The current dominant mechanism for public inclusion is the multistakeholder approach, i.e. one that includes governments, industry and civil society in governance debates. Despite at times being used as a shorthand for public inclusion, multistakeholder governance is implemented in many different ways and has faced criticism, with some arguing that multistakeholder discussions serve as a cover for the growth of state dominance over the Web, and enables oligarchic domination of discourses that are ostensibly open and democratic.

In her Policy & Internet article “Searching for the Public in Internet Governance: Examining Infrastructures of Participation at NETmundial”, Sarah Myers West examines the role of the public in Internet governance debates, with reference to public inclusion at the 2014 Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance (NETmundial). NETmundial emerged at a point when public legitimacy was a particular concern for the Internet governance community, so finding ways to include the rapidly growing, and increasingly diverse group of stakeholders in the governance debate was especially important for the meeting’s success.

This is particularly significant as the Internet governance community faces problems of increasing complexity and diversity of views. The growth of the Internet has made the public central to Internet governance — but introduces problems around the growing number of stakeholders speaking different languages, with different technical backgrounds, and different perspectives on the future of the Internet.

However, the article suggests that rather than attempting to unify behind a single institution or achieve public consensus through a single, deliberative forum, the NETmundial example suggests that the Internet community may further fragment into multiple publics, further redistributing into a more networked and “agonistic” model. This doesn’t quite reflect the model of the “public sphere” Habermas may have envisioned, but it may ultimately befit the network of networks it is forged around.

We caught up with Sarah to discuss her findings:

Ed.: You say governance debates involve two levels of contestation: firstly in how we define “the Internet community”, and secondly around the actual decision-making process. How do we even start defining what “the public” means?

Sarah: This is a really difficult question, and it’s really the one that drove me throughout my research. I think that observing examples of publics ‘in the wild’ — how they are actually constituted within the Internet governance space — is one entry point. As I found in the article, there are a number of different kinds of publics that have emerged over the history of the internet, some fairly structured and centralized and others more ad hoc and decentralized. There’s also a difference between the way public inclusion is described/structured and the way things work out in practice. But better understanding what kinds of publics actually exist is only the first step to analyzing deeper questions — about the workings of power on and through the Internet.

Ed.: I know Internet governance is important but haven’t the faintest idea who represents me (as a member of “the public”) in these debates. Are my interests represented by the UK Government? Europe? NGOs? Industry? Or by self-proclaimed “public representatives”?

Sarah: All of the above — and also, maybe, none of the above. There are a number of different kinds of stakeholders representing different constituencies on the Internet — at NETmundial, this was separated into Government, Business, Civil Society, Academia and the Technical Community. In reality, there are blurred boundaries around all these categories, and each of these groups could make claims about representing the public, though which aspects of the public interest they represent is worth a closer look.

Many Internet governance fora are constituted in a way that would also allow each of us to represent ourselves: at NETmundial, there was a lot of thought put in to facilitating remote participation and bringing in questions from the Internet. But there are still barriers — it’s not the same as being in the room with decision makers, and the technical language that’s developed around Internet governance certainly makes these discussions hard for newcomers to follow.

Ed.: Is there a tension here between keeping a process fairly closed (and efficient) vs making it totally open and paralysed? And also between being completely democratic vs being run by people (engineers) who actually understand how the Internet works? i.e. what is the point of including “the public” (whatever that means) at a global level, instead of simply being represented by the governments we elect at a national (or European) level?

Sarah: There definitely is a tension there, and I think this is part of the reason why we see such different models of public inclusion in different kinds of forums. For starters, I’m not sure that, at present, there’s a forum that I can think of that is fully democratic. But I think there is still a value in trying to be more democratic, and to placing the public at the centre of these discussions. As we’ve seen in the years following the Snowden revelations, the interests of state actors are not always aligned, and sometimes are completely at odds, with those of the public.

The involvement of civil society, academia and the technical community is really critical to counterbalancing these interests — but, as many civil society members remarked after NETmundial, this can be an uphill battle. Governments and corporations have an easier time in these kinds of forums identifying and advocating for a narrow set of interests and values, whereas civil society doesn’t always come in to these discussions with as clear a consensus. It can be a messy process.

Ed.: You say that “analyzing the infrastructure of public participation makes it possible to examine the functions of Internet governance processes at a deeper level.” Having done so, are you hopeful or cynical about “Internet governance” as it is currently done?

Sarah: I’m hopeful about the attentiveness to public inclusion exhibited at NETmundial — it really was a central part of the process and the organizers made a number of investments in ensuring it was as broadly accessible as possible. That said, I’m a bit critical of whether building technological infrastructure for inclusion on its own can overcome the real resource imbalances that effect who can participate in these kinds of forums. It’s probably going to require investments in both — there’s a danger that by focusing on the appearance of being democratic, these discussions can mask the underlying power discrepancies that inhibit deliberation on an even playing field.

Read the full article: West, S.M. (2017) Searching for the Public in Internet Governance: Examining Infrastructures of Participation at NETmundial. Policy & Internet 9 (2). doi:10.1002/poi3.143

Sarah Myers West was talking to blog editor David Sutcliffe.

We examined two recent Internet governance initiatives which incorporated crowdsourcing with mixed results: the first one, the ICANN Strategy Panel on Multistakeholder Innovation, received only limited support from the online community; the second, NETmundial, had a significant number of online inputs from global stakeholders who had the opportunity to engage using a platform for political participation specifically set up for the drafting of the outcome document. The study builds on these two cases to evaluate how crowdsourcing was used as a form of public consultation aimed at bringing the online voice of the “undefined many” (as opposed to the “elected few”) into Internet governance processes.

From the two cases, it emerged that the design of the consultation processes conducted via crowdsourcing platforms is key in overcoming barriers of participation. For instance, in the NETmundial process, the ability to submit comments and participate remotely via www.netmundial.br attracted inputs from all over the world very early on, since the preparatory phase of the meeting. In addition, substantial public engagement was obtained from the local community in the drafting of the outcome document, through a platform for political participation — www.participa.br — that gathered comments in Portuguese. In contrast, the outreach efforts of the ICANN Strategy Panel on Multistakeholder Innovation remained limited; the crowdsourcing platform they used only gathered input (exclusively in English) from a small group of people, insufficient to attribute to online public input a significant role in the reform of ICANN’s multistakeholder processes.

Second, questions around how crowdsourcing should and could be used effectively to enhance the legitimacy of decision-making processes in Internet governance remain unanswered. A proper institutional setting that recognizes a role for online multistakeholder participation is yet to be defined; in its absence, the initiatives we examined present a set of procedural limitations. For instance, in the NETmundial case, the Executive Multistakeholder Committee, in charge of drafting an outcome document to be discussed during the meeting based on the analysis of online contributions, favoured more “mainstream” and “uncontroversial” contributions. Additionally, online deliberation mechanisms for different propositions put forward by a High-Level Multistakeholder Committee, which commented on the initial draft, were not in place.

With regard to ICANN, online consultations have been used on a regular basis since its creation in 1998. Its target audience is the “ICANN community,” a group of stakeholders that volunteer their time and expertise to improve policy processes within the organization. Despite the effort, initiatives such as the 2000 global election for the new At-Large Directors have revealed difficulties in reaching as broad of an audience as wanted. Our study discusses some of the obstacles of the implementation of this ambitious initiative, including limited information and awareness about the At-Large elections, and low Internet access and use in most developing countries, particularly in Africa and Latin America.

Third, there is a need for clear rules regarding the way in which contributions are evaluated in crowdsourcing efforts. When the deliberating body (or committee) is free to disregard inputs without providing any motivation, it triggers concerns about the broader transnational governance framework in which we operate, as there is no election of those few who end up determining which parts of the contributions should be reflected in the outcome document. To avoid the agency problem arising from the lack of accountability over the incorporation of inputs, it is important that crowdsourcing attempts pay particular attention to designing a clear and comprehensive assessment process.

The “wisdom of the crowd” has traditionally been explored in developing the Internet, yet it remains a contested ground when it comes to its governance. In multistakeholder set-ups, the diversity of voices and the collection of ideas and input from as many actors as possible — via online means — represent a desideratum, rather than a reality. In our exploration of empowerment through online crowdsourcing for institutional reform, we identify three fundamental preconditions: first, the existence of sufficient community interest, able to leverage wide expertise beyond a purely technical discussion; second, the existence of procedures for the collection and screening of inputs, streamlining certain ideas considered for implementation; and third, commitment to institutionalizing the procedures, especially by clearly defining the rules according to which feedback is incorporated and circumvention is avoided.

Read the full paper: Radu, R., Zingales, N. and Calandro, E. (2015), Crowdsourcing Ideas as an Emerging Form of Multistakeholder Participation in Internet Governance. Policy & Internet, 7: 362–382. doi: 10.1002/poi3.99

Roxana Radu is a PhD candidate in International Relations at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva and a fellow at the Center for Media, Data and Society, Central European University (Budapest). Her current research explores the negotiation of internet policy-making in global and regional frameworks.

Nicolo Zingales is an assistant professor at Tilburg law school, a senior member of the Tilburg Law and Economics Center (TILEC), and a research associate of the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology and Society (TILT). He researches on various aspects of Internet governance and regulation, including multistakeholder processes, data-driven innovation and the role of online intermediaries.

Enrico Calandro (PhD) is a senior research fellow at Research ICT Africa, an ICT policy think-tank based based in Cape Town. His academic research focuses on accessibility and affordability of ICT, broadband policy, and internet governance issues from an African perspective.