IGF 2018 - Day 1 - Salle IV - WS146 Hidden Aspects of Digital Inclusion

The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Paris, France, from 12 to 14 November 2018. 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 to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record. 

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>> MODERATOR: Hello, everyone.  Okay.  Good morning.  Let's start in a minute.

     Good morning, everybody.  Welcome to the session, Hidden Aspects of Digital Inclusion.  My name is Stef Leidel, I'm head of Deutschell Welle Akademie and the moderator of this session.  I want to welcome the panelists.  I will introduce you in a few moments.  Some words about Deutschell Welle Akademie.  You might be familiar with the Deutschell Welle Internation Broadcast of Germany.  And we have the media development institution, the Deutschell Welle Akademie, we do media development in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Middle East.  What is the session about? 

This is thought to be a breakout group discussion.  So we want to have interaction, not just words from me and the panelist.  We will have the first part of input. 

I will give a little intro on how we at Deutschell Welle Akademie are defining and working on this topic.  And then experts interventions, each of them five minutes.  I will be a rough timekeeper, because we have 90 minutes and we also want to have time for discussion.

After that, we are going to have some group discussion so you can talk together and you also can have exchange with the experts. 

So let's start with the content, we can ask ourself, okay, what digital world do we live in?  One of the lessons we learn at Deutschell Welle Akademie is digital participation is not a digital issue.  There are factors defining if people can participate or not.  I would like to start with a little quiz.  So test your knowledge.  I would ask you three questions, you give the answer by raising your arms.  The first question is, what do you think?  How many people worldwide live under governments that disconnected Internet mobile networks often for political reasons?  17%, 42%?  Who says 17%?  Nobody?  42%?  Okay.  You're correct.  You are experts.  This is new data from Freedom House in the New Freedom on the Net Report.

The other thing is, for example, if you look at the affordability issue, what do you think in Uganda what is the price of one gigabyte mobile date as the percentage of average income in Uganda.  2.5?  Or 16.2%?  2.5?  Nobody? 16.2? Correct answer.  2.5 is South Africa, and it also conjures, far more expensive.  Zimbabwe around 30%.  This is an interesting report just released from The Alliance of Affordable Internet, a couple of days, weeks ago.  I recommend to read it.

The last question is about Wikipedia.  You know, it is a big topic that we have English as a very important language, Chinese, Spanish, but there are so many languages in the world, maybe have 6 to 7,000 languages.  What do you think ‑‑ how many language editions exist on Wikipedia?  43 or 292?  43?  292?  So there is reasons for optimism at least here.  There are definitely 292 active language editions.  If you compare still with the 6,000 languages in the world, it is still very few.

So as we have seen, digital participation is something that is diverse.  There is no easy way to see if a country has a high or low level of digital inclusion or digital participation.  So we look as Deutschell Welle Akademie as I said, we work with around 50 countries, with developing and emerging countries.  We started the project to measure in a way, digital participation.  We call it the speak up barometer.  So we're measuring 8 countries in Africa.  One we have done is Uganda.

We say, okay, how can we describe the level of digital participation?  We have developed a special model for the measurement of digital participation.  I don't want to dig too deep, because we don't have the time to go into the method in detail.  You can read everything on our website.  Just to tell you a little bit how we approached the digital participation.  So we say, okay, in the digital world, you have like data, content, services, you have code.  And there are different ‑‑ very different types how you can participate.  So you can, for example, take content.  You can just consume it as a user.  You can create content.  But you also can share and govern content.  And for us, also, an important aspect is you can innovate.  Though we think innovation is important for digital participation driver.  Now look at how we measure digital participation, what we consider like five clusters or thematic areas.  We look at topics of access, topics of media, journalism, topics of society, digital rights, and innovation.

We develop a kind of questionnaire of around 100 questions.  We ask in each country, based on expert interviews, field research, also desk research.  And of course, we check the technical things, how is the infrastructure, is there public Internet, how is the affordability, for example?  Very important is the digital rights topics, look at the freedom of speech laws, check for example, what about Internet governance topics?  For example, the Internet Governance Forum, for example.

For us, the cluster we're strong, media and journalism cluster, because we do media development.  What we do there is analyze a little bit ‑‑ okay, what do the media do, independent media, civic media, public service broadcasting, for example.  More importantly is the society cluster.  Many countries, the cultural norms are determining if someone can participate or not on the Internet.  You have the gender topic, you have the language topic, for example.

And the last one is the innovation thing.  As I said, it is really interesting we have in many countries, Latin America or Africa, we have so great ideas and great projects, especially in the media ecosystem.  So we're really interested in how do this innovative actors influence the whole system?  So this we do on the basis, as I said, of expert interviews.  We use a broad range of experts, for example, from the innovators to investigative journalists to community reporters.  For us, also important the user perspective, what does people say that live in rural areas and don't have access really? 

So some of our outcomes of previous results we have is this information is from industry.  This is a terrible topic, we have proliferation of misinformation.  In Mexico, you can hire agencies for hate speech.  Not only Mexico, but Kenya, a big problem.  I'm not sure if people from Kenya are here.  We have a big problem with hate speech, for example.  It is done in a very professional way.  Yeah.

Another thing, of course, is the social media taxation topic.  More and more countries are discovering this topic as a way to determine or limit freedom of speech.  Not just Uganda.  But also positive developments.  We don't only want to talk about the negative things.  Of course, we have the enormative actors everywhere and social media innovators in many countries bringing in good ideas on how people can participate.

Okay.  So I talked a lot.  Now I would like to introduce our experts.  And first, Sarah Kiden from Uganda.  I'm glad you're here.  You're a technologist and researcher, you work on open source and Internet policy, you were a Mozilla open web fellow, and now you're working on an Internet measurement project, with Internet peering and user behavior.  We ask each panelist to give an initial statement.  You say social media and mobile media tax will lead to exploding cost and drop in Internet use for those that are already unprivileged.  Hello, Sarah. 

Talal Raza, you are from Pakistan, you work For Media Matters For Democracy in Pakistan, you're an expert on digital rights, and you lead the initiative we found interesting, that you are fostering media and journalists capacity to report on digital rights issues.  You say cyber crime laws are used to enforce self‑censorship of critical voices. 

Daniel O'Maley from the U.S., we're working a lot together, at (?) and Deutschell Welle Akademie.  He's associate editor at the International Media Assistance.  He works with the global media environment and Internet policy and conducts research on the Internet governance and implications of new digital technologies impact on media systems worldwide. 

You say social media platforms as gatekeepers of content make it easier for governments to censor content. 

I want to welcome Osama from India.  He's founder of the Digital Empowerment Foundation.  Your mission is to eradicate information poverty in India and global south by using digital tools.  He's an expert on digital literacy media information, as we call it at Deutschell Welle Akademie is an important line of work.  You are part of the network created on media information literacy called Mill Network.  You say misinformation is a curse of the society in the 21st Century connected world mainly spread by political parties using social media.  It is ultimately a societal problem to be solved by society itself.

Last but not least, Mary Rose Ofianga Rontal from the Philippines.  I'm so happy you chimed in because, unfortunately, Rachel Sibande cannot be here.  She's sick.  You have jumped in.  I'm happy you are here.  You have done great innovative work, founded a project called WomenPowered Institute that provides opportunities for women to excel in the digital economies through training and community events.  You say innovation in the digital space is happening but limited access to Internet is preventing it at a larger scale, especially for women in the Philippines. 

This is our panelists.  Now ‑‑ sorry.  I would ask each of them to give a little intervention, really, only five minutes, as I said, we have some cards prepared.  Yellow card means four minutes and red card is come to an end.  We want to have space later on for the group discussions. 

Please, Sarah, I would like you to start.  Thank you.

     >> SARAH KIDEN: Hi, everyone.  I hope you are okay.  I am happy to talk to you about access, because it is passionate to me.  In the recent past, I like to tell the story that I first go access to the Internet at age of 12. I feel myself lucky as not many in my country have this privilege I got.  I want to use this analogy.  Image the Internet as a big jigsaw puzzle spread across the world. Imagine the Internet like that, you can think of holes, very big holes.  That means we can't get the full image of who we are, what's out there, aspect of our lives.

Before we go further, I would like to give you good and bad news that you already know, but I think a reminder will push us better.  The good news is half of the world's population has access to the Internet.  And the bad news is that the other half does not.  We need the constant reminder, it will help us to push for better.  Looking at other regions, Africa's statistic is worse.  It is 36% people have access. 

Recent studies are showing it is worse, because regulators are counting active SIM cards instead of how many are connected.  If I have three SIM cards, it counts as three different people.  I don't know how to count that, but I don't think that is the right way to count how many people connected to the Internet.  It is important to know the Internet has the potential to change our lives.  To give us access to better healthcare, jobs, improve our standards of living.  If half the world's population  doesn't have access to something powerful to change our lives, that is very upset.

You talk about digital inclusion, you can't say we're talking about inclusion when there are people already excluded.  They're not here, you can't even begin to plan for people not here.  We need to think about these people as we plan.

There are so many challenges and threads, the one about social media, we're in social media now and started to see many governments right now want to charge people for social media tax and mobile money tax.  I saw in Uganda, Zambia, Benin.  And Benin, the cost went up by over 200%.  That is really upset.  There is a barrier to access.  One of the biggest challenges not to be online is cost of access.  They don't have the money.

They increase it by 200%.  And you add I don't know how many layers and making it hard to join.  Some of the policies need to change.  I don't know if you heard about the one for Tanzania, where they said if you want to become a blogger reporter, you had to register and cost was $920.  How many can afford $920 to register and do these things? 

Some of the issues of Internet shut down.  We talked about the Internet being an enabler, helping us go to school.  You are shutting down the Internet for political reasons and keeping people off and off and off.  I think that is something of the things to look at.  Not to be all negative, there is a lot of positive things.  A lot of positive development, if you look at Africa, in the last five years, at least the numbers have gone up, at least we have more people online.  The cost of $16 that you showed was worse five years ago.  That would be my intervention for now.  I would be happy to indulge more during the breakout.  Thank you.

     >> MODERATOR: Thank you, perfect.  You will have space for your questions after everybody has given his or her intervention.  Talal, please.

     >> TALAL RAZA: Thank you.  From digital rights perspective, when we talk about digital inclusion, two factors are very important.  If you want to evaluate a society against digital inclusion, two factors are important.  What extent can people express themselves freely online?  And second is what extent can they affiliate with others in the cyber space?  Pakistan we have had highs and lows on these factors.  Highs, Internet has provided the space, particularly provided the space to the marginalized communities, to talk about the issues that could not become part of the mentioned media.

I will give you context on the Pakistan society.  For a long time, human rights defenders and marginalized groups had a hard time talking about human rights violations and critical assessment of the security policies.  These conditions exist, and as a result, 88% of journalists in Pakistan, they self‑censor themselves. 

In the middle of these pressures, we talk about the sensitive issues.  However, the laws of the Internet freedom emerged soon.  Initially, the reaction of the state was take down website, require Facebook and Twitter to censor pages. They censor websites.  Initially, in 2017 we thought initially that is the maximum extent that the state could go.  However things changed drastically in 2017 when four bloggers were picked out and apparent crime was they were managing Facebook pages and violating security policies.  That sent a strong message.  It was if you have tried cross red lines over the Internet, you will not be spared.  That was not the only incident, many instances reported.

Just two weeks ago, the web owner and producer of an online news channel was arrested under antiterrorism clauses of cybercrime laws and the crime was defaming the judiciary.  That "defaming the judiciary" is a very subjective term.  Using the antiterrorism clauses to punish somebody for this crime, it is again unparalleled and witnessed in Pakistan as well.

You know, the threats are there.  Physical threats as a result of digital expressions are there.  More prominent are the online harassment.  The more frequent ones are, if you say something, you can be a victim of online harassment, you can field your campaign.  These are strategies frequently used within the state.

How do we get out of the situation when you have journalists, HRD, marginalized groups who came to the Internet to talk about sensitive issues but as a result of the digital threats they do not feel safe.  So at the moment I think that the digital rights community is trying to document all the violations.  If someone is picked up it is not reported in the media as well.  You have to find a way to report and take up with the humanity side as well.

As part of my work as a digital rights advocate in Pakistan, I run the Digital Rights Monitor, which is a news website.  I believe without documenting the instances there is no way to advocate for change. 

Lastly, I think the digital rights activists they're fighting the wars against the encroachments alone.  There needs to be broader participation from other sectors, private sector, media.  They need to understand digital rights violations are serious issue with long‑term implications on all of us.  This some dimensions from my view on digital rights.

     >> MODERATOR: Thank you, Talal.  Now we'll talk about the media ecosystem.  Daniel from CIMA.

     >> DANIEL O'MALEY: Great, thank you.  It is a pleasure to be here talking about these inclusion issues from the perspective of the news media, journalists in particular.  What I want to say my argument is basically the Internet is keeping us from the news.  That is provacative to say.  I will explain where I am coming from on this.  We have seen changes to the news media market and news institutions to support themselves financially as the model of advertising has changed with the development of new dissemination channels with new aggregators online.

This created a challenge for news media institutions that support journalists and independent reporting because you don't have a financial way to support the important work we need in society so citizens have high quality information.

At first, you might hear this and think this is a sectorial issue that impacts media institutions or journalists why does it impact the broader public?  This is key to all of us because th internet is this amazing platform for news and information to help Inform us and make better decisions.  If we have this kind of societal layer, the news media system broken, will we see a further deterioration in how democracy is working worldwide.  If you look at the last 10 years, you can see the crisis in the media system has perhaps had negative effect on how democratic governance is working.

This is paradoxical for some, me included, because when the Internet first came to global scale in the 1990s, we saw it as this incredible opportunity for new voices to enter into ‑‑ the barrier to entry and sharing news is much lower. 

We're finding more and more with how people use the Internet and large integration into tech platforms there is less media diversity than we thought.  People want to be where sites where news is updated constantly, kind of sticky sites.  It is the news aggregators, social media are popular.  The advertising revenue is not filtered back into the institutions that support journalists and news media.  We're seeing a deterioration of that.  And also, it is not just having knowledge of Internet connection and HTML, you have to have more technical knowledge to create platforms to encourage people to visit them.

Really, the challenges to the news media ecosystem are difficult.  You know, the Internet is an amazing opportunity to share information and knowledge.  We can't be concerned just about access but also concerned about quality of access.  That is what this issue is about.  You know, I think that the Internet is keeping us from the news, but there are things we can do, especially at a global level, thinking about policies to support independent media.  I would love to talk with you guys in the breakout session about some of the ideas that I have.

Thank you.

     >> MODERATOR: Yeah, thank you, Daniel.  Now we are coming to this interesting class that we call society.  Osama, you can share experiences from India.

     >> OSAMA MANZAR: Yeah, most of the unconnected society lives in India.  Out of 1.3 billion, close to a billion are unconnected in India, and we have the highest connected people contributing to the world. 

I want to share two stories to you.  One how digital inclusion is resulting in digital exclusion and so it is a negative story.  The other is a more positive story.  The negative story a woman in a village in India, who is a daily wage worker.  She has to get her wages every day in the evening or she is dependent on ration, government entitlements.  She can't avail even a single entitlement without going through a biometric identification, which is dependent on a  database that is supposed to be connected through the Internet.  More often than not, 37 to 40% of such women or men in villages that are dependent on daily wages or ration do not get their biometric item correctly identified or Internet doesn't work so the database doesn't get connected, or they're asked to come back again.  Or said you know, if it matches you can only take 1KG of rice rather than 15KG of rice.  The digital inclusion created a mandate for the government to make it mandatory that you go through the biometric, without making the digital infrastructure available without having a fault in it.

So digital inclusion is resulting in exclusion.  This is not just one woman.  We have 350 million people dependent daily on ration or government entitlement, without which they cannot eat the minimum requirement of food on a monthly basis.  This is one example.  This may be the situation in many other developing and countries where connectivity is not available.

The second example.  A musician remembers 250 songs in a language with no script.  He's a beautiful singer.  He's been using mobile to record all his music and folk music to not let it die.  Because, you know, in the coming generation, everybody may not be able to memorize the 250 or 300 songs, all the folk music or language you speak that doesn't have a script.  This is another digital inclusion that is resulting in saving many languages and, you know preserving culture, folk, art, heritage, which most of this work has people without connectivity, actually listen.  Because if you really look at 200 ‑‑ you know, 3.5 billion people not connected, if you demographically give them a category, you will find that they're poor, tribals, they live in remote areas, they have great and huge heritage culture and language.  You know, something that you would love to preserve.

I think digital may be an interesting tool to preserve it.  That is all the time I guess I have.  Thank you.

     >> MODERATOR: Thank you, Osama.  Our last cluster, about innovation.

     >> AUDIENCE: Bonjour.  Did I pronounce it correctly?  Hi, everyone.  I'm Rose.  Innovation.  I think all of us know about how technology and Internet brought up innovations and solutions into our lives, like just a tap on our phone will get  our food delivered to our doorstep.  This isn't true for most people.  Like Steffen mentioned, 40% of people is disconnected from Internet.  In the Philippines, 63% of the people are connected to the Internet.  It is quite higher, compared to other Asian countries, but the concentration of the connectivity is only in the urban areas.

As an island, the Philippines have still a lot of things in terms of connectivity.  The ecosystem in the Philippines is striving, but there are an opposite and totally different portion of the society, the digital gap, and the digital divide, so there are people who are highly connected to the Internet.  They're so innovative, using our smartphones to do everything they want to do.  But there are farmers, health workers who have no Internet connection.  So what we are doing now in my organization, WomenPowered, we are trying to bridge the gap by bringing together the community and tech community to develop innovative solutions to help the community where we don't have access to the Internet and come up with distributions that is participatory and make sure that innovation they develop addresses the specific needs of the community.  So I have been organizing social innovation start‑up weekends, and we make sure the problem they're trying to solve is resonating to the markets, the users they want to address to.  We want to make sure they go out, interview to the community, instead of the other way around.  They develop something.  When they go to the community, it is useless, because first, there is no Internet and no other option to use the app.  So it is not sustainable.

Back in 2014, we developed a healthcare app in an urban community, actually.  But after a year, it didn't sustain because of no Internet connection.  The local yesterday unit didn't provide Internet connectivity, so it was useless.  Health workers went back to the paper and pen documentation of the health status of the community.  And they forget the application.  There is a lot of innovative solutions, a lot of people want to develop an application, web application, a blockchain technology to prevent face news, but the question is how to sustain all of the innovations?  So from my experience, when we do workshop on developing innovative solutions, we make sure stakeholders on at the same table.  We make sure the tech community, developers, programmers, go to the community, reach out to them, ask them questions that are what are their needs, what is the current situation in the community?  Do they have Internet?  It is useless for them to develop the app for the farmers to cut the middlemen and create the e‑Commerce platform if the farmers cannot use it.  They're using the old phone, not the smartphone or iPhone they're using.  It is important for us to build the digital gap to make sure we connect to the community and the people on the bottom of the pyramid who needs the innovative solutions for them to participate.  These are the people marginalized and has no opportunity to participate because we don't have access to technology.  When we just let that happen, the more they're left behind in participating in democratic activity, e‑Commerce and online payments, the digital divide goes further.  Later, I would be excited share the experience on how we do that and help the organization in develop approach.

     >> MODERATOR: Thank you very much for your interventions, you have been great keeping the time.

Now, we'll have time for discussion.  Before we start the discussion, maybe one question to the audience.  We hear about negative ‑‑ a lot of negative development in the world and positive development, so if I ask you, okay, do we have in five years from now a better digital world, who says yes, we will have a better digital world and who would say no, it is getting worst.  Who is the optimistic part?  Raise your arms.  Okay.  Some of them.  But not all.  There are some pessimists, I imagine.  Please raise your arms.  Okay. 

Maybe this is also for discussion, now.  What we want to do now, please split up in five groups, colleagues from Deutschell Welle Akademie and partners who will be your facilitators and you can gather in five groups.  In each group, we will have an expert.  We really want to discuss and want to know from you, okay, what would you consider the most pressing topics of digital inclusion?  This is Called Hidden Aspects of Digital Inclusion, what would you add as important topics?  And more importantly, what would you say are the promising solutions?  Don't be afraid of the interactive part.  Because after that, what we want to do is come together again and then in short intervention, know what each group has worked out.  So if there is somebody in a group that would like to be the Rapporteur, it would be great.  But also we can do it the colleagues of Deutschell Welle Akademie, there is Jocelyn, Cuda, me, we are facilitators.  Now we can start with ‑‑ you have created signs.  We have to try to gather, use the room.  Maybe in each corner, come together in the groups.  Okay? 

It is about 20 minutes of discussion.  We are going to put it on some flip chart paper and then come together again and discuss in total.  Thank you. 

(Activity)



>> MODERATOR: Please come closer, so we can discuss the results of your discussions.  It was really interesting.  We have here from the part ‑‑ what was it?  Who is going ‑‑ you are going to present? 

We will start with Society.  Come to the microphone so we can have it for the remote participants, too.  Talk into the microphone.

     >> We were like, okay, society is a big item, how do we take it apart from the access and things other groups are talking about.  We looked to the overall system of how we operate, live, and questions around our social norms.  At the moment, are we existing, working, creating in a patriarchal system, which is very much built upon Colonialism.  This structure needs to be questioned and changed for society as a whole. 

Talking about the power structure of bubble, with few people having power over the Internet.  And what that means for exclusion.  The fact we operate in a capital system is brought up and questioned as to whether this was a system that would bring about inclusion for all. 

     The kind of connected and hyperconnected, very the unconnected, being one of the biggest problems that we are experiencing.  And how information is consumed and produced and who is producing it.  Ultimately, majority in being a consumer and impact that has on what is being consumed and the messages, opportunities that are missed by the lack of inclusion.  Osama spoke about the different examples in India, regarding this having to do with basic things and tourism and hotels and restaurants and cultural areas that don't get any coverage because they're not online. 

We then looked at solutions.  So for solutions, public access is one area, where something is a public opportunity, not something related by a service provider, such as Facebook or ‑‑ it is actually room for all.  And look to at antitrust regulation, and the fact that at the moment, power is with very few companies and this should be rectified.  Obviously, our promising solutions of feminist Internet that helps change the norms of the system in which we operate and the power structure.  We looked at more consumer‑focused initiatives.  Such as GDPR, which is coming about.  Which is looking at rights of society. 

Capacity building, open knowledge and beginning to see information as a way to also be empowered with that through access with skills to do so.

     >> MODERATOR: Yeah.  Great.  So looking at the time, we have 10 minutes left.  So please maybe come to the next topic, digital rights.  Are you going to report?  Two minutes, okay?

     >>  My name is Daniel (?), Fellow at IGF 2018.  We looked at access, the group was mostly from Africa, because that is the major thing affecting people from that region. 

Some of the things we looked at are aspects that range from political, socioeconomic.  Most of the economic were taxes that exist on the Internet platforms such as social media platforms such as countries Tanzania, access for websites, all of those other things.  We also looked at the issue of content  censorship, when it comes to access, before you release certain information in the Internet, you are supposed to seek authorization from the government.  When the government agrees with the information or data, and you release it.  If it is contrary to, you can't release it.  It was access for disabled and marginalized persons and looked at barriers to innovation because of the problems with the access. 

Some of the promising solutions we looked at legal strategies such as public interest litigation that is challenging the unfair policies like tax policies.  And unfair spectrum distribution policies, that various companies relating in the same space can rely on the same broadband to ensure access is extended to places that initially never had such.  And looking at creating community networks to be able to enhance access in places where persons are able to afford to be on the Internet. 

Then promoting relevance of the Internet, we established that in some of the African countries, like Tanzania and Uganda, for example, Wi‑Fi hot spots in several places.  Not only are they not trusted by the people around them but also people that have access to the hot spots don't understand why they need to be able to connect to those spots.  So we need to promote relevance of the Internet.  Thank you.

     >> MODERATOR: Thank you.  So the next one ‑‑ who wants to ‑‑ Cudda, please.

     >> We were talking about digital rights and the basic issues that we identified were the fact that there is need to fix ‑‑ there is need to fix the offline institutions.  This is like the independent institutions and constitutions and legal frameworks in country.  And then use this to protect rights or protect people's digital rights in the online world.  The other issue we identified was a leg of government policies as one part.  The second part is that government policies specifically government laws can be overbroad, so these laws then persecute people.  Examples were given about how it was done in Nigeria and Pakistan. 

The other topic we identified was the lack of awareness that leads to people not being able to stand up, fight for protection of their rights in online environments.  And also the issue of cyber harm.  That includes things like cyber bullying.  Generally, it speaks to the lack of people's knowledge on how to promote and protect other people's rights online. 

Moving on to the promising solutions we came up with, is what we're doing here, partly.  To put together multi stakeholder approaches to coming up with solutions that led to the problems that we identified.  There is also a need to set up and run awareness campaigns.  An example is given in the Consul of Europe guidelines to expect and protect and fulfill the rights of the children in digital environments.  So that is an example of a campaign that is running in Europe.  Countries can also identify issues and then run awareness campaigns to address the issues.

The companies when we meet together to talk about problems in the digital world and digital rights, private companies are left out in the conversation.  Because private companies now are operating as semiautonomous, making laws for themselves.  We need to rope them into the solutions as well.  The last thing is that we need to use the existing human rights frameworks for more rights.  Sorry.

     >> MODERATOR: Great.  For the last two classes, media and innovation, please, two minutes.  Because we have to leave the room because the next panel is going to start.  Innovation.

     >> This will be quick.  For innovation, the discussion went around what is with digital inclusion and how innovation can address the needs.  So some of the pressing topics to identify were the gap of knowledge and skill.  Sometimes of how to help develop information and technology and skills from the universities up to the professionals, for example.

And accessibility in the mainstream and on distribution of access.  This involves different ways of access in terms of the format of the content, audio, video, make it accessible in a local language.  And also, like, for persons with disabilities to make sure infrastructure are accessible for them.

Another pressing issue, especially in Africa is the social media talks.  And (?) capital, especially with social media, social capital is used by companies and corporations.  Child online protection to make sure kids right now and the young knows how to be responsible using the Internet.  Facebook 0 is one of the pressing topics.  It is identified as a double sword

     It can be an advantage in the area that this is no Internet, at the same time, it could be a means to propagate misinformation or fake news, those things.  Part of the solution is we know blockchain technology right now is an interesting discussion.  So we want ‑‑ we want to use blockchain technology to help the unconnected to get connected, for example, using blockchain technology for farmers for health workers and other people on the ground to access content using blockchain technology and the top doc for accessible content. 

Universal design.  We learned people with disabilities have a universal design that should be adopted by the tech community when they develop solutions.  We make sure there is participation and consultation with the stakeholders when they develop a solutions to make sure these people who are marginalized or not get connected has the right solutions.

Yeah, maximize government programs like providing technical trainings to universities and other professionals.  Online payment.  And yes.

     >> MODERATOR: Thank you very much.  So in the last class, yours is about media and journalism.

     >> Last but not least, the media class, we worked on the hidden topics.  We found three or four different sectors.  One sector is the payment issue, because we had participants from Bangladesh, Yemen, Ghana, Brazil, all saying journalists are not paid enough.  Because of that, we're losing quality.  It is not an aspect ‑‑ not an obvious aspect, but a hidden part.  Social media is outweighing journalism. Why is it?  It is because social media is following the money?  Simple as that. Even in countries like Yemen, the social media companies are interested in revenue, not in freedom of speech.  We have to think of something against that. 

One other thing is ‑‑ actually ideas like Facebook zero and something like that are (?) also journalism because they're channelling people in small funnels, and they're one reason that the dark social we have seen in Brazil is so mighty and influencing even the elections.

The third part is that there is ‑‑ then I come to the promising solutions.  It is an issue of regulation.  Regulation has a bad side and good side.  Regulation is better when there is no democracy.  That leads to no good regulations.

Promising solutions.  A little disappointing the last speaker said okay, there is no shortcut to establishing or reestablishing good journalism.  We thought about new solutions like I think the most important topic was to raise awareness in society that journalism is important for them.  I think this is good summary of what we discussed.  Some ways of promoting journalism is just collecting money from the people via cross (?) and via funds or companies that gives grants for independent journalism and journalists must be more proactive. 

We heard from Ghana, there is some interest in the recent times and journalists and newspapers that did their report.  So the participants said journalists must be more proactive ‑‑

     >> MODERATOR: I'm sorry.

     >> I have lots more to say.

     >> MODERATOR: Two minutes over.

     >> To allow the discussion with all of you.

     >> MODERATOR: Okay.  Thank you very much.  This is food for thought.  Thank you for this great discussion.  Sorry for these two minutes, but now we're finished.  Thank you. 

     >> Thank you to the transcriber, as well.