IGF 2016: Enabling Inclusive and Sustainable Growth

Operational responses to online harassment

From election campaigns in the US to news sites, community forums and social media in every country on the planet, online harassment is widespread and rampant. Whether they are systematic, large-scale smear campaigns or individuals targeting those they disagree with, the rise in threats and attacks against anyone who sticks out their neck, who are critical, in opposition, or simply do not conform to normative standards, is alarming.

The attacks are often devastating and with long-term impact on people's ability to speak out or simply exist in the online space. Many of those targeted are women, who are often not targeted because they hold an unpopular opinion, but simply because they are women.

The problems are well-known. But how should we respond? What are the realistic, constructive responses to mitigate, prevent and protect?

This session will brainstorm on these questions with the help of our great panel, looking for useful, realistic ways to respond from a variety of key angles - from human rights and legal perspectives, from a technology platform and from an online community perspective.

We've got a great panel lined up:

• Hyra Basit, Digital Rights Foundation, Pakistan
  Instrumental in establishing Pakistan and the region's first online harassment helpline, which offers digital security support, legal advice and emotional trauma assistance, Hyra has extensive experience in the field of cyber harassment and how to address it.
• Ellery Roberts Biddle, Advocacy Director, Global Voices & Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, US
  As the chief steward of Global Voices’ Advox project, Ellery facilitates a network of bloggers and advocates reporting on threats to online speech, sharing tactics for protecting themselves and their communities online, and supporting efforts to strengthen Internet policy and practice worldwide.
• Marcel Leonardi, Senior Public Policy and Government Relations Counsel at Google Brazil
  ​Marcel is a public policy professional, attorney and law professor with over a decade of Internet law experience, specialising in the research, analysis, litigation, communication, and support of complex legal and policy positions on privacy and data protection, intermediary liability, copyright, freedom of speech, competition and other issues related to the Internet.
• Jonathan McCully, Legal Officer at Media Legal Defence Initiative, UK
  Jonathan is the Legal Officer at the Media Legal Defence Initiative, a UK-based charity that provides legal support to protect journalists, bloggers and independent media outlets around the world. He works on the organisation's strategic litigation and the delivery of its training programmes.
• 'Gbenga Sesan, Executive Director at Paradigm Initiative Nigeria
  A social entrepeneur and recognised scholar, speaker and writer, 'Gbenga leads Paradigm Initiative Nigeria, one of the leading ICT for development groups in Africa which connects underserved people with ICT-­enabled opportunities.

 

Background: This session is organised by the Copenhagen-based media development non-profit, International Media Support (IMS) which supports local media in countries affected by armed conflict, human insecurity and political transition. Across four continents, IMS helps to promote press freedom, strengthen professional journalism and ensure that media can operate in challenging circumstances. You can read more about us here: http://www.mediasupport.org

Over the decades, the Internet has gained increasing importance in themes of local, national and global governance. In order to foster an inclusive and human-rights oriented regulation of the Internet, several initiatives around the concept of a Internet Bill of Rights have been developed both nationally and internationally. Brazil followed a hard law approach and adopted its own Internet Bill of Rights in 2014 as a federal law. In Italy, a study commission was established by the President of Italy's Chamber of Deputies and a Declaration of Internet Rights was adopted in 2015 after an online consultation. In addition to domestic initiatives, international charters have been developed (i.e. Web Foundation and Internet Rights and Principles dynamics coalition).

The aim of workshop is to join forces to map the form, scope and enforcement of the first initiatives to create laws, declarations and charters that fit in the concept of Internet Bill of Rights. Once launched, what are the next steps for such initiatives? What can other countries learn from such experiences? Once in force, how different stakeholders have reacted to the final text? Decisions by governmental authorities have been affected by the adoption of an Internet Bill of Rights? Can a judge directly enforce its terms?

Speakers:
Carlos Affonso Souza / Mario Viola (ITS Rio)Stefano Trumpy (ISOC, Italy)Flavia Lefreve (CGI.br)
Audience is encouraged to make contributions to the debate in order to foster the conversation over the Internet Bill of Rights initiatives and their impacts and enforcement challenges.

To ensure a sustainable discussion for Internet Governance, it is important to include remote participants who are unable to attend physically to these discussions. IGF and regional IGFs only happen once a year, so most of the work is actually done remotely. While face to face meetings are best, it often comes with a high price tag of traveling and accommodation costs, which is often unaffordable by participants in developing countries. In particular, we would want to explore how to make it sustainable for youth since they are the new blood and least economically supported. By discussing how to make remote participation a sustainable way to attract new attendees, and how to make it easy for them to voice out, despite language and timezone barriers. This topic is crucial to enable inclusive and sustainable growth. 

To identify the most important problems to address for remote participation, we will start with a survey to be sent out to broader IGF community. After collecting their feedback, organizer will recap the result at the beginning of the session, and conduct a breakout group discussion for solutions that we can adopt in the next IGF. The report will be submitted to the Secretariat for reference.

10 questions survey was created to get to know your remote participation experience on IG discussions
Please feel free to share your thought here:
http://igf.asia/2fT3iFs

Rundown: 
5 min: Workshop Introduction
5 min: Sharing of survey results on key areas to improve
30 min: Breakout group discussion (According to the guiding questions)
20 min: Wrap up on conclusion, and next steps to bring remote participation viable

The guiding questions for the breakout groups will be determined by the results of the survey, whilst the main topics are listed as below: 
1. How to attract new remote participants? What is the reasons for them to attend remotely?
2. How would remote participants feel more inclusive? 
3. If you couldn't attend IGF next year, how would you have done that? 
4. How can we attract more people to host remote hub? How to provide better mechanisms for workshop organizers to identify the hubs that can join their workshop? 
5. How can we help youth in particular to get started? 
6. How to remove barrier for remote participants to join?

Faciliator of the breakout group discussion:
Bianca HO
David NG
Yannis LI
Renata Aquino Ribeiro
Ginger Paque (Remote)
Hailey Yang (Remote)

In the online environment, private intermediaries heavily influence the conditions in which human rights are exercised. Companies’ corporate responsibility to respect human rights has been highlighted by international organizations, in documents such as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the reports by the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression. These standards offer general principles that should be observed in terms of freedom of expression, privacy (including data protection) and due process, but usually lack procedural orientations on how to implement them. In this context, a remaining challenge seems to be how to enforce the existing international human rights standards in a transnational environment and make them be reflected in concrete practices and policies such as Terms of Service, transparency reports, internal audits, etc. This workshop will gather different stakeholders to discuss how the ICT sector can effectively implement their responsibility to protect human rights. The proposal is to understand what are the challenges faced by companies in this aspect and how they can be jointly addressed. In the occasion, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression will give a keynote about his report on ICT sector corporate responsibility to protect and respect human rights launched in June 2016. Empirical evidence produced by the project Terms of Service and Human Rights, developed by CTS-FGV will also be presented to stimulate the debate.

Speakers are:

David Kaye, UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression
Jamila Venturini, Center for Technology and Society at FGV Rio Law School (CTS-FGV)
João Brant, OBSERVACOM - Observatorio Latinoamericano de Regulación, Medios y Convergencia
Katie Shay, Yahoo
Peter Micek, Access Now
Pranesh Prakash, Centre for Internet and Society (CIS India) - TBC

Moderator: Luca Belli, Center for Technology and Society at FGV Rio Law School (CTS-FGV)

The Internet is today a community of over 3 billion users, and concerted efforts are on to bring in the Next Billion users to this community. Asia-Pacific, which is home to almost two-thirds of humanity, will likely provide a majority of the next billion Internet users, mostly from regions such as East Asia and South Asia, but also from very small communities, such as those in the Pacific islands. 

Despite its size, Asia-Pacific faces special challenges in enabling digital inclusion. These challenges include social, demographic, geographic, economic, and technological factors. Specifically, these include:

- Poor Internet infrastructure
- Difficult terrain (mountains to deserts to Small Island Developing States)
- Diversity of languages/scripts
- Large rural populations
- Social and Educational backwardness
- Gender-based access issues
- Extreme diversity
- Existence of marginalized communities (eg., indigenous peoples, people with disabilities)
- Lack of policy coherence

At the same time, there are some mitigating factors that may ease the process of digital inclusion:

- Increasing mobile phone use across barriers
- Falling costs for Internet access
- Better education
- More openness towards technology, particularly from the youth

The proposed BoG session will take stock of the situation in a cross-section of countries in Asia-Pacific, including Pacific Islands, China, India, Pakistan, New Zealand, Armenia and China, and propose a set of strategies to address the issue of Digital Inclusion in the region, with the intention of strengthening community action towards equitable inclusion. The session will follow up on action items evolved at the APrIGF as well as national IGFs in different countries in the region.

Speakers provisionally confirmed:

Abdul Rahim, Rinalia
Ang, Peng Hwa
Astbrink, Gunela
Chharia, Rajesh
Galstyan, Lianna
Jayakumar, Arjun
Kovacs, Anja
Park, KS
Rayamajhi, Shreedeep (Remote)

Moderator: Satish Babu

Tentative Program
1. Intro and introduction to themes: 15 min
- Welcome and format of Session: 5 min (Satish)
- Introduction to the four themes: 10 min (Rinalia)

2. Breakout discussions: 30 min
3. Presentation of summary of Breakout Sessions (4 min x 4 group chairs): 16 min
4. Open discussions: 25 min
- Presentation of Group reports
- Specific speakers (see below)
5. Closing: 4 min (Satish)

Themes for Breakout Discussions (with Chairs):
a. Infrastructural and Economics Issues (Peng Hwa Ang)
b. Social Issues (Anja Kovacs)
c. Technology issues (KS Park)
d. Policy Issues (Noelle)

Specific Speakers during Open Discussions (3 min per person):
- Country situations (Rajesh, Shreedeep, Arjun)
- Disability and Access (Gunela)

Safe access to the internet is beneficial to childrens development, unfortunately- the internet has its darker sides. Child helplines play a pivotal role in identifying and reporting child (online) sexual exploitation and abuse. The breadth of contacts, of which sexual exploitation can be a part, provide evidence and context. Above all, children and young people can seek the advice, counselling and referral needed in these difficult circumstances

Under the CHI LEAP initiative, CHI committed to identify the capacity building needs of child helplines in 17 target countries selected by UNICEF,  and to determine their needs to strengthen their response to reports of online child sexual abuse and exploitation.

The open forum will show the results so far of this initiave and discuss the role of Child helplines in supporting children in their digital world. 

We will have remote participation from members of Child Helpline International who will share their direct experiences with us.  We'll hear from National Runaway Safeline in Chicago and from Crisis Text Line in New York.

Name of Speaker(s)

Sheila Donovan (Child Helpline International)

John Carr

Clara Sommarin (UNICEF)

Gordon Vance (National Runaway Safeline)

Elana Jacobs (Crisis Text Line)

This Workshop session, comprising contributions from a variety of stakeholders, will explore the current discussions and analysis to date on the impact of the expansion of the Internet’s namespace via ICANN’s New gTLD Program. The workshop will include discussion and updates on the different formal reviews ICANN has initiated ahead of a potential new application round. In particular, the Session will encourage debate and discourse, both from the physical and on-line audiences, on the contribution new gTLDs have made to consumer choice and competition and what, if any, policy and implementation changes are necessary or desirable ahead of any subsequent application round. The session will specifically seek contributions from participants that do not normally engage in the on-going debate at ICANN meetings. 


The issuance of diverse generic domains (especially where in no Latin script) is conducive to sustainability and inclusive growth. 

Speakers provisionally confirmed:

Atallah, Akram 
Cavalli, Olga
Crépin-Leblond, Olivier M.J.
Doria, Avri
Mosweu, Gao
Olufuye, JImson
Richards , Megan 
Zuck, Jonathan

There is an ongoing debate about the answerability of IG organizations and the various stakeholder groups involved,to the broader community and how to build that in practice.Continuing a previous IGF discussion regarding civil society participation in policy-making, this workshop will focus on civil society’s transparency, openness and answerability. The goals are to evaluate the current situation in different areas associated to IG including trade and cybersecurity, highlighting existing efforts to build frameworks and/or principles such as ICANN reform or Brussels Declaration and outline set of principles . 

The roundtable focuses more on global organizations or processes in order to build practices that can be applied or adapted to other areas, also adjusted to national levels.

To steer an interactive discussion leading to actions-oriented outcomes the question below will be addressed:
1- How international organizations build their “constitution”, structure and processes to respond to expectations such as transparency, openness,diversity, inclusion, legitimacy, representation and accountability
2- How stakeholders in particular civil society strategize their participation ? what are they using as mechanisms and approaches to justify their actions and maintain transparency?
3- What is the influence of processes and restructuring within the organizations and stakeholders in term of agenda-setting, issues framing and yielding outcomes?
4- Can we envision a set of principles, best practices, mechanism or even process template that can be shared between all IG organizations and processes?

Speakers :

Jeanette Hofmann, WZB
Andres Piazza, LACTLD
Tatiana Tropina, Max-Planck Institute
Burcu Kilic, Public Citizen
Michele Woods, WIPO
Matthew Shears, Center for Democracy & Technology.
Jay Sudowski, Internet Infrastructure Coalition

Agenda:
1- Setting the scene : 
explaining context and objectives behind the roundtable (5min) 
2- Discussants' interventions:
going through the questions and presenting different experiences and cases (45min) 
3- Q&A session:
with the audience, interaction between discussants (40min) 
4- Wrap-up:
recommendations & summary of the discussion (10min) 

Connecting the Next Billion is a key milestone for the Internet Community. Primary factors being addressed towards this objective include infrastructure, capacity building, policy coherence, access devices (such as mobile phones) and technology. Of secondary enabling factors, an important one is Open Source, both in technology (Free/Open Source Software, FOSS), as well as in terms of approach.

FOSS provides many advantages, including:

- Low-cost, robust, cost-effective, customizable, public software
- Liberal licensing
- No-cost community support
- Enables building of group/community applications
- Enables privacy, anonymity and confidentiality
- Provides the software 'community' model, combining developers, maintainers and users

There lurks numerous risks when a large number of first-generation Internet neo-literates--ordinary users, children, girls/women, differntly-abled, and the aged, civil society activists--join the network, including cyberstalking, surveillance, loss of confidential information, lack of anonymity, cyberbullying, malware, spam, scams, identity theft and more.

FOSS provides numerous technolgy tools & social models that helps building resilience in commmunities to become empowered users. These include general applications such as browsers, messengers, media players and office suites, to specialized software such as ToR, Freenet or I2P. 

The BoF session will focus on ways in which communities can deploy FOSS and build capacity within the community to meet the challenges arising out of joining the Internet. The speakers are drawn from IGF participants from previous meetings. There exists a distinct group of IGF participants--judging by previous workshops on similar topics--who are interested in FOSS, who will constitute the audience.

Speakers provisionally confirmed:

Astbrink, Gunela
Crépin-Leblond, Olivier M.J.
Datta, Bishakha
Jayakumar, Arjun
McKnight, Glenn
Teelucksingh, Dev Anand

Moderators: Judi Okite, Satish Babu

 

A strategic approach to advocacy work is crucial for all human rights defenders that aim to influence public policy. 

The current Internet Governance ecosystem is not only complex, it presents a mixed picture with regard to participation and interests. There is a growing number of civil society actors advocating for human rights in the digital age. But there are also increasingly geopolitically motivated state actors and well-resourced international corporations who shape a more politicised and securitised Internet Governance system. Additionally, resources for effective engagement for advocacy work are limited and some spaces are not open to multistakeholder engagement - making strategic approaches even more crucial.

To effectively engage in these spaces, human rights defenders need to be aware of the ecosystem they operate in, the actors involved and the barriers they face - and develop strategies to overcome these. 

The workshop aims to strengthen strategic advocacy for human rights online in relevant internet governance debates. It aims to offer an opportunity for human rights defenders of all stakeholder groups to share lessons learned about their advocacy work, map barriers they are facing and jointly develop strategic approaches to overcome these. Advancing strategic engagement strategic engagement skills is likely to also benefit new voices of human rights defenders with limited resources to participate meaningfully.

Speakers provisionally confirmed:

Cunningham, Laura
Ojo, Edetaen
Varon Ferraz, Joana 
Vermeer, Lisa

Ageing population, globalization 2.0 and digital revolution are completely reshaping the world of work. In particular, growing computer power, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things and collaborative platforms are profoundly changing the characteristics of work: what is needed, by whom, where and how it should be carried out. Following the success of the workshop at IGF 2015 “Digital economy, jobs and multistakeholder practices” there is a need to continue to deepen the analysis of the future of work in the digital economy.

The purpose of this workshop is to bring together representatives from diverse stakeholder groups to explore the future of work in the digital economy. This topic matches the overarching theme of IGF “‘Enabling Inclusive and Sustainable Growth” as it will address how the digital economy is driving shaping and challenging workforces and types of jobs which are key to inclusive growth. The workshop will answer the following question: “How can we reap the benefits and address challenges of the digital economy for the future of work?”

The workshop will discuss some very important challenges including: the financial and regulatory risks in starting up new businesses or creating new infrastructures; appropriate and available skills development practices and infrastructures necessary for creating, consuming, and maintaining new services; existence of network externalities and barriers to trade; institutional linkages to higher education, research and business. Through an interactive discussion participants will consider how multistakeholder efforts can identify and address skill deficiencies to better prepare work forces for the changes produced by the digital economy. 

Speakers provisionally confirmed:

Cerf, Vint
Galpaya , Helani
Nalwoga, Lillian
Spiezia, Vincenzo

Skeptics remind us that non-commercial users are the consumers of Internet rules, they can never participate as equals in the processes that create those rules. They also argue that multistakeholder governance is a hoax, a nice way of making non-commercial users feel they are a valued part of the process, while the decisions that matter are actually made by a powerful few. But is that so? This session will discuss where and how non-commercial Internet users have been able to participate in Internet policymaking as equals with much more powerful stakeholders and have been able to make decisions. The successful cases we look at will include: the non-commercial users constituency (NCUC) work in policy development at ICANN, efforts at the IETF, and decisionmaking in ccTLDs.

This workshop is not about the participation of non-commercial users in certain processes, it is rather about what non-commercial users have achieved and what this tells us about the collaboration between stakeholders and successes of the multistakeholder approach.

In the months leading up to the IGF in December, we will crowd source success stories and invite many to tell us how they have been involved with multistakeholder process. Other multi-stakeholders involved in these specific cases will also be invited to give their view of the how the multistakeholder discussions and outcomes developed, with collective learning about the experience.The outcome of the workshop might contradict with the general conception that noncommercial users cannot engage with decision-making at Internet governance organizations. 

Speakers provisionally confirmed:

Corinne Cath
Rachel Pollack
Tatiana Tropina, Max-Planck Institute
Farzaneh Badii, Internet Governance Project
Giovanni Seppia, Eurid 

Today part of a social network has become a necessity, people need to be updated and socially present. The Central Unit of Medical Cooperation (UCCM) was not present in social networks or had a blog or website that would enable direct publication of timely information to meet the information needs of users. Given the objective advantages of social networks, the real needs of finding a direct line of communication with the scattered Cuban collaborators in more than 65 countries, to make known to everyone the fundamental concepts of Cuban medical cooperation, as the main achievements and results of this cooperation assistance. The Ministry of Public Health of Cuba and UCCM have approved the initiative inserted in social networks making appropriate and professional Internet and TIC, through the development of a website and a Facebook profile for UCCM, for the official disclosure of relevant information related to cooperation. This will improve the quality of communication and disclosure of medical services and international cooperation provided by our country under the principles of solidarity and internationalism. With this project we aim to increase levels of visibility in cyberspace professional services practitioners, academics and health services available from the international medical cooperation, Constitute a means for direct exchange and feedback with Cuban partners health and those with relatives, contribute to the socialization of published content, generate user traffic to both platforms and serve as a tool to measure the extent and impact of the disclosure of the results of the Cuban medical cooperation abroad.

Our session seeks to explore the contours of the multistakeholder model by examining the role played by civil society actors in the IANA Transition Process. ‘Roles and responsibilities’ of stakeholders to enable inclusive and sustainable growth as envisioned by the WSIS process continues to be at the heart of internet governance discussions. Civil Society as a stakeholder group encompasses incredible diversity within itself. By examining the experiences of civil society stakeholders in the IANA transition, the session will throw light on the role, successes and failures of this stakeholder group in the process. The IANA Transition is seen as a prime example of multistakeholderism in practice. An important aspect discussed apart from the diverse viewpoints within the stakeholder group will be regarding participation from marginalized actors and barriers to participation for actors from developing countries and regions. The IANA transition is an ideal case study because, it will have participants look to future multistakeholder engagements such as the continuing work stream 2 of ICANN accountability enhancements among others. This will enable new participants to get involved and old participants to refine the multistakeholder model to make it more inclusive. The discussion will be steered by the diverse and vibrant non-commercial stakeholder group composed of members of civil society, along with members from technical and academic communities. The session will feed into the goals of more inclusive governance models and the diversity within this stakeholder group fits into the larger theme of the IGF 2016 of enabling inclusive and sustainable development.

Speakers provisionally confirmed:

Bhavana, Aarti 
Doria, Avri
Gross, Robin 
Mueller, Milton
Peake, Adam 
Scholte, Jan-Aart
Shears, Matthew
Stoll, Klaus 
Ten Oever, Niels 

Best Practice Forum on IXPs  -  draft agenda


Contributing to the success and continued development of Internet exchange points (IXPs)

• Introduction & overview of the document - 10 min

Douglas Onyango, Wim Degezelle

• An IXP: role and benefits - 10 min

Bastiaan Goslings (Netherlands - AMS-IX)

• IXP Best practices: managing & developing an IXP - 55 min (incl Q&A)

Panel lead: Jane Coffin
Panellists: Allan MacGillivary (Canada), Sumon A.Sabir (Bangladesh), Carlos Vera (Ecuador), Antonio Moreiras (Brazil)

• IXP information and best practice exchange - 10 min

Sharada Srinivasan (India/USA)

• Conclusion: takeaways from this year’s BPF - 5 min

Remote moderator:  Michael Oghia

Information & Documents:
2016 Best Practice Forum on IXPs webpage: http://www.intgovforum.org/multilingual/content/bpf-ixps

BPF 2016 Best Practice document : current draft (google docs link) 

Comments and suggestions on the document can be made via the IGF public review platform 

Legitimacy of multistakeholder IG processes and outcomes are inextricably linked with participants’ legitimacy and accountability. Critics of multistakeholder IG point to lack of clarity over who participates and what institution/organization/entity they represent. They see incongruity when individual stakeholders offer personal opinions alongside representatives of organized collections of individuals, representatives of entities/interest groups, and government representatives who see themselves as responsible for meeting the needs of millions of citizens. 

While supporters of multistakeholder IG believe the openness of IG processes is one of its core strengths, for critics, this openness can enable “bad actors” and others to “capture” or distort what should be consensus-based decision-making process. The result is that critics of multistakeholderism, and marginalized voices in IG processes, have less confidence in IG processes to contribute, as part of the WSIS and SDG frameworks, to achieving inclusive and sustainable growth.

Many multistakeholder IG processes have rudimentary ways to prioritize views of representatives of groups over individuals. e.g.:

• CSTD’s working groups asked stakeholder groups to nominate a limited number of representatives
• ICANN’s Cross-Community Working Groups prioritize representatives of ICANN constituencies (“members”) over individuals (“observers/participants”).

However, there are other ways stakeholders can achieve disproportionate influence, including:

• Informal sources of power (expertise, seniority/age, ubiquitous presence)
• Misrepresenting the size and decision-making processes of a group a stakeholder asserts to represent

This workshop will build on the Multistakeholder BPF and stakeholder legitimacy and accountability work in other sectors to identify and manage challenges in IG stakeholder legitimacy.

Background paper (PDF)

Breakout group documents:
(These are fully editable, so feel free to add your responses to the topics directly into the documents at any time before the session as well as during the session)

1. Is there a need to prove the legitimacy of stakeholder groups and their members, and if so, what are ways that legitimacy can be established?
2. Stakeholder groups and their configurations
3. Levels of stakeholder representation (individuals through to aggregated groupings)
4. How do stakeholders manage the participation of entities or individuals that are not deemed to have a high level of legitimacy in a process?

Breakout group facilitators:

Tereza Horejsova

Dominique Lazanski

Jim Prendergast

Samantha Dickinson

Indonesia Open Forum: Social Media and Democracy

Social media has been an inseparable aspect of daily life and successfully connected citizen of the world through various emerging applications. It also transforms how people interract, exchange ideas, and share information into a way that has never been possible before. It provides powerful platform to engage people to join in a discourse, and even a collective action. For Indonesia, the largest moderate Muslim democracy in the world with 132,7 million internet users, and surely many other countries in the world, the emergence of social media serves as groundbreaking and essential tools for strengthening participatory of political and civil engagement. The innovation of online civil engagement can also break barriers hindering the underrepresented in the process of democracy, such as female and youth. It has also aid the effort government around the world in doing public service in a more transparent and accountable manner as well as serves as an effective media to nurture tolerance and respect for diversity. As social media provides convenience to our life, it also comes with its own challenges. Nations often confronted by paradoxes of social media as a tool to facilitate democratic development, yet by the same time used as a medium to incite hartred. The immense flood of information and the rise of disinformation in online sphere also pose a challenge for the citizen in making an informed decision for their civic participation. The session will discussed the role of social media in strengthening civic engagement around the world and therefore aim to seize the opportunities and manage the challenges that permeates in the rise of social media, particularly in promoting and sustaining democratic governance of a nation.

Name of Speaker(s): 
Dirgayuza Setiawan (Author and ISOC Fellow) 
Hamza Ben Mehrez (Policy Analyst Lead, IG MENA) 
Mariam Barata (Deputy Director General of ICT Application, MCIT Indonesia) 
Tereza Horejsova (Project Development Director, DiploFoundation) 

Moderator: Shita Laksmi (IGF Multistakeholder Advisory Group/Hivos)
Remote Moderator: Donny BU (ICT Watch)
Rapporteur: Rizki Ameliah (Ministry of CIT, Indonesia)

Join us and get Indonesian coffee for free!