Social Actors on a Hot Tin Roof? Between Tradition and the Avant-Garde in Internet Governance Mobilization

Abstract

This paper argues that the interplay between techno-economic rules and norms, ideas, regulatory imperatives, communicative practices, and agenda-setting around Internet governance as a 'global' project need to be conceptualised more critically than heretofore. The question is whether these parameters for enabling the participation of ordinary individuals, communities, or advocacy groups in consultations normally reserved for experts, political and economic power-elites can be an effective counterweight to incumbent powers anyway let alone in the face of widespread scepticism about the point of such exercises in participatory democracy UN-style. To this end the research revisits Foucault’s notion of governmentality; asking whether the power ‘re-dispositions’ implied by this undertaking amount to the emergence of Internet governmentality. If so then what are the practical implications for effective social action, in actors' own terms and vis-a-vis said public/s especially since civil society groups’ participation in particular, and the multi-stakeholder participatory model in general are represented as a break from the past, not business-as-usual? In light of this argument the paper outlines research into how social actors are navigating multilateral institution building around Internet governance. Taken to be a quintessentially global issue by all concerned, these actors operate on the presupposition that outcomes concern a global - transnational - public or publics. Extending previous research the project investigates how formal incorporation into the workings of multilateral agenda setting affects activists over time. It does so from three angles: actors’ experiences and shifts in perception about what is at stake in Internet governance as co-producers of this discourse; then tracing selected media and web-based (inter)actions and output in their capacity as media/ICT practitioners in their own right; and how these two aspects affect communication with respective constituencies beyond this arena. A fourth angle will be added at a later stage; focusing on those who remain outside this domain, whether by choice or force of circumstance, but who are also mobilizing around these issues on behalf of their respective public/s. Following how social actors are engaging in this project from this more circumspect standpoint on current initiatives to shape the future of the Internet 'from below' and under the aegis of the UN offers insight into the leverage of influence on behalf of ‘global civil society’ in domains for action that now combine longstanding on-the-ground communicative cultures with newer ‘cyberspatial practices’ of computer-mediated ones. These have both strategic and tactical consequences for both ‘traditional’ and ‘avant-garde’ forms of social activism.