Global Information Society Watch
This year’s Global Information Society Watch (GISWatch) focuses on community networks. Community networks are “communication networks built, owned, operated, and used by citizens in a participatory and open manner.” This is a starting point. As the 43 country reports gathered here show, in practice, “community networks” can be hybrid systems, with different political and practical objectives. The country reports cover a diverse range of countries such as Georgia, Nepal, South Africa...
Like every year, the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) will be the venue where the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) launches the new edition of its annual publication Global Information Society Watch (GISWatch). This year, the theme of the report is community networks, understood as “communication networks built, owned, operated and used by citizens in a participatory and open manner.” When: Tuesday, 13 November 2018 – 13:30 to 15:00 Where: Salle X, UNESCO headquarters, Pa...
Right to Know - India’s Internet Avant-garde, is a podcast series about people coming to terms with the internet in some of India’s poorest rural and tribal districts, where many have not seen a television, or as in the ancient city of Chanderi, locals are still coming to terms with cars and scooters. This podcast series, presented and produced by Andrew Garton for the Association for...
The purpose of this review was to look back over the past decade of country reports published in Global Information Society Watch (GISWatch) and attempt to identify trends in civil society perspectives on what needed to be done to create a people-centred information society. The period for analysis was, more accurately, just over a decade: 2007-2017, during which a GISWatch report was produced ...
Regulations pertaining to online spaces have taken many forms. Information and communication technology (ICT) laws throughout Asia have provisions that seek to censor and criminalise speech online. These regulations pose a significant challenge to people’s freedom of expression and their ability to participate in democratic processes such as elections. Media and journalists along with human r...
National and Regional Internet Governance Forum Initiatives (NRIs) are now widely recognised as a vital element of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) process. In fact, they are seen to be the key to the sustainability and ongoing evolution of collaborative, inclusive and multistakeholder approaches to internet policy development and implementation. A total of 54 reports on NRIs are gathered in...
National and Regional Internet Governance Forum Initiatives (NRIs) emerged in response to the success of the first two global Internet Governance Forums (IGFs). The Tunis Agenda for the Information Society, the outcome document of the final phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), alongside the call for the creation of the IGF, served as the foundations for the model of bott...
Freedom of expression and opinion online is increasingly criminalised with the aid of penal and internet-specific legislation. With this report, we hope to bring to light the problematic trends in the use of laws against freedom of expression in online spaces in Asia. In this special edition of GISWatch, APC brings together analysis on the criminalisation of online expression from six Asian st...
Together with a special companion edition: "Internet governance from the edges: NRIs in their own words". A groundbreaking report analysing National and Regional Internet Governance Forums will be released at the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Geneva, Switzerland, on 20 December 2017. The latest edition of the Global Information Society Watch (GISWatch) report will look at local Internet G...
APC has taken initiative to compile two editions of Global Information Society Watch focused on National and Regional IGFs (NRIs). While one will consist of independent and analytical perspectives on the role of NRIs in internet governance, this questionnaire is linked to the second volume, which intends to give voice and visibility to the stories of each NRI, to present their undertakings and ...
Association for Progressive Communications (APC) 2019
Unless otherwise stated, content on the APC website is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)