IGF 2021

Day 0 Event #84: “Internet governance, with and for the citizens”

Time
Monday, 6th December, 2021 (08:30 UTC) – Monday, 6th December, 2021 (09:15 UTC)

Room
Conference Room 1+2
Missions Publiques
Benoît Verhulst, Antoine Vergne, Maria Tazi

Organization’s Website
https://missionspubliques.org/?lang=en

Onsite Moderator
Antoine Vergne

Online Moderator
Benoît Verhulst

Rapporteur
Maria Tazi

Format
Interactive presentation and exchange between speakers and attendees

Duration (minutes)
45

Language
English

Description
We the Internet is the first debate of its kind to engage a coalition of strategic stakeholders brought together by Missions Publiques and representing the key players in the field: international organizations (UNESCO, European Commission, Council of Europe) governments (Germany, Switzerland), the private sector (Google, Facebook, Mozilla), civil society (The Internet Society, Web Foundation, Wikimedia Foundation, Particip’action), and the scientific community (WZB Berlin, Arizona State University for example). In 2020 we are scaling up the process in more than 100 countries, with discussions held on a single day and following a single method. In addition to the citizens’ forums, there will also be workshops with stakeholders as part of the UN High Level Panel process. “We the Internet” has proven that the future of Internet is a subject to be debated with citizens. The outcome of the preliminary dialogues in 2018 put the participants’ agenda on the table. That year, the participants brought up the question of the environment and this has now been officially added to the agenda of the Global Internet Governance Forum to be held in Poland in 2021. The pilots run in 2019 produced some clear results on the issues of digital identity and disinformation while showing the state of internet in different part of the world.

We will show to and with the attendees what a deliberative process is and what kind of output it can bring, even on a topic which is difficult to tackle as Internet. It will be an interactive session where staff members will interact directly with attendees and then compare the results of the session with the large-scale event that we run in 2020.