NonGovernmental Politics:The Case for Communication Rights: After the World Summit on the Information Society

This article discusses whether the World Summit on the Information Society was a success or failure and other potential ways of speaking about the “information society” than those privileged at the event. There are two major positions on contemporary communications; the first, neoliberal technomanagerialism, champions the information society driven largely by government and corporate influences. The second tries to define human rights to communication and defines the current network as a communication society driven by the actions of many. The article discusses the current shift to a philosophy of multi-stakeholderism and connections between the human right to communication and a human right to speak. The article then identifies two ways in which demands for human rights to communication could manifest; organizations could simply make demands and clearly define what constitutes communication rights, or they could slip the term and thus the concept of “human rights” into discourse on the information society. The article seems to argue for the second, suggesting that democratic efforts and representation could be removed from government and reapplied to the communication sphere with the influence of such a paradigm.