Date & Time:
November 12th, 2018; 10:40-12:10
Organizer(s):
Steffen Leidel (DW Akademie)
Lena Nitsche (DW Akademie)
Julius Endert (DW Akademie)
Chair/Moderator:
Steffen Leidel (DW Akademie)
Rapporteur/Notetaker:
Julius Endert (DW Akademie)
Lena Nitsche (DW Akademie)
List of speakers and their institutional affiliations (Indicate male/female/ transgender male/ transgender female/gender variant/prefer not to answer):
Osama Manzar (Digital Empowerment Foundation),male
Sarah Kiden (Mozilla Foundation), female
Mary Rose Ofiango (Women Empowerment Phillipines, technocal community, female
Talal Raza (Media Matters for Democracy), male
Daniel O'Maley (Center for International Media Assistance), male
Theme:
Digital inclusion & Accessibility
Subtheme:
Digital Capacity Building
Please state no more than three (3) key messages of the discussion. [150 words or less]
- Digital inclusions means more than technical access to the Internet. In order to understand the barries and drivers for citizens participating in the digital spehere, you need to gain deep insights into various fields influencing digital inclusion.
- DW Akademie developed a model of digital inclusion consisting of five thematic fields: Access, Digital Rights, Media and Journalism, Society and Innovation that describes more than 100 attributes to assess digital inclusion on a country basis.With the help of the model, we can highlight challnges to digital inclusion in the five respective fields.
- Points for discussion: What are approaches to overcome challenges regarding digital inclusion in the future? What are the neglected aspects that keep people from participating in the digital sphere?
- Please elaborate on the discussion held, specifically on areas of agreement and divergence. [150 words]
There was a broad support of the view that it is not enough to support access to the Internet, people need to have a meaningful access that can change their life for the better. Meaningful access is seen as being connected to media and information literacy, quality content and a free media environment. Panelists also noted that digital inclusion can lead to exclusion and mentioned that when digital literacy programmes are being introduced, those who haven’t got access already, won’t benefit from it.
- Please describe any policy recommendations or suggestions regarding the way forward/potential next steps. Promising solutions included community networks, public broadband access, flexible spectrum allocation, consumer focused initiatives, capacity building, universal design and multistakeholder approaches. Participatnts discussed that issues influencing digital inclusion are mutually influencing each other, for example in some countries aspects of media sustainability - for example special licensing fees for bloggers - could cut down independent voices and lead to self-sensorship of users. That is why the multi-stakeholder model was agreed to be the most promising solution to discuss issues of digital inclusion.
- What ideas surfaced in the discussion with respect to how the IGF ecosystem might make progress on this issue? [75 words]
Digital inclusion is multifacted, it involves many stakeholder and the issues that lead to digital inclusion vary between countries. With regards to the many overlapping issues and thematic fields involved, panellists and participants agreed that the multi-stakeholder model should be the method to be followed. Short-sighted solutions for digital inclusion might lead to digital exclusion in the end.
- Please estimate the total number of participants.
Around 80 participants
- Please estimate the total number of women and gender-variant individuals present.
50 % women, 50% men
- To what extent did the session discuss gender issues, and if to any extent, what was the discussion? [100 words]
In the topic of digital inclusion, gender-related issues were seen as a cross-cutting issue relevant to issues such as internet access, digital security – especially for female journalists. Also cyber mobbing was discussed as an important barrier towards more digital inclusion of women.
Relevant links:
DW Akadmeie project #speakup barometer that assesses aspects of digital participation and digital inclusion worldwide: www.dw.com/barometer