Digital Governance and Democratization in the Arab World

Making the choice to be an Internet society is not a process governed simply by a state’s attitudes towards computers and the data that flows between them. Rather, being an Internet society means fostering the wide embrace of perspectives modeled on the technology itself. The basic components of designing an Internet society include a commitment to the free flow of information across and among hierarchies; a belief that it is best not to privilege any single information node; a realization that censorship is difficult if not futile; and a commitment to the idea that communities, companies and individuals have the right to represent themselves within electronic landscapes. All of these information attitudes have spill over effects in the real world. While constructing an Internet society is also about building information infrastructure and teaching people to use new tools, it is the clear spill over effects linked with the technology’s design principles that have most developing countries proceeding with caution. For many countries around the world, especially (semi) authoritarian ones, no matter how strong the economic incentives for being an Internet society are, politically and socially, accepting such processes of change without selective state intervention is uncommon. Nowhere are these interventions more apparent than in the puzzling mosaic of Internet led development in the Arab World. This article entertains a series of questions regarding emerging Internet societies in the Arab World: 1. To what degree is the Internet spreading in the Arab World and what factors are most commonly driving (or inhibiting) these processes of technological change? 2. In what way is the Internet contributing to processes of political change in the region? And how is the authoritarian state intervening to regulate Internet use in an attempt to control the spill over effects of such use? 3. What might be the longer term impacts of emergent Internet cultures in the region?

Digital Governance and Democratization in the Arab World

Encyclopedia of Digital Government ◽

10.4018/978-1-59140-789-8.ch050 ◽

2011 ◽

pp. 327-335

Author(s):

D. Wheeler

Keyword(s):

Arab World ◽

State Intervention ◽

Economic Incentives ◽

The Internet ◽

Authoritarian State ◽

The World ◽

Building Information ◽

The Right ◽

Making the choice to be an Internet society is not a process governed simply by a state’s attitudes towards computers and the data that flows between them. Rather, being an Internet society means fostering the wide embrace of perspectives modeled on the technology itself. The basic components of designing an Internet society include a commitment to the free flow of information across and among hierarchies; a belief that it is best not to privilege any single information node; a realization that censorship is difficult if not futile; and a commitment to the idea that communities, companies and individuals have the right to represent themselves within electronic landscapes. All of these information attitudes have spill over effects in the real world. While constructing an Internet society is also about building information infrastructure and teaching people to use new tools, it is the clear spill over effects linked with the technology’s design principles that have most developing countries proceeding with caution. For many countries around the world, especially (semi) authoritarian ones, no matter how strong the economic incentives for being an Internet society are, politically and socially, accepting such processes of change without selective state intervention is uncommon. Nowhere are these interventions more apparent than in the puzzling mosaic of Internet led development in the Arab World. This article entertains a series of questions regarding emerging Internet societies in the Arab World: 1. To what degree is the Internet spreading in the Arab World and what factors are most commonly driving (or inhibiting) these processes of technological change? 2. In what way is the Internet contributing to processes of political change in the region? And how is the authoritarian state intervening to regulate Internet use in an attempt to control the spill over effects of such use? 3. What might be the longer term impacts of emergent Internet cultures in the region?

Online privacy regulation in a decentralized, unbounded context: Internet Governance and multi-stake-holder initiatives as regulatory mechanisms

Iuris Dictio ◽

10.18272/iu.v22i22.1063 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Hugo Fernando Aguiar Lozano

Keyword(s):

Online Privacy ◽

The Internet ◽

Internet Governance ◽

Regulatory Structure ◽

Privacy Regulation ◽

The Right To Privacy ◽

Stake Holder ◽

The Right ◽

The present paper analyzes the right to privacy in the context of the Internet. The multi-stake- holder initiatives are an alternative that has already provided a regulatory structure on various aspects of the Internet, be it security, free flow of information or online privacy. Although there are elements that make it not a total solution, this paper analyzes some reasons why online privacy should be regulated by mechanisms of Internet Governance and by entities that do not respond only to governments or only to private firms. In this work, a general look at this alternative is given, without neglecting other approaches that should be applied to the topic of online privacy.

CYBERLIBERTARIANISM IN THE MID-1990S

AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research ◽

10.5210/spir.v2020i0.11299 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Jonathan Pace

Keyword(s):

Free Market ◽

State Intervention ◽

The State ◽

The Internet ◽

Early Adopters ◽

Computer Professionals ◽

Way Of Thinking ◽

Constitutional Protections ◽

This paper analyzes libertarian internet discourse in the mid-1990s, focusing on the events surrounding the passage of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which criminalized obscene and indecent content on the internet. During this episode, hackers, early adopters, computer professionals, technology lobbyists, and civil society advocates embraced a libertarian way of thinking about the internet and the state — a way of thinking I refer to as cyberlibertarianism. These groups had long-standing libertarian dispositions, although their anti-statism ranged from a left-libertarianism, concerned with concentrations of power in the state and in the market, to a civil-libertarianism, concerned with the integrity of constitutional protections, to a right-libertarianism, concerned with laissez-faire market conditions. In responding to the events of the decade, and following from their established dispositions, these groups converged on a libertarian narrative about the internet and the state. According this narrative, the state was overbearing, intrusive, compromised, and uninformed — and therefore a threat to the internet as a sphere of freedom, individualism, competition, and innovation. This libertarian narrative structured their arguments against specific acts of state intervention. In the case of the Communications Decency Act, they argued that the regulatory measure undermined the promise of the internet as a venue of free speech, an object of the free market, and a conduit for the free flow of information.

Why Trade Agreements are not Setting Information Free: The Lost History and Reinvigorated Debate over Cross-Border Data Flows, Human Rights, and National Security

World Trade Review ◽

10.1017/s1474745615000014 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 14 (04) ◽

pp. 671-700 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

SUSAN AARONSON

Keyword(s):

National Security ◽

Trade Agreements ◽

The United States ◽

Free Flow ◽

The Internet ◽

Digital Rights ◽

Cross Border ◽

Data Flows ◽

AbstractHerein, we examine how the United States and the European Union use trade agreements to advance the free flow of information and to promote digital rights online. In the 1980s and 1990s, after US policymakers tried to include language governing the free flow of information in trade agreements, other nations feared a threat to their sovereignty and their ability to restrict cross-border data flows in the interest of privacy or national security.In the twenty-first century, again many states have not responded positively to US and EU efforts to facilitate the free flow of information. They worry that the US dominates both the Internet economy and Internet governance in ways that benefit its interests. After the Snowden allegations, many states adopted strategies that restricted rather than enhanced the free flow of information. Without deliberate intent, efforts to set information free through trade liberalization may be making the Internet less free.Finally, the two trade giants are not fully in agreement on Internet freedom, but neither has linked policies to promote the free flow of information with policies to advance digital rights. Moreover, they do not agree as to when restrictions on information are necessary and when they are protectionist.

Privacy Risk in E-Commerce

Encyclopedia of Multimedia Technology and Networking, Second Edition ◽

10.4018/978-1-60566-014-1.ch161 ◽

2009 ◽

pp. 1188-1193

Author(s):

Tziporah Stern

Keyword(s):

World Wide ◽

Personal Information ◽

The Internet ◽

Digital Information ◽

New Techniques ◽

Privacy Concerns ◽

Technological Advances ◽

The World ◽

Data Files ◽

The Right

Privacy, or the right to hold information about oneself in secret (Masuda, 1979; O’Brien & Yasnof, 1999), has become increasingly important in the information society. With the rapid technological advances and the digitalization of information, retrieval of specific records is more rapid; personal information can be integrated into a number of different data files; and copying, transporting, collecting, storing, and processing large amounts of information is easier. Additionally, the advent of the World Wide Web and the fast-paced growth of the Internet have created further cause for concern. The vast amounts of digital information and the pervasiveness of the Internet facilitate new techniques for gathering information—for example, spyware, phishing, and cookies. Hence, personal information is much more vulnerable to being inappropriately used. This article outlines the importance of privacy in an e-commerce environment, the specific privacy concerns individuals may have, antecedents to these concerns, and potential remedies to quell them.

Official Tourism Web Sites and City Marketing

Information Communication Technologies and City Marketing ◽

10.4018/978-1-60566-134-6.ch008 ◽

2011 ◽

pp. 152-183 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Pablo Díaz-Luque

Keyword(s):

Web Sites ◽

Marketing Mix ◽

Marketing Strategies ◽

The Internet ◽

City Marketing ◽

Large Cities ◽

The World ◽

Tourism Destinations ◽

The Right ◽

The City

Large cities are one of the most popular tourism destinations throughout the world. Business and leisure tourists visit these areas every year and before they travel there, they look for useful information on the Internet. This chapter analyses the tourism Web sites developed by Convention and Visitor Bureaus. These Web sites represent the official image of the city on the Internet and trough them tourism organizations can organize the marketing and mix strategy. The chapter studies the concept of a city as a tourism destination, the organizations that manage tourist activities, and the right marketing strategies to be developed on these official Web sites. The strategy begins with the market research to select the right marketing segments and it continues with the right actions from a marketing mix perspective. It means different options in terms of product-destination exhibition, price policies, commercialization, and communication actions.

The “Information Divide” in the Climate Sciences

Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society ◽

10.1175/bams-84-12-1703 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 84 (12) ◽

pp. 1703-1710 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Andrew Gettelman

Keyword(s):

Developing Countries ◽

Cultural Differences ◽

Scientific Work ◽

The Internet ◽

Electronic Distribution ◽

Language Difficulties ◽

The World ◽

Forecast Data ◽

Flow Of Information ◽

New Strategies

The gap between the availability of information in developed and developing countries in climate and meteorology is described and detailed. The description is based on a recent survey of scientists around the world. The information divide results from the high costs of information and lack of resources in many countries and can be compounded by language difficulties and cultural differences. This has led to the breakdown in the flow of weather and forecast data, the flow of journals to developing countries, and the flow of the results of scientific work back to these same journals from developing countries. With the increasing electronic flow of information, many countries are also limited by costly and low-bandwidth access to the Internet. Several ideas for bridging the information divide are also presented, ranging from electronic distribution of journals, to increasing capacity to deal with information, to a commitment to include all users in new strategies for delivering information.

Taking Care of Business

10.5406/illinois/9780252038761.003.0012 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Dan Schiller

Keyword(s):

Task Force ◽

The United States ◽

Free Flow ◽

The Internet ◽

Computing Services ◽

Internet Policy ◽

Global Commerce ◽

The Impact ◽

This chapter examines the Commerce Department's free-flow policy as part of its power over internet policy. It first provides an overview of U.S.–centric internet and Commerce's Internet Policy Task Force, established to launch an inquiry into “the global free flow of information on the Internet.” The inquiry's purpose was “to identify and examine the impact that restrictions on the flow of information over the Internet have on American businesses and global commerce.” The chapter also considers Commerce's commodification strategies based in part on data centers and the place of cloud computing services in the department's free-flow inquiry. It shows that the Commerce Department's free-flow policy was a major component of the federal government's overall efforts to keep corporate data flows streaming without restriction as new profit sites emerged around an extraterritorial internet managed by the United States.

The generalized sousveillance society

Social Science Information ◽

10.1177/0539018410371027 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 49 (3) ◽

pp. 489-507 ◽

Cited By ~ 32

Author(s):

Jean-Gabriel Ganascia

Keyword(s):

Present State ◽

Real World ◽

Public Transportation ◽

Virtual World ◽

Information Technologies ◽

The Internet ◽

Public And Private ◽

The World ◽

Modern Information ◽

This article is based on the notion of ‘sousveillance’, which was invented by Steve Mann to describe the present state of modern technological societies where anybody may take photos or videos of any person or event, and then diffuse the information freely all over the world. The article shows how sousveillance can be generalized both to the real world and to the virtual world of the Infosphere using modern information technologies. As a consequence, the separation between public and private spheres tends to disappear. We believe that generalized sousveillance may transform the overall society, e.g. modern public transportation like the Paris subway might have to change the way it disseminates information due to the impossibility of managing the flow of information coming from its infrastructures. To attempt to elucidate a society based on generalized sousveillance, the article introduces the notion of the ‘Catopticon’, derived from Bentham’s Panopticon: while the architecture of the Panopticon was designed to facilitate surveillance by prohibiting communication and by installing surveyors in a watchtower, the architecture of the ‘Catopticon’ allows everybody to communicate with everybody and removes surveyors from the watchtower. The article goes on to explore the opportunities the Catopticon might offer if extended to the whole planet. It also shows the limitations of the extended Catopticon; some are extrinsic: they consist of various resistances which restrict access to the Internet; others are intrinsic: for instance, we can exchange simultaneously only with a few people, while we may have millions of contacts. As a consequence, the various new ‘regimes of distinction’ mentioned above play a key role in modern societies.