Session 8: Cyber Policy and Cyber Democracy
4th Global Conference
Friday 13th March – Sunday 15th March 2009
Salzburg, Austria
Session 8: Cyber-Policy and Cyber-Democracy and their Impact on National and Global Politics
Chair: Nils Gustafsson
Governance and the Global Metaverse
Melissa DeZwart and David Lindsay
Monash Law School, Australia
Governance of global technological spaces, such as MMORPGs, virtual worlds and social networking sites, involves the complex interaction of law, technology (including standards-setting), markets and social norms. The governance of these emerging global communities raises fundamental issues concerning the legitimacy of rule-making, including problems relating to the rule of law, democratic accountability, and the application of national laws to global communities. The issues include: the legitimacy of decisions made by private entities, especially service providers; the legitimacy of applying national (territorial) laws to global technological spaces; the rights of users (or citizens) of global virtual worlds; and the accountability of those responsible for designing technology (including standards-setting bodies). These issues have arisen in the analogous context of internet governance, where there are persistent questions regarding the legitimacy of ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), which is a private, non-profit organization, established under Californian law, that is responsible for key policy decisions regarding the Domain Name System (DNS). An important current debate in this contentious area concerns the desirability of the US government retaining its current privileged role in overseeing ICANN, which is being resisted by ICANN. These issues have been subject to considerable attention, and accompanying controversy, in debates as part of the ongoing Internet Governance Forum (IGF) process.
This paper examines the challenges to governance, and concepts of legitimacy, posed by emerging global technological spaces, including virtual worlds. In doing so, it first analyses the interaction between new technologies and changing concepts of governance, including the development of networks of control. Secondly, it explains the key differences between traditional cybergovernance issues as applied to the internet, and the new governance issues that arise in the context of the global metaverse. For instance, traditionally, the liability of internet intermediaries, such as ISPs, under national laws, has been limited on the basis of principles such as the ‘end-to-end’ argument and content neutrality. Virtual world service providers, however, perform quite a different role to the roles performed by traditional internet intermediaries. To what extent should virtual world service providers be subject to territorially-based national laws, including the quite different laws that apply to the regulation of ‘offensive’ content? Thirdly, the paper investigates the interaction between law, technology (or code), markets and norms in governing the global metaverse, drawing a contrast with traditional internet governance. In this respect, the potential for unintentional side-effects arising from the interaction between the four governance ‘modalities’ is emphasized. Finally, some conclusions are drawn concerning the legitimacy of rule-making in the global metaverse.
The paper adopts an eclectic approach to the analysis of these issues, drawing from traditional legal theories of legitimacy, Habermas-influenced approaches, systems theory (Teubner), the theory of cybernetic networks and actor network theory (ANT). Proposals will be made concerning the recognition of the rights of citizens in the emerging global metaverse.
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Politics and Social Software: Recommendations for Inclusive ICTs
Celina Raffl and Christina Neumayer
ICT&S Center, Advanced Studies and Research in Information and Communication Technologies & Society, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria
The emergence of social software and the new perception of the Internet promise to enable decentralized actions, a range of possibilities to share and exchange information open and free of charge, to collaborate equally, and to foster intercultural understanding and participation. These new possibilities have the potential to lay the foundation for a new way of political participation and social movements to emerge, but there are also limits because of existing social structures and increasing commercialisation of the Internet. In this paper we discuss theoretical concepts that we currently state as characteristics of political activism and the Internet in general, and of social software in particular: [1] the foundation for community building, [2] the interrelation of the real and the virtual space, [3] digital divide and social inequalities, and [4] the influence of globalisation. The Internet provides the foundation for communities to emerge and to shape society, for both societal benefits (e.g. empowerment of citizens, ecological conservation, democratisation and participation) as well as negative consequences (e.g. social inequalities, digital divide). Based on these four concepts we outline recommendations for inclusive Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), i.e. possibilities social software theoretically offers for social movements, political activism and participation.
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Scrutinizing Al-Qaeda’s Media Strategy: Discursive Analysis of Bin Laden’s Videotaped Messages
Rasha El-Ibiary
Misr International University, Cairo, Egypt
Al-Qaeda’s quick and pervasive use of all forms of mass media, ranging from print, satellite broadcast and the Internet is central to its decisive and strategic use of the mass media to further its short-term and long-term goals. Videotaped messages of Osama Bin Laden, and his main strategist, Ayman El Zawahri, are now exclusively produced and disseminated online for publicizing its ideology, legitimizing its goals, and winning hearts and minds of Arabs and Muslims, while at the same time inflating fear in the West, at both government and people’s levels, via constant threats and intimidations.
This research critically analyses Al-Qaeda’s media strategy, as central to its military strategy in its fight against the West. Assessing the various ways it is communicating its strategic deeds, this paper argues that the apparent worldwide success of Al-Qaeda’s media strategy, eased by new technologies, carries the seeds for its eventual failure due to the inherent contradictions in its propaganda messages, the absence of territorial-based legitimate goals, and the inability of their virtual online activity to substitute for the real world. In addition, the deliberate targeting of civilians worldwide, which directly works against the essence of Islam, loses them public support in the Arab and Islamic Worlds. Using critical discourse analysis, it closely examines and scrutinizes selected videotaped messages, which represent the central strategic tool of the organization to win hearts and minds. Evaluating the intertexuality and discursive formation of image and text, it aims to provide a persuasive critical account of Al-Qaeda’s communicated audio-visual rhetoric of policies and strategies, raising questions, and opening up for constructive arguments, rather providing answers, expectations or recommendations.
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