑ or the majority ‑‑ again, this is a small sample, of course, but we found the so called co‑delivery was what we find most projects with a particular thing, that these in the public sector and the collaboration with NGOs had a lot to gain. I'm going to take a bit more in the findings and we only have one with what we classify as co‑assessment and it was also a collaborative project beyond boarders. So let me walk you on the key findings. Can I move my slide now?
This!
We found that while governments move to speak about AI everywhere, about the data standardization and open data or government data, was essential for the success of this project at different ‑‑ you know, it is different phases and this is key because we send tend to focus on the algorithms but then the data this machine learning tool is still at the core, and we have to focus on that still a lot.
The coproduction initiatives have the potential to contribute at both sides, because the collaborators outside of the government learned a lot and governments learned a lot from this expertise. This is a well‑known thing in digital government transformation, but we did explore this in more detail here. And the third one is hiring external consultants especially from small firms or NGOs or people that know how to manipulate these tools can be a short‑term solution for the lack of internal capabilities in the public sector. Definitely last finding is that, of course, the coproduction projects that use public data and only have a transactional relationship, you know ‑‑ are going to be less likely to become long‑term or permanent collaborations. Not surprising, but still something we have to pay attention.
That's what I wanted to show or share with you today and looking forward also to the discussion. Thanks a lot.
>> MODERATOR: Great. Thank you. We can applaud for them too, no?
Even though they are not in the room. Thank you, thank you, Carla.
Now we have one other paper from Jenny, Jeehyun Jenny Lee at the University of Washington in Seattle. Up early for us. Thank you.
And the title is "The Aftermath of Pandemic Data Disclosure: Towards a data governance framework for equitable data cultures."
Off you go, Jenny.
>> JEEHYUN JENNY LEE: Thank you. I will share my screen and the presentation.
Hi, everyone, I'm Jenny and I'm a Ph.D. candidate from the University of Washington's department of communication. And in this paper, I'm going to be examining how the South Korean government's data governance shape the cultures of the pandemic and the implications they have for thinking about governance frameworks as states increasingly turn to big data to mitigate national risks.
So to provide you a brief background, the Korean government managed pandemic data in two main ways. The government authorities graced the virus by collecting people's personal information such as their location data and demographic data, through credit card companies and telecommunication companies to name the few and then they reported anonymized location data of confirmed patients through local government websites and emergency text messaged as indicated in the pictures here to alert citizens of positive cases nearby. And the news media readily reported on this because they are made public.
Despite the privacy, they said this was to protect the right to know about the pandemic. But while anonymous, this has led to grave and unethical practices and concerns, such as enabling people to speculate the faces behind the anonymous data and engage in social shaming and bread rumors online. This is an example of a newspaper article you may have seen in relation to the government's data strategies. So this the type of cultures that the paper is concerned with. Mainly the practices and the imaginary shaped by the government's data disclosure. So while the study conducts a case study of South Korea, it has implications of how studying ideals of behavior and empowerment through data become main ideals in the government strategies in the face of uncertainty and risk.
So in this paper, I argue that critical interventions in data governance needs to be made with a deep understanding about the cultural norms, values and practices that are encouraged or produced and legitimized through their operation. And while the Korean government no longer publishes patient data, they will look at how the ethical implications of their initial strategies and proposed alternatives for the future emergencies. So to do so, I asked the following questions, what kind of data cultures are encouraged and enabled by government's data disclosure strategies and what are the ethical implications for citizens' rights and well‑being, in particular for that of minority identities.
To answer these questions, I conducted critical discourse analysis of multiple online materials, such.
>> AUSTRIA: Public reports and news media articles and coverage of the privity dilemmas and the critiques the data management. The first type of data cultures identified in this study is the data cultures of collective right to know. The health institutions responsible for the data driven strategies mainly the Korean Disease and Ministry of Health and welfare, and espouses democratic principles, mainly transparency and therefore the data is presented as a public good that can empower the collective of knowledge to navigate through the heightened uncertainty of the pandemic. However, the collective right to know is heavily data of infected, and it becomes eclipsed by the understanding of a public good. This is lynched to the culturalization of criminalization as the citizens were seen as a threat to the data governance and the public safety. The criminalization of COVID‑19 patients came prevalent in May, which was reported in Seoul, South Korea. When it was reported that the cases were linked to gay clubs in South Korea, the public engaged in public shaming and homophobic. And this was made pore at the severe as they posted the travel histories of the visitors the club.
Criminalization of COVID‑19 patients also occurred for migrant workers who were not able to ‑‑ when it was reported that they left their quarantine areas. And this resulted along the existing norms. The ownership of data and the right to access data of others resides with the majority, while societies minoritized members receive heightened surveillance and benefit from data as public service.
Lastly, the culture of criminalization leads to the speculation, rather than certainty. And so data is provided by the government to provide us with confidence to manage the pandemic but ironically, it has led to more speculation. This occurred online across the network media landscape where the personalities and users engaged in speculating these criminalized identities and speculating who they could be and also speculating about what their personal lives would be like.
And so data disclosure strategies, mainly the lack of policies of how it's ‑‑ it further drove this economy of speculations.
In the paper, I talk about the policy recommendations specifically in relation to South Korea, but in this presentation, I'm going to focus more on the implications this may have for scholarship and critical data studies and data governance. So big data will be increasingly in national and security risks such as the global pandemic. And the states seek to make this public data in the name of data transparency. However, the study revealed that data does not speak for themselves but is guided by the media norms.
At the stage of implementing data governance strategies there, should be considerations for the following.
Sorry. I think I'm going over time a bit.
But there should be considerations for data, what kind of imaginaries are created, mainly the data and imaginaries of the public because that is how we make sense of what is going around the world and how we make sense of others. Also the idea of public data needs to be critically interrogated to check whether it's creating new data power relations and would it be public? And third, when we talk about sharing in public ‑‑ and publicizing this data, we need to think about the network media landscape and how people are using this data in line with social media cultures such as call out and shaming.
Thank you for listening to my presentation. And I look forward to your questions.
Thank you.
Now we have discussant Dmitry Epstein. He has jumped in the last minute with his usual sense of public service as chair of the GigaNet community. So over to you.
>> DMITRY EPSTEIN: Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Jan. Thank you, everybody, for those thought‑provoking presentations.
Yes, I was called to duty, more or less this morning. So I'm one of those discussants who protecting more his own work on what was just presented. Reflecting in‑depth on what you have reflected in the papers because I was only able to skim them today.
With that, I would like to offer a general reflection, which has Berna Akcali projecting my own work on what I glanced at in the morning and then more pointed questions to each one of the presenters. So my observation is this. It's interesting to soon and entire panel dedicated to data flows at the GigaNet. It makes one think about the scope and the boundaries of our feel. And kind of journey that we made from focusing explicitly on critical regulation of ‑‑ or critical Internet Governance, and the information flow. I'm not sure yet what to do with the thought but wanted to put it out this for, you know, to engage with it later. Now moving on to the papered. I think it was really interesting how in many ways how complimentary the four papers were.
The first two papers dealt with the big thoughts and sort of broad observations about what is being done or what can be done in the area of data flows, regulation. The two papers ‑‑ the second kind of portion. The other two papers told with more concrete kind of more bounded experiences of data flows governance in practice. So ‑‑ and I think in a way, the papers raise questions a little bit like one to another. So I will go in the order in which the papers represented ‑‑ sorry in which the papers appear in the program and I will hopefully make sense out of it. So starting with the data sovereignty paper.
It's an ambitious undertaking with cute obligations about the regulatory vacuum that is filled with regional initiatives which, but then the concluding remarks are calling for sort of a centralized node that could coordinate or promote harmonization of this regional and local initiatives. And I wonder whether given we are in year 17 of the Internet Governance and attempts to resolve some of the ongoing questions. So I wonder whether so what extent this so what has it taken into account and whether it's feasible to have a regulatory body like the one you proposed in the paper. How does this kind of call towards convergence around a digital framework? And what does it take into account what we have learned in trying to converge around various Internet policy issues.
Right? And I would say, perhaps like unsuccessful attempts to converge around those in international bodies.
And I wonder about what other bodies, for example, polycentric models where there's not necessarily a single, again node on the network, where everything converges, right, but there is a contributed form of governance that kind of takes ‑‑ talks to some of these ideas we have been hearing about today, and about multi‑stakeholders, et cetera.
Moving on to kind of avoidance of a new technological Cold War, which I think is a great title!
Again, take my ‑‑ all of my comments with this kind ‑‑ again, take all of my comments with caveat of how bounded they are and kind of genuine questions and they are not meant to be really criticism, but this paper made me think about ‑‑ I'm just getting to my notes. Right whether this kind of call for Europe to take kind of a leading role is a little bit past its time. Europe is taking a leading role through the regional agreements that we just heard about in the other paper. Right? Like, if you think about GDPR as an example of regional policy that has global ripple effect, this is an amazing example that kind of ‑‑ I mean in a way places your paper behind the development that's already happened.
But, on the other hand I wonder if it's a paternalistic take on the role of Europe in resolving this big brother entering a scrabbling between siblings and trying to prevent them from destroying each other.
Borrowing from a different place like science communication, there was this deficit model that was kind of practiced for many years where the idea is that, you know, there's ‑‑ there are scientists that kind of know what they are talking about and in the position of privilege and there are citizens who don't know what they are talking about and there's a knowledge gap that the scientists need to fill.
And you learn that it's not that black and white. It's not that simple. And there's a whole citizen science movement and there's a lot of kind of processes that are mutually fitting, right and are trying to deal with genuine differences and experiences and practices and power structures, right in these two groups. And it's ‑‑ I was scanning through the paper, and I had the same against. There as a mutual powerful figure in the form of the European Union that kind of knows something that others do not, right? And that's what gives this kind of body this responsibility. The responsibility to step in and resolve the tension. How does this bode with the realities of how the polities develop and in particular, this whole point about transactional nature of many of those relationships that Carla was mentioning at the end of her presentation.
So moving to Carla's presentation. On key value production of artificial intelligence, I think it gets at a very interesting kind of intersection that we heard about this morning, this whole idea of sometimes an abstract ideas about policy with more practical attempts to turn them into something concrete. I find this fascinating. I would love to hear a little bit more about how you collected your texts. So I understand the point about privileged access, but how did you decide what to include and what to exclude in your final analysis?
And I think one of the interesting points which, again, like I think raises questions towards, you know the previous two presentations is that the technical expertise lies outside of the government, right? So, again, that goes back to my question about to what extent do the first two papers take into account what you have already learned in the past two decades of thinking about Internet Governance questions, about the fact that the technical expertise lies outside of the purview of the governments.
For Carla, how do you resolve the transactional nature of most of these relationships in which regulatory bodies and technological companies and citizens, right, engaged in, right? So I understood the point that you are making and the problems that you raise but I wonder do you have any thoughts about how do we actually untangle it because I would guess, I do not know, that the majority of interactions are based on this kind of transactional notion.
And finally to Jenny's paper, about cultures of data governance during the pandemics, this kind of ‑‑ the ‑‑ the governance inheritance of the pandemic, if we may say. It's an interesting moment of time which exposed a lot of our ‑‑ kind of taken for granted ways we think about data and data policy and I think this is a very interesting project.
Again, it kind of speaks to some of the work that I have been involved in around privacy and the pandemic. That's why it was easy for me to relate. Here again, I have a methodological question, because it seems like a very vast purpose to work with.
And I really appreciate how ‑‑ I took notice that you were speaking and then you wrapped it up in your discussion, the point about power, right, about how the cultures reflect power structures within a given nation state, right, in your case, South Korea. Also, I like how you brought in this imaginary in thinking about policy. I wonder, again, in the link that you are trying to make between your kind of observations for the study of information governance ‑‑ data governance and the policy recommendations, right, so how do you think we can practically better understand the clash in the imaginary in the elites. How do we put it in practice in how do we help the policymakers imagine more diverse audience for the schools that they create and I will stop here. Thank you very much again.
>> MODERATOR: Great. Thank you so much, Dima. I think he deserves a hand. If I'm given four papers to discuss at two hours' notice, I wouldn't be able to put together commentary like that. That was super. Rather than go to the paper givers right away, I think let's take a window for the audience to ask any questions and then we will let the authors respond to all of the feedback they got. People in the audience here want to ask any questions? Any comments on any of the papers?
>> Yes, please and maybe identify yourself so people know who they are hearing from.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you. The data governance and the policy, you mentioned that, but the Internet government, it's different than the security issues. There are data exclusions between them. So how the researchers see in the current ways.
>> MODERATOR: So the connection between data governance and security issues and how you see that in relation to your various subjects. That's a nice connecting question. Others here?
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Good afternoon. Morning. My name is Robert. I just wanted to ‑‑ oh.
Okay. I just wanted to ask if there's any lessons to learn across ‑‑ from what you have done, what are the good practices in government regulation, perhaps, formulation. We are in Ethiopia which headquarters the African Union and a number of organizations. The region has ‑‑ so what's the best practices can the government borrow, particularly in bringing together industry probably academia and then the government? Thanks.
>> MODERATOR: Great. Thank you. Again, a nice question connecting papers.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes, I asked, the researcher asked, the data colonization, but she didn't say how can we avoid the data colonization. My question simple.
>> MODERATOR: Which paper.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: The colonization.
>> MODERATOR: Whoever spoke to data colonization, the question is for you. Actually, take my mic here.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, everyone, my name is Liso Rimbo. I don't know which paper this was, but it talked about diplomacy. I think it was yours, yes. So you mentioned that there is no collegially accepted data nor comprehensive binding agreement but from the ‑‑ but from the cooperations that exist between countries, are there patents that ‑‑ where we could tell the trends the common types of agreement of how a global data framework would look like?
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: My name is Qugu and I will focus on the data and also the aspect about the governance of the data. So in Africa, there's the Malibu convention for data and one the biggest problems that we have, the countries after having that framework, haven't signed them. We know the global standard is the GDPR from the EU, and we in Africa are more like ‑‑ we are caught in between what is happening. And so a follow‑up from me, what are we doing as institutions? Why are we not talking to each other? And one the other problems too I want to raise up is about the diplomacy. We are in the world now where technology is being governed by different institutions. So just last move we came from ITU, and we are here at the IGF.
How are we as academics being able to write about how we are synchronizing this and also raising points on which we can agree on?
So that we are not speaking about it ten years from now but we made progress about it. All right. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Great. Thanks.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: From the morning session, we talked about data and the cross‑sector issues. The Africa union, what is go of the permits and the researchers solution. What are the future solutions? And are there policies formulated national?
>> YIK CHAN CHIN: Any other?
>> MODERATOR: Technologically useless chair. Okay very good. Just a little abuse of the chair's position for people. I did ‑‑ on the Pilar, I also wondered whether Europe is always the solution and whether Europe might also work with other parts in terms of forming the third leg. For Stephanie, there is a little bit of an assumption that cross‑border trade is always good. And I wonder if you had situations where data sovereignty issues and the like might say we don't want open cross border trade id data but that's just a provocation.
For Carla, is this a way to get AI development in Latin America? And, Jenny, I was wondering about the dilemma you posed between data as a public good on the one hand and the privacy issues of control of one own on the other hand. Are there general philosophical principles between working out the two, is it by context, by country, and issue and so on? We have how much time?
15 minutes. So I make that two or three minutes per paper. Okay. Shall we take it in the same order as presented? Pilar.
>> MARIA DEL PILAR RODRIGUEZ PITA: The question you posed is actually quite difficult. I don't think that Europe is always the solution. It's a solution to some problems like, it can act as mediator between the western front and the eastern front because we are in the middle geographically speaking. There are other problems that Europe can control, like, Prince, when we think about ‑‑ I'm just remembering something that I heard on the USA IGF. So China is moving a lot to where it's connecting now America and connecting Africa and Europe doesn't have that capability to contrast that, but it can work ‑‑ create alliances with the United States and alliances with Japan and alliances with African countries so that we can SOP having this huge dependency on just one ‑‑ how do you say it? On just one part of the value chain.
So Europe is a solution to some problems but it's not the ultimate solution.
>> MODERATOR: If only we had ultimate solutions. Okay, Stephanie, do you want to take the trade question?
>> STEPHANIE TEEUWEN: Yeah, thank you for all the questions ‑‑ thanks for all the questions. In two or three minutes, I will try to answer as many as possible. I might not be able to do all of it. So one of the questions that was asked about concerning data colonialism, we do go into depth a little more in the paper but we didn't really have time in this paper to talk about it more. But I think what India is doing ‑‑ the Indian government, what they are doing in terms of providing, like ‑‑ pushing back against the cross‑border flow of data. It's not always beneficial but I think it also shows that it's very hard to push back when you are so dependent upon a few Big Tech companies that are neither American or Chinese and when you don't really have a legal alternative, which is even sometimes the case for the EU and so it's lightning trying to find this balance between still trying to balance these online services and use online platforms like provided by alphabet, meta, those, and while at the same time keeping ownership of your own data and making sure that Big Tech is not the only one profiting off this big data but also it's the Indian people.
I think the government of India is trying but it shows that it's very hard and I don't think there's one solution to solving data colonialism. And then let's see what else. I think it's definitely unlikely that there will be one global framework, but I do think that just in terms of having to comply with all different data regulations whether it's the EU GDPR, or South Korea's data regulations or China's data regulations, just having to comply with that in different ways I think it shows it would be beneficial if there were to be more convergence of this these data regulations. And to go back to a question that was asked in the beginning, in terms of what we learned of two decades of Internet governance, I think it shows that a place like the IGF, even though there's no decisions, it's an important place to come together and stay in discussion to ensure that there is ‑‑ there might actually be some convergence, whether it's data regulation or any other topic. I will stop for now. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Stephanie. Carla, do you want to take it from here in.
>> CARLA BONINA: Very briefly and thank a lot for the comments Dmitry and all of you. I'm learning a lot, which is great. Very quickly to clarify the data, we had the full sample ‑‑ I mean these seven projects, all the projects are worthy out of 70 were contested. And so this is self‑selected and we have biased but it was a good proxy to analyze them, and think it was very, very relevant on them. How to resolve that transactional nature, what I think that this very small scale pilots show that we need better policies to work together with smaller companies and not the Big Techs. It's also good to work with them in certain conditions but we know this from digital government as well.
So, for example, directives of the Chilean government that you must pay SMEs within 30 days enables more of this participation.
So I think we need to encourage much more of this, you know, policies by design, like co‑creation, or co‑collaboration on these projects, you know, from policy directives. And there's some very good, you know, examples, very much from a long-standing work on open data that, you know, was the greatest phase of collaboration. I think that's what we got challenging to move from that. But it shows that both teams learn a lot and there is a lot to gain.
I think those were the two questions that I take as more important.
>> MODERATOR: Okay. Good. Thank you, Carla. And Jenny.
>> JEEHYUN JENNY LEE: The last question about the dilemma as data between public good and individuals' rights, I think needs to be approached from a very context‑specific approach but then at the same time, there are scholarships such as critical data study, critical scholarships and communication studies. The trouble, with the idea of data being objective and data being good and so scholars in this area question, when we say that data is for the public, that the data empowers the public who is the public? Who are we actually helping? And so scholars and critical data studies are saying that we need to approach the majority as composed of the minorities. And so they introduced this idea of ethics of care. So we should bring in the ethics of care to create these data strategies and data governance framework so that we are very attentive to the different ways in which these ideals of data, transparency, data as good impacts people disproportionately. I think frameworks from critical data studies and feminist ethics of care can move arguments beyond, you know, the binary understanding and the arguments that often make it difficult for us to move beyond the ideas of public good and individual good. So how we can be attentive to individual needs while moving forward to this equitable interaction that we all desire.
And I think that also kind of relates to the question on how do we make these data imaginary. How do we cultivate data imaginary. What I have seen happening is how the Korean government is engaging with, like the news media and how they should publicize data when it comes to health emergencies like this, so that they don't encourage people to draw upon hate discourses that is readily available to them. So there is a part where they have to work with media companies to kind of tackle that network environment and they don't give these data interpretations as deeply embedded in society.
I think this is a very ‑‑ there's a lot of heavy lifting going on because if data imaginaries is deeply rooted in our culture, how we view people, the norms and cultures that's been here for all this long time.
So there needs to be an approach, in the educational sector but also in the government itself when they are creating these government strategies, they need to think about what kind of relationships are enabling when we implement this?
What kind of ways ever engaging ‑‑ engagement are we enabling?
And so yeah, I think those were the two questions.
Regarding the methods, how I collected the data, the data from the government resources mainly came from my previous research that looked at how the government was constructing the data as democratic. They were given authority by the government to carry out these data‑driven activities and for the news media documents, I collected data from the period of January 1st, 2020, to July, because that was the period when the public was most concerned about the privacy implications of the government infrastructure, and the other documents, such as the Human Rights Commission and progressive networks, those were the most vehement opponents of how the government was disclosing strategies and their critique have actually changed the government to make their disclosure more sensitive.
And so I drew upon those literature to see counter discourses to the government's infrastructure. Thank you all.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Jenny, and Pilar and Stephanie for and Carla for responding to all of those points so succinctly and carefully. Thank you for the whole session, the papers, everything done here. Very good session, diverse but complimentary papers and I was really struck by how much feedback and that's ‑‑ that's super done.
If you are interested in these data governance, digital data governance issues more, I can shameless promote a session tomorrow morning at 9:00 in conference room 6, we ‑‑ I and others wrote the book on these digital governance issues, Dima has written a chapter in there and we will present that book between 9 and 10 tomorrow morning in CR6. Nice it's to be chair and you can promote yourself a little bit. (Feedback).
That's my punishment for being here. I want to thank Yik Chan Chin for coordinating everything here. And Roxana Radu for overseeing the whole academic symposium. I think it brings us to the end of the academic symposium for this year. Yeah, yeah.
Stay for the business meeting.
Yes, I encourage you to stay for the business meeting shortly to talk about GigaNet as a general community and how if develops and I think your feedback would really be appreciated for that as well. Thank you all for being here. Thanks again, everyone, online and we finish this session. Thanks a lot.
(Applause)
>> YIK CHAN CHIN: Thank you, Jan, very much, for your very charming discussion and also very charming chair and the discussion as well.
Thank you very much.
So as I said, we have a business meeting straight after the panel because we want to ‑‑ you to join us. If you are not a member of the GigaNet yet, we welcome you to join our GigaNet as a member because this is a digitalized global society for the Internet governance with the academics. We have been here for every IGF since it begins 16 years ago. It was set up by generations of academics and researchers. So we have been here for every single IGF.
Okay. So we will have the business meeting and the business meeting is chaired by the current chair of the IGF ‑‑ sorry, the GigaNet, Dmitry. So should I pass the time to Dmitry and he will lead us for the discussion. Okay?
Dmitry, are you ready?
>> DMITRY EPSTEIN: Always ready. So I cannot see the room. I can see myself double in the Zoom window. Oh, perfect.
Okay. So we will not take a break. We will continue straight into the business meeting. And I have a single agenda slide if you want to see it or I can walk through the five points I have on the agenda. Let me see if I can do it. I can apparently do it.
So here is something to focus on.
Okay? Basically, this is what we have in terms of the agenda for the next ‑‑ we have about half an hour, I think. No? 40 minutes? Sorry.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
In terms of what we wanted to discuss, and I think we have most of the steering committee either in the room or online, so feel free to jump in and correct me or add. So I would like to start by first of all, thanking ‑‑ thanking all of you who made it to the room in person, all of you who connected remotely and participated, listened and asked questions and participated remotely.
Thank you to all the presenters who ‑‑ some I understand woke up in very early hours of the day to be here with us and for sharing your thoughts and putting your work out there tore discussion. I hope it was worth it. I would like to thank the program committee for taking the time to review papers and provide feedback to the authors.
A huge thanks to Roxana for coordinating this process so gracefully and confidentially. You make it seem so easy. I think anyone who was involved in this process knows that it's what a very complicated endeavor. I'm not room but I would like to invite everyone to give a round of applause for Roxana for driving the symposium program.
(Applause).
I will assume you are clapping. And I would like to provide a round of thanks to the steering committee, who are present in one form or another at the symposium. For those of you who are attending our symposium for the first time, GigaNet is a Global Internet Governance Academic Network. As Yik Chan mentioned, the network was established more or less at the same time as the IGF started and we have historical events and they have taken place on the data Internet Governance Forum. We are an open network with the focus, right, on people who are active in Internet Governance research and kind of moving into kind of updates bullet already.
For those of you who are interested, you are always welcomed to apply to become a member. We have a membership committee that reviews the applications so people who are actively engaged in net governance research can become full members of GigaNet. There is a form that you can fill out on our website, and for people who are less active in the research or less interested in the research part, but still want to stay up to date with us, there is also an observer option. The main difference between the two is in bullet number three, as a member of the GigaNet, you can stand for elected positions in the network. But as an observer, you cannot.
So a few updates about where we are with GigaNet at the moment. We currently have 323 members, spanning the entire globe and 61 observers. We have a steady flow of applications. There is often a question from graduate students about whether they meet the membership criteria. Again, the main yardstick is whether you are engaged in research activities in the area of Internet Governance and sometimes we may ask for recommendation from a GigaNet member, but don't be intimidated by what you see on the website. If you feel you belong to the community, you want to be part of the community, you are welcome to reach out and talk to us.
In the last few years and I think especially over the last year, there were quite a number of different events that the members of the community organized and this is maybe a good place to emphasize that we are a membership driven organization. So anything that ‑‑ like, everything is ‑‑ everything you see us doing is done voluntarily, and everything you see us doing is an initiative coming from the members. And so this year, we had in January a workshop on standard setting methods, organized by Corine Cath and Ricardo Denani, and it was virtual. Like, good outcome of corona that we kind of opened up to having virtual gatherings. And so we had that workshop in January about methods of studying standards setting processes and organizations in had April. Sort of responding to the developments in Ukraine, we held a workshop by Courtney Reg on sanctions and the sanctions around the Internet access, you may recall there were a lot of calls to sanction Russian Internet actions, and we had a conversation about that. And just earlier this month, Niels ten Oever, discussed the politics of this connection, which I think still kind of converses ‑‑ it seems to me that it conversed very well with the workshop that we had in April.
At the IGF itself, we have at least 13 workshops co‑organized by ‑‑ or organized by GigaNet members and I have a sense that there are more. There's a much broader involvement of our community, but just to kind of show you the volume of activity that is going on at the network.
As you might have heard, this is going to be the third year that we are collaborating with Communications Policy Journal on a special issue based on the symposium presentations and, again, Roxana seems to make it seem so easy to navigate that process as well. And I sincerely hope this partnership will continue moving on.
Now, I'm getting to the third point and then we will open it to a discussion in the room. So those of you who are on the GigaNet mailing list, you know that we have election coming on. The way GigaNet is governed, we have a steering committee, consisting of four people, who are elected by the members of GigaNet, and every year four of these roles are up for reelection. This year, the oppositions are chair, secretary ‑‑ the chair of the membership committee, which I mentioned before, and the chair of the program committee.
We had some nominations for the secretary. But we didn't have nominations for the program committee chairs. I would like to use this opportunity to encourage you to volunteer, stand up, and take part in shaping where our community is headed.
Again, this is a community of volunteers, enthusiasts of Internet Governance research, and everything we do is kind of driven by the members and the steering committee, and this is a really tangible way to kind of get engaged with the field. So with that, I would like, I would like to open the floor. Maybe I will stop the slide sharing. I would like to open the floor and to invite you to ask questions, raise issues and reflect on the symposium and have a conversation to the extent we can remotely.
>> YIK CHAN CHIN: Yes, many of the colleagues actually have other meetings. So some of them left. And so I already passed our information on our website and the link to them, but, yeah, for those still here, do you have anything you want to ask Dmitry or ‑‑
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Just a practical question, how ‑‑ thank you. I just want to, as an academic, I wanted to know more about your work and what kind of collaborations you can do. I teach here in Addis Ababa University, and I would like to learn more on that.
A more practical question.
>> YIK CHAN CHIN: And also, Dmitry, if you can talk about what kind of collaboration, what you can offer to other institutions and, of course, I can talk about it. You also can, you know, mention to our onsite audience and you can ensure those strategies as well. Thank you, Dmitry.
>> DMITRY EPSTEIN: Sure.
So I think a couple of things. Maybe one of the things I did not mention in a review of updates about GigaNet is that we are increasingly engaged in ‑‑ Internet expertise with the actual policy discussions to bring the academic expertise to the spaces where policy deliberation occurs. In terms of collaborations, again, GigaNet is a platform, right, which we ‑‑ which is a member that we can use to consult others, to find peoples to cooperate on, you know ‑‑ cooperate with on the research project ‑‑ as a network, we do not issue kind of GigaNet branded research and we do not host researchers, but anything you can imagine to derive transactionally, right, from a network of like‑minded academics and experts in the field. I mean, you can probably find it in the ‑‑ in GigaNet.
Beyond the transactional nature, of interaction, I think again, it's a community where you kind of get to know people, and colleagues and I think this collaboration kind of emerge, either out of interactions in workshops or at the symposium, et cetera.
We did kick start a few processes, I think, in the past year and a half, trying to think more systemically about how we can bring additional value to our membership. We have an outreach committee and outreach chair and Yik Chan is the chair of the outreach committee, where we are thinking of how we can bring more value, whether it's being in kind of capacity building events like the methods workshop we had earlier in the year, or we have been discussing the possibility of having ‑‑ or kind of helping people secure funding in terms of, you know, figuring out whether we can collaborate with external bodies to help people secure funding for, you know, GigaNet sort of facilitated research.
We're not there yet. It's still a very, very preliminary stages, but ‑‑ and I don't want to kind of place too many kind of promises to commitments on whoever will take over the chair role, because this is my second and last term as a GigaNet chair. But I will emphasize again, that everything that happens within GigaNet starts with the members.
So if there's something that you want to happen, it's just a matter of getting kind of engaged and trying to make this happen.
Through the network. Others, please feel free to, you know, chime in. Yik Chan, Niels, Nadia is here also in the call.
>> YIK CHAN CHIN: We also have a question from the floor.
>> DMITRY EPSTEIN: Okay.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hello, I'm Claire. I'm a researcher from Paris. This is the first day at IGF. And my resource is about the communication with the private sector within the IGF. I didn't know GigaNet and it appears very interesting to my project. So I wanted to know, for example, if people like me ‑‑ I'm not a researcher. I'm not a confirmed researcher, I'm just a researcher student if I can be involved in ‑‑ in the network, and if my ‑‑ like, I don't know if I can get some tips from your community for my master's thesis. Thank you.
>> DMITRY EPSTEIN: So I think that the short answer is yes.
Again, as I said we have two‑Tiered membership system. I mean, membership is free, but so you can be a full member or observer. I mean, I'm sure that if ‑‑ you know, if I recall correctly, the kind of ‑‑ the procedure, you can easily become an observer right now. Again, I think probably you can see it in the room, but Niels shared in the chat, in Zoom, the link, and it's easily ‑‑ if you go to our website, Giga‑net.org, under membership, there's a link to become a member. If you apply to be an observer, you can kind of easily become one as a grad student in the field. You can get added to the LISTSERV and solicit any advice that you feel is necessary for your work.
If you want to become a member, you need a letter from an existing GigaNet member. And you can become a member and get even more involved in kind of running the network itself. So, yes, by all means do not hesitate to apply.
>> YIK CHAN CHIN: We have other questions. Before he asks the question, I want to add something about the outreach. As I said, you know, as Dmitry said, I'm the chair of the outreach and partnership. So we want to have more chance to reach out to your community and especially in the south ‑‑ in the south part of the world. And the US and those transitional ‑‑ we have many members come from that part of the world. So we also want to expand our membership to cover researchers and students from Asia and from Africa, and representative areas as well.
So in coming years, I think we will do more of that and we will also collaborate with different organizations.
So, of course, it's my duty, you know, to do more things for our community. We will do it. We will do it together as well. Thank you.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hello, hello, I represent McGill University in Montreal, Canada. And also I represent, the ICANN snarl, you discussed it the academic outreach and engagement. And I'm involved in the process of virtual schools of Internet Governance and I have one question, a theoretical one and the other question is a practical one because I would like to be fully involved in the academic participation, but the question in theory, do you think academia should be recognized as a separate stakeholder group within the scope of the Internet Governance process?
Thank you.
>> YIK CHAN CHIN: So first of all, I will take the privilege of role of outreach, chair of the GigaNet implications in, I think so. I agree with you. We have such a large group as academia. We have our own ideas and positions and I think it's legitimate to raise the question and also ask the ideas of whether we should as a community and one community of the stakeholder in the IG system. Yes, that's my comment.
Yes.
Dmitry, yes, back to you.
>> DMITRY EPSTEIN: I wonder if other steering committee members want to chime.
Niels, Nadia?
Okay. Obviously, I think it's a while since I tried to think about it. And what I'm kind of ‑‑ maybe let me try and turn this question kind of back at you and ask you, what kind of ‑‑ what are the unique concerns that academics bring to the table that you think are not reflected in other stakeholder groups? That would ‑‑ I will just ask you that.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Well, sorry, I would like to answer this question, because it's absolutely ‑‑ it's absolute concern that I have. I'm a lawyer in my background. And when I taught in Russia, in the higher school of economics for nine years, it took me seven years to form a Working Group, an official Working Group on the Internet Governance because lawyers are dealing with law. Computer scientists are dealing with computer science and there's absolutely no collaboration between ‑‑ between them.
And what about the specific concerns? Of course, every single issue of Internet Governance needs a look. From legal, let's say, sociological, political science, let's say regional science, cultural science, everything, is interconnected with it.
So that's a specific set of concerns. It's hundreds of concerns, maybe thousands. We can decide on. Thank you very much. That's my opinion. Very emotional.
>> DMITRY EPSTEIN: No, that's very fine. I would just say that it seems to me that there's kind of two directions in which you can ask this question. The original question you asked is whether ‑‑ whether, you know, academia should be, like, a separate stakeholder within Internet Governance discussion spaces or Internet Governance institutions. It's a separate stakeholder. Your example is facing in the opposite direction, right? It's the idea of ‑‑ it's more of a question whether the Internet Governance is a discipline. And this is an ongoing, I guess, debate and we ‑‑ I think there was a conference, recently organized by Milton Mueller and whether it should be the political connection of information. That's a discussion that I think we should have and may want to have within the GigaNet or building on GigaNet network. I think those are two separate questions about the carving out a label for the academic community within Internet Governance space as opposed to carving a space of Internet Governance within academia. That's what I would say.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you.
>> YIK CHAN CHIN: Other comments from other committee members?
>> DMITRY EPSTEIN: I would like to ask a question, if I may. Especially kind of for ‑‑ for the people who have been participating in GigaNet and in GigaNet events for a while, as well as people who just discovered GigaNet with this event, how do you kind of ‑‑ what would be your least wishes and aspirations for GigaNet. How can we as a network help better do your research or teaching in academia?
>> YIK CHAN CHIN: Whom do you want to pose the question to?
>> DMITRY EPSTEIN: Just the people in the room. I don't see the room, right? But I would like to pose it as a question to the floor.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Sorry for being so active, I think that ‑‑ so a lot of things ‑‑ a lot of use of things. So we have different examples of virtual scope of Internet Governance, the different regional schools of Internet Governance or just participated in Puerto Rico, for example, in North American school of Internet governance. And so there is ‑‑ and so I can see the demand from ‑‑ let the university students ‑‑ the university community to learn more about that, be to more involved. Are.
For example, in the ‑‑ I also teaching the online free course, on Internet Governance and we are teaching there how to participate, how to get involved, what it is ‑‑ is it the ‑‑ let's say, it's not easy issues. And the issues have to guide not from the students, of course but also the academic community how to be more involved and I think one of the best solution for that is to organize more conferences, maybe not on ‑‑ it's a good place to organize this, but it's also to organize separate conferences dealing with solely academic issues, maybe that would be a good idea.
Thank you.
>> DMITRY EPSTEIN: May I ask for a small clarification. When you say academic cases of Internet governance. Do you mean around the substance of what we may include under the umbrella of internet governance or kind of more practical aspects of professional development within the field of Internet Governance?
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes, do you want a follow‑up?
>> DMITRY EPSTEIN: Just quickly.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: I suppose academic issues of net governance would be, let's say, for example, explanation, over the normative papers maybe created in this field.
I'm a lawyer. So my background, I can make the commented version. I created the commented version of charter rights and principles which created. So the different ‑‑ we have also other political scopes, social other kinds of scopes. All of these specialists have words to say and that will be academic issues. And without this explanation, I don't think it will be useful to adopt rules in Internet governance according to the mandate of Internet Governance. Create rules, Rules and procedures, standards all of this needs academic and that I suppose will be the academic issue thank you.
>> YIK CHAN CHIN: They are presenting here. So we don't have many chance to meet them on site. So yes, I would like to invite one of the Chinese colleagues to talk about what they think GigaNet can help to boost the IG research in China. Is that okay?
>> DMITRY EPSTEIN: Sure.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, it's a great pleasure to be here to join this event, and although I'm not a member of this community yet, but I guess the GigaNet can be a platform, which can helps to do the information sharing, especially in the digital committee for the Internet Governance, the Internet has the feature of the globalization and it is very significant for us to have the sharing information and to reach value consensus and to know each other better and achieve the international cooperation.
>> YIK CHAN CHIN: Yes.
>> DMITRY EPSTEIN: Thank you.
>> YIK CHAN CHIN: The Chinese colleagues in the room, it's especially interesting how the IG can help the researchers and the researchers in academic and Internet Governance.
Yes, with we have other question. No? Okay.
So I think ‑‑ you want ‑‑
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you very much, I'm Cyr from Iran. We are working on Internet Governance. We are very much interested to participate in the ‑‑ in the GigaNet network. Actually, because of ‑‑ because of similar issues that we are facing with, particularly regarding the platform governance, transnational governments and the way that you are dealing with developing countries and particularly with kind of the political agenda that they are dealing with us, regarding the kind of sanctions and censorships that are doing over those kind of countries.
And these kind of issues is something that several countries are faced with, how to deal with international transnational platforms and how to come across through the shaped solutions, to at the same times to keep the national sovereignty and also to benefit from using those transnational platforms and the networks that ‑‑ the network that they have covered.
It's a kind of balance that several countries like us, we are faced with and it's a kind of governance‑related issues that we need to think about and we need to discuss within the networks of the governance ‑‑ the Internet Governance researchers.
I arrived a bit late today, and I missed most of session, but I would like to join the network and to raise those kind of issues with why you are colleagues across the globe. Thank you very much.
>> DMITRY EPSTEIN: Thank you. I will just say if I can quickly respond to the last comments. I think they speak to the aim issue. Membership in GigaNet is an individual membership and everyone can able to join the network. And the discussion in the ‑‑ and the activities, we're a global academic network. And so I guess consulting people around issues and soliciting partners, anything that feeds into the broad mandate of academia, can happen on GigaNet. And, again, membership is individual.
So, you know, everyone in this room is welcomed to apply and there is a link on the website, go to gig a‑net.org, that explain how this works. Any other questions online?
>> YIK CHAN CHIN: I think they already asked their questions from the floor and the room. So he, why.
>> DMITRY EPSTEIN: I wonder if other steering committee members want to chime in. Any reflection on the symposium, yes, Niels, go ahead. I have the power.
>> NIELS TEN OEVER: Thank you so much, Dima. Could you hear me well?
>> YIK CHAN CHIN: Yes, we can hear you well.
>> NIELS TEN OEVER: It's a pleasure to be connected to you all and speak to you from Amsterdam. Appreciate all the work that's been going in told and the excellent papers that have been presented and I think it really shows the health and growth of our community of Internet Governance researchers, and discuss fragmentations and interconnection. I don't know we have actual answers what GigaNet has been doing and I hope will continue to do and for that we need you. It's to put this issue on the agenda and provide an academic discussion so we can have a science‑informed policy decisions and we can also understand whether the policies that are implemented actually have the impact that we expected of them and if not, how else they could address issues such as adverse or intentional human rights impacts.
So I hope people will consider becoming a member of GigaNet. And the people who are already a member of GigaNet run for positions in the steering committee because our association is only as strong as the participation just like the Internet itself. Thanks so much.
Niels is the current and continuing vice chair of GigaNet.
>> YIK CHAN CHIN: I think that's all from our side. Yeah. From the ‑‑ now back to you.
>> DMITRY EPSTEIN: Niels, shall I unmute you again in.
>> NIELS TEN OEVER: No. No. No.
>> DMITRY EPSTEIN: Leftover hand. I would like to thank everybody who attended, who stayed for the business meeting. I encourage anybody who as ‑‑ as Niels did, if you are not a member, to become a member. And if you are a member, do a stint in the election for the vacant positions. If you have any questions about what it entails, don't hesitate to ask anyone of current committee members. Our names are on the website under the governance tab. And I hope to see you in other GigaNet events and the symposium next year.
>> YIK CHAN CHIN: Thank you. Thank you. So we conclude our business meeting and also we conclude our GigaNet symposium today. Okay. We see you next year. Bye.
Thank you. Bye.