The European Information Society: A Reality Check

THE EUROPEAN INFORMATION SOCIETY A REALITY CHECK Edited By Jan Servaes

NEW MEDIA intellect

The European Information Society A reality check

Edited by

Jan Servaes

Published in Paperback in UK in 2003 by Intellect Books, PO Box 862, Bristol BS99 1DE, UK Published in Paperback in USA in 2003 by Intellect Books, ISBS, 920 NE 58th Ave. Suite 300, Portland, Oregon 97213-3786, USA Copyright © 2003 Intellect All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.

Copy Editor: Holly Spradling

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Electronic ISBN 1-84150-893-4 / ISBN 1-84150-106-9

Printed in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Eastbourne.

European Consortium for Communications Research This series consists of books arising from the intellectual work of ECCR members. Books address themes relevant to ECCR interests; make a major contribution to the theory, research, practice and/or policy literature; are European in scope; and represent a diversity of perspectives. Book proposals are refereed. Series Editors Denis McQuail Robert Picard Jan Servaes

The aims of the ECCR: • To provide a forum where researchers and others involved in communication and information research can meet and exchange information and documentation about their work. Its disciplinary focus will be on media, (tele)communications and informations research; • To encourage the development of research and systematic study, especially on subjects and areas where such work is not well developed; • To stimulate academic and intellectual interest in media and communications research, and to promote communication and cooperation between members of the Consortium; • To co-ordinate information on communications research in Europe, with a view to establishing a database of ongoing research; • To encourage, support, and where possible publish, the work of junior scholars in Europe, • To take into account the different languages and cultures in Europe; • To develop links with relevant national and international communication organisations and with professional communication researchers working for commercial and regulatory institutions, both public and private; • To promote the interests of communication research within and between the member states of the Council of Europe and the European Union; and • To collect and disseminate information concerning the professional position of communication researchers in the European region.

Contents By way of introduction

5

Introducing the issue 1. Jan Servaes – The European Information Society: 1. A wake-up call

11

Checking discourses, policies, and findings 2. 2. 3. 3. 3. 4. 4. 5. 5. 6. 6.

Paschal Preston – European Union ICT Policies: Neglected Social and Cultural Dimensions 33 Caroline Pauwels & Jean-Claude Burgelman – Policy challenges to the creation of a European Information Society: A critical analysis 59 Francois Heinderyckx – Issues in measuring Information Society adoption in Europe 87 Nico Carpentier – Access and participation in the discourse of the digital divide: The European perspective at/on the WSIS 99 Cees J. Hamelink – Communication Rights and the European Information Society 121

Checking in more detail 7. 8. 8. 9. 9. 10. 10. 10.

Robert G. Picard – Business Issues facing New Media Peter Johnston – Perspectives for Employment in the Transition to a Knowledge Society Andrea Ricci – The Political Internet: Between dogma and reality Brian Trench – New roles for users in online news media? Exploring the application of interactivity through European case studies

149 165 177

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By way of conclusions 11. Luisella Pavan-Woolfe – Social and Human Capital in the 11.Knowledge Society: Policy implications 225 12. Jan Servaes – Digital citizenship and information inequalities: Challenges for the future 231 List of acronyms

239

Note on contributors

241

By way of introduction The globalization of social, cultural and economic relations is facilitated, and at the same time conditioned by developments in the information and communications technologies (ICT) and infrastructure. Human knowledge brought mankind from an oral to a literate culture, thanks to the invention of the print media. The development of the electronic media in the last century paved the path for the information age, in which spatial and temporal constraints are lifted. “In every society, the production, distribution, and use of information play vital roles in the management of events… The development of these Information Societies has been characterized by the innovation and adoption of technologies, changes in mass media systems, and changing patterns and procedures for individual and group decision-making. Attention has shifted in these societies from the development and utilization of technologies to a concern for their impact upon each society” (Edelstein, Bowes & Harsel, 1978: vii). The consequences of this revolution in human communications are multidimensional in character, affecting economical, political and social life on national, international and local levels. The focus of this book will be on Europe. However, as argued by John Pinder (1995) or Cees Hamelink in his contribution to this book, it is rather difficult to qualify what is meant by the notion of the ‘European Information Society (EIS)’. Therefore, we cannot but take other geographical dimensions into consideration as well. Though many authors (see, e.g., Dordick & Wang, 1993; Martin, 1995; Webster, 1995) express serious doubts about the validity of the notion of an information society, a variety of criteria could be used to analytically distinguish definitions of an information society (IS). Frank Webster (1995: 6), for instance, identifies the following five types of definitions: technological, economic, occupational, spatial, and cultural. The most common definition of an IS is probably technological. It sees the information society as the leading growth sector in advanced industrial economies. Its three strands – computing, telecommunications and broadcasting – have evolved historically as three separate sectors, and by means of digitization these sectors are now converging. Throughout the past decade however a gradual shift can be observed in favor of more socio-economic and cultural definitions of the IS. The following definition, drafted by a High Level Group of EU-experts, incorporates this change: “The information society is the society currently being put into place, where low-cost

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information and data storage and transmission technologies are in general use. This generalization of information and data use is being accompanied by organizational, commercial, social and legal innovations that will profoundly change life both in the world of work and in society generally” (Soete, 1997: 11). Others prefer to use the term knowledge society to clarify the shift in emphasis from ICTs as ‘drivers’ of change to a perspective where these technologies are regarded as tools which may provide a new potential for combining the information embedded in ICT systems with the creative potential and knowledge embodied in people. “These technologies do not create the transformations in society by themselves; they are designed and implemented by people in their social, economic, and technological contexts” (Mansell & When, 1998: 12). Also in other ways, this book intends to move away from the technological hurrah to a more historical and contextual assessment of the opportunities and dangers on the information highway ahead of us. One of the fundamental questions is whether the information society in Europe will also be a welfare society? The welfare society which is one of those great captivating ideas Europe wants to cherish (Calabrese & Burgelman, 1999). Undoubtedly the evolution towards an information society puts pressure on the classical ways in which the welfare society has been constructed. And this at the level of political philosophy – for instance: what means citizenship in a digital environment? (see Castells, 1997; or the contribution by Andrea Ricci) – as well as at the level of social and economic policy. These discussions imply choices in such areas as universal availability, investment in education, regulation, the role of public authorities, and the balance between individual privacy and community security, and between information freedoms and communication rights (see Venturelli, 1997, or the contributions by Cees Hamelink and Peter Johnston). One of the hottest issues in debates on the information society is the digital divide between the ‘information haves’ and ‘have-nots’ (the socalled ‘information underclass’). According to Hacker and van Dijk (2001), there are four main hurdles of access to the information society producing these inequalities: (a) lack of basic skills and ‘computer fear’; (b) no access to computers and networks; (c) insufficient user-friendliness; and (d) insufficient and unevenly distributed usage opportunities. Especially the contributions by Jan Servaes, Francois Heinderyckx, and Nico Carpentier address these issues in some detail. The European communications environment is undergoing a number of major structural changes. The Single European Act (SEA), adopted by all national parliaments in the European Union, which entered into force on 1 July 1987, has

By way of introduction

introduced a new strategic vision – the 1992 objective for completion of the internal market. It created the framework for Europe 1992, and therefore it can be said to be the most important reform of the Treaty of Rome since its inception on 25 March 1957. As the Single European Market-idea is based on the philosophies of mutual recognition and subsidiarity – mutual recognition by member states of the differences in national laws so long as these do not distort inter-community trade, and subsidiarity whereby international bodies should not assume powers over national issues and that national governments should not take control of matters better dealt with on a regional level – it is increasingly becoming governed by international and supranational regulations. Therefore, the SEA has introduced new dynamic elements to generate the convergence of the member states of the European Union. International regulation, as laid down in the Council of Europe's Convention on Transfrontier Television Broadcasting (1989), and supranational regulation, as expressed in the EU Council of Minister's Broadcasting Directive (1989), has contributed to a more competitive communications environment, both at national and supranational levels. Nowhere, perhaps, as argued by Caroline Pauwels and Jean-Claude Burgelman, are these changes more profound than in the field of broadcasting, which is ceasing to be an activity almost entirely regulated by national legislation. Furthermore, one could argue that different logics are guiding the EC policies in different hardware and software sectors. Therefore, the telecommunications policy with an emphasis on liberalization and deregulation differs from the policy recommendations in the broadcasting field where some measures (e.g., the quotasystem) could be interpreted to be protectionist. For instance, with regard to anticartel legislation, there is at present no cohesive legislative provision in the European Union. The EU industrial policies have changed during the eighties from a defensive towards a more offensive policy. Two sectors where this policy change has become very obvious are telecommunications and informatics. This has led to a technological convergence of communications and computer technology into Information Communication Technologies (ICT). This convergence will have considerable implications for policy formulations at distinct levels. However, it is feared that the EU is not really anticipating an overall policy on the problems of convergence within the EU. Only at operational levels some concern is expressed and isolated initiatives are initiated. A more comprehensive and centralized structure is urgently needed to tackle this convergence issue.

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As the two historically, separately evolved sectors of telecommunications and broadcasting converge, the different policy consequences of the economic versus the cultural, and local versus international interests have to be taken into account. It is no longer sufficient to concentrate on a distinct sector from only a technological or an economic perspective. Therefore, a multi-dimensional analysis of the different policy options and their respective consequences is necessary. This discussion can also be observed at the more theoretical level. Jan Van Cuilenburg and Denis McQuail (1998) distinguish between three different historical phases of media policy in the US and Western Europe. During the first phase (until World War II) media policy was largely dominated by the tensions between state and corporate interests at a national level. Afterwards (from the fifties into the eighties) a shift took place from economic and national concerns to more sociopolitical considerations. This phase is often summarized with a reference to publicservice broadcasting as the political ideal for media policy, notably in Western Europe. There was a strong policy commitment to universal service, diversity of content, democratic accountability, public financing and non-profit making. Caroline Pauwels and Jean-Claude Burgelman argue that these concepts are largely insufficient in view of the problems and challenges that new information and communication technologies pose for the information society. Such a broad perspective coincides with the third phase, as identified by Van Cuilenburg and McQuail. They describe how from 1980 onwards several technological, economic and socio-cultural trends have fundamentally changed the context of media policy. In general one could say that both national governments and the European Union as a governing body are faced with a dilemma when it comes to developing a communications policy. If they would give preference to economic and technical considerations, they would stimulate the media policies in the direction of uniformization and large-scale developments. Quantitative criteria, which are mainly based on 'technical' (or hardware) considerations, do play a more important role than qualitative criteria that build upon the 'content' (or software) of media products. The latter approach would be more in line with a cultural policy, which emphasizes pluriformity and small-scale autonomy (see also Becker, 1995). The contributions in this book take shape at three levels: At one level, the policy of an EIS will be analysed in terms of its underlying assumptions and discourses. Although most of the articles deal with this point, especially the ones by Jan Servaes, Paschal Preston, Caroline Pauwels and Jean-

By way of introduction

Claude Burgelman, Francois Heinderyckx, Nico Carpentier, and Cees Hamelink discuss EIS policies in some detail. Starting from the assumption that information and communication technologies undoubtedly possess the potential to contribute to social change, these authors question whether this potential will be converted into advantages for everyone under the given scenario's the EU has planned. As large-scale application of information and communication technology increases, new problems will arise which 'the market' as such will not being able to resolve. More and better regulatory mechanisms, this book argues, will have to be developed to deal with these. If it should appear that the means proposed by the EU representatives are inadequate to arrive at the intended result, then the current ICT strategy will have to be amended, or, if necessary, an alternative strategy will have to be proposed. A second level of critical issues deals with the tension between the national and the supranational (the EU) and how this might affect EIS policy and planning in the distinct nation-states. As in every dossier, different national authorities in Europe react differently to the plans of Brussels (and this mainly due to national specificities). At a third level, specific issues or cases are being scrutinized: business issues facing new media (by Robert Picard), the impact of the EIS on employment and work (by Peter Johnston), the prospects for on-line voting and e-democracy (by Andrea Ricci), and the new roles for users in on-line news media (by Brian Trench). The book concludes with a number of recommendations for both policymakers and researchers.

Jan Servaes

9

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References Becker J. (1995), “Information for all or knowledge for the elite? The contours of a dissimilar European information policy”, Prometheus, vol. 13, no. 1, June. Calabrese A. & Burgelman J-C (eds.) (1999) Communication, Citizenship and social Policy: Rethinking the limits of the welfare state, Boulder: Rowman & Littlefield. Castells M. (1997), The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Vols I, II & III, Oxford: Blackwell. Dordick H. & Wang G. (1993), The Information Society: A retrospective view. Newbury Park: Sage. Edelstein A., Bowes J. & Harsel S. (eds.) (1978) Information Societies: Comparing the Japanese and American Experiences. Seattle: School of Communications, University of Washington. Gates B. (1995), The road ahead, London: Viking Penguin. Hacker F. & Van Dijk J. (2001), Digital Democracy: Issues of Theory and Practice, London: Sage. Mansell R. & Wehn U. (1998) (eds.), Knowledge Societies: Information Technology for Sustainable Development. Report for the United Nations Commission on Science and Technology for Development, New York : Oxford University Press. Pinder J. (1995) European Community. The building of a union. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Soete L. (1997), Building the European Information Society for us all. Final policy report of the high-level expert group. Brussels: EU-DGV. Van Cuilenburg J & McQuail D. (1998) “Media Policy Paradigm Shifts: In search of a New Communications Policy Paradigm”, Picard R. (ed.), Evolving Media Markets, Turku: The Economic Research Foundation (pp. 57-80) Venturelli S. (1997), “Prospects for Human Rights in the Political and Regulatory Design of the Information Society”, Servaes J. & Lie R. (eds.), Media and Politics in Transition. Cultural identity in the age of globalization, Louvain: Acco, (pp. 6176).

The European Information Society: A wake-up call* Jan Servaes

In many ways the European plans to build an Information Society (IS) emerged as a reaction to Japanese and American initiatives (Edelstein, Bowes & Harsel, 1978). As in many other previous technological projects, European policies on information and communication technologies (ICT) were lagging behind the policies of its main global competitors. This situation has changed slightly since the beginning of the eighties, when it became clear that information and communication would be one of the main technological factors and markets for the future. From then onwards Europe has spend a growing amount of its R&D on ICTs. This went hand in hand with a radical change in policy orientation. Starting from the Green Paper on Television Policy (Television without Frontiers) in 1984, the area of communications became gradually and more or less totally liberalized. From 1998 onwards, the whole ICT field became deregulated. Though, in the eighties, the term information society as such wasn't used in the R&D and policy discourse of the EU, the idea underlying it was nevertheless captured in most R&D programs in terms of 'wired society', 'broad band networks' and so on. Thus the EU didn't start from scratch in this field. On the contrary, a very considerable research effort was made. Nevertheless, in terms of user acceptance, these first generations of large-scale R&D projects in integrated communications were not very successful. This might explain why, when the idea of an ‘information highway’ was officially 'launched' by the Clinton-Gore administration, Europe almost immediately integrated it into its own discourse. First, under the label of trans-European networks, in the so-called Delors White Paper (1993), but much more prominently

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in the Bangemann report (1994) with an unconditional belief in the market as the driving force. What resulted is the EU way to build the information society: pushing politically the wiring of Europe and the building of its highways, but leaving it up to the private sector to implement. Europe clearly wanted no lagging behind this time and, at the same time though not explicitly, got a brand new 'grand societal project' for its official policy. The information society indeed became a discourse in which it was possible to integrate many of the at first sight disparate European ambitions: from competition policy over competitiveness to maintaining cultural diversity and subsidiarity.

Two waves of IS-rhetoric … and several contradictory discourses The first initiative of the European Commission in its ‘information society planning’ of the nineties was the white paper ‘Growth, Competitiveness and Employment’ of 1993. The Commission under the chairmanship of the former French Socialist Minister of Finance, Jacques Delors, prepared this paper. It starts from a SocialDemocratic concern for job creation and equal opportunity combined with a focus on Europe’s competitiveness in an increasingly internationalizing world economy. This rather neo-Keynesian white paper was followed by the much more neo-liberal Bangemann report in 1994 on the basis of an initiative by the Council. This report, chaired by the former German FDP (liberal) Minister Martin Bangemann, focuses more on the issues of liberalization of telecommunications and the primacy of the private sector in the development of an information society. Therefore, the information society policies of the European Union in the nineties can be presented as two waves, one in the first part of the decade with an emphasis on liberalization of telecommunications and information technology development, and the other in the second half of the 1990s with more focus on social aspects of information society developments. This understanding is, to a large extent, well founded especially if the first wave is seen as being represented by the Bangemann report and the ‘Action Plan’ of 1994. The development in the EU information society policy has thus been characterized by an oscillation between broader social concerns and a more technology and market-oriented focus. However, by doing so, it probably portrays the development in too rosy colors as a continuous development without the differences of opinion or emphases that have existed.

The European Information Society: A Wake-up call

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In 1995, for instance, a high-level expert group (HLEG) and an Information Society Forum were established to analyze “the social aspects of the information society” as the HLEG poses it in its final policy report ‘Building the European Information Society for us all’ (Soete, 1997). As a justification for this focus, HLEG wrote: “Until that time, the debate on the emerging information society had been dominated by issues relating to the technological and infrastructure challenges and the regulatory economic environment” (CEC, 1997a). There was, therefore, a perceived need for re-focusing on the social dimensions of the ‘European model’, in line with the white paper ‘Growth, Competitiveness and Employment’, as stated in the HLEG-report. In yet another document, ‘The Social and Labor Market Dimension of the Information Society – People First – the Next Steps’ (CEC, 1997b), the Commission suggests that information society policies should have as basic aims to “improve access to information, enhance democracy and social justice, promote employability and lifelong learning, strengthen the capacity of the EU economy to achieve high and sustainable growth and employment, achieve and enhance equal opportunity between men and women, promote inclusion and support people with special needs and those lacking opportunities to improve their position, and improve quality and efficiency of public administration”. In other words, the Information Society will solve all problems of humankind. Often, the recommendations are less ambitious and comprehensive. Quite a number of them give priority to social and labor market dimensions (see, for instance, CEC, 2002a+b; Johnston, 2000; or Johnston’s contribution to this volume), but also other issues such as political integration, EU-citizenship and cultural diversity feature prominently In other contexts, other issues have been given priority. Especially, educational policies and lifelong learning and the combination of information technology-related policies with other policy areas have come to the fore in the last couple of years. One of the reasons for the change of priority in favor of social concerns is that the liberalization of telecommunications has developed in a satisfactory way seen from the point of view of the Commission. However, the basic aims listed still remain an expression of a development in the EU information society policy.

Questions, questions, questions Though it remains to be seen whether a mixture of Marshall Plan type of ‘grand works’ (the Delors imprint) with an unconditional belief in the market as the driving force (the Bangemann influence) has a feasible future, the information society has become a discourse in which it is possible to integrate many of the at first sight

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disparate European ambitions. Or, as argued by Garnham (1997): the claims made for telecommunications and IT, as catalyst for economic development should be seen as good old political rhetoric. "It meets the needs of politicians because it promises a technological fix to deep seated social and economic problems, but as a 'new' initiative it distracts attention away from the failure of previous similar initiatives to solve these problems" (Garnham, 1997: 327). Furthermore, the policy of an IS has to be checked against its underlying assumptions. Starting from the assumption that information and communication technologies undoubtedly possess the potential to contribute to socio-cultural change, it can be questioned whether this potential will be converted into advantages for everyone under the given scenario's the EU has planned. As largescale application of information and communication technology increases, new problems will arise which 'the market' as such will not being able to resolve. More and better regulatory mechanisms will have to be developed to deal with these. If it should appear that the means proposed by the European Commission representatives are inadequate to arrive at the intended result, then the current strategy will have to be amended, or, if necessary, an alternative strategy will have to be proposed. In other words, is it enough to state, as the fifth framework (1999–2002) for R&D of the EU did, that it has to be a “user friendly information society in the benefit for all” to make it happen? Sophia Kaitatzi-Whitlock (2000) notices that so far the questions that dominated policy discussions about the ‘information society’ deal firstly about the ‘astonishing’ quantities of films, shows, data etc. that can be consumed online and on the spot, and secondly, about the variety, the level and the speed of services that can be performed from home. Both sets of issues stress the consuming function. Such an approach obscures another set of questions that have to be addressed but remain default. What agency enhancing potential is actually offered to the citizen by the information society? How far does the famous interactivity element reach? What skills, and job-creating capabilities are conferred by information technology sold on the market? What new outlooks, options are provided to individual members of society? What familiarization processes have been initiated? These issues need to be focused closely and systematically. Unless, these questions find viable solutions, citizens and underfunded consumers will not create demand for supplied information networks, contents and tools. In general, the European Commission realizes that it still has a long way to go. Therefore, top aide Maria Rodrigues, the chief organizer of the EU’s first-ever IT summit which took place in March 2000 during Portugal’s presidency of the Union, readily admitted that “we have to recognize that Europe is late compared with the

The European Information Society: A Wake-up call

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US regarding the transition to an innovation and knowledge society. We must speed up this transition not just because we are late but also so that we can find our own way -- a European model” (in Jones, 1999: 30). Since this Lisbon summit official texts of the European Commission teem with new terms coined with reference to the Information Society, such as ‘New Information and Communication Technologies (NICTs)’, ‘on-line world’, ‘knowledge and innovation economy’, ‘e-Europe’, etc. Specific aims include: adopting a legal framework for ecommerce; fully liberalized telecommunications markets by 2002; cutting the cost of Internet use; all schools to have Internet access in 2001 and all teachers to be skilled in Internet use in 2002; Internet access to basic public services by 2003; and an e-Europe action plan specifying targets for interconnected low-cost, highspeed Internet and telecommunication networks (see CEC, 2001, 2002c; or Mather, 2000).

Is the European IS-policy sustainable? Relating to telecommunications and with the benefit of hindsight, the question can be raised whether information society policies have not just functioned as the sugar around a policy of telecommunication liberalization. Telecommunication liberalization was the main issue in the Bangemann report of 1993 and the ‘Action Plan’ of 1994 and is still the most marked result of the information society initiatives taken from the beginning of the 1990s. However, such an understanding would be a misconception of the general outline of the EU information society policy. Telecommunication liberalization is not an alien element in this policy but an important integral part. Although there are disagreements on specific policy elements and directions, information society policies are answers to technological and international economic developments and general policy trends with a clear liberal taste, which is also why there is an overall consensus around EU information society policies even though they fluctuate and have different emphases depending on the people involved and the phases of development. Regarding the field of telecommunications and broadcasting a distinction between liberal economic (in favor of deregulation) and cultural policies (mostly in favor of regulation) respectively is visible in Europe. Early analyses of EU public policy show that the EU was not anticipating an overall policy on the convergence of these formerly distinct services (see Burgelman & Pauwels, 1991, as well as their contribution in this volume, and Venturelli, 1998). In telecommunications development the emphasis is on liberalization and deregulation, providing private corporations with a maximum of freedom to invest on the telecommunication networks.

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Public policy in the broadcasting field is guided by another logic. In the media sector political concerns to safeguard a public sphere of pluralism and national sovereignty leads to the ambition to offer a diverse media system, containing public as well as private media (Wang, Servaes & Goonasekera, 2000; Servaes & Heinsman, 1991). As the two historically, separately evolved sectors of telecommunications and broadcasting converge, the different policy consequences of the economic versus the cultural, and local versus international interests have to be taken into account. Research indicates, however, that the national, and especially the European policies regarding telecommunication services in general and broadcasting in particular are based on economic instead of cultural considerations. This trend has even increased after 1992 (Weymouth & Lamizet, 1996; Natalicchi, 2001). Also the public service broadcasting structure and philosophy have undergone major changes throughout the last decades. These changes, initiated by internal as well as external factors, have affected the organizational and finance structures, and the programming of public service broadcasting (Wolton, 1990). Therefore, it is questionable whether the European policies will be in the advantage of the so-called smaller countries in the EU, like for instance Belgium or the Netherlands (Servaes, 1993), on the one hand, and whether these policies will be able to secure a free and balanced flow of information, ideas, opinions and cultural activities within the EU on the other hand. In other words, it is no longer sufficient to concentrate on a distinct sector from only a technological or an economic perspective; a multi-dimensional analysis of the different policy options and their respective consequences is necessary. Therefore, it could be argued that the EU strategy is not sustainable in the medium and long term. The reason for this is that policymakers and market parties have thoroughly neglected the principle of balance between productive and consumptive functions. This is caused by the fact that the Commission and the politically accountable EU policymakers and institutions have assigned the transition to the digitized information economy to market forces and logics alone (see also Preston’s analysis in this book). Similarly this is the reason why the EU failed to develop a longer-term vision of the future global networks.

The convergence issue The convergence between telecommunications and broadcasting occurs at three levels: at the levels of networks (infrastructure), service provision, and corporate organization (Wang, Servaes & Goonasekera, 2000). In Europe policy decisions or policy perspectives are mainly technology and/or commercially driven. A lot of attention focuses on the research concerning (and the

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implementation of) hardware. A lot of money is spent for the development of network infrastructure, broadcasting facilities etc. (Foley, 2000, Heinderyckx, 1998; Salak, 2000). Second, regarding media ownership, we always seem to meet the same players in the different sectors on different global, regional and national levels. These are telecommunication operators, major publishing firms and media moguls. In most of the countries we observe that one or two of these actors (or a merger of them) control the telecommunication sector, major parts of the broadcasting sector and sometimes an important part of the print media (Doyle, 2002, Grimes, 2000). Third, because of these concentration tendencies, national governments are afraid of broadcasting monopolies. Their legal reaction is the promulgation of anti-trust and anti-concentration laws. Examples of this legislation are the prohibition of controlling more than two national television networks and the restriction of market share percentage in the media landscape. Last, the emphasis in public policy making is on hardware. Software/content development is heavily neglected.

Underlying assumptions At least five assumptions or hypotheses can be derived from a review of the literature (see, e.g., a number of special issues: Burgelman & Servaes, 1996; Servaes, 1991, 1997; Servaes & Burgelman, 2000; Servaes, Burgelman & Goonasekera, 1997; Servaes & Wang, 1997). The first one is that the visions are so alike, even if countries are different in many ways. Today, the visions in the different countries of the EU are very much in sync. There seems to have been a harmonization going on which has taken some time to initiate. The second assumption is that everybody agrees on the visions and policy directions even though there are different interests in society -- which especially should come out in ‘revolutionary’ transformations. The establishment of an information society is often described as a revolutionary development, likened with the transition from an agricultural society to an industrial society. However, the industrial revolution surely resulted in fierce clashes between groups, classes, ideologies, etc. This does not seem to be the case with the ‘information revolution’. At a slightly less dramatic level, it can be noticed that in some countries, there are center-left governments and in others center-right governments. Still, the plans are very much the same, even when countries shift political orientation of their governments. This becomes obvious from the analysis on the Nordic countries by Henten and colleagues (1996, 1999, 2000). To an ‘outsider’ the Nordic countries may seem similar, there are many differences in economic structure which also

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applies to the ICT-producing industries. Henten and colleagues showed that the information society thinking of different European countries differed to a noticeable extent. The reason, that could be established, dealt with the differences in productive structures of the countries and the differences in points of departure and focus. The latter conclusion is also supported by the analysis of the Greek case in analyses by Tonchev (2000) or by Sarikakis and Terzis (2000). Greece is a EU member State but at the same time is part of the Periphery standing in between the rich industrialized North and the poor developing South. Sarikakis and Terzis argue that, despite the citizens’ needs and wishes, the promotion of the European Information Society in Greece is characterized by disproportionality. Another kind of capital difference between groups with different socio-economic status is emerging. The 'Knowledge-Gap' phenomenon becomes evident in that a high percentage of the population is excluded as users of the new media, due to reasons related to their educational and financial status. Additionally, a new phenomenon of “pleonastic exclusion” is taking place, as a result of the enormous numbers of channels of communication, which forces audiences to a continuous selection-exclusion of information sources. A third and related assumption is the widespread support for the same visions in a period where the ‘great narratives’ are said to be vanishing. Information society visions have clearly become such a new narrative. A fourth and, once again, connected assumption is that there is so much information society planning going on in a time when state planning is considered to be obsolete because of the policies of liberalization and the flexible circumstances that an information society is supposed to require. A fifth assumption is based on the strong move to create a ‘European culture’ through communications, particularly TV broadcasting. This is seen in some of the EU-directives, such as the emphasis on 51 percent of European material in television programming, etc. In many regions of Europe the most important development in the communications industry has not been the further dominance of global media, but the emerging of cultural-linguistic television markets. Triggered by policy deregulation and the rediscovery of autonomy by communities within a state, – e.g., the Welsh and Gaelics in the UK, and the Catalans and Basques in Spain – local and regional programmes have become increasingly popular. Many of the ‘proximity television’ programmes are part of a public system. In the long run, market forces are expected to play a decisive role in their further development. But as it is only in those ‘nations without state’ that proximity television has enjoyed the most powerful support, whether the market will work for, or against, the further development of proximity television will depend upon the

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strength of the cultural and linguistic factors (Collins, 2002; De Moragas Spa & Lopez, 2000).

Divergent policies Though a user-driven (and consequently more content oriented) and user-specific policy framework may be preferred, a more corporate driven economic rationale seems to become the norm. Both policy perspectives start from quite opposite assumptions, as shown in the following scheme (further developed in Burgelman & Verhoest, 1996): Current corporate-driven policy • Agitated market/uncertain revenues • Competition • Short term • Technology push/technology specific • The medium is the message

Preferred user-driven policy • 'Controlled' market/'guaranteed' • 'New deal' type of policy • Long-term objectives • User-driven solutions • Content oriented

Analyzing the ‘digital divide’ Apart from contradictory policies and questionable assumptions, also the problem of the measurement of the Information Society appears to be crucial for the organization of the scientific debate, for the industrial development and for the implementation of public policies. The results of the Commission Surveys “Measuring Information Society” in 1995 (pilot), in 1997 (Eurobarometer 47), in 1999 (Eurobarometer 51) and in 2000 (Eurobarometer 53) present a timely information resource for all those scholars who still today, when the Internet seems to have become ‘free and ubiquitous’, think that the Information Society must remain a problematic field of scientific research and an overriding public policy for Europe. The results of the surveys are striking. It becomes very clear that the rhetoric scenario, which depicted a uniform, regional transition towards “a society founded on electronics”, was radically contradicted by the data that emerged from the surveys. [The general findings from these surveys are estimations, the accuracy of which, everything being equal, rests upon the sample size and upon the observed percentage. Though mostly confirmed by other sources, at least in the ranking of

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the countries, the actual figures are difficult to compare by lack of consistency in question wording]. For extensive interpretations and discussions of these surveys, see Ricci (1997, 1998, 2000), Sarikakis & Terzis (2000), and Servaes & Heinderyckx (2002). See also Heinderyckx’ contribution to this volume.

2 + 1= 3 technology clusters By reviewing descriptively the results of the 1995–1997– and 1999 surveys one notes that different technologies are used with various intensity across the European Union. Some countries are more oriented towards the television, others to the computer technology cluster:

Television

Computer

Video recorder

Personal Computer

Satellite dish

CD-ROM

Pay television decoder

Modem

Teletext

Internet or Minitel

The MIS 2000 survey confirmed these findings. The very nature of a technological cluster and the position, the functional area it intends to fill, is important. Therefore some additional questions and hypotheses were added to the research design, and as a result a third ‘wireless’ or ‘mobile’ cluster came into the picture: Consequently, an additional distinction could be made between the two already identified clusters and a new emerging ‘wireless’ cluster.

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Wireless Mobile phone UMTS Broadband WAP or i-Mode Of all the technologies surveyed in 1999, the video recorder is the most mature. It has reached the flat part of its diffusion curve so that it is gradually being used by similar proportions of people in most countries and demographic groups. Only Greece and Portugal show significantly lower penetration rates. Satellite dish, by contrast with the VCR, is a much younger technology. The range of penetration levels (between 2% in Greece and 52% in Austria) is the highest of all technologies surveyed. Various factors attached to each country explain most of the discrepancies. For example, Belgium and the Netherlands are very heavily cabled (more than 90%), so that there is only a narrow market for satellite dishes. High penetrations in Germany and Austria are best explained by the wide choice of German speaking channels readily available by satellite. Other sources confirm Austria as the European country where satellite dishes are most implemented. The varying proportions of people resorting to pay television are to be considered in connection with the media landscape so particular to each country. In Sweden, the high rates are due to the success of a few stations (Filmnet, TV1000, Canal+). In the UK, success is the result of a long established tradition of pay television (Sky is the best example). France offers a wide choice of pay channels, and fifteen years of success for Canal+ account for most of the high proportion of users. France and Spain also have a head start with digital packages, which fall into this category. The development of digital packages and of terrestrial digital broadcasting will considerably modify the choice of pay television made available throughout Europe, so that this variable is likely to move significantly in the near future. The teletext technology is widely available on most television sets manufactured in the past ten years. Only old or low-end receivers are deprived of that feature. However, the data indicate that a number of people are either unaware that their

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television set is equipped, or are unable or not willing to use teletext. The skills required to operate teletext properly are indeed quite different from those necessary to just operate a TV set. The use of a personal computer is no longer marginal. A little over a third of all Europeans say they use a computer. Scandinavia and the Netherlands show significantly higher penetration figures. Do bear in mind that the question asked in this survey was about use, not ownership, so that these differences cover the penetration of computers in the workplace, at school, at the university as well as at home. The use of CD-ROM shows slightly more contrast among countries ranging from 53% in Sweden to 6% in Greece. If we assume that computers equipped with CDROM readers are either recent or high end machines only, combining PC and CDROM use figures may be interpreted as an indication of the average age or quality of the computers used in different countries. However, one can assume that many people do use a personal computer and not a CD-ROM, even if there is one, be it by lack of skill or absence of need or even interest. The modem is yet another additional feature requiring extra skills and cost (including running communication costs). Motivation and need for using a modem do appear quite contrasting between the eight countries to the right of the European average (16% or less of users), and the United Kingdom, Luxembourg, Finland, the Netherlands and particularly Denmark and Sweden where the modem achieves penetration figures as high as 58%, comparable to CD-ROM and not so far from PCs. Unsurprisingly, the shape of the Internet users graph bears a strong resemblance to that of modems, illustrating the fact that it is the Internet that is driving the modem market. The Euro barometer findings of 1999 are mostly confirmed by other sources (see, e.g., Sciadas, 2002), at least in the ranking of the countries (actual figures are difficult to compare by lack of consistency in question wording). In addition, the MIS 2000 survey finds that more than half of the EU countries show more than 50% of households having a mobile phone, with Finland reaching 80%, while Germany shows less than 40%. Most demographic variables bring significant contrast. Proportions vary according to professional status: 75% among the self-employed, two thirds among the employed and 43% among those not working. Household income shows linear correlation between about one third of lowest income and three quarters of the

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highest. Larger households are also more likely to have a mobile phone. Level of education also shows a strong positive correlation. Gender is, on average, the least discriminating variable, while countries, income and terminal education and age are the most significant sources of disparities. This indicates, “strong and distinctive national practices and habits, and traces of a complex social divide based on income and level of education” (INRA, 2000: 17). Some observers notice that Europe may have a competitive advantage in the mobile sector. Some key players in the electronics business – especially Nokia and Ericsson – are based in Scandinavia. They contribute to a rapid growth in wireless technology. The Nordic region, for instance, has an internet penetration of 41% compared with 37% in the US and 21% in the rest of Europe; mobile-phone penetration in capitals Stockholm and Helsinki is more than 90%. Another key to Europe’s success is, according to Almar Latour (2000), its new equity culture: “Fueled by the arrival of the Economic and Monetary Union, a new breed of risktaking CEOs have stepped up the merger-and-acquisition activity in Europe. Meanwhile, young entrepreneurs are founding their own companies at a pace Europe has never seen before”.

The country divide On average, Europe shows a balanced growth between Television and Computer technologies on the one hand, and between these two ‘older’ clusters and the new ‘mobile’ cluster. When one merged the penetration figures of the three clusters, one could identify six groups: types of 1-Sweden and Austria both show much higher than average penetrations of the three technologies. 2- Greece and Portugal, on the other hand, are significantly much lower on all clusters. 3- Belgium, Italy, Ireland, Spain and Germany form a compact group around the European average and seem to balance the use of the three types of technologies. 4- Austria is higher than average on the television axis and about average on computer, but lower on the mobile cluster. The United Kingdom is higher than average on the television axis and about average on computer, but higher on the mobile cluster while Austria is more oriented to the ‘old’ technologies, the UK combines the television and mobile cluster.

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5- On the contrary, Luxembourg, Finland and the Netherlands are about average for television, but much higher up the PC technology and wireless axis, so that these countries appear more oriented towards new technologies. 6- France stands on its own, with PC technology use about average and belowaverage use of mobile technologies, and it is still significantly below average for television (mostly due to a very low use of teletext). On the basis of the Information and Communication Technology Adoption Scale (ICTAS), which can be used as an integrated indicator of the use of modern information and communication related technologies (clustered around the television and the computer), the gap between northern and southern Europe is quite striking and quantifiable: the medium user countries form a central block of continental Europe (plus Ireland), the heavy users are found in Northern Europe, the light users are at the periphery of Southern Europe (Greece and Portugal).

Need, price, and complexity What is keeping people from using these technologies? The notion of perceived need is central. Over half of the Europeans who are not interested in on-line services say they don’t need them in their private life. Even a number of heavy using countries show high proportions of non-users feeling no need for on-line services. This fits perfectly into functionalist theory, and more particularly in uses and gratifications theory that sees media in general as a mean to satisfy various needs. However, the concept of need and its use by respondents is to be taken with caution. Denying a need is in some cases a legitimate cover-up for ignorance, fear or lack of financial means. Therefore, second to the absence of need is price, then perceived complexity. Here again, there is no clear-cut dichotomy between northern and southern Europe, with Germans, Belgians and Austrians just as repelled by complexity as Portuguese and Spaniards.

Young, well-educated, rich males on the run Women are more deterred by complexity than men. Noticeably, proportions of people finding these technologies too complicated vary more significantly along demographic variables identified as key in predicting technology adoption: age, income and level of education. This shows that younger, wealthier and bettereducated Europeans are less likely to find on-line technologies too complicated.

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This is yet another confirmation that these three demographic variables can be quite powerful in segmenting the technology market inasmuch as they are reliable predictors of restraint to adoption on the basis of perceived over-complexity. Any product development or marketing campaign will have to be concerned about the seeming or factual complexity of any innovation. It is likely that, among less deterred groups, complexity might, in fact, encourage the adoption of innovations which, for that particular target, will have to prove an increase in complexity or functionality while the opposite is true for convincing non-users that it is all too complicated for them. The lack of time is an obstacle of increasing importance as we go higher up the income. Portugal, Greece and Ireland show significantly lower levels of respondents deterred by lack of time. The age factor is also crucial in studying new technologies. We all know people around us who show some level of reluctance towards technologies for which they feel insufficient need or skills. The generation gap is obvious. This is where the full meaning of new in ‘new technologies’ comes to light. For a technology to change status from ‘new’ to ‘aging’ or ‘obsolete’ only takes the next innovation to hit the market.

How new is ‘new’? There is a second dimension to the novelty of new technologies in the sense that it was unknown to its users beforehand. Depending on your age or your length of service, your ability or likeness to modify your behavior and adopt a new technology will vary. Senior people are therefore more likely to remain longer on the non-adopter side while, at the other end of the age spectrum, the younger population will have little difficulty in adjusting. Generation gap isn’t, in this particular case, to be seen as just another sign of older people’s conservatism. New technologies, and the changes in behavior associated with them, have to pass the hurdle of lifestyle and habits, which grow deeper, rooted as time passes. Something new might not seem like an improvement if only because of the immense time investment necessary to learn or re-learn previously acquired and much practiced behaviours. Younger people have little merit in their ability to adopt innovations. In fact, it is worth stressing that to a child, the keyboard of a computer is not newer than a pencil; learning how to type and send an e-mail is not any harder (probably less) than learning how to hand-write a letter, fold it into an envelope and apply a stamp; using a traditional phone confined to the wall plug

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might even seem unnatural as compared to using a mobile phone; just as going shopping might seem unpleasant and unwise as compared to ordering on-line. Naturally this is all a matter of education, depending mostly on efforts developed by schools and parents. Yet one can hypothesize that younger generations will grow to be more enthusiastic adopters as they grow older, that is if they can be kept in a innovation-adoption dynamic which would prevent another generation gap when too radical an innovation would, in some time, leave them at the door, just like today’s elderly seem to have missed the current train of innovations (see also Picard’s contribution). Therefore, Ricci (2000) argues that explanations can be found in what Kotler calls ‘personal factors’: position in the life cycle, economic conditions, and more generally ‘life style’ appeared to be strongly correlated to use of and interest for technologies.

Active, passive, heavy and non-users When one tries to evaluate with quantitative instruments the evolution of the informatization of our societies, abundant evidence emerges confirming that the penetration of the key technologies is indeed increasing with variable ratios in all EU member states. If we try to categorize the different users, we could say that there indeed is an ‘informatized/computerized society’ with a minority of Europeans which are heavy users of information technologies. This social trend has also given rise to a counter trend of ‘conscious un-informatized’ which are educated, upper-class individuals who deliberately and consciously choose not to abide to the rules of consumption of a societal model, which they consider to be in contradiction with their system of values. In between one finds two other types: a community of moderate or low users which is either essentially ‘passive’ or ‘active’ to the media system and which uses enough technologies to bear all the consequences of the competition between media. These communities may either adopt a passive or active stance in media consumption, use of TV technologies, and seek entertainment as a substitute to interpersonal communication or as a way to re-acquire a psychological relief against the complexities and the pressures of living in a modern society.

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By way of conclusion Seven general conclusions can be drawn: Firstly, whether we like it or not, the information society in Europe is 'a society in formation' and certainly not immanently emerging. The dynamic character of its policy has the benefit to point to large possible degrees of policy impact. In other words: the information society is not pre-determined (see also Garnham, 1994). Secondly, there is no single road to the Information Society. Every country has its own particularities and these are very heavily determined by national political objectives. As a result, there is no single road to the Information Society. Every country has its own particularities and these are very heavily determined by national political objectives. As in every dossier, subsidiarity plays an important role here too and different national authorities in Europe react differently to the plans of Brussels (and this mainly due to national specificities). A third somewhat contradictory conclusion is that there is so much information society-planning going on in a time when state planning is considered to be obsolete because of the policies of liberalization and the flexible circumstances that an information society is supposed to require. However, it is clear that the traditional neo-Keynesian way of state interventionism in public life is not the way information society policy is being made. In fact a more ‘remote’ but nevertheless active state seems to become the model here. A fourth and related conclusion is the widespread support for the same visions in a period where the ‘great narratives’ are said to be vanishing. Information society visions have clearly become such a new narrative. This explains why, from 1994 onwards and in a Europe without communism, the EU policy both accelerated the liberalization of its communications markets and did put an enormous effort towards more general awareness-building measures and PR campaigns. As we already noticed elsewhere (see Servaes & Burgelman, 1996), historians of this period will undoubtedly uncover the beginning of a ‘digital gold fever' that got into the discourse and policy of the EU. Fifthly, the Internet in its most popular form (the World Wide Web) seems to hold characteristics, which might grow into true media integration. However, at the content side it remains to be seen whether it will not become another divide comparable to the ‘old’ media. As is usually the case with new technologies, it remains to be seen how much ICTs will be used on top of existing devices and/or

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will gradually replace them. Sixthly, another kind of capital difference between groups with different socioeconomic status is emerging. A high percentage of the population is excluded as users of the new media, due to reasons related to their educational and financial status. Digital divide is enduring mostly because it underlies core social divides. Therefore, strategies to fill the gap can not be globalized. Lastly and additionally, a new phenomenon of ‘pleonastic exclusion’ is taking place, as a result of the enormous numbers of channels of communication, which forces audiences to a continuous selection-exclusion of information sources. In other words, ICTs adoption is not to be taken for granted.

Note * This chapter builds on Servaes (2002) and Servaes & Heinderyckx (2002)

References Burgelman J-C & Pauwels C. (1991), “Growing convergence between broadcasting and telecommunication: Policy problems at the level of the Commission of the European Communities”, Telematics and Informatics, vol. 8, no 3, pp. 135-141 Burgelman J-C & Servaes J. (1996) (eds.), “The emergent European Information Society”, Special Issue of Telematics & Informatics, vol. 13, no. 2/3 Burgelman J-C & Verhoest P. (1996), “Trans-European information networks”, Telematics & Informatics, vol. 13, no. 2/3, pp. 67-80. Collins R. (2002) Media and identity in Contemporary Europe. Consequences of Global Convergence, Bristol: Intellect. Commission of the European Communities (1984), Television without Frontiers. Green Paper on the establishment of the Common Market for broadcasting especially by satellite and cable, EU: Brussels (COM-84-300 final). Commission of the European Communities (1993), Growth, competitiveness, employment. The challenges and ways forward into the 21st century, EU: Brussels (Delors White Paper). Commission of the European Communities (1994a), Europe and the global information society. Recommendations to the European Council, EU: Brussels (High-level group on the information society – Bangemann Report). Commission of the European Communities (1994b), Europe’s way to the information society. An action plan. Brussels: European Commission.

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Commission of the European Communities (1994c), Europe’s way to the information society. An action plan. Brussels: European Commission. Commission of the European Communities (1996a), Europe at the forefront of the global information society: Rolling action plan. Brussels: European Commission. Commission of the European Communities (1996b), Living and working in the information society: People first (Green Paper COM (96) 389). Brussels: European Commission. Commission of the European Communities (1996c), The implications of the information society for the European Union – Policies preparing the next steps. Brussels: European Commission. Commission of the European Communities (1997a), Building the European information society for us all – Final report of the high-level expert group. Brussels: Directorate-General for employment, industrial relations and social affairs. Commission of the European Communities (1997b), The Social and Labor Market Dimension of the Information Society – People First – the Next Steps. (COM (97) 397) Brussels: Directorate-General for employment, industrial relations and social affairs. Commission of the European Communities (2001), e-Inclusion. The Information Society’s potential for social inclusion in Europe. Brussels: High Level Group ‘Employment and Social Dimension of the Information Society’ (ESDIS). Commission of the European Communities (2002a), Information Society Jobs – Quality for Change, Brussels: High Level Group ‘Employment and Social Dimension of the Information Society’ (ESDIS). Commission of the European Communities (2002b), eWork 2002. Status report on new ways to work in the knowledge economy. Brussels: Directorate-General for Information Society Technologies. Commission of the European Communities (2002c), eEurope 2002. eEurope Benchmarking report. Brussels: COM (2002) 62 final. Crampton T. (2000), “The wireless wars”, International Herald Tribune, BizTech section, December 4, 2000, pp. I-VIII. De Moragas Spa M. & Lopez B. (2000), “Decentralization processes and ‘proximate television’ in Europe”, Wang G, Servaes J. & Goonasekera A. (eds.), The New Communications Landscape. Demystifying media globalization, London: Routledge, pp. 33-51. Doyle G. (2002) Media Ownership. The economics and politics of convergence and concentration in the UK and European media. London: Sage. Edelstein A., Bowes J. & Harsel S. (eds.) (1978) Information Societies: Comparing the Japanese and American Experiences. Seattle: School of Communications, University of Washington. Fair Project (1999), Constructing the European Information Society, Brussels: European Commission, DG XIII.

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Garnham N. (1997), “Europe and the Global Information Society: The History of a Troubled Relationship”, Telematics and Informatics, vol. 14, no 4, pp. 323-328. Garnham, N. (1994), "Whatever happened to the information society?” in R. Mansell (ed.), Management of Information and Communication Technologies. Emerging patterns of control, ASLIB: London. Hacker F. & Van Dijk J. (2001), Digital Democracy: Issues of Theory and Practice, London, Sage. Heinderyckx F. (1998), L’Europe des médias, Brussels: Editions de l’Université. Henten A. & Kristensen T. M. (2000), “Information society visions in the Nordic countries”, Telematics and Informatics, vol.17, no.1/2, pp.77-104. Henten A. (1999): “Will information societies be welfare societies?”, Calebrese A. & Burgelman J-C (eds.), Communication, citizenship, and social policy. Boulder: Rowmann & Littlefield. Henten A., Skouby K.E. & Falch M. (1996), “European planning for an information society”. Telematics and Informatics, vol.13, no.2/3, pp.177-190. HLGIS (1994), Europe and the global information society: Recommendations to the European Council. Brussels: High-Level Group on the Information Society. INRA (2000), Measuring Information Society 2000. A Eurobarometer survey carried out for the European Commission. Analytical report, Brussels: International Research Associates (INRA). Johnston P. (2000), Work and sustainability in the Emerging Information Society, paper Constitutive Conference of the European Consortium for Communications Research (ECCR), European Parliament, 31 March 2000 (URL: htpp://www.eccr.info). Jones T. (1999), “Business Interview Maria Rodrigues”, European Voice, 27 October, p. 30. Kaitatzi-Whitlock S. (2000), “A ‘redundant information society’ for the European Union?”, Telematics and Informatics, vol.17, no.1/2, pp.39-76. Latour A. (2000), “Europe could take the lead in tech arena”, The Wall Street Journal Europe, April 26, 2000, p. 28. Mather F. (2000), The eEUROPE Initiative. The Information Society for All, paper Constitutive Conference of the European Consortium for Communications Research (ECCR), European Parliament, 31 March 2000 (URL: htpp://www.eccr.info). Natalicchi G. (2001) Wiring Europe. Reshaping the European Telecommunications Regime. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Ricci A. (1997), “Towards a systematic study of internet based political and social communication in Europe”, Servaes J. & Lie R. (eds.), Media and Politics in Transition. Cultural identity in the age of globalization, Louvain: Acco, pp. 159-173. Ricci A. (1998), “Towards a systematic study of internet based political and social communication in Europe”, Telematics and Informatics, vol. 15, no 3, pp. 135-161.

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Ricci A. (2000), “Measuring information society. Dynamics of European data on usage of information and communication technologies in Europe since 1995”, Telematics and Informatics, vol. 17, no 1/2, pp. 141- 167. Salak J. (2000), “European regulators make peace”, Tele.Com, Vol. 5, Nr. 15, July 31, 2000, pp. 36-38. Sarikakis K. & Terzis G. (2000), “Pleonastic exclusion in the European Information Society”, Telematics and Informatics, vol. 17, no 1/2, pp. 105- 128. Sciadas G. (2002) Monitoring the Digital Divide. Montreal: Orbicom. Servaes J. & Burgelman J-C (eds.) (1996) “The emergent European Information Society”, Telematics and Informatics, vol. 13, no. 2/3. Servaes J. & Heinderyckx F. (2002), “The ‘new’ ICTs environment in Europe: Closing or widening the gaps?” Telematics and Informatics, vol. 19 (2): 91-116. Servaes J. & Heinsman L. (eds.) (1991), Televisie na 1992. Perspectieven voor de Vlaamse en Nederlandse omroep, Leuven: Acco. Servaes J. & Wang G. (eds.) (1997), “Broadcasting Policies in Western Europe and Southeast Asia”, Special Issue of the Asian Journal of Communication, Vol. 7, no. 2. Servaes J. (1993), “Beyond ‘Europe 1992’: Communication and Cultural Identity in Small Nation States”, Telematics and Informatics, vol. 10, no 4, pp. 321-344. Servaes J. (2002), “The European Information Society: Much ado about nothing”, Gazette: The International Journal for Communication Studies, VOL 64(5): 433–447 Servaes J. (ed.) (1998), “Internet and Democracy”, Special Issue of Telematics & Informatics, vol. 15, no. 3. Servaes J., J-C Burgelman & A. Goonasekera (eds.) (1997), “Implications of Liberalized Telecommunications Markets in Europe and Asia”, Special Issue of Telematics & Informatics, vol. 14, nr. 4. Servaes, J. (1991) (ed.), "Europe 1992: Impacts on the Communications Environment", Telematics & Informatics (special issue), Vol. 8, No. 3. Soete L. (1997), Building the European Information Society for us all. Final policy report of the high-level expert group. Brussels: EU-DGV. Tonchev P. (2000), Issues and Perspectives of Information Society in Greece, paper Constitutive Conference of the European Consortium for Communications Research (ECCR), European Parliament, 31 March 2000 (URL: htpp://www.eccr.info). Venturelli S. (1998), Liberalizing the European Media: Politics, Regulation & the Public Sphere, Oxford: University Press. Wang G, Servaes J. & Goonasekera A. (eds.) (2000), The New Communications Landscape. Demystifying media globalization, London: Routledge. Weymouth T. & Lamizet B. (eds.) (1996), Markets & Myths. Forces for change in the European media, London: Longman.

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Wolton D. (1990), Eloge du grand public. Une théorie critique de la télévision, Paris: Flammarion.

European Union ICT Policies: Neglected Social and Cultural Dimensions Paschal Preston Introduction For more than a decade now, existing ICT research and information society policies have generally been subjected to sharp and strong critique by social and cultural theorists. The latter have tended to criticise such policies for a lack of attention to social and cultural concerns, or at least for their inadequate treatment of such issues. My own view is that such critiques have been, for the most part, perfectly valid and justified in their essence and orientation. But they have often been conducted at a highly abstract level and thus fail to engage directly with the empirical or descriptive levels of the policies in question. In this chapter, I want to start with a descriptive review of the EU’s ICT research policies and related information society strategies from the mid-1990s up to the early years of the new century. In section two, I will attempt to describe the key aims, orientations and financial resource allocations associated with these overlapping policy initiatives. Here, I will seek to describe the evolution of the EU’s ICT research policy agenda and its linkages, the notions or construction(s) of an ‘information society’ and/or ‘knowledge-based’ society in Europe. I will also consider the manner and extent to which such policy initiatives address the domains of technical knowledge on the one hand and those of culture and other forms of information ‘content’ on the other. Having undertaken this empirically-focused, descriptive review of the EU’s ICT research and related information society policies, I will then move on to consider some of the more important strategic stakes and criticisms. The treatment here will be necessarily brief for reasons of space, and so I propose to highlight a few key issues that seem relevant to the wider policy debates in the run up to the WSIS conferences.

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In what follows, I should flag at the outset that my attention will focus on European Union level policy thinking and practices. It should be borne in mind, however, that this is not merely a matter of considering or criticising the actions of some nameless Eurocrats based in Brussels or Luxembourg. It must also be remembered that the core orientations and direction of EC level policies are, in practice as well as in principle, subject to the approval and decision-making of national government representatives, especially in the powerful if secretive arena of the ministerial councils of the EU. They are also subject to the lobbying and pressures of interests that reside in and operate at the national level throughout the member states of the Union. Thus, it is important to note that the flaws and weaknesses evident in selected aspects of ‘Europe’s way to the information society’ as discussed here, also reflect and express those which generally prevail at the national level throughout this major world region. In addition, the research and writings of colleagues elsewhere suggests that most, if not all, of the critical comments concerning the EU’s ICT research and related policy strategies in this chapter can be equally applied to national-level strategies and initiatives across most member states.

Overview of the EU’s ICT Policies & Initiatives since early 1990s "Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted." (Albert Einstein)

Role of ICT Research and the ‘Framework’ R&D Programmes Educational exchanges and research collaborations across the member states have been important elements in the overall project of constructing a more integrated European Union in recent decades. Since the 1970s, the European Commission has launched a number of successive initiatives which aim to promote exchanges of students between educational institutions and especially to foster collaborative research projects or knowledge sharing between researchers based in universities and related institutions. Indeed, the Treaty establishing the European Community (part 3, title XVIII, art. 166, page 114) provides for the creation and funding of multi-annual research and development (R&D) initiatives, generally known as ‘framework programmes’. The Fifth Framework programme (FP5) covered the period 1998–2002 and the Sixth programme (FP6) will span the period 2002–2006. Considerable resources have been invested in the EU’s fourth and fifth framework R&D programmes since they commenced in the 1980s. The total budget for the

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Fifth Framework programme amounted to 14.96 billion euro and that planned for the Sixth Framework programme amounts to 17.5 billion euro or 3.9% of the EU’s total budget, as indicated in Table 1.

Table 1 FP5 & FP6: The EU’s Framework Programmes for Research and Development

‘Framework’ R&D Programme Budget Share of total EU budget

FP5 (1998-2002)

FP6 (2002-2006)

14.96 Bn Euro

17.5 Bn Euro

4.0 %

3.9 %

Source: EU IST directorate’s ‘Factsheet’ The particular field of research concerned with the development of new information and communication technologies (or ICT) has been accorded a major role within the overall budgets of the EU’s framework programmes since the 1980s. The term new ICT is now usually taken to refer to this cluster or interrelated system of technological innovations in the fields of microelectronics, computing, electronic communications including broadcasting and the Internet. Thus, new ICT comprises the cluster or family of interrelated technical innovations, based around ‘a common digital’ mode, and they are generally concerned with the handling, storing, processing and distribution of information or, as some would have it, ‘knowledge’. The term new IT was first used to refer to this field of technological innovations in the 1980s (e.g. Hall and Preston, 1988). But this term was gradually changed to new ICT as the communicational dimension became increasingly significant (Preston, 2001). New ICT may be also defined as one of those relatively rare major new technology clusters or systems which have a pervasive applications potential. This notion suggests that they can or may be applied or adopted across a very wide range of industrial, social and cultural activities, in much the same way as electricity at the turn of the twentieth century, for example. However, the forms and extent of such applications, no less than the origins or supply-side aspects of new ICT, are not determined by any single technological ‘logic’ or trajectory. Rather these are and will be influenced by a wide set of institutional, socio-economic, policy and other factors, In any case, although researchers may disagree about the precise role

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and influence of technological and/or other factors in this process, new ICT has been widely viewed the most significant contemporary technology cluster with important economic, social cultural and policy implications (Preston, 2001). Thus it may not be surprising to find that technological research related to the new ICT field has been a key focus within the successive ‘Framework’ programmes since the 1980s. Indeed, it is estimated that this particular field of technological research received EC funding of some 12.5 billion euro between 1984 and 2002 (EC, 2000a: 1). Because of its contemporary role and importance, research related to the development and production of new ICT (hardware and software) devices and systems can be found in many sub-programmes or research fields within the EU’s framework programmes. But a large (unknown) portion of ICT related research is funded via one specific sub-programme or research stream in the most recent Framework programmes. Within the Fifth Framework programme (FP5) covering the period 1998–2002, the ‘User-friendly Information Society’ was the main research stream concerned with the development of new ICT and this was allocated some 3.6 billion euro. The successor ‘Information Society Technologies’ research stream within the Sixth Framework programme (spanning the period 2002-2006) is scheduled to be allocated some 3.625 billion euro. Further details on the categories of research and distributions of funds under these two most recent Framework programmes can be found in Table 2.

Table 2 Key Themes & Budget Items in EU’s ‘Framework Programmes’ 5 & 6 FP5 (1998-2002) .1) R&D & demonstration activities .1.a) Quality of Life & Management of living resources .1b) User-friendly Information Society .1c) Competitive & sustainable growth

Budget (Euro M)

FP6 (2002-2006)

Budget (Euro M)

10,843

.1) Focusing & Integrating Community Research (a

2,413

.1a) Life Sciences, gneomics & Biotechnology for health

2,225

3,600

.1b) Information Society Technologies

3,625

2,705

.1c) Nanotechnologies and nano-sciences, materials etc

1,300

13,345

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.1d) Energy, Environment & Sustainable Development

.2) International role of Community Research .3) Promoting Innovation & SME participation .4) Human research potential & socioeconomic knowledge base .5) Direct Actions : JRC .6) EurAtom programme Overall Total

2,125

475 363

1,280

37

.1d) Aeronautics & space

1,075

.1e) Food Quality & Safety .1f) Sustainable development, global change & ecosystems .1g) Citizens & governance in a knowledge-based society .1h) Activities ‘covering a wider field of research’ .1k) Non-Nuclear work of JRC

685 2,120

.2) Structuring the European Research Area .3) Strengthening the foundations of the ERA

2,605

.4) Nuclear Energy Programme

1,230

225

1,300 760

320

739 1,260

14,960

17,500

Notes: a) A more detailed breakdown of FP6 sub-categories is available from source. Source: Author’s re-working of data downloaded from EC’s CORDIS web site [13 Dec. 2002]

Technological Projections: From ICT to IS, eEurope & the ERA So much for the key formal or explicit research policies related to the development of ICT. But these do not mark the limit or boundaries of 'new ICT-related policies' and initiatives within the European Union, or indeed, in most other regions of the contemporary world. The scope, role and implications of new ICTs are now (and, especially since the early 1990s) widely perceived and taken to apply to a whole range of other policy discourses and practices. One expression or manifestation of this shift can be found in the very titles given to the ICT-related research streams within the EU Fifth and Sixth Framework programmes. These successive EU

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technical research initiatives are referred to as 'the User-friendly Information Society' and 'Information Society Technologies' sub-programmes respectively. There are several reasons why the apparent scope and role of new ICT-related research and other policies have expanded significantly in my view. In part, this is because of the contemporary role and pervasive applications potential of new ICT and in part, it reflects the fact that these technologies are precisely concerned with the handling and processing of one other pervasive resources that is also heavily laden with conceptual difficulties: information and/or knowledge. But there is a further reason which I will briefly flag here but examine further in subsequent sections. This refers to the fact that the thinking and practices of the relevant industrial and policy elites are generally stamped by a very particular set of conceptualisations or understandings of the role of new ICTs and their socioeconomic and policy implications on the one hand, and the notion of an emerging information society on the other. To return to the development of the EU’s ICT research and related policies, we can note a significant turn in the 1993–94 period. This was the time when the same time as the Commission was preparing plans for the Fourth framework R&D programme and just as the Internet, helped by its World Wide Web overlay interface, began its rapid diffusion phase. It was also when some influential politicians got bitten (or ‘byten’) by the digital deliria bug--that is quite some time before the stock market and private sector analysts caught the dot.com goldrush fever of the late 1990s. Al Gore had successfully managed to co-pilot the ClintonGore electoral-promise wagon via the virtual reality of an ‘information superhighway’ in the USA. Now, as US vice president, he was by 1994 seeking to project his vision-thing to a more global audience. In the run up to the Kyoto conference of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), Al Gore, declared to the wider world that it must now build and run nothing less than a Global version of the Information Infrastructure (GII): "The linking of the world's people to a vast exchange of information and ideas is a dream that technology is set to deliver. President Bill Clinton and I believe that the creation of a network of networks, transmitting messages and images at the speed of light across every continent, is essential to sustainable development for all the human family… It will bring economic progress, strong democracies, better environmental management, improved healthcare and a greater sense of shared stewardship of our small planet…legislators, regulators and business people must now build and run a Global Information Infrastructure (GII)….All governments, in their own sovereign nations and in international co-operation, …[must] build this infrastructure…it must be

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a co-operative effort and it must be democratic… The economics of networks have changed so radically that a competitive, private market can build much of the GII… this is dependent, however, upon sensible regulation". (Al Gore, ‘Plugged into the world’s knowledge’, in ‘The Financial Times’, 19 Sept. 1994). The political and industrial elites involved in shaping the EU’s research and related industrial and communications policies were not deaf to such promises and challenges originating from the other side of the Atlantic—or to their rhetorical and material implications. For such actors, after all, the core stakes boiled down to economic interests and crucially involved transnational trade and investment policy considerations, whatever the technology-centred vision-ware might suggest. They were, no doubt, aware that a full decade before Al Gore graced the vicepresidential electoral stage, US industrial and foreign policy strategists had identified communication networks, ICT-related services and the notion of an ‘information society’ as ‘a strategic new element in the American global equation’ (see Preston, 2001). Even before that, the European Commission’s research and industrial innovation strategy, much like the EU’s overall project for greater economic integration, was essentially based on the view that this would enhance the competitiveness of European industry vis-a-vis US and Japanese competitors. Besides, the EC had commenced a programme for a radical re-regulation of the telecommunications sector in 1988 that was very similar to the competitive vision of a ‘network of networks’ which was instituted in the USA only a few years previously. In addition, the industrial and policy elites on both sides of the Atlantic were also actively repositioning their international trade and industrial policies following the GATT (later WTO) ‘Uruguay Round’ of negotiations. The latter had established a new regime for the liberalisation of trade and investment in services, where telecommunications and other ICT-based services, alongside financial, media and other ‘information’ related services were perceived to play an increasingly important role in the revised rules of the economic competition game. This was echoed by new initiatives in the early 1990s to further deepen the regional globalisation economic, political and indeed cultural ‘integration’ at the EU level and to create ‘a single market’ for all kinds of services, including the media and cultural industries. The interwoven narratives around the deepening globalisation of trade and investment, the liberalisation of regulation, telecommunications and information services policies and EU ‘competitiveness’ were brought together and explicitly expressed in a number of important EU policy documents published in the 1994–94 period. First, there was the Commission’s strategic white paper on

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Growth, Competitiveness and Employment--Challenges for entering in the 21st century, colloquially called 'the Délors Report' (EC, 1993a). This was closely followed by a report from the powerful Commissioner responsible for industrial and telecommunications affairs entitled Europe and the Global Information Society: Recommendations to the European Council (EC, 1994a). Often referred to as 'the Bangemann Report', this document was more than an EU retort to the somewhat short-lived G7 and other ‘global information society’ initiatives which followed in the years immediately after Al Gore’s original proposals. The ‘Bangemann Report' had more major and lasting influences on the framing of subsequent EU policies for ICT research and communication services. Indeed, for some years following its publication, this report was repeatedly cited as a sort of ‘bible’ or master mantra by Commission documents and officials dealing with a very wide spectrum of industrial and social policy initiatives. For example, it was explicitly invoked as a framework for an important 1994 document setting out a new industrial and policy strategy for the audio-visual sector in the European Union’s single market context (EC, 1994b). In the EU’s R&D, industrial and communications policy arenae, the Bangemann report’s most obvious influence was to insert the term ‘information society’ as the key term in the vocabulary rather than IT or ICT. This semantic shift was meant to reflect a greater emphasis on demand-side rather than technology-centred approaches to R&D and a more (neo-)liberal view of the role of market forces and competition in the allocation of economic resources, including those related to telecommunications and to the selection and direction of new technological developments. The approach was also intended to signal a response to the criticisms of prior EU framework research programmes which had highlighted a predominant focus on the further development of scientific and technical knowledge and relative lack of attention to industrial applications or demand-side aspects of ICT or other technological fields. At the same time, not least for those associated with ‘the Social Europe’ agenda, the shift in vocabulary was taken to imply something rather different. It was taken to imply that there was or may be something special about more ‘Europe’s Way’ to the information society which reflected a traditional orientation towards a robust welfare state and a social democratic conception of citizenship rights (EC, 1996a, 1996b). Even if such shifts in vocabulary were too late to influence the terminological framing of the EU’s Fourth Framework R&D programme they were clearly manifest in the two subsequent programmes (as indicated in Table 2). Despite these semantic shifts however, the impacts of the post-Bangemann report policy shifts

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appear to be less evident in the core R&D policy arena than in other areas of communication and information services policy. For example, there has been no significant shift in the character or orientation of the research activities funded under the Fifth framework programme compared to the previous programmes. Despite the substitution of information ‘society’ for ‘technology’, the vast majority of the funding remains allocated to the scientific and technical activities concerned with the further development of new knowledge or technologies. The shift to applications is more pronounced in the vocabulary framing the various research action lines than in the substance of the work undertaken. Despite much rhetorical emphasis on the importance of the social and economic applications and implications of new ICT and an emerging ‘information society’, there has only been a small increase in the share of funding allocated to social science or humanities based research in FP4 and FP5 compared to earlier programmes. One estimates suggest that explicit socio-economic research activities accounted for about 1% of the Fifth Framework R&D programme’s overall budget (EC, 2002a:22). But even that minor shift seems very temporary as the penultimate draft documents for the new Sixth Framework programme signal a much reduced role for socio-economic research compared to the previous programme. Over the past couple of years and in the run-up to the launch of the FP6, the EU’s research and technology policy agenda has been increasingly framed around two other related master concepts: eEurope and the European Research Area (ERA). Both have been directly influenced by the proceedings of the European Council meeting held in Lisbon in 2000 which expressed the ambitious aim of making Europe “the most dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion” (EC, 2002a:7). This goal has been linked to an expanding emphasis on the role of R&D for European competitiveness, especially at the the European Council’s Barcelona meeting in 2002 where the “Heads of State and Government committed themselves to investing 3% of GDP in R&D by 2010”, (ibid: 7). Policies to develop and promote moves towards a more integrated European Research Area (ERA) are viewed as essential or closely linked to the EC’s declared ambition to “become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy of the world” (EC, 2002a). In December 1999, the Commission launched its eEurope initiative. This has the declared aim of ensuring that “the European Union fully benefits for generations to come from the changes the Information Society is bringing” (cited in Arlandis et al.,

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2001:19). Over the past two years, the eEurope initiative and its action plan have been refined through a number of subsequent documents. The eEurope action plan is defined as ‘part of the Lisbon strategy to make the European Union the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy with improved employment and social cohesion by 2010’ (EC, 2002b: 2). A subsequent document states that eEurope “is not only about making European industry more competitive; it is also about ensuring that all citizens… have access to modern communications technologies to improve the quality of life” (EC, 2002c:3). Indeed, it suggests that “the new knowledge-based society must be an inclusive society” and that “in emphasising digital inclusion, the European Commission aims to distinguish the European approach to the information society from other regions of the world” (EC, 2002c: 4).

EU policies for Information ‘Content’ and Culture Since the early 1990s at least, many of the EU’s ICT research, innovation and related industrial strategy documents have emphasised the growth potential of the information ‘content’ services sectors, especially those based on the application of new digital tools and systems. Indeed, the Bangemann report and other EU policy documents published in the 1993–94 period, emphasised the growth of ‘high-level, grey-matter’ occupations in such media and ‘content’ services, predicting that the number of such jobs in the EU area would double by the year 2000. As we might well expect with research strategies increasingly framed around the notions of ‘an information society for all’ and seeking to construct ‘a knowledgebased eEurope’, recent EU R&D programmes have specific funding lines orientated towards information ‘content’ applications. The most important example here is the ‘User-friendly Information Society’ stream of FP5 (1998–2002) and, in particular, its key action or funding line entitled ‘multimedia content and tools’. A budget of some 564 million euro has been allocated to this research action in order to address ‘the development of tools and systems for managing, disseminating and using digital content’. The very title and key descriptors of the ‘multimedia content and tools’ subprogramme would seem to suggest an equal balance between two separate but complementary streams of research and development activity: those concerned with the production of new digital media ‘tools’ on the one hand, and the new kinds of new knowledge, creative and innovative initiatives required to successfully adopt, combine and appropriate such tools for the production of digital content artefacts or services, on the other hand. But the more detailed descriptions of the kinds of activities targeted by this sub-programme, and the kinds of project

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proposals actually selected for funding tell a very different story. They are more heavily biased towards the technical, engineering and programming knowledge fields concerned with development of digital ‘tools’ such as software and/or hardware-based devices, systems or platforms. Consequently, the equally important new kinds of knowledge and research activity related to the ‘downstream’ or application layers of innovation in the digital content field are relatively neglected. Even in this sectorally targeted sub-programme, there is minimal recognition of the role and importance of the new creative and hybrid forms of knowledge directly related to the innovation process in the digital content field. These include research related to the specific authoring, design and textual strategies which best fit, match or mobilise the potentialities of the new technical systems, and/or to the new kinds of publishing, editorial, distribution and marketing strategies and business models appropriate for successful product and process innovation in the (still small and emergent) digital content sector. Admittedly, some of these research agenda items are also addressed as minor themes in other EC programmes such as the MEDIA initiative, and they are formally part of the agenda in the eContent programme launched in 2001. (The MEDIA initiative will be discussed a little further on). The eContent programme is one of the two actions proposed in the ‘eEurope Action Plan’. Its main focus is on stimulating the digital content market through the following action lines: (a) Improving access to and expanding use of public sector information; (b) Enhancing content production in a multilingual and multicultural environment; and (c) Increasing dynamism of the digital content market (see Table 3 for more details on these two programmes). The eContent programme, which has been allocated EUR 100 million for the period 2001–2005 “focuses on commercial use of European digital content”. It aims to promote the production, use and dissemination of European digital products and services by “supporting cooperation between companies in the field and the public and private sectors”. The key actions in receipt of funding relate, inter alia, to public-sector services which use the information and “the development of digital databases and the necessary software tools”. The Commission states that this programme does embrace a concern for “multilingual access to multimedia products and services distributed via digital networks and adapting them to local cultural requirements”. The research actions may “involve subjects such as art, cultural heritage, archives, libraries and tourism” (Commission’s ‘Europa’ web site).

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But the actual operation and implementation of the eContent programme so far does not appear to have been strongly orientated to cultural information. Overall, the major focus of the eContent programme appears to lie with ‘producer’ and instrumental forms of information services more directly relevant to industrial and organisational functions or uses. Thus even in the case of EU programmes apparently orientated towards digital media, the level of attention and funding accorded to the new design, authoring, publishing of knowledge forms and competencies related to ‘content’ production activities by the mainstream ICT research programmes is relatively small. The extent to which these properly ‘content’ -related knowledge and activity fields are neglected, least compared to the activities and knowledge domains directed at the further development of technical systems and tools, is quite striking. Indeed, it is all the more so given the context of EU policy discourses which appear to place so much emphasis on ‘an information society for all’ and seeking to construct ‘a knowledge-based eEurope’.

Table 3 EC’s Major Programmes related to ‘Culture’ & ‘Content’ Programme

Focus and Scope (a

.A) ‘CULTURE’ Related (b

Culture 2000

MEDIA-3

This programme ‘helps to finance cooperation in all areas of the arts’ and ‘aims to promote the cultural diversity of the European Union, creativity, exchanges between those involved in the cultural sector in the EU, and to make culture more accessible to the public’ The MEDIA programme ‘supports the development, distribution and promotion of European audiovisual works’. The sectors concerned are fiction (cinema & TV), creative documentaries, animation and multimedia.

Perio d

Budget

2000-2004

167

2001-2005

400

1998-2002

564

.B) ‘CONTENT’ Related FP5 Multimedia Content & Tools Programme

The FP5 IST research stream relates to ‘the development of tools and systems for managing, disseminating and using digital content’. The programmes brief cites some examples of content with a cultural

(M Euro)

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FP5 Energy, Environment & Sustainable Developmen programme

The ‘eContent ‘ programme

The ‘TENTelecom’ programme

theme: This programme includes a key action called "The city of tomorrow and cultural heritage". About one third of the budget goes towards ‘identifying and assessing damage to cultural heritage, whether built or movable heritage’. The action ‘promotes the protection and sustainable management of cultural heritage, its preservation and development, and steps to make it more accessible to the public’. This programme ‘focuses on commercial use of European digital content’ and ‘aims to promote the production, use and dissemination of European digital products and services by supporting cooperation between companies in the field and the public and private sectors’. tourism. It is ‘also concerned with multilingual access to multimedia products and services distributed via digital networks and adapting them to local cultural requirements’. TEN-Telecom ‘promotes the marketing of European digital goods and services in areas of common interest’, including education and culture. Providing funding of up to 50% for feasibility studies and 10% of the necessary investment, it ‘aims to help European companies through the critical phase of launching these services’.

45

1998-2002

170

2001-2005

100

2000-2006

276

Notes: a) This table reflects the EC’s own claims about the scope of its key ‘culture’ and contentrelated activities. b) In addition, we should note the EC’s education and training programmes, SOCRATES and Leonardo da Vinci (allocated respectively EUR 1.85 & 1.15 billion for 2000-2006). Both cover a range of disciplines and provide funding for projects in the field of education and training, including educational projects in schools on cultural themes and those which raise cultural awareness. One of the key themes of the programmes is language learning. Also, the ‘Youth’ programme 2000-2006 (budget of EUR 520 M) plays a part in the cultural field by financing youth exchanges. Source: Author’s estimates and tabulation based on EU documents.

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Implications for the domain of ‘culture’ I will now wind up this descriptive review of the EU’s ICT-related policies by considering their implications for the domain of ‘culture’. This is a rather elusive if important arena where there are important overlaps with the discussion of information and content matters immediately above. As the Commission itself acknowledges, it is difficult to provide a succinct “overview of the European Union's various cultural activities and programmes” (Commission’s ‘Europa’ web site) . Perhaps, the most prominent and culturespecific activity or programme of the EC is the “Culture 2000” programme. As the title suggests, this initiative specifically targets cultural cooperation--I will address its key features in more detail a little later. But, in addition, the Commission itself tends to emphasise that many of its research and other policy programmes embrace a strong cultural agenda or orientation. For example, it claims that “many European programmes have a cultural dimension in various areas of activity: support for the cultural industries, technological research, education and training in the arts, regional development, cooperation with third countries, and so on” (Commission’s ‘Europa’ web site). The Commission recognises that these programmes are managed by different Directorates-General and departments within the European Commission and that these may well “have their own rules regarding operation and eligibility”. Here, we might also add, that they have their own priorities and orientations which are far removed from the cultural domain as conventionally defined. (See Table 3). For example, the Commission points to “elements of the Framework R&D programme (1998–2002) , especially… the key action ‘multimedia content and tools’, which has been allocated EUR 564 million, and in particular its cultural heritage components” (Commission’s ‘Europa’ web site). But as noted above, this research action line is more strongly focused on the development of digital tools and platforms that content design and production activities per se. The Commission also points to another element of FP4, ‘the Energy, Environment and Sustainable Development programme’ because this features a research stream called ‘The city of tomorrow and cultural heritage’, for which 170 million euro have been earmarked. Around a third of this sum goes towards identifying and assessing damage to cultural heritage, ‘whether built or movable heritage’. This research action line seeks to “promote the protection and sustainable management of cultural heritage, its preservation and development, and steps to make it more accessible to the public” (Commission’s ‘Europa’ web site). Thirdly, it is suggested that funding may be provided under the FP4 for ‘certain cultural projects involving ‘international cooperation activities’, particularly with the Mediterranean countries.

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Finally, we may note that the EU’s main educational exchange and training programmes, SOCRATES and Leonardo da Vinci , do provide funding particularly for projects in the field related to the arts and culture. These include educational projects in schools on cultural themes and projects to raise cultural awareness, and indeed language learning. But as suggested earlier, only a tiny portion of the research-related resources in these programmes are directed at the knowledge, competencies and activities involved in the design and production of new mediabased cultural content compared to the sums devoted to the technical and scientific knowledge fields. Apart from such ‘side-shows’ in policy terms, we really end up with two major EC programmes that are directly and explicitly engaged in supporting culture-specific activities: the Culture 2000 programme and the MEDIA programme. The European Commission’s ‘Culture 2000’ programme helps to finance Community cooperation in all areas of the arts, such as the performing arts, visual and fine arts, literature, music, history and cultural heritage. Its declared aims are to promote the cultural diversity of the European Union, creativity, exchanges between those involved in the cultural sector in the EU, and to make culture more accessible to the public. The programme has been allocated 167 million euro for the period 2000–2004 . Financial assistance is awarded to projects selected on the basis of a call for proposals, which is published at the beginning of each year. The MEDIA programme provides financial and policy support for the audio-visual and related industries. The latest phase of this programme has been allocated a budget of 400 million euro for the period 2001–2005, supports the development, distribution and promotion of European audiovisual works. The sectors addressed by this initiative comprise fiction (cinema and television), creative documentaries, animation and multimedia. The MEDIA programme also earmarks 50 million euro for business and legal training (marketing, intellectual property law), training in technology (computer graphics, multimedia) and courses in how to write screenplays for foreign audiences. In essence, the MEDIA and the Culture 2000 initiatives comprise the two major EU programmes directly concerned with ‘culture’ and related ‘content’ . In combination they provide an annual average funding resources of 142 million euro over the 2000–2004 period. These sums are relatively tiny when compared to the resources devoted to the technical knowledge fields involved in the design and development of new digital and other technologies (see Tables 2 and 3).

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These statistical indicators suggest that the levels of attention and funding accorded to the domains of culture and other content production activities by the mainstream ICT research programmes are relatively low. They are tiny compared to the resources allocated to the activities and knowledge domains involved in the further development of technical systems and tools. Again, this is all the more so when considered in the context of EU policy discourses which place so much emphasis on ‘an information society for all’ and seeking to construct ‘a knowledgebased eEurope’. These and other quantitative indicators all seem to underline the fact that the official project for constructing a new ‘knowledge-based’ European Union is a peculiarly lopsided one. In terms of material resources and surrounding policy frameworks and supports, it is heavily biased towards one end of the knowledge production and distribution spectrum. As with ‘content’ and information structures relative to technical infrastructures, the creative and cultural components of new knowledge creation and distribution are relatively neglected—and this more than two decades after one of the founding fathers of the European Union integration project had declared that, if beginning again, he would ‘start with culture’.

EU’s ICT & IS Policies: Towards a Critique and Evaluation Having presented an empirically focused, descriptive review of the EU’s ICT research and related information society policies, I will now move on to consider some of the more important strategic stakes and criticisms. The treatment here will be necessarily brief for reasons of space, and so I propose to highlight two key sets of issues that seem relevant to the wider policy debates in the run-up to the WSIS conferences.

Technology-Fixated Versus Socially-Centred Visions & Imaginations The first major point of criticism I wish to identify in relation the EU’s research and information society policies focuses on their predominant fixation with technologycentred concerns and their consequent un-social or a-social character. This strategic criticism applies despite all the ritualistic genuflections towards a ‘social’ dimension in EU policy documents since the mid-1990s and in more recent reports related to the newer eEurope initiative. I have already indicated how this is manifest in the tendency of successive EU research programmes to privilege the

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design and production of new ICT devices and systems over the application and use of existing technologies for social and cultural ends. Despite some growth in the 1990s, the recognition and funding of socio-economic research, even that which is directly related to the presumed significant socioeconomic implications of new ICT as a major new technology system, remains small in relative terms. Some EC estimates suggest that explicit socio-economic research activities accounted for 1% of the Fifth Framework R&D programme’s overall budget and that this will grow to comprise some 2% of the Sixth Framework programme (EC, 2002a). But my own reading of the latter’s documentation suggests a reduction rather than increase in such research funding over the next few years. When it comes to the arena of ‘information society’ policies-- where we might expect to find broader concerns with, or discussion of, social development paths or alternatives—the situation is really no different. On the one hand, we have the implied message that we confront the emergence of a radically new and distinct kind of social formation, but on the other, this is defined and measured solely in terms of changes in the supply and use of new technological infrastructures or services. For all operational purposes, the information society, no less than the successor concept of eEurope, is fundamentally framed, imagined and measured in terms of the maximum production and use of new ICTs. The same applies to the sister concept of a ‘knowledge-based’ Europe, where once again the predominant emphasis falls upon the production and dissemination of one particular subcategory of knowledge: the scientific and technical (Preston, 2002a). In other words, what seems like a concept, strategy and debate concerning future society-wide development and change is reduced to a highly freighted technologycentred discourse and one-sided conception of knowledge creation. What is initially presented as a radical or significant societal change turns out to be largely a case of ‘business as usual’, except that we must all produce and use new ICTs more widely and avidly. In essence, we are presented with an impoverished, and essentially a-social, vision of the scope or potential for future societal development. Technology and instrumental technical knowledge becomes not merely the means but is substituted as the key measure and goal of societal development (Preston, 2001: especially chaps. 9 and 10; Preston, 2002a). This is certainly a much reduced and impoverished vision compared to the initial conceptions of an emergent ‘information society’ which were first advanced by social theorists in the 1970s, even if we recognise that these were much criticised by other sociologists and theorists subsequently. The US sociologist Daniel Bell (1973) is usually designated as the author of the most robust early information

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society theory--even if Adam Smith could prior lay claim to a pioneering prognosis of the ‘knowledge economy’ phenomenon (Preston, 2001). Certainly, we can find some clear echoes and borrowings from the work of Daniel Bell in the information society discourses favoured by the political and industrial elites in Europe. (These are also manifest in the writings of many contemporary postmodern and ‘cultural turn’ theorists, even if these are self-defined as critical theorists.) One core example is the determinist view that changes in the technological infrastructure and in the division of labour are inherently transformative, liberating and presumed to lead to a significant reduction in material ‘scarcity’ or needs. The growth of jobs defined as information or knowledge-intensive is deemed to lead to much greater individual autonomy and power in the workplace. Another borrowing here is the assertion that material issues (such as those pertaining to wealth and income) or the ‘politics of distribution’ are now much less salient compared to ‘the politics of representation’, or in extreme cases, compared to the ‘end of politics’ in the modern sense. Another echo comprises a set of presumptions about the decline (if not death) of larger-scale ‘modern’ social solidarities and integration mechanisms, and an increasing obsession with individual consumer(ist) or small discrete group identities or cultures. (Taken together, these do not merely reflect the borrowings of contemporary EU policy discourses from older academic theories of an emerging information society. In addition, they also provide some striking commonalities between the core tenets of official information society discourses, based around the now dominant political economic theory of neo-liberalism on the one hand, and those of postmodern or cultural turn theorists, on the other hand.) However, such borrowing by contemporary information society policy discourses reflect only some highly selective elements of the seminal post-industrial thesis advanced by Daniel Bell. A more rounded engagement with Bell’s thesis, however, would reveal that whatever its analytical flaws and conservative ideological leanings, it was certainly not singing along to the ‘there is no such thing as society’ hymn sheet which has become the increasingly dominant anthem of our own times. Its core analysis concerning the post-industrial society as a just or progressive society was not solely predicated on changes in the technological infrastructure or division of labour or the newly influential role of intellectual knowledge. Rather it placed an equal emphasis on the continuing, if not growing, role of the socially-progressive, Keynesian welfare state policy regime which prevailed during the post-war boom period and a concomitant decline in the sway of markets relations and of unregulated economic rationality. In essence, Bell’s ‘venture in social forecasting’ was also predicated on a trend towards reducing economic inequalities within an increasingly meritocratic order. It was precisely and only in such a social and political context that Bell envisaged the new role or social character knowledge and planning as a direct

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counter to the economic rationality of the market and competitive capitalism (Preston, 2002b, Seville). Of course, much has changed since Bell first advanced his thesis in the early 1970s, not least the increasing sway of economic rationality and market forces over all forms of knowledge and information production. Hence, the highly selective contemporary borrowings from the post-industrial society thesis, as advanced by the elite information society discourses (or indeed, the cultural turn literature) are highly partial. Indeed, as cultural productions of a sort themselves, they can hardly be understood as innocently accidental or politically neutral, but highly attuned to the political and economic sensibilities and pressures of their times. What we are presented with is an impoverished and hallowed-out version of an emergent information society compared even to that advanced in Bell’s seminal work (despite its undoubted flaws) -- or even compared to the social rights dimension of citizenship which prevailed in many EU member states during most decades of the twentieth century (Preston, 2002b). In essence, we find little by way of sustained discussion or attention to the question of what is or might be special about ‘Europe’s way to the information society’, to quote a phrase from some of the earlier EU policy documents in the mid-1990s (Preston, 1998; 2001). We may note ‘significant silences’ or absences especially in relation to the implications of the strong tradition of social democratic politics and associated social citizenship rights which key features of the political culture in many member states. Of course, as indicated earlier, we may note certain semantic shifts and genuflections towards a ‘social Europe’ agenda within the EU’s research and information society policy documents, including the more recent spate of eEurope policy reports. But these seem little more than occasional rhetorical gestures in the midst of policy concepts and practices that are fundamentally embedded in the neo-liberal ideology which celebrates a ‘marketdriven’ information society and which privileges consumer identities and roles over those of citizenship. Indeed, we may note that the elite discourses surrounding new ICT and the information society have provided important ideological arenae for the general promotion of neo-liberal ideas and policy practices. This, of course, does not reflect or contribute anything along the lines of a distinctive ‘Europe’s way…’ to societal development, nor does it indicate any serious attempt to address the new and alternative developmental possibilities opened up by a large and increasingly integrated economic union embracing some 320 million people. Rather it indicates a certain poverty of political imagination on the part of elites who rely so heavily on the importation or universalisation of ideas and practices developed elsewhere.

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Finally, we should briefly also note here that this impoverished approach to a European social development strategy has serious implications for evolving forms of social inequality, of which the much debated ‘digital divide’ is but one aspect. The wider adoption of neo-liberal policy ideas and practices in the EU area, not least via the frequent presumptions of a necessary or beneficial linkages between new ICT and a ‘market-driven’ vision of societal development, have had major impacts with respect to deepening social inequalities. Of course, this particular attack on the prospects for any meaningful ‘social Europe’ policy strategy has nothing to do with technology per se. Rather, it comprises the impacts and intentions of a particular political-economy regime which has been increasingly hegemonic over the past two decades. One of the major and most obvious consequences has been a significant increase in inequalities with respect to the distribution of income and wealth. But, we should also note, this has accompanied the push to commodify an ever greater number of services and functions which comprise the evolving basket of ‘socially-necessary’ goods (i.e. those which are required to match/access prevailing consumption norms) or indeed, which are required for effective exercise of citizenship rights in contemporary society. Thus the extending sway of the ‘naked cash nexus’, alongside growing material inequalities, now impacts upon the levels and modes of access to a growing number of services and functions in areas such as health, education, legal services as well as in the arena of information and communication services. Considerations of the nature and origins of the so-called ‘digital divide’ and effective policy responses must be framed as but one manifestation or expression of these wider developmental trends and contexts.

Information ‘Content’ and Culture Matters The second selective focus of my criticism concerns the implications of EU policies for information ‘content’ services and the domain of culture. As noted earlier, EU research and information society policies, since the early 1990s at least, have tended to emphasise the beneficial implications of new ICT for the growth potential of downstream (or application) fields such as information content services, including cultural and media-related services (EC, 1993a; 1994a, 1994b; 1997a, 1997b, 1997c ). They have also emphasised the beneficial implications of new ICT for greater diversity of cultural and other media content services. In keeping with the technology-centred vision discussed earlier, key EU policy and research reports have also assumed or asserted the rapid replacement of the old media by new/digital media and a radical ‘convergence’ or blurring of boundaries between previously separate communication services (EC, 1997a, 1997d; Techno-Z FH, 1997; TechServ, 1998).

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Whilst the range of new ICT-based ‘content’ delivery systems and networks has expanded rapidly over the past decade, the optimistic forecasts of a doubling of the numbers of ‘high-level, grey-matter’ and labour intensive jobs in the media content services sector by the year 2000 have failed to materialise. The reasons why this is so are multiple and quite complex (Preston, 2001). One key factor has been the tendency for key EU research and policy reports to embrace the transformative, determinist visions of ICTs and their implications for the media and content sectors associated with the digital deliria of the late 1990s. Another has been the failure of EU policies to adequately recognise or address the distinctive economic and social characteristics of the cultural and other media content services. Instead, the tendency has been to extend the very same technological and economistic logics relevant to the new ICT (tools and systems) supply sectors (where economies of scale, standardisation and scope are highly relevant) to the very different goals and requirements of the cultural and media content domains (where diversity and difference rather than standardisation should be taken as the overriding goals). These flaws are linked to the tendency of EU research and information society policies to neglect the specifics of the innovation and production processes involved in the new media domain, as already indicated in section two above. The implied assumption is that the supply of new ICT-based devises and networks will somehow ‘automatically’ create the new content forms and texts appropriate to the new technical capacities or potentialities. The privileging of technical domains of new knowledge within the EU research and related policy programmes tends to neglect the all-important ‘downstream’ or application layers of innovation processes in the domain of media and content. It implies a de-valuing and neglect of the various other domains of new expertise, competencies and creativity required to successfully explore, test and develop the relevant new authoring, design and textual strategies, editorial and publishing models etc. (Preston and Kerr, 2001; Williams and Slack, 1998).

Concluding Comments This brief account of the EU’s research and information society policies has been both selective and highly critical in its content and tone. I do not, however, mean it to be totally negative, either in the sense of being anti-technology (or against new ICT in particular) or of being opposed to the very principle of an EU research and development policy in this field. In my view, both the further development and application of new ICT and the role of EU-level policies in this field are important endeavours. Indeed, both have the potential to contribute to improved living and working conditions for citizens, workers and consumers in an increasingly integrated Europe and global society. My main problem with the thrust of the

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existing policies and initiatives is that they appear to deliver so very little by way of realising such potential. And, as stated at the outset, the key sources of this problem do not lie with some remote or all-powerful Eurocrats based in Brussels. Rather they reflect the wider patterns of political vision, policy strategies and decision-making related to new ICT or an emergent new information or knowledgebased society at the local and national level. At root, the most significant criticisms and challenges posed in this chapter have little or nothing to do with technology per se. The crucial and critical issues are to do with how we, or more precisely those in possess the relevant resources of economic, political and discursive power in our society, think about, discuss and seek to address the ‘impacts’ or implications of such technologies for the living and working lives of citizens and consumers in Europe and the wider world. One of the biggest challenges or ironies here is the dominant elites’ vision of new ICTs inaugurating a radical shift to an allegedly new kind of social formation on the one hand, and on the other, the portfolio of highly conservative and extremely oldfashioned social and political doctrines they proffer at the same time. In part at least, the success of the New Right in Europe no less than the USA rests on its successful packaging together of the enthusiastic embrace of new technological developments (especially ICTs) in combination with some of the oldest and crudest ideas concerning the supremacy of market-based economics and associated individualism (Kintz, 2002). The ultimate logic and political prescriptions here are the celebration of the individualised consumer in the marketplace and vehement opposition to social forms of collective identity, solidarities or action, for example on the part of workers, women, citizens or consumers (e.g. Toffler, 1993; Gilder, 1989). As I see it, one key task for critical researchers and progressive civic organisations is to challenge the prevailing elite discourses which describe and prescribe a highly partial and impoverished vision of new ICT and to assert its relation to a more progressive and just emergent/future social order. This means challenging the prevailing assumptions and prescriptions that: (a) the maximum development and use of new ICT is the key measure, goal or end of social development, and (b) the effective development and use of new ICT is somehow necessarily bound up with the embrace of the neo-liberal doctrine of a ‘market-driven’ path to social development. It is only by challenging such technocratic, economistic and impoverished (but highly partial) political visions that the growth of social inequalities--including those embraced by the ‘digital divide’ -–may be addressed effectively, both within the European region as well as in the wider global level.

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References Arlandis, J., E. Bohlin, J. Leyten, and R. Mansell (2001), ‘Sustainable e-Europe: An Agenda for Dynamic Information Societies. An ENCIP Policy Position Paper’. Montepelier: ENCIP. Bell, Daniel (1973), The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting’ . New York: Basic Books. Collins, Richard and Christina Murroni (1996), ‘New Media, New Policies’. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. EC (European Commission) (1993a), Growth, Competitiveness and Employment Challenges for entering in the 21st century. (White Paper, colloquially called 'the Délors Report'). Luxembourg: European Commission. EC (1994a), Europe and the Global Information Society: Recommendations to the European Council ['Bangemann Report']. Brussels: CEC. EC (1994b), ['Green Paper'] Strategy Options to Strengthen the European Programme Industry in the Context of the Audiovisual Policy of the European Union, Brussels: EC [Com(94) 96 final] EC (1996a) Building the European Information Society for Us All: First Reflections of the High Level Group of Experts. Brussels: EC, DGV,1996a EC (1996b), People First: Report on the Dublin Colloquium, Dublin Castle, 30 Sept. – 1 Oct. 1996. Brussels: DGV. EC (1997a), ‘Economic Implications of New Communication Technologies on the Audio-Visual Markets- Final Report’, Report of research by Norcontel, NERA, Screen Digest , Stanbrook/Hooper and commissioned by the EC [DGX/D/3]. EC (1997b), Green Paper on the Convergence of the Telecoms, Media and Information Technology Sectors, and the Implications for Regulation: Towards and Information Society Approach. Brussels: COM (97)623 [Final. 3.12.1997]. EC (1997c), Electronic Publishing in Europe: Competitiveness, Employment and Skills [Flash Presentation of the Electronic Publishing Sector]. Report prepared by IDATE and commissioned and published by EC, DG XIII/E (October 1997). EC (1997d), Interactive Digital Media: Impact of the Technology to 2003. Report prepared by ‘Informed Sources’ and commissioned/published by EC, DG XIII/E (Oct 1997). EC (1998a), ‘Trading Cultural Assets: The European Commission at Milia 1998’. [WWW2.echo.lu/milia98 ] Prep. for the EC by Cambridge Management Group. EC (2000a), ‘Five Year Assessment Report Related to the Specific Programme: User-Friendly Informaiton Soceity, 1995-99’, Brussels: EC [Accessed from EC web site, 13 Dec. 2002]. EC (2000b), ‘eEurope, An Information Society for All: Communication on a Commission Initiative for the Special European Council of Lisbon’, 23 and 24 March, 2000.

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EC 2002a), ‘Science, Technology and Innovation Key Figures, 2002: Towards a European Research Area’. Brussels: EC Research Directorate General. EC (2002c) ( ‘eEurope 2005: An Information Society for All: An Action Plan to be presented in view of the Seville European Council’, Brussels Towards a knowledge-based eEurope: The European Union and the Information Society, [EC, DG for Press and Communication; DL from web site, Nov. 2002] Gilder, G. (1989), ‘Microcosm: The Quantum Revolution n Economics and Technology’, New York: Simon and Schuster. Hall, Peter and Paschal Preston (1988), ‘The Carrier Wave: New Information Technology & the Geography of Innovation , Published: London: Unwin Hyman. Harris, Scott Blake, [Chief, Intl. Bureau, FCC] (1995), ‘How the USA regulates ‘the glue that will make the GII work’. In Intermedia, V.23, No2, pp:40-42. Kintz, Linda (2002), ‘Performing Virtual Whiteness: George Gilder’s TechnoTheocracy’, in ‘Cultural Studies, 16(5) 735—773. Kubicek, H. et al. (1997) (eds.) ‘The Social Shaping of the Info Superhighway: European & American Roads to the Info Society’. New York: St Martins Press. OECD (1997), ‘Webcasting and Convergence: Policy Implications’ Paris: OECD. Preston, Paschal (2001), Reshaping Communications Technology, Information and Social Change. London: Sage. Paschal Preston & Aphra Kerr (2001) ‘Digital media, nation-states and local cultures: the case of multimedia ‘content’ production, in Media Culture and Society, Vol. 23, pp. 109-131. Preston, Paschal (2002a), "The ‘Knowledge’ Versus ‘Know-less’ Society: Reflections on Melody and the Canadian Tradition’, in Mansell, R., R. Samarajiva, and A. Mahan (eds.) (2002) Networking Knowledge for Information Societies: Institutions & Intervention. (Delft: Delft Univ. Press) pp. 232–239. Preston, Paschal (2002b), ‘The Diverted "Coming" of the Info Society?’, Paper presented to the European Media Technology and Everyday Life workshop, Seville, Spain, March 2002. Preston, Paschal (2002c), "A Once-and-Future 'King'? The changing fate of 'content' in digital Multimedia sector strategies and policies”. Invited presentation to "Media in Transition" Workshop, at European Parliament, Brussels (Workshop organised by Infonomics International & ECCR, June 2002). Preston, Paschal (1998), ‘The Media, Communication Services and “Europe's Way to the Information Society', in 'Kurswechsel' journal, Vienna, Austria. Techno-Z FH (1997), The Content Challenge: Electronic Publishing and the New Content Industries’. Research report commissioned and published by EC, DG XIII/E (October 1997). TechServ (1998), The Future of Content: Discussions on the Future of European Electronic Publishing. Research report commissioned and published by EC, DG XIII/E.

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Toffler, Alvin (1993), ‘Previews and Premises’, London: Pan Books. Williams, Robin and Roger S. Slack (eds.) (1998) 'Europe Appropriates Multimedia: A Study of National Uptake in Eight European Countries and Japan', pp. 215-275, Trondheim: NUST STS Rapport No. 42.

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Policy challenges to the creation of a European Information Society: A critical analysis Caroline Pauwels & Jean-Claude Burgelman1 A vital factor in the formation of the European Information Society has been the EU’s aggregate policies as regards broadcasting and telecommunication. Both sectors have been propelled into the age of high technology and deregulation over the past decades and, as a result, their industrial strategies and policy goals have, since the mid- eighties, gradually merged. This trend was reinforced by the publication of the White Book of 1985 and the endorsement of the Single European Act (SEA). Both of these reflect the decision, prompted by the recession of the seventies, to push for integration of all EU member states into one internal market where people, goods and services could move freely from 1 January 1993,. From this moment, the creation of the necessary conditions for a single market has been the dominant theme of European policy making. The creation of a common market for broadcasting and telecommunications was described in the White Book as an urgent issue for the EU. This can be found back in the landmark publication of the Green Book on Television without Frontiers (1984) and the Green Book on Telecommunications in 1987. Both Green Books had the same basic message: communication is a good/service and should move, be sold and purchased freely within the EU. EU policy has, since then, focused on removing barriers that hinder competition and the creation of an internal broadcasting and telecommunications market. These objectives have been reiterated several times in initiatives where the creation of the European Information or Knowledge Society has been high on the EU policy agenda, for example, in the Bangemann report (1994) and particularly in Lisbon Summit (March 2000). Significantly, this whole process has been labeled as E-Europe since the end of the 90s, indicating a trend towards looking at the Information Society from a societal rather than a technological point of view. It is also noticeable that broadcasting and telecommunication policies are now converging at a European and worldwide level, along side technological and economic convergence. At a European level, this has been made explicit in the

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Green paper on the convergence of the telecommunications, media and information technology, published in 1997, and its follow-up, the 2003 regulatory framework for electronic communications networks and services. The latter clearly indicates the EU approach, which is that all communications should be regarded as part of the same regulatory concept. There is clearly a lot of activity going on at the policy level, and efforts are being made to achieve clarity in regulating the communications sector in an integrated way. However, the question remains: what sort of Information Society does Europe want? In this context, we will review the political and economic trends in European broadcasting and telecommunications, as in contrast to the underlying assumptions and presuppositions of both EU policy and research in this field. We will show: (1) how the discourse on European integration and cultural diversity contradicts the oligopolistic tendency of the market, (2) how the emphasis on creating a plethora of competing distribution channels is opposed to the overstated and overrated demands of the user/consumer/viewer, and (3) how the Euro-specificity of policy making puts a burden on reaching coherence and efficiency in policy making. This ‘Euro specificity’ of policy, as in other areas, is mainly due to the origins of the EU as an ‘imposed supra-national’ state, based on common interest that are real but nonetheless challenged most of the time. Indeed, when studying European problems one has to bear in mind that the EU is an integration process that has been imposed on what have been for several hundred years, competing, isolated and very heterogeneous regional entities and/or states. Therefore, a fragile equilibrium has to be found between heterogeneous member states on the one hand, and the European institutions on the other, especially when several new states join the European Union from 2004 onwards. This will result in a permanent struggle over enlargement of powers and competencies at both sides of the policy spectrum, especially also when the world level, by means of WTO policy making, comes in. Political and economic globalization trends are indeed opposed by the member states and regions themselves, which try to reinvent and renegotiate powers of their own (according to the principle of subsidiarity).

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Trends, issues and assumptions in Western European media policy and research: Broadcasting and telecommunications Though originally separate empirical realities which responded to distinct internal dynamics, both broadcasting and telecommunications sectors have changed dramatically over a very short period of time. This due to more or less the same factors: firstly, technological innovation has made new ways of delivering communication content possible. Also, user needs have changed as a result of a macro-economic climate (post fordism and globalism as a result of hypercapitalism) linked with a changing consumer culture (individualization and pay-per logic). This was reinforced, up until recently, by an ultra-liberal climate of policy making backed up by a post-modern ideology of super individualism. Finally, a withering away in Europe of the nation-states as politico-geographical entities, which had traditionally shaped both the audio-visual and telecommunications sectors, has also contributed to the change (Burgelman, 1994; Charon, 1991; Collins, 1994; Collins, Garnham and Locksley, 1988; Eliassen and Sjovaag, 1999; Euromedia Group, 1992; Garnham, 1990a; Kayzer, 1993; McQuail, 1990 and 1991; Pauwels, 1995; Sanchez-Tabernero, 1993; Siune and Trutzschler, 1992). With regard to the latter, a political shift has been observed away from the regional and national level to the post, transnational, or European level, and furthermore, the global level. At the global level, institutions such as the WTO have extended their powers into the telecommunications and audiovisual sector, thus adding an extra dimension to and pressure on European policy making. This goes hand in hand with a paradigmatic shift in European policy making in broadcasting and universal service issues in telecommunications, where a completely market driven approach now challenges the decades-long tradition of public service broadcasting, state subsidy to the film sector, must and may carry rules, etc. (Pauwels and Cincera 2001; Pauwels and Loisen 2002). Paternalism and state interventionism have given way to a policy based on consumer sovereignty and liberalization. Most of the time this is as rhetorical as the old discourse on ‘educating for the better’ and ‘protecting the weak cultures of Europe’. From the viewpoint of telecommunications and broadcasting economic actors, the above-mentioned dynamics resulted in managerial professionalization, capitalization and industrialization. Both sectors moved away at the same time from what had been only 20 years ago a public service monopoly in Europe towards a private, oligopolistic functioning. Telecommunications and broadcasting are becoming more and more intertwined, and concentration is indeed a very apparent trend in the communication industries. This means that overall

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competition or antitrust policies are becoming more important than traditional sector-specific regulation and legislation.

From fragmentation to unification and backwards: Discourse and the process of policy making at the European level European unification and the policy making process was and still is a question of give and take. It has been a struggle to get the member states to allow a transnational organization such as the EU to meddle in what they see as culturally (broadcasting/audio-visual sector) and economically (telecommunications) strategic sectors. In order to legitimize its intervention in both sectors, the EU has therefore been forced to depict in detail all sorts of boom-and-doom scenarios, and also continually amend and refine its policy instruments. As stated above, the creation of a common market for broadcasting and telecommunications was described as an urgent matter for the EU in the White Book of 1985. The reasoning then was that the European dimension could offer these sectors new prospects for growth and competitiveness. In turn, these sectors could contribute to the realization of a European dimension in other economic sectors; for example, micro-electronics, consumer electronics, advertising etc. However, because of lack of concerted action and national fragmentation, this economic potential was not fully realized. European action was therefore necessary, particularly in view of the economic and cultural threats increasingly posed by Japan and America in these domains. If Europe was not to miss the boat as regards Information Society benefits, then concerted action was absolutely necessary. This message was repeated in the Green Books on TV (1984) and on telecommunications (1987). It was expressed again in two important publications, which were supposed to put Europe on track for the Information Society -- namely the 1993 White Paper on competitiveness, employment and growth and the Bangemann report on the Information Society, published in 1994. The Lisbon Summit in 2000 made the realization of a European Knowledge society the new paradigm, as well as the driving force behind EU policy for both sectors. We note however that, with eEurope, discussion on what kind of Information Society Europe wants to develop is, to a significant degree, no longer technologically driven, as it was at the beginning. In the first decade of EU policy making, however, the opposite was true: the technological developments and thus the creation of an Information Society are not only unavoidable but also include quasi limitless possibilities, if only people know how to make use of them (Burgelman, 2001).

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EU policy, which aimed at the realization of an internal market in telecommunications and broadcasting, encompassed both negative integration, i.e. the breaking down of existing national regulations that form an obstacle to European unification, and positive integration, i.e. the creation of the EU’s own community-wide regulations and policy. The latter meant that certain matters had to be withdrawn from the domain of autonomous national policy. This resulted in the adoption of a battery of Directives (secondary community laws) that have liberalized, harmonized and standardized the production and distribution of both the hardware and software sectors. In addition, action was taken on stimulation programs in the form of a community industrial policy that was intended to support, among other things, the production of broadcasting and telecommunications equipment, infrastructure and content. These are or were often prestigious industrial programs such as Race, the action plan relating to HDTV or even the more culturally inspired and, compared to the previous two, largely underfunded Media program (Measures to Encourage the Development of an Audiovisual Industry in Europe). With a view to the realization of the internal market and mainly by extensive use of Directives, the EU aimed to accommodate pressure from the member states wishing to reserve some control over their own policies. A Directive is, after all, binding in respect of the result but allows member states to choose the means by which they achieve it. Although this was the only way to draw in reluctant states, it also led to a situation in which the member states regarded community legislation as a sort of à la carte system. This allowed them to defend national interests both a priori, when they have the last word when complying with primary and secondary community legislation, and a posteriori, when it comes to the often ambivalent and challengeable implementation and interpretation. Although economically unified, the internal market is still, due to this, legally fragmented to an important degree. After the legislative harmonization, which resulted in the establishment of the internal market in 1993, some important policy shifts occurred. On the one hand, there is a major shift from a sector-oriented policy towards a more general competition and antitrust policy: ‘the European competition authority has taken over the regulatory task, outweighing to a certain extent the decline in the Commission’s legislative influence since the passage of the SEA’ (Pauwels and Cincera 2001). From that moment onwards tensions between both approaches have occurred frequently. Simultaneously, the member states have shown even greater opposition, as they consider the intervention of the EU in questions of competition unwanted interference with national matters. Indeed, most national authorities tend to promote and defend, first and foremost, the interests of, for example, their own telecommunications operator instead of

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thinking and acting ‘European’. Hence there is a constant tension between them and the EU (Hulsink, 1994; Mansell, 1993a). The small nations and the so-called ‘less favored regions’ especially, as they have smaller markets to build on (also true in broadcasting), seem to be less inclined to follow the road of perfect liberalization than the big ones (Preston, 1993). The question is, however, whether these countries have any other choice and whether, given their specific economic and infrastructural situation, EU policy should not adopt more case-specific strategies at this level (Constantelou and Mansell, 1994). On the other hand, the adoption of the Treaty of Maastricht caused a series of major changes. The EU started to emphasize a Europe of diversity, heterogeneity and pluralism – at least in discussion -- to the disadvantage of concepts like a European cultural unity and identity. In the phrasing of the cultural paragraph of the Treaty, cultural diversity became institutionalized. At the same time, Maastricht institutionalized the principle of subsidiarity, which serves to safeguard (at least in principle) the policy margins of the member states, in questions of culture, for example. The audio-visual sector gets mentioned here explicitly. The inclusion of the principle of subsidiarity, may have been the only option left to convince the more restrained member states to move further in the direction of European integration and liberalization, as this principle aims to limit the interference of the Community as much as possible. De facto, it has resulted in decentralization and a tendency towards bottom-up rather than the former topdown policy making. This becomes obvious in the growing use of mechanisms such as the ‘open method coordination’. In this more laborious bottom-up strategy, member states or other (economic) actors are requested to co-ordinate their policies as much as possible and to implement self-regulation and control. Initiated in the Maastricht Treaty, and from the Treaty of Nice onwards, decentralization becomes next to centralization the road Europe has – almost by necessity– chosen. In that respect, one can speak of a partial renaissance of the nation-state.

Towards a new global communication order: The economic convergence of broadcasting and telecommunications The increasing importance of EU competition policy is not solely the result of internal political regulatory developments but also relates to the economic integration and concentration of the communication industries themselves. It is certain, however, that concentration, integration, and ownership entanglements between industrial/economic conglomerates and media corporations are neither explicitly recent phenomena nor strictly linear evolutionary processes. This is illustrated by the recent difficulties of some, once so promising, mergers (Mattelart,

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1991a: 20&ff.; Pilon, 1991: 287&ff.; Bonnell, 1989: 471&ff.; 494&ff.; Conso, 1991: 291; Brenner, 1993; Crookes, 1996). The 80s and 90s, however, were characterized by a great number of takeovers, mergers and alliances, as was illustrated, among other things, by the rising number of cases which the European Union had to process under its merger regulation2. It is noteworthy that the scale of these alliances were spectacular -- the largest merger of all time in economic history was the one between AOL and Time Warner (January 2000) with a combined value at that moment of 187 billion dollars. Other figures confirm this trend -- for example, 5 out of the 10 largest mergers were related to the telecom and media sector in 2000 alone. At the same time, these mergers have led to a fundamental strategic reorganisation of both the audio-visual and telecommunications sector (Idate, 1992: 7&ff.; Luyken, 1990: 621&ff.; Pilon, 1991; Hancock, 1993; Screen Digest February 1993: 36&ff.; Booz Allen and Hamilton, 1989; 1992; European Audiovisual Observatory, Statistical Yearbook 1996–1997; Pauwels and Cincera 2001; Burgelman, Bogdanowich and Punie, 2002). These restructuring moves have indeed set the stage for a new era. Back in 1988, American networks were the world’s largest audio-visual concerns, but from 1989 on they were overtaken by corporations pursuing both horizontal but mostly vertical integration strategies in the production, distribution, hardware, and software (programmes) areas. At that time, along with a trend towards integration of software and hardware companies, sales of American majors such as Columbia or MCA/Universal kept the headlines buzzing. Since in the mid-90s, however, the emphasis has been on convergence between telecommunications groups, computing and audiovisual companies. The telecom operators’ strategy here is, as a former BT chairman remarked, “to become (CP) retailers of anything that can be converted into digital form” (IMO working paper 95/5). These alliances, whatever form they take, point to what the Green Paper on convergence refers to as a trend towards diversification as a response to the economic and technological opportunities being created in the EU and the global market (CEC, Com(97)623). Even though some alliances tended to misfire or were more inspired by hype than rational thinking3, usually leading to a renewed focus on core activities, further integration of telecommunications, cable, film industry, programme packaging, and consumer electronics was inevitable (Mansell, 1993; Noam & Kramer, 1994; Noam, 1996). These alliances can also be interpreted within the general framework of American and European plans for the establishment of information highways (Burgelman, Punie &Verhoest, 1995). Related to this, the latest takeovers and mergers such as AOL and Time Warner or Vivendi, Canal Plus and Seagram illustrate how far the Internet has become a 'driving force' behind the merger movements.

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With this integration of the old and the new economies, the ‘megalisation’ of the cultural industry has clearly taken on a new dimension: i.e. to acquire the ‘oldfashioned’ media conglomerates. In 2000 e.g., Time Warner, AOL, the biggest player in the new media economy, was ready to pay five times as much as Viacom had stumped up five years before for CBS (Rutten, 2000). Another trend is apparent: although European public service companies in broadcasting still hold respectable market positions, they have lost the complete dominance they had 20 years ago. The presence of a limited number of private multinational conglomerates here is simply overwhelming. This explains the recent shifts in policy thinking, pointing at the fact that public objectives do not have to be secured by definition by public service institutions but can be met equally well by the market (Oreja, 1998; Tongue, 1999). Or as EU Commissioner Viviane Reding said, referring to the coming digital age, where a scarcity of frequencies and other distribution channels will no longer be a problem, “... some public interest objectives, such as pluralism, will increasingly be met by the market itself " (Reding, 30 November 2000; Tongue, 1999: 128; 136; CEC COM (97) 623 3 December 1997). The challenge here, of course, is to understand how far a rather oligopolistic market with a minority of public services, will automatically provide pluralism, particularly as regards content.

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Infrastructure and technology driven assumptions as opposed to content: Is content diversity and cultural identity politically and economically feasible? The latest integration developments and the crisis of public service missions, as will be argued later, illustrate very clearly the way in which the ‘content’ sector has over the years become a strategic choice for takeover targets (Tongue, 1999; Rutten, 2000). The more distribution channels are added or freed through technological development and deregulation, the greater the demand for content, whether for traditional culture industry products like films, music, novels, magazines and television programmes, or more recent forms of electronic services. According to Screen Digest, continental Europe had over 650 TV channels at the end of 1998. With regard to the growth of digital TV, Idate calculated that as of June 1999, there were 35 digital TV platforms in the EU, compared with 20 at the end of 1998. At the end of 1999, Idate therefore estimated that there were around 400 digitally broadcast TV channels in the EU (Idate, 2000). The first question to answer is, of course, to what degree this explosion of potential choice will be matched by a real demand for new broadcasting services on a panEuropean level? Most policy makers and actors were expecting a lot from this because broadcasting is not a market to be invented (like multimedia was and is). Research suggests, however, that a more cautious approach to pan-European TV should be taken. First of all, research shows that over the last few years total TV consumption stabilized in Europe (3-4 hours a day). This means that whatever new broadcasting services are offered, they will have to substitute existing viewing habits. These viewing habits are at the moment very well established and cost the viewer almost nothing. This raises the question as to why consumers would pay for new broadcasting services when they already have a multitude of free choice. There is also the question of who is going to finance a segmented offer in Europe, given the fact that it took CNN, for example, more than 10 years to reach breakeven. Indeed, is there enough advertising revenue to support a segmented broadcasting offer? It must be remembered that the largest TV advertisers are the Procter and Gamble type of consumer goods -- precisely those that need a broad audience and not a segmented one.

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The answer could be subscription TV. However, here too it is questionable whether the European market is large enough to allow specialized TV on a subscriber basis. Or more precisely: is it homogeneous enough? The analogy in terms of specialized offer with the written press clearly does not work, since press economies are not at all comparable with broadcasting economies (though digital innovation makes the business model here more and more attractive). One also has to bear in mind that watching cross-border TV, an essential condition for a segmented pan-European broadcasting offer, is very infrequent in Europe. Finally, what will be the ease of use of an explosion of demand? How will the viewer make a choice between 400 channels? The answer one reads about here is that someone will offer to make a choice for the audience (navigator systems pre-selecting e.g. half an hour of soap, 15 minutes of news, a movie and so on). Although possible, is this not exactly what the general channels offer? As a result, this increase in channels has for the moment only resulted in an explosion in demand for cheap programmes. The European broadcasting industry can only provide 1/3 of the programmes needed (especially in fiction, the most competitive programme category). Hence the need to import entertainment and drama – this lies at the roots of one of the most complicated questions of media policy in Western Europe: namely, the dominance of the US and the endangered European audio-visual culture and industry. The figures illustrate this domination clearly. If the Europeans only have a 6% market share of the US market, the American audio-visual sector in Europe has a market share of approximately 75%, though the European broadcasting and film sector pursue their own logics. In general one can say that people generally stick to national programmes, if available, when watching television but prefer watching US movies on the big screen. As far as broadcasting is concerned, reception analysis as well as internal EU evaluation reports have shown that national broadcasters do programme home made fiction, especially during prime time as these programmes are the most popular ones. However, the remaining time is filled with imported American, rather than imported non-national European, programmes. Figures from the European Audiovisual Observatory confirm these trends. They show that the import of European fiction in 16 European countries has stabilized since 1994 but that import from American has increased (Table 1). In other words, the explosion in demand for programmes has up till now been filled with national and American material.

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Table 1: Origin of imported fiction in 16 European countries Fiction of European origin

Co-production

Imported fiction – nonEuropean

Germany

France

UK

Italy

European

joined.

NonEur.

US

CA

AU+ NZ

1994

1.7%

2.9%

6.0%

1.6%

2.7%

1.8%

0.4%

69.8%

1.5%

3.4%

1995

1.6%

2.7%

5.8%

1.1%

2.9%

2.7%

0.4%

69.8%

1.6%

3.3%

1996

1.5%

2.2%

5.2%

1.0%

3.0%

2.6%

0.5%

71.2%

1.5%

3.2%

1997

1.6%

2.3%

5.0%

1.0%

4.4%

2.0%

0.4%

71.3%

1.7%

3.1%

Source: l’Observatoire de l’Audiovisuel, Statistical Yearbook (1999: 196) As far as film is concerned, the same imbalance occurs. It is striking that European non-national films still do not circulate in Europe, and that the share of national films in their own market, not withstanding some recent exceptions and EU policy in this area4 is extremely small (Directorate of Culture and Audiovisual Policy, 1997: 14 et seq.; Pauwels, 1995; Directorate of Culture and Audiovisual Policy, 1997: 12 et al.). The market share of national films in their home market is around 17%, and the share of non-national European films on the European market only amounts to 13%. The gross earnings per distributed film are by consequence much higher in America than in Europe, namely 5.3 million dollars or 4.8 million euro in America compared to 1 million dollars or 900,000 euro in Europe (Directorate of Culture and Audiovisual Policy, 1997: 14).

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Table 2: Market shares of the national and European non-national film on the European markets (1995/1996/1997). Market share (%) of national film (incl. Copro)

Market share (%) of European non-national film

1995

1996

1997

1995

1996

1997

France

35.3

37.5

34.2

8.4

6.5

10

Germany

6.3

15.3

16.7

5.1

8.9

11.5

Italy

23.7

23.9

31.3

11.7

12.5

15.9

Spain

11.9

9.3

13

14.1

11.8

17.6

UK

10.2

-

26

6.1

-

-

Belgium

2.5

5.3

3.6

20.8

10.9

13.4

Netherlands

7.6

5.4

3.4

75.

3.6

10.5

Denmark

10.3

3.7

6.6

7.4

15.3

13.1

Portugal

8.4

17.2

18.8

34

-

29

Finland

-

-

-

11.2

15.7

18.6

Greece

4

-

-

21

-

-

Switserla

2

4.3

2.3

24

24.3

21

Norway

12

5.4

5.2

-

-

-

Luxemburg

0

0.2

1.7

15.1

16.2

28.4

Iceland

5.9

8

3.7

-

6.7

13

Sweden

20.4

18

17.8

6.1

-

-

Source: Media Salles (1998) This has resulted in a trade deficit that has continued to grow through the years. It increased from only 2.5 billion euro in 1990 to 8 billion euro in 2000 (Idate, 1992: 104-115; l’Observatoire de l’Audiovisuel, Statistical Yearbook 1998: 37 and 2002). According to the Commission's Communication on 'Principles and guidelines for the Community's audiovisual policy in the digital age' (CEC COM(1999) 657final): “American productions account for between 60 – 90% of Member States' audiovisual markets (receipts from cinema ticket sales, video cassette sales and rentals and from sales of television fiction programmes), whilst the respective European share of the American market is of the order of 1 – 2%”. In terms of content, this is visible in the ubiquity of American films on European TV and

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television screens. Of the top 50 box office successes in 1998, just 10 were of European origin, including two British-American co-productions. Leading the top 50 was Titanic, Armageddon and Saving Private Ryan. As Tongue argues "This deficit has a cultural, social and political impact on the UK and Europe" (Tongue, 1999:108). These trends are even more problematic in the smaller EU countries because their markets are smaller and their cultures are more hermetic and thus not so easily exportable (Burgelman and Pauwels, 1992; Pauwels, 1995). There seems to be very little interest indeed among Greek viewers to watch a Scandinavian soap, and vice versa. It is also much more difficult to realize a return on investment when making a programme for an audience of 6 million people, in a language that few understand (and thus needs dubbing, extra promotion etc. if it is to be exported), than when doing the same for an audience of 50 million. At the same time, this means less investment is made in film production in smaller states as compared to their bigger European neighbors, not to mention their American counterparts. As shown in Table 3, the average production budget of bigger member states is double the average budget the smaller states can spend.

Table 3: Average film production budget in 1997 (billions of dollars) Big EU Small EU US countries countries France 5.53 Belgium 3.18 Majors 53.41 Germany 5.68 Netherlands 4.2 Independent U.K. 8.34 Luxemburg 0.66 Spain 2.97 Ireland 5.08 Italy 3.44 Denmark 2.6 Finland 1.65 Sweden 2.63 Austria 1.23 Switzerland 0.82 Portugal 0.44 Average 5.19 Average 2.25 Average 14.53 Source: Screen Digest, June 1998

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However, if content diversity is a difficult economic objective within a globalizing entertainment economy, it might also be politically difficult to promote or organize. Does this rather dominant position of the USA imply that (1) European culture is threatened and (2) that a European response should be imposed? These questions divide both the policy and research communities in Europe, and are problematic in several respects. Firstly, the assumption of American hegemony is disputable because it assumes on the one hand, that European production is better, because it is not American. It also ignores the fact that most American media groups, and indeed European groups too, are now global multinationals, as illustrated by the recent merger between Canal Plus/Vivendi/Universal. In this respect, it comes as no surprise that former Canal Plus/Vivendi’s CEO Jean-Marie Messier declared European cultural specificity to be dead. Second, European research in this area makes more or less the same mistakes as those observed in the debate on the New World International Information Order. This mistake resides in the fact that studies on the origin of a programme (in itself an irrelevant indicator as the example on the American programming industry just clarified) are used to presuppose effects on the audience, a fallacy that reception analysis within the cultural studies tradition has sufficiently tackled. Third, it raises the question of what is so specific about European culture, that is has to be considered as endangered (Garnham, 1993). This is a vital but extremely complex research question since it is difficult to imagine how this can be operationalised. It would mean that European research would have to demonstrate what the specific quality of European culture is -- again, a very complex issue since it depends on the interests involved. Quality in broadcasting is something which can be measured in many different ways (Mulgan, 1990). It is in fact related to different assumptions as to the nature of the audience (consumer versus citizens), of broadcasting (being a commercial good or not) and as to the relationship between broadcasting and society. From this point of view, the mechanisms Europe puts in place to establish a competitive audio-visual industry -- i.e. the Media program, quota and competition policy – should be fundamentally reconsidered. First of all, US domination cannot possibly be compensated for through EU funding. The total amount of the Media III program targeted at the production of audio-visual programmes, barely amounts to 350 million euro for 2000/2005, -- in no way comparable with the average production budget of the US major

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companies. To push the comparison a bit further: the total budget of Media 1 was similar to that of just one high budget US production, i.e. Titanic. An interesting paradox within European policy thinking emerges here: promoting competition and free market as the ultimate benchmark for free movement of goods and services within the community is not easily compatible with any support, based on cultural interests, of the broadcasting industry. This would mean an agreement has to be reached between big and small countries whom both have different objectives and interests in this area, as illustrated by the quota discussion in the Television without Frontiers Directive. Smaller countries not only have much higher import rates than the bigger European ones, but they also complain about being too dependent on their big European neighbours. This came to the fore in the quota debates at the end of the 80s. In order to protect the European broadcasting industry, it was suggested that each country would have to schedule more than 50% of European programmes. In response, the small countries aired the view that this would oblige them to buy more expensive European programmes when they could buy cheaper elsewhere (from the US). The whole debate resulted in the adoption of the EU recommendation that member states should do their best to schedule as many European programmes as possible. Not only did the whole issue illustrate that quotas are economic and in this context to a large extent contestable, another fallacy appears: the scheduling of European content does not per se mean that it is actually watched. Audience research as well as political economy have clearly shown that one can only speak of homogeneous markets in broadcasting when the cultural proximity of the audiences is close. As we have said before, there seems to be very little interest indeed from a Southern European viewer in watching a Scandinavian soap and vice versa. This underlines the fundamental friction between the policy of a united Europe for business and the continuing constraints of cultural specificity. Another level of complexity is added by looking at how EU competition policy comes into play here. EU competition policies are meant to reconcile two conflicting objectives. On the one hand, sizeable corporations are essential for accomplishing internal market objectives and strengthening European competitiveness. Improving technical efficiency in the production and introduction of a given set of (new) services at the lowest possible cost and overcoming fragmentation are important criteria in the industrial economic analysis of alliances. On the other hand, these holdings have to be deterred from taking advantage of their increased market power to undermine competition, i.e. their potential for anticompetitive behaviour towards both their competitors and suppliers and the abuse

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of a dominant position vis-à-vis the users (Kiessling and Johnson, 1998:157; Cini and McGowan, 1998). As regards the media, Community competition policies adds an extra dimension stemming from the added cultural value of the software product. Here decisions regarding competition may have an impact on media pluralism and diversity, policy principles which in Europe are traditionally associated, among other things, with a public service mission, but as such do not belong to the specific objectives of the EC competition policy which is concerned solely with fair competition. It is questionable whether objectives for pluralism and diversity have been met by the outcomes of EU competition policy. With regard to the application of the rules concerning state aid, an area that is traditionally not regarded as anti-trust, it is the general belief of the Commission that state aid does not contribute to economic efficiency. Its only benefit is to remedy market imperfection. It is in the light of this conviction that state-aid cases have been adjudicated. As the European Commission has often pointed to the need to remedy structural weaknesses in the audio- visual sector, it seemed until recently that the application of the state-aid rules in this area could be positively evaluated (CEC, COM (96) 160 final of 17 April 1996), in particular since the EC Treaty made provision for a new exception to the application of state-aid rules in order to support culture (art. 87.3.d). In this context it should, however, be emphasised that the Commission and the Court seldom deviate from the legal essence of the European unification, i.e. broad rules and no exceptions. Discriminatory and non-proportional provisions included in German, French, Danish, Spanish, Italian, Dutch and Greek support mechanisms for the film industry have had to give way under pressure from the Commission (Pons, 1996). Since 1998, however, the Commission has been seeking to lay down a more general policy line with regard to state aid to cinema and television programming. In its Decision of 9.6.1998 on the French system of support to film production, the Commission set out a list of 4 specific criteria on the basis of which it intended to assess state aid to cinema and TV programme production under the cultural derogation of Article 87.3.d. In particular the provisions that aid to the audio- visual sector should be limited to 50% of the production budget and that producers receiving such support must be free to spend at least 20% of the film budget in another member state led to uproar and unrest in professional and political circles. Significantly, the often heard point of view that ‘culture should not serve as an alibi for subsidizing an industry’ has been neutralized by the adoption in November 2000 of a resolution stating that the audio-visual industry is an ‘exceptional cultural industry’. Assistance to film and media ‘forms’ is, in the wording of the resolution, ‘one of the most important means of maintaining cultural diversity, which is precisely the objective of government assistance’. Whether this marks a turn in the tide has still to be seen.

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Public service as guarantee for quality and diversity? In so far as the Treaty recognises the importance of the concept of public service and provides guarantees for its existence and maintenance (arts. 7d, 86, 87.3.d), the Decisions of the Commission undoubtedly point to a certain goodwill. In the audio-visual sector member states have gone so far as to emphasise the importance of public broadcasting by endorsing the Protocol on Public Service Broadcasting, which was an annex to the Amsterdam Treaty5. Of more fundamental importance, however, are the proceedings that the Commission has initiated concerning state support to public broadcasting. Various private broadcasters have complained that the licence fee system distorts competition, especially when coupled with advertising on public service broadcasters. Several complaints have been brought before the Commission on this basis by the private broadcasters (Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, Germany) (Oreja, 1998). The Portugese RTP case was the first one on which the Commission has passed judgement (Decision of 7 November 1996). The Commission concluded that the public financing which the RTP enjoys is not a form of government support because, in return, the RTP is required to fulfil public service tasks which are clearly defined by law. Whether this has had the effect of creating an important precedent is, however, another question, particularly since the Commission’s Decision has recently (May 2000) been cancelled by the Court of First Instance. It found that the Commission had incorrectly reached a decision too quickly and should therefore start a more thorough enquiry. Similar failings had been denounced earlier by the Court of First Instance in the case of TF1 versus France 2 and 3. It is clear that, in the eyes of the Commission (Oreja, 1998) and the Court of Justice, support measures always have to be tested against principles such as transparency, proportionality, objective necessity and the like, which are arbitrary in that they have never been precisely defined. This raises the question, for example, as to whether licence fees can be maintained, and if so, how and in what form. Are they indeed proportional? In other words, is public broadcasting funding limited to the strictly necessary to allow fulfillment of the public service remit? Is it objectively necessary with respect to the public service mission? Is it really related to the added costs incurred by fulfilling a public service mission? As the added cost is almost impossible to calculate and criteria like proportionality are interpreted restrictively, public service broadcaster remain in a situation of legal uncertainty. However, even if public service institutions were to survive, one should bear in mind that Public service status is not in itself a guarantee for varied content, or for ‘providing what the market does not offer’. One should bear in mind, when being critical of the market, that one should also be critical of public broadcasting as an

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instrument for relevant policy, as the EU competition policy quite rightly pointed out. Indeed, the whole debate on the nature of public service broadcasting as opposed to commercial broadcasting rests on two assumptions (Burgelman, 1990). Firstly, public broadcasting has no inherent operational mechanism that determines its management, unlike commercial broadcasting (profit making). Public broadcasting is only a concept. Second, and by consequence, it is assumed that a public service exploitation model in broadcasting is a distinct organizational way of running a broadcasting institution. More precisely it is accepted that public service broadcasting offers different outputs in terms of programming than commercial broadcasting (which is the main reason why public broadcasters are defended) because public service broadcasting is a different way of organizing communication. This specificity of public service broadcasting is very seldom challenged. On the contrary, the specific nature of public service broadcasting is accepted, almost as an ontological fact, which has been there from the beginning of broadcasting. Therefore one can almost speak of an ideology of public service broadcasting: public service broadcasting was and is superior to commercial broadcasting because it is organized in a non-market way. Many studies have, in the meantime, demonstrated that the way public broadcasters operate is very similar to commercial ones. This means that having a public service output in broadcasting is not only dependent on media inherent characteristics. In fact, it may be more related to non-media specific elements, such as political culture and economic policy than to the specific way in which it is organized as a mass medium. It follows from this non-media centric point of view that the dilemma presented by current regulatory debates on communications policy – i.e. between the need to regulate a communications system so that it fulfils its public service role, and the need to deregulate it commercially in order to fit a given cultural project – may be false. Simply because regulating into a public service way, because of its supposed rationale of quality, culture or independence, is not the most important reason why such a system was chosen for by the policymakers. A non-media centered approach even suggests that a public service can also be chosen for its conservative, middle of the road, non- critical or whatever characteristics a market approach is said to be typical for. The same reasoning goes for the implementation and articulation of the concept of universal service in telecommunications. Although large-scale comparative analysis of the regulatory concept of universal service is lacking, what is available

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(Garnham, 1988b; Burgelman & Verhoest, 1994) demonstrates that it was, like public service in broadcasting, a compromise between all dominant interests (and the fact that business users and residential users had no other choice than to use the same network). It differs from country to country and is not a God-given concept that has a regulatory dynamic of its own. This means that ‘solving’ the present problems of equal distribution and access to telecommunications in Europe, in a fully liberalized market, by imposing a concept like universal service -or by proposing regulatory concepts in which infrastructure, platform services and applications are seen as separate entities -- without negotiating this with industry, political authorities and so on, is bound to fail. Public service and universal service should therefore be regarded as a normative and dynamic set of rules which have to be constantly reviewed and redefined (but not reinvented) in the light of the constantly changing nature of power relations and society.

Political and regulatory convergence of broadcasting and telecommunications at the global level: The impact of the WTO policy actions Last but not least is the extra burden the WTO might actually put on the political and economic trends in European broadcasting and telecommunications. It could result in more conflicts between cultural diversity and the noticeable oligopolistic reality of the market on the one hand, and on tensions between the global policies, EU policy and the regional priorities on the other. As a consequence, a blurring of definitions might put extra pressure on maintaining traditional mechanisms like subsidies and public service for promoting content creation and diversity. This last point becomes crucial within the coming WTO negotiations, launched in Qatar in November 2001 (Pauwels and Loisen 2002). Although the European Union was able to postpone the dismantling of its audio-visual policy and the liberalisation of the audio-visual sector during the Uruguay round, it did not succeed in exacting a separate cultural status for the audio-visual sector. The European audio-visual sector is therefore not safeguarded against future attempts at liberalisation. On the contrary: other contracting parties have already started on this liberalisation and have made concrete commitments. As few liberalisation commitments have been made in the audio-visual sector and an elaborate list of MFN exceptions has been drawn up, the only immediate effect of the GATS Agreement is that all members who have not entered into agreements will undertake to keep any rules and measures in the audio-visual sector which they

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subscribe to now or in the future transparent (Article III of GATS Agreement). In this way, the largest and most important opponent of imposed liberalisation of the sector, the EU, has primarily gained time and a certain amount of room for manoeuvre. It remains temporarily free to enforce its regulatory framework and support measures. However, the increasing convergence between traditional and new, digital, communications media (telecommunications and other ICT services) is leading to a situation where audio-visual sector policy and regulation are increasingly coming into contact with other forms of service provision. The result of this convergence is that borders between formerly relatively isolated concepts such as ‘audio-visual services’, ‘electronic commerce’ or ‘online trading’ are becoming blurred (Wheeler 2000, 254, 257; Deselaers & König 1999, 148). In view of the stalemate on the audio-visual dossier during the Uruguay round, it may be supposed that the advocates of imposed liberalisation of the audio-visual sector will attempt to crack the audio-visual market via the points of contact between various types of service. This is even more valid insofar as major steps towards liberalizing telecommunications had already been undertaken during the Uruguay round and in subsequent years. Although extreme differences between mainly the US and a number of developing countries meant that agreement was only reached on value added services during the Ministerial Conference in Marrakech (which formed the closing section of the Uruguay round), the deregulation of the entire telecom sector followed soon after. Basic telecommunications services, which represent approximately 80% of total turnover in telecommunication services trade (Barth 1999, 60) were finally fully included in GATS following difficult negotiations on 15 February 1997 (Fredebeul Klein & Freytag 1997, 477, 483, 486). An additional aspect which may ensure that it will become ever more difficult to consider audio-visual services as a cultural product, is the fact that the new concepts arising from convergence are not yet clearly defined. In the past it was possible to fall back on the position that regulatory interference in the distribution of content was defensible for cultural reasons during discussions about the audiovisual sector. Thus Europe could keep free of liberalization commitments and advance the provisions of the Directive ‘Television without Frontiers’ without being sanctioned. However, where audio-visual services can be seen as a form of electronic transport, the issues are not so clear (Wheeler 2000, 257; Deselaers & König 1999, 148, 150). Furthermore, the US wishes to classify some products which are delivered and downloaded via the Internet as virtual goods, making them fall under the GATT regulation, which (for the time being) demands much stronger liberalization than GATS (Deselaers & König 1999, 151). Incidentally, this position is not only supported by the US, but also by another major trading power, Japan.

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In view of the dominance of Japanese companies in the production of CDs, the prospect of a fully liberalized Internet market is an important reason for siding with the US (Le Monde 23 November 1999, 8). This may therefore mean an end to the cultural exception and the situation where member states can subsidize the audiovisual sector. However, as previous negotiations within the GATS framework were disappointing for the US, an attempt is now being made to apply the rules already negotiated for other sectors to the audio-visual. Anticipating the position that the Europeans will probably adopt in this dossier, the US is attempting to demonstrate that sufficient safeguards exist for preserving the cultural component of audio-visual services. Thus, Article IV of GATT (dating from 1947) provides for an exception concerning the rules for national treatment of cinema films, GATS Article XIV (a) and GATT Article XX (a) provide for possibilities to intervene on a regulatory basis “to preserve public morality” and the acceptance of obligations does not by definition mean no possibility of acting via regulation … “so long as the regulation is not administered in a way that represents an unexpected trade barrier” (United States, Communication from the United States – Audiovisual and Related Services; 18 December 2000). In other words, room for European manoeuvre is limited.

Conclusion: Building the European Knowledge society on converged policy making? If a European Knowledge Society is to appear, the three aspects of EU regulation - competition policy, telecommunications policy and media policy -- must be tuned into each other. The first obstacle to overcome is the fact that European Information Society policy is, to a large extent, concerned with infrastructure. The issue of what content should be provided is very sensitive for the member states, as they want as much subsidiarity as possible. This means that two rival policies are at work: a ‘centralist’ hardware policy as opposed to a decentralizing preoccupation with subsidiarity in terms of content to be offered on that infrastructure. The second obstacle (related to the first) which must be overcome is the conflict between the will of the EU to install fair competition, open the market, abolish the monopolies, etc. (EU competition objectives) and the need for at least a stable environment with guaranteed revenues to attract the necessary investment in

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trans-European networks (EU industrial policy objectives) on the one hand, and the safeguarding of diversity and pluralism on the other hand (EU media policy objectives). Moreover EU competition policy is not always compatible with financing mechanisms for Public Service (state aid) or EU action programmes such as Media. This means that EU policy is rather inadequate when it comes to tackling what has always been a major concern -- promoting cultural diversity in mass media, as demonstrated by the problems associated with the import of American broadcasting. The last is even more fundamental. Since the EU is a top-down construction, composed of nations which have, as their first priority, to gain their legitimacy at the national level, it is inevitable that the principle of subsidiarity will not always smooth the path of the European integration. Europe’s specificity resides in fact that it is the local (nation states), which has been there far longer than the global (the EU). As argued throughout this article, there is nothing specific about European media policy. In fact, the main issues at stake are the same in other industrialized countries, but it is the context of Europe that makes them unique. This uniqueness lies in the fact that though Europe is a market, it lacks the necessary homogeneity to behave like a real market for communication services; it is also a political unity, without most of the ‘normal’, bottom-up political legitimacy such a unity requires. It is this tension between the local and the global reality that makes a pan-European communication policy so problematic, much more than the technical problems.

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Notes 1

The main ideas of this article were already developed in Burgelman (1997).The views in this chapter are the ones of the authors and do not represent the views of the EC. The authors want to thank Jan Loisen for his input. 2 Since the regulation came into effect a number of mergers involving audiovisual media and allied services have been reported. Statistics on the merger regulation application moreover show increased merger activity in the telecommunications and media sector since 1996 (Cini andMcGowan, 1998:124). Of the 1158 decisions which have been taken until now on the basis of the merger regulation, about 45 decisions are related to the media sector and 142 to the telecommunications sector. More importantly, however, six of the twelve negative decisions made until now under the merger regulation directly affect the media sector: MSG Media Service (1994), Nordic Satellite Distribution (1995), HMG (RTL/Veronica/Endemol (1995), Bertelsmann/Kirch/Première (1997), Deutsche Telekom/Betaresearch (1997) and MCI Worldcom/Sprint (2000) (Pauwels and Cincera 2001) 3 The many different agents in this field, from all kinds of network operators to consumer electronics companies and software distributors, seem not to be driven so much by rational, long-term strategies, but rather by a possibly short-sighted compulsion not to miss out on current developments and state-of-the-art technology (Burgelman, 1994). 4 Here, this relates mainly to the major producing countries such as Germany, Great Britain, and France. Often however this increasing market share held by the national film can be attributed to one or more box office successes (‘The Full Monty’, ‘Bean’, ‘The fifth element’, ‘Knockin’on heavens door’, ‘Rossini’, ‘Kleines Arscloch’,...) so that it is perhaps too early to talk of a real structural trend (l’Observatoire de l’Audiovisuel, Statistical Yearbook 1999: 78). 5 The protocol declares that, considering that ‘the public broadcasting system in Member States is directly connected with the democratic, social and cultural needs’ of every society and the need to maintain media diversity (…) the provisions of this treaty (…) do not detract from the rights of member states to provide financial resources for public broadcasting, in so far as such resources are provided to broadcasting organisations for the fulfilment of the defined and organised missions entrusted to them in the public service area, and providing that these resources do not influence trading and competition conditions in the Community to such an extent that, taking into account the demands of public service, they are opposed to the public interest.”

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References Barth, D. (1999), The prospects of international trade in services, Bonn: Friedrich Ebert Foundation. Bonnell, R. (1989), La vingt-cinquième image. Une économie de l'audiovisuel, Paris: Gallimard/Femis. Booz Allen and Hamilton (1989), Strategic Partnership as a Way Forward in European Broadcasting, Media viewpoint. Booz Allen and Hamilton (1992), Study to Establish a Methodology for the Implementation of Article 4 Paragraph 2 and 4 of Council Directive 89/532/EEC. Television without Frontiers. Brussels. Brenner, S. R. (1993), Politique de la concurrence et mutation du secteur de la diffusion audiovisuelle, Paris : OCDE. Burgelman, J. -C., Bogdanowicz, M. and Punie, Y. (2002), The future of online media industries: scenarios for 2005 and beyond. IPTS Report n° 64, pp. 35-42. Burgelman, J. -C. (2001), How social dynamics Influence Information Society Technology: Lessons for innovation policy, pp. 215-224 in OECD, Social Sciences and Innovation – Information Society. Paris, OECD. Burgelman, J. -C. (1994), ‘Pan European experiences in communication policy: possible relevance for South Africa’, Communicatio, 20:1 (1994); pp. 9-14. Burgelman, J. -C., Punie, Y. and Verhoest, P. (1995), Van telegraaf tot telenet. Naar een nieuw communicatiebeleid in België en Vlaanderen, Brussels: VUBPress. Burgelman, J. -C. (1990), ‘Politics and the media: how relative can the autonomy be? Some theoretical remarks concerning the dominant concepts on the relationship between media and society’ in Hochheimer, J., Jakubowicz, K. and Splichal, S. (eds.), Democratization and the Media: an East-West Dialogue. (Ljubljana: CCC). Burgelman, J. -C. (1997), ‘Issues and assumptions in communication policy and research in Western Europe: a critical analysis’ in Corner, J., Schlesinger, P. and Silverstone, R. (eds), Media research. A critical survey, London: Routledge, pp. 123-153. Burgelman, J. -C. and Pauwels, C. (1992), ‘Audio-visual and cultural policies in the small European countries: the challenge of a unified European television market’, Media, Culture and Society, 14:2 (1992), pp. 169-183. Burgelman, J. -C. and Verhoest, P. (1994), ‘Les services publics de communication en Belgique (1830-1994)’, Réseaux, 66 (1994), pp. 67-98. Charon, J. -M. (1991), L’Etat des médias, Paris: La Découverte. Cini, M. and McGowan, L. (2000), Competition policy in the European Union, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire and London: Macmillan Press.

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Collins, R. (1994), Broadcasting and audio-visual policy in the European single market, London: J. Libbey. Collins, R., Garnham, N. and Locksley, G. (1988), The economics of TV, London: Sage. Conso, C. (1991), ‘Comment s’explique la montée en puissance des groupes multimédias dans le monde’ in Charon, J.M. (ed.) L’Etat des médias (Paris: La Découverte/Médiaspouvoirs), pp. 290-293. Constantelou, N. and Mansell, R. (1994), On the road to competition in telecommunication: ‘catching up’ in the European Union less favoured regions (paper), Montpellier: Encip. Crookes, P. (1996), ‘Convergences and alliances: the shape of things to come’, The Bulletin (European Institute for the Media), 13:2 (1996), pp. 1-4. de Witte, B. (2001), ‘Trade in Culture: International Legal Regimes and EU Constitutional Values’in De Búrca G. and Scott J. (eds.) The EU and the WTO. Legal and Constitutional Issues (Oxford: Hart Publishing), pp. 237-255. Deselaers, W. and König, M. (1999), ‘The WTO Millennium Round and the Audiovisual Sector’, International Trade Law and Regulation, 5:6, pp. 147-154. Eliassen, K. A. and Sjovaag M. (eds.) (1999), European Telecommunications Liberalisation, London and New York: Routledge. Euromedia Research Group (1992), The media in Western Europe, London: Sage. European Audiovisual Observatory, Statistical Yearbook 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2002, Strasbourg: European Audiovisual Observatory. Fredebeul-Krein, M. and Freytag, A. (1997), ‘Telecommunications and WTO discipline: an assessment of the WTO agreement on telecommunication services’, Telecommunications Policy, 21:6 (1997), pp. 477-491. Garnham, N. (1990), Capitalism and communication, London: Sage. Garnham, N. (1993), ‘The mass media, cultural identity, and the public sphere in the modern world’, Public Culture, 5:5, pp. 251-265. Hancock, D. (1993), ‘The world’s top AV companies: the IDATE 100’, Screen Digest, August, pp. 181-4. Hulsink, W. (1994), ‘The single European Telecoms Market: from state monopolies and national champions to an oligopoly of Euro-nationals and global alliances’, Tilburg: WORC paper. IDATE (1992), Marché mondial du cinéma et de l’audiovisuel. Analyses industrielles, Montpellier: Idate. IDATE (2000), Development of digital television in the European Union, reference report/1999, Montpellier: Idate. Kayzer, H. J. (1993), Controlling für Rundfunkanstalten, Baden-Baden: Nomos. Kiessling, T. and Johnson, G. (1998), ‘Strategic Alliances in Telecommunications and Media: An Economic Analysis of Recent European Commission Decisions’ in

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Pilon, R. (1991), ‘Groupes et stratégies. L’industrie mondiale des médias et de divertissement’ in Charon J.M. (ed.) L’Etat des médias (Paris: La Découverte/Médiaspouvoirs), pp. 282-290. Porter, V. (1991), Film and Television in the Single European Market. Dreams and Delusions. Inaugural Professoral Lecture, Westminster University, 17 October 1991. Preston, P. (1993), ‘Some limits to neoliberal regulation: a materialistic and institutionalist perspective’, Aberdeen: CPR conference (unpublished paper). Reding, V. (2000), Community audiovisual policy in the 21st century. Content without frontiers? Speech delivered at the British Screen Advisory Council, London, 30 november 2000. Rutten, P. (2000), ‘De toekomst van de verbeeldingsmachine. De culturele industrie in de eenentwintigste eeuw’, Boekmancahier 12:43. Sanchez-Tabernero, A. (1993), Media concentration in Europe. Commercial enterprise and public interest, Manchester: European Institute for the Media. Siune, K. and Truetzschler W. (eds.) (1992), Dynamics of media politics, London: Sage, 1992. Tongue, C. (1999), ‘Culture Or Monoculture? The European Audiovisual Challenge’ in Marsden, C. (ed.) Convergence in European Digital TV Regulation (London: Blackstone Press), pp. 99-140. United States (2000), Communication from the United States – Audiovisual and Related Services, 18 December 2000. Wheeler, M. (2000), ‘Research Note: The ‘Undeclared War’ Part II. The European Union’s Consultation Process for the New Round of the General Agreement on Trading Services/World Trade Organization on Audiovisual Services’, European Journal of Communication, 15:2, pp. 253-262.

Issues in measuring Information Society adoption in Europe François Heinderyckx Adoption of the Information Society in Europe (as well as in the developed world at large), is considered a given and a political priority. The only uncertainty associated with this overwhelming and said to be irreversible trend is the rate of adoption and the nature of the obstacles holding it up. This contribution will argue that the attention and energy vested into studying these issues foster on restrictive perspectives partly based on erroneous assumptions. In particular, it will be argued that most IS adoption indicators are not only diverse (hence hazardous to compare) but more importantly deprived of unequivocal conceptual basis. The central and apparently simple ‘Internet use’ indicators will be used to elaborate on this issue. Moreover, it will be argued that mainstream initiatives in assessing IS take up are overlooking two crucial issues: (a) that besides those individuals who cannot use IS technologies, there remains a significant and potentially irreducible proportion of individuals who simply do not want to use them and (b) that these ‘want-nots’ are likely to be discriminated in their rights as citizens.

The challenge of measuring IS adoption Ever since the Information Society self-proclaimed its emergence and advent, it has been considered inseparable from a major shift in society bearing high expectations as a source of growth, wealth, employment, and well-being in general. Even though social and innovation research has gradually turned its focus on the users (Vedel, 1994), technological determinism still imposes the view that technological innovation drives progress. These prospects have triggered countless initiatives in attempting to measure its progress among businesses, administrations and households. Those measures have gradually become fully-

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fledged socio-economic indicators alongside traditional indicators used to monitor countries or regions (GDP, unemployment rate, etc.). The development of the Information Society, however, is much more challenging to monitor than one would think. Undertakings to monitor the adoption of the Information Society rely almost exclusively on survey research interviewing representative samples of population about their use of IS related technologies. Given the prohibitive cost associated with such studies, measures are so far predominantly carried out by the industry for which the exercise is also one of plain market research. The successive waves of such indicators are strikingly heterogeneous in their methodology, up to the point where using their results requires great caution if only regarding the variables they actually measure. One of the core indicators of IS take up is the ‘Internet penetration’. Behind this seemingly simple and unambiguous concept lays a variety of variables as wide as that of the survey questions they are based upon. A number of ‘meta-sources’ try to compile various studies in order to provide a reliable basis for comparisons, mostly on a nation-by-nation perspective. NUA, Internetstats.com, CyberAtlas and other web sites gather statistics from various sources and try to aggregate them with too little concern for the diversity of underlying methodologies, except for a few words of caution (‘Often, there are widely differing counts. We do our best to check on the accuracy of counts by comparing them to regional growth patterns and other projections’ warns CyberAtlas). For lack of a systematic meta-analysis, we shall consider two main clusters of indicators used to measure Internet adoption. The first cluster focuses on ‘access to’ the Internet. The questions used query whether respondents have within their reach the means to use the Internet, most often at home or at work. Although Internet is accessed from a number of places (Heinderyckx, 2001), one can regard as genuine Internet users those having a connection at home. This particular approach is quite typical of the market research perspective in which ‘penetration’ is gauged against ownership of the necessary equipment and services to use the Internet. These studies are easily identifiable when they feed triumphant headlines announcing that so many households, for example, are ‘connected’. Using data from the Eurobarometer surveys organised by the European Commission, we can assess Internet penetration in European households on that very basis (EB 56.0, see second column of Table 1). On average, a little less than 30 % of all European respondents say they have access to the Internet from their home. However impressive these figures may be, they tell us very little about IS adoption. At best, they provide an evaluation of potential users.

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Deciphering the ‘Internet user’ The second cluster of indicators is centred on determining whether respondents qualify as actual ‘Internet users’. This apparently simple indicator can be particularly misleading. What makes one an ‘Internet user’? One way to avoid endless arguments about what is an adequate definition of an Internet user, is to simply ask people whether they consider themselves an Internet user. Even though such an approach obviously relies on a blurred and ambiguous basis, it is nonetheless relevant in the way it measures consistently respondents’ selfperception of being an Internet user, i.e. singling out individuals who feel they have taken a step towards those technologies and, in a way, are committed to integrate them in their way of life, if only partly. Let us see what picture of the ‘Internet user’ is produced by such a broad approach. Using data from wave 56.3 of the Eurobarometer, we find that over one third (37,2 %) of the European population see themselves as Internet users (the question was “Do you use the Internet nowadays?”). Quite predictably, that proportion varies considerably among countries (from 19% in Greece to 68% in Sweden) and among various demographic groups (see first column of Table 1). Another approach to measuring Internet adoption is to concentrate not only on the use of Internet in general, but to include some notion of frequency of use. Some studies include in ‘Internet users’ statistics even those who use it very seldom. If one has ever used the Internet, it can be argued that he or she has taken that decisive first step towards IS technologies. On the contrary, one could argue that very low frequencies of use can be an indication of dissatisfaction which is likely to build up resistance against, rather than initiate transition towards IS technologies. Using questions querying the ‘frequency of use’ allows to differentiate ‘occasional users’ from ‘heavy users’. In fact, on the continuum of frequency of use, one might decide ‘true’ or ‘actual’ users are only found above a specific threshold of frequency. This approach can be upheld by arguing that it takes into account only individuals who have truly integrated IS technologies into their daily lives, their cultural practices, their information, communication and leisure activities. Again, the Eurobarometer provides figures regarding the frequency of use (EB 56.0). The third and fourth columns of Table 1 allow direct comparison with the previous approaches (access at home and self-perception). If we consider only those using the Internet at least several times a week, the European average drops below a quarter (24%). And if we only count the ‘heavy users’, i.e. those using it on a daily basis, the figure falls below 10%. None of these approaches are completely satisfactory. In practice, each study tends to find its own set of indicators to determine the nature and amplitude of the

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use of technologies in a particular way. Even if we agree on conventional qualifying factors for being an Internet user, we are still very far from understanding the mechanisms of adoption which require a finer investigation of the actual uses of the Internet. Being a user, even a regular one, still leaves a wide range of questions open as regards the actual applications being used, the time spent using them, etc. Such studies rely mostly on panels of Internet users whose representativeness is questionable. Within the wide range of Internet applications frequently investigated, a few bear relevance well beyond their strict scope. One of these, for example, is the use of Internet for bank transactions. Its relevance, I argue, comes from a number of underlying attitudes associated with doing online banking: technical skills (in spite of the efforts for user-friendliness, the applications are still complex), trust in reliability (one would not resort to e-banking if having doubts about the fact that things will happen as they seem), trust in confidentiality (most people are quite nervous about secrecy of financial issues), willingness to carry out remote tasks which until recently required presential transactions with an individual (bank clerk), etc. All these attitudes indicate a strong basis for the most ambitious Internet applications, so that it could be argued that e-banking activities are to be considered as an aggregate parameter defining a particular class of core Internet users. Let us consider this as yet another way to define, hence to measure the ‘Internet user’. Still based on Eurobarometer data, this would bring the proportion of Internet users in Europe down to a mere 6% (last column of Table 1).

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Table 1: Various approaches to measuring internet penetration using Eurobarometer data

S DK NL FIN L UK A IRL I F D B E P GR

Self-perceived 36.3 67.6 61.9 61.5 53.0 48.4 41.2 38.9 36.2 34.3 33.9 33.8 32.7 27.5 20.9 18.9

Internet access at (2) home 29.3 59.4 55.5 53.7 34.3 46.3 37.2 26.5 20.8 32.2 21.6 27.6 24.1 18.5 11.8 12.1

At least several times a (2) week 23.7 48.8 44.5 39.9 33.0 31.2 27.2 24.8 17.8 26.0 18.5 21.9 19.5 18.7 10.9 9.7

Male Female

43.0 30.0

33.8 25.1

30.3 17.6

12.2 6.2

8.3 4.0

Age 15 - 24 years 25 - 39 years 40 - 54 years 55 + years

63.8 47.4 37.4 11.9

43.4 38.3 34.2 10.9

39.9 33.9 24.6 6.0

14.5 13.6 9.6 2.1

4.5 9.8 7.8 2.2

Self-employed Employed Not working

43.5 45.4 27.5

37.4 37.4 20.8

30.8 32.6 14.7

12.1 12.7 5.4

10.6 9.3 2.4

Income - + ++

21.1 26.2 36.7 56.7

12.6 17.7 31.0 55.6

10.7 15.4 22.5 45.5

4.5 5.6 7.1 19.1

1.9 3.7 7.2 15.8

(Per cent) (1)

EU15

(3)

Every Remote (2) (2) day banking 9.1 6.0 24.9 27.7 23.6 21.8 19.9 12.2 11.4 24.5 13.2 14.0 12.3 6.3 9.1 8.5 7.2 1.0 10.0 2.4 6.9 4.9 6.0 7.3 8.6 4.1 5.8 1.5 2.8 0.5 3.7 0.6

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TEA

(1)

(4)

up to 15 years 16 - 19 years 20 + years Still studying

10.1 32.5 56.4 78.4

9.6 27.9 48.1 54.1

5.6 20.6 43.1 49.3

2.1 7.2 18.7 17.5

1.2 5.5 14.4 5.2

Average coefficient (5) of variation

0.36

0.39

0.44

0.50

0.63

(2)

Eurobarometer 56.3 (n=15,926, fieldwork January-February 2002) ; Eurobarometer (3) (4) 56.0 (n=16,162 , fieldwork August-September 2001) ; weighted average ; Terminal (5) Education Age (age at which respondent stopped full-time education) ; COV=std deviation/mean

These five different, yet uncomplicated definitions of ‘Internet users’ not only result in a wide range of levels of penetrations, they also prompt significantly different patterns among various demographic groups. The deviation observed among classes of such basic demographic variables as nationality, gender, age, level of education and occupation are notably higher when considering narrower definitions of the Internet user (see ‘Average coefficient of variation’ in Table 1). Figure 1 plots the penetration values for each EU country in both the selfperception of being an Internet user (broadest definition) and the use of e-banking (narrow definition). Coefficients of variation indicate much more ample differences among countries as regards e-banking (COV=0.95) than regarding broad penetration (COV=0.35). Figure 1 also shows that although the two variables are globally correlated, they are far from perfectly so. Countries with similar levels of Internet penetration on the broad scale (Denmark and Netherlands, 62%) show considerable difference in the stricter scale of e-banking (22 versus 12%). Countries showing not so dissimilar levels on the stricter scale of e-banking such as Austria and the Netherlands (8.5 and 12%) nonetheless present contrasting levels on the broader scale of self-perception (39 versus 61.5%).

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Figure 1

40

30 S FIN DK 20

L NL 10 D B GR+P

0 0

10

20

F I

E 30

A EU15

UK

IRL 40

50

60

70

80

Proportion of self-perceived internet users (C. of Var. = 0.35)

Likewise, the key demographic variables traditionally underlying the ‘digital divide’ (Servaes and Heinderyckx, 2002) give quite a different picture depending on the approach used as the basis for Internet penetration. The gender gap is much less spectacular on the self-perception scale than on stricter scales (where men are twice as keen on Internet as women, see Table 1). The generation gap takes a particular shape using the e-banking criterion given that younger users are less involved in financial transactions. The e-banking criterion enhances the already spectacular income gap. Even this quick comparison of five approaches to Internet penetration assessment using a coherent source (all our data comes from recent Eurobarometer surveys so that differences observed cannot, in our comparison, be attributed to methodological discrepancies) shows how delicate the exercise of measuring the Information Society can be. Methodological choices are never neutral and may impact considerably the observations and the conclusions one might draw upon them. Yet, measuring the Information Society faces even more fundamental issues, that of the very meaning of the variables to be measured, as can be seen by continuing to examine our example of the ‘Internet users’.

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Internet users as ‘audience’? History somewhat repeats itself. The early newspapers could only assess their success on the basis on circulation figures. Soon, their legitimacy and more importantly their advertising rates demanded that the number of readers be evaluated. This could only be achieved by surveys on representative samples. Respondents were (and still are) asked whether they read a particular newspaper. Interestingly, the notion of ‘being a reader’ of a newspaper is as simple in appearance, and as tricky to handle as that of the ‘Internet user’. What is a ‘reader’? In spite of genuine efforts of harmonisation, the definitions used to qualify as such vary among countries and among studies. The variations revolve along two dimensions: (a) what is considered ‘to read’ and (b) what is the reference period. In some cases, one is considered a reader if he has barely held a copy of the publication in hand. As for the reference period, it can range from the past 24 hours to the past week, if not more. In many cases, the result of some of these ridiculously broad definitions is that one who is merely in contact with some issue of a newspaper or a magazine is to be included in its readership, its audience. Likewise, audiences for posters and billboards are assessed by studying people’s whereabouts. In this case, one passing by (‘abeam’) a poster is considered as having had an ‘opportunity to see’ (OTS) the poster, and on that basis in included in the audience of that board. The early days of radio and television bear even more resemblance with the current situation of IS technologies. Early broadcasters circulated figures not of viewers or listeners of their station, or of any station, but rather the number of receivers sold. These figures appear nowadays as of limited interest except for the manufacturers and sellers of those appliances, yet the ‘access to Internet’ approach, or the number of domain names or of ISPs or of Internet hosts that we often see today is very similar in nature. Likewise, in more recent times, the transnational and thematic television stations, by lack of systematic study of their audience, usually advertise the number of households where their programme is received, or rather ‘can be received’, that is, most of the time, the number of subscribers to ‘bouquets’ or cable carriers on which they are included, if not the number of households in the area covered by their signal. There again, confusion exists between audience and potential audience. As does confusion prevail in radio audience measurement where two notions coexist, one based on simple contact with a station (audiences), the other taking into account the time spent listening to the various stations (market shares). Nowadays, the audience of broadcast media is monitored using complex survey approaches involving diary-based surveys (for radio) as well as people-meters

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panels (for television). However, various evolutions lead to an increased audience fragmentation which begins to cause difficulties in audience measurement and calls for an integrated system capable of tracking audience trends of all media based on large samples surveys (Heinderyckx and Phillips, 2001). But to what extent can the history of media audience measurement be transposed to assessing the implementation of IS technologies? Or even to the sole issue of Internet use? The frequent reference to ‘new media’ certainly entertains the idea that, after all, the Internet is just a case of new media, so that monitoring its users in just a case of measuring new audiences. Although such an approach seems quite stimulating, it is based on two questionable assumptions, namely that (a) Internet is a medium and (b) that Internet users are the audience of that medium. Internet is, indeed, a medium if only because it serves the purpose of disseminating information and content to large and dispersed numbers of individuals which could, on that basis, be considered as audiences. As such, the web site or web pages can be seen as a suitable medium for advertising, so that similar instruments to those used for analogous purposes in traditional media would be suitable. However, this would reduce the Internet to only a fragment of its reality and use. Studying television audience can be boiled down to two questions: is one (a) watching television and, if yes, (b) what channel? Even though there are many ways to watch television (how loud the volume, doing anything else at the same time, etc.) measurement can merely work on that simple dual basis. No such luck when assessing Internet users. Web surfers have a wealth of possibilities to go beyond browsing when, for example, they rely on the Internet for communicating with others (e-mail, chat, forum), or even to, themselves, disseminate content to an audience (personal web pages, peer-to-peer file exchange). The multifaceted use of Internet related technologies, and the fact that these facets combine into an unlimited and evolutional number of patterns makes the study of the use of the Internet, hence of the IS adoption, a knotty enterprise. It also brings into question the sheer relevance of such notion as the ‘Internet user’, hence its measurement. Measuring and monitoring the Information Society, i.e. understanding how the Information Society takes shape, how new technologies tempt some, but not others, how adoption reshapes existing media and communication practices, at what pace, in what directions, and for whom, and so many more crucial questions cannot be merely touched upon without a sustained effort in quantitative as well as qualitative research among users as well as non-users, including time-budget analysis to monitor the role and place the new practices take and how it affects

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pre-existing practices. These studies are not only complex and expensive. More importantly, they take time. Too much time in comparison with the pace at which changes, innovations and evolutions are taking place.

The issue of the ‘want-nots’ Most of the industry driven studies are understandingly oriented towards IS as a market: hardware and software purchase, ISP and broadband, e-commerce, advertising exposure and response etc. In a number of instances, one can suspect that the questions used to survey IS penetration are worded in such a way as to produce an optimistic snapshot of the situation, if not to provide the highest possible figures. One can speculate that this favourable light sustains efforts to demonstrate the fast growing rate of penetration, thus reassuring investors while simultaneously creating a momentum likely to make non-users feel deviant and pressure them to join the movement. This is not unlike self-fulfilling prophecies: the projections built upon these surveys usually come to the conclusion that the progression is overwhelming and that soon nearly everybody will own and use a particular technology. Literature, news discourse as well as political rhetoric on the subject converge predominantly on the fact that the advent of the Information Society is unquestionable, inevitable and indeed necessary in order to solve and anticipate various societal problems (Mansell, 2002). Therefore, it is widely accepted that anything likely to stimulate ICTs take-up is of general interest, hence legitimate as a priority. From that viewpoint, non-users are seen as outcasts likely to be left out of society and needing help to gain access to what has become a basic and necessary commodity. The gap between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ of the IS has become known as the ‘digital divide’. Its reduction now ranks alongside that of homelessness, unemployment or illiteracy in the political agendas of all industrialised countries and beyond. However prevailing these views have become, discordant voices can be heard particularly regarding the role of public authorities in stimulating a market which, some say, if given time, might simply regulate itself and, as cost decreases, primarily leave out those who choose not to join rather than those who cannot (Compaine 2001).

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This leads to an important distinction generally overlooked: beyond the well documented ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’, we must consider the ‘can-nots’ and, more importantly, the ‘want-nots’. When talking about the Information Society, mainstream discourse usually only distinguishes the first two categories which, in essence, constitute an oversimplification, for this dichotomy tends to uphold the absurd idea that one is either ‘in’ or ‘out’ of the Information Society (not to mention the underlying idea that those who are out are deviant). The ‘can-nots’ are occasionally mentioned when explanations have to be provided as to the causes for ‘not having’: they can’t afford and/or they lack the skills. There again, the assumption is that ‘they wish they could’, but they cannot, yet. What we call the ‘want-nots’ are seldom discussed. They are seen as a classic byproduct of resistance to change, reactionary fringes of population against modernity. The fact that ‘want-nots’ are largely neglected (apart for trying to convince them otherwise) is hardly surprising and does not seem, at first sight, to be a matter of concern. After all, even in the most ‘advanced’ countries, there is still a sizeable number of households with no television. However, I believe IS technology is different and the ‘want-nots’ cannot be overlooked, if only for one emerging motive: ‘e-government’. Although the term still sounds like a politician’s fantasy, a vague project nurtured to give campaigns a flavour of modernity, many administrations in many countries, regions, localities are engaged in a process of thorough reorganisation and modernisation under the banner of ‘e-government’ which has become a goal as well as a leverage for in depth organisational changes. The likely outcome of this turmoil is the development of online applications made available to the public (citizens and businesses). When those applications are offered as an alternative for traditional procedures, the ‘want-nots’ of IS simply decide implicitly to carry on doing things as before. Yet, a number of new services are developing (e.g. access to information, tax simulation, full-text search of legal documents, etc.) that IS ‘want-nots’ will be deprived of. Worse, the same is true of e-government applications which are intended to replace pre-existing services, hence introducing discrimination which infringes fundamental principles of today’s democracies. We can see early examples of the problems which lay ahead. In 2003, the official journal of Belgium will no longer be printed in its traditional paper format. The official publication will only be accessible online. Even though the vast majority of regular subscribers to the journal (lawyers, large companies, university professors) do have access to the internet and do find it much more convenient, those citizens or businesses not wanting to blend into the Information Society, or simply repelled

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by the Internet or by computers, are now deprived of access to the most elementary source of official information. The implications go well beyond that of refusing to acquire a television set. It seems that public authorities have moved to a position whereby using ICTs is considered essential and in the public interest, as is vaccination, road safety, sewage or running water. For public authorities to determine that something is of so essential a nature, there needs to be either unquestionable evidence that it will improve safety and well-being and / or public and democratic debate. The Information Society and its adoption by the population became unquestionable following neither of these processes.

References Compaine, B. A. (2001), The Digital Divide: Facing a Crisis or Creating a Myth, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Heinderyckx, F. (2001), ‘Measuring the Information Society – the use of the Internet by the European consumer’, European Information Technology Observatory, EITO, pp. 414-439. Heinderyckx, F., Phillips, A. (2001), ‘Mesurer les audiences à l’époque de la convergence médiatique’, in Droesbeke J.-J., Lebart, L., Enquêtes, modèles et applications, Paris: Dunod, pp. 231-24. Mansell, R. (2002), ‘From digital divides to digital entitlements in knowledge societies’, Current Sociology, 50:3, pp. 407-426. Servaes, J., Heinderyckx, F. (2002), ‘The ‘New’ ICTs environment in Europe: closing or widening the gaps?’, Telematics and Informatics, 19:2, pp. 91-115. Vedel, T. (1994), ‘Sociologie des innovations technologiques et usager: Introduction à une socio-politique des usages’ in Vitalis, A. (dir.), Médias et nouvelles technologies, Rennes: Editions Apogée, pp. 13-34.

Access and participation in the discourse of the digital divide The European perspective at/on the WSIS Nico Carpentier1 The digital divide: c’est quoi finalement? The discourse on the digital divide is characterised by a complex set of articulations. Some of this complexity can already be found in the diversity of commonly used definitions of the digital divide. Rice (2002: 106) defines the digital divide as the ‘differential access to and use of the Internet according to gender, income, race and location.’ At the launch of the UN ICT Task Force in November 2001, established to ‘lend a truly global dimension to the multitude of efforts to bridge the global digital divide, foster digital opportunity and thus firmly put ICT at the service of development for all’ (UN ICT Task Force, 2002), Kofi Annan (2001) links the digital divide to development, and the reduction of poverty and inequality, as he states that “one of the most pressing challenges in the new century” is to “harness this extraordinary force [of the new technologies], spread it throughout the world, and make its benefits accessible and meaningful for all humanity, in particular the poor.” In the ‘Digital opportunities for all’ report of the DOT Force (which was created by the G8 heads of state at the Kyushu-Okinawa Summit in July 2000), the need for a “rapid response to the so-called ‘digital divide’” is deemed ‘essential’: “Access to, and effective use of the tools and networks of the new global economy [2], and the innovations they make possible, are critical to poverty reduction, increased social inclusion and the creation of a better life for all.” At the same time it is added that the digital divide is a “reflection of existing broader socio-economic inequalities and can be characterised by insufficient infrastructure, high cost of access,

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inappropriate or weak policy regimes, inefficiencies in the provision of telecommunication networks and services, lack of locally created content, and uneven ability to derive economic and social benefits from information-intensive activities.” (DOT force, 2001: 4) At a more European level, a similar articulatory diversity can be found, although few recent high-level policy documents explicitly focus on the digital divide. The eEurope 2002 Action Plan3 (EU, 2001: 4) for instance calls on the member states to “draw the attention of citizens to the emerging possibilities of digital technologies to help to ensure a truly inclusive information society. Only through positive action now can info-exclusion be avoided at the European level.” Only in the manuscript for an information brochure on eEurope 2002 – targeting the ‘general public’ – its objectives are more clearly linked to an element of the digital divide, when these objectives are (re) presented as seeking “to create a digitally literate Europe and to ensure that the whole process is socially inclusive, builds consumer trust and narrows the gap between the haves and haves-not in European society.” (DG for Press and Communication, 2002: 7) The eEurope 2002 Action Plan does not only refer to the ‘European society’, but also (at least briefly) mentions the need for a more global contextualisation when it calls “closing the digital divide between developed and developing countries […] a key goal for the European Union.” (EU, 2001: 4) The commissioner responsible for Development and Humanitarian aid – Poul Nielson (2002: 34) – also takes this position when he defines the digital divide as “unequal access to ICTs among and within countries.” In the introduction of the @lis-brochure (EuropeAid, 2002: 3), Erkki Liikanen (responsible for Enterprise and the Information Society) writes that “the European Commission attaches great importance to developing the information society in an inclusive manner, and fighting against the digital divide, both within and between the regions and countries.” The €85 million @lis cooperation programme – the Alliance for the information society – aims “to extend the benefits of the information society to all citizens in Latin America and reduce the digital divide between those who have access to the new information technologies and those who are excluded from the information society.” (EuropeAid, 2002: 2) Finally, the European position that was advocated at the first meeting of the Preparatory Committee (PrepCom 1 – Geneva – July 2002) of the upcoming World Summit of the Information Society also emphasised the importance of the digital divide, which will be “a central theme of the Summit.” (EU, 2002a: 3) This position was also echoed by the statement of the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2002), who spoke on behalf of the European Union: “Our objective is to reach a balanced

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approach that deals as much with bridging the digital divide as with other key questions for the development of a common vision of the information society.” These other key questions are mentioned in EU PrepCom 1 document (EU, 2002a: 3), where it is stated that “Actually, the debate associates all the actors concerned, and includes, in addition to the questions of infrastructure/access, regulation/competition, and applications, the following topics: content (respect of languages and practices and local socio-cultural sensitivities; development of local contents), knowledge (training of the human resources required by the Information Society), and participation (implication of the civil society in the economic and technical local and international choices).” In the EU position document for PrepCom 2 (2002b: 7), which took place in February 2003, this nuanced position is repeated, at the same time articulating a definition of the digital divide: “The potential benefits of the Information Society for citizens and companies are undoubted. At the same time, there is a possible threat of a widening gap between info-rich and info-poor, a concept known as the digital divide. This divide reflects and exacerbates existing inequalities, not only between countries but also within each country.” As most of the definitions mentioned above illustrate, the core of the digital divide discourse is based on the articulation of three elements: 1/ the importance of access to on-line computers, 2/ which use results in increased levels of information, knowledge, communication or other types of socially valued benefits 3/ that are in turn so vital that the absence of access and the resulting ‘digibetism’ (or computer illiteracy) will eventually create or maintain a dichotomous society of haves and have-nots. Especially the element of unequal access to on-line computer technology plays a crucial role and functions as a nodal point (to refer to one of the basic concepts of Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory (1985)) of the digital divide discourse. As a nodal point it creates the stability and fixity that every discourse needs to maintain its coherence. The centrality of the signifier access is well illustrated by the rather enormous amount of research aimed at documenting socio-demographically based differences in ICT access4.

Lines of critique This specific articulation of the discourse of the digital divide, with access as its nodal point, does the same time exclude a series of other meanings. As is the case in any discourse, a specific set of elements is linked in a way that their identity is modified by the articulatory practice (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985: 105). The discourse of the digital divide can be analysed, and in a way deconstructed, by

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focusing on the specificity of the articulation of the different elements that compose the discourse, and by focusing on what meanings and elements become excluded by these specific articulations. This exclusionary aspect of the digital divide discourse can trigger different discursive coping strategies, when for instance the discursive limitations are simply accepted or attempts are being made to rearticulate it. Some of these rearticulations simply add new signifiers or superimpose new layers of meaning to the digital divide discourse, without criticising the specificity of this discourse, whilst other (re)articulatory practices are targeted at broadening the meaning of the discourse (or its nodal point access) itself. In this chapter, three lines of critique towards the digital divide discourse are discussed and illustrated by referring to the position the EU formulates in their two PrepCom documents5 for the World Summit of the Information Society (EU 2002a; 2002b).

Line of critique 1: broadening access A first line of critique of these discursively exclusionary practices is based on the argument of the multi-dimensional character of Internet access. Steyaert (2000 and 2002) for instance argues that ‘psychical access’ (stressing the materiality of access) should be complemented with the different necessary skills required for the interaction with ICT (informacy). He distinguishes three levels of capabilities: instrumental, structural and strategic skills6. This argument is complemented by the emphasis on user practices. As Silverstone (1999: 252) remarks on the domestication of ICT: “The more recent history of home computing indicates that individuals in the household construct and affirm their own identities through their appropriation of the machine via processes of acceptance, resistance, and negotiation. What individuals do, and how they do it, depends on both cultural and material resources.” A third broadening of the scope is performed when the focus is placed on both the relevance of on-line content and on the possibilities of feedback towards the content producing organisation. A clear illustration of this position can be found in the definition of (media)access proposed at the 1977 Unesco-meeting in Belgrade, which has been reproduced in Servaes (1999: 85): “access refers to the use of media for public service. It may be defined in terms of the opportunities available to the public to choose varied and relevant programs and to have a means of feedback to transmit its reactions and demands to production organisations.” More specific content-oriented approaches focus on ‘missing content’ from a user perspective. The Children’s Partnership (2000) analysis, for instance, points to the

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absence of content of interest to people (living in the US) with an underclass background, with low levels of literacy in English and with interests in local politics in culture, in other words: “underserved Americans [that] are seeking the following content on the Internet: practical information focusing on local community; information at a basic literacy level; material in multiple languages; information on ethnic and cultural interests; interfaces and content accessible to people with disabilities; easier searching; and coaches to guide them. Comparing the meaning(s) access is attributed within the digital divide discourse and the ‘other’ articulations and definitions of access discussed above, the following elements have become disarticulated from the digital divide discourse: 1/ the possession of skills (and not only of equipment), 2/ user practices, 3/ relevant content and 4/ feedback (and not only the mere use of the equipment). When analysing the EU PrepCom documents for these potential shortcomings, several attempts to broaden the digital divide discourse can be found. First, a clear emphasis on ‘developing human capacity’ (EU, 2002b: 4) is present, although some of the segments on training in the PrepCom 1 document tend to instrumentalise the acquisition of skills, as for instance in the following fragment defining knowledge as the “training of the human resources required by the Information Society” (EU, 2002a: 3). In the EU PrepCom 2 document, the need to (discursively) broaden the nodal point access is addressed in the discussion of eLearning (one of the four priorities for action, next to e-Inclusion, e-Government and e-Business). e-Learning is defined as “the development of skills to access knowledge”, which is in turn seen as one of “the foremost issues for bridging the digital divide” (EU, 2002b: 7). Also the need to include access to content is acknowledged, thus avoiding another type of reduction to physical access. Here the emphasis is on ‘cultural diversity and identity’ and on ‘varied’ (EU, 2002b: 7) and local content: “ICTs and media as a whole can and should stimulate linguistic and cultural diversity, including through the facilitation of exchange of local content. […] In this respect, production and exchange of appropriate local content available in the user’s mother tongue is of vital importance.” (EU, 2002b: 4) The problem is that although the EU clearly postulates in their PrepCom 1 document that it is “one of the major challenges […] to convey to […] the average citizen and small and medium enterprises that the ongoing changes related to the Information Society are not just about technologies and sophisticated financial market mechanisms, but also about their daily way of life and working process” (EU, 2002a: 12), these documents hardly refer to the complexity and contingency of user practices and user needs. The meaning of the nodal point access remains well locked within the boundaries of a macro-approach to informational benefits, blatantly disregarding potential disadvantages7: “The potential benefits of the Information Society for

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citizens and companies are undoubted.” (EU, 2002b: 7) Despite the recognition that these actors “should be part of the political process in which they have their own voice” (EU, 2002a: 12), the EU PrepCom documents hardly utilise a bottomup perspective to content and use.

Line of critique 2: challenging the truth claim A second line of critique touches the very hart of the digital divide discourse, challenging the truth claim this discourse inherently carries. More gentle criticisms are oriented towards the notion that a two-tiered division is not tenable. Van Dijk (1999: 155) pleads for replacing the ‘gap’ or ‘divide’ by a ‘continuum’, when he says that: “a better representation would be a continuum or spectrum of differentiated positions across the population with the ‘information elite’ at the top and a group of ‘excluded people’ at the bottom.” Others point to the dynamic character of innovation, the role and specificity of early adopters (and implicitly or explicitly to Rogers’ (1996) theory of the diffusion of innovations) in order to account for the reduction or reinterpretation of the ‘divide’. Frissen (2000) takes this position and refers (a bit less gently) to the ‘myth of the digital gap’. One of her arguments for this position goes as follows: “The term ‘gap’ suggests that the identified differences have a static character. There are enough empirical clues that this is not the case. Certain groups such as women and elderly do not belong to the vanguard, but are rapidly catching up.” (Frissen, 2000: 9-10 – my translation) In the USA similar arguments have been used stating that racial and gender differences are decreasing or disappearing (Katz et al., 2001; Hoffman et al. 1999). The triumphant 2002 U.S. Department of Commerce report “A nation online: how Americans are expanding their use of the Internet” concludes: “those who have been the least traditional users – people of lower income levels, lower education levels, or the elderly – are among the fastest adopters of this new technology.” (U.S. Department of Commerce, 2002: 92) An even more fundamental version of this critique is that the digital Source: BBC News Online (1999) – Special report: divide ‘Bridging the digital divide’ discourse articulates a dichotomy between information haves and information have-nots, between information rich and information poor or between those who use or benefit from ICT and those who do not8. Not only does this dichotomy imply a static approach

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to technological innovation, but it also offers a structuring of the social on the basis of a technological criterion, both in explaining contemporary and future societies. Especially when the introduction and/or increased access to these ‘technologies of freedom’ (de Sola Pool, 1983) is seen as the motor for social development, a technological deterministic ideology is seen in operation. ICTs in general are articulated as beneficial and their possession as enviable. For this reason socalled ‘non-users’ or ‘want-nots’ (also see Heinderyckx’ contribution in this volume) are often considered as being in a transitory phase, which can be illustrated by the following statement in the UCLA report: “Many people still don’t have a computer at home – nearly 40 percent (39.7) of respondents.” (UCLA, 2000: 24) Wolf (1998: 26) links this articulation with commodification: “calling the Internet the Great Equalizer helps to sell more computers. The metaphor masquerades as a quick fix to social inequality while ignoring the factors that lead to inequality.” Moreover, at the epistemological level the foregrounding of information forms again a specific articulation that is closely related to the more liberal approaches towards a free flow of information as a democratic practice. The fetishisation of information (to the detriment of knowledge) is based on a very mechanical approach to human learning and knowledge acquisition. One of the major reasons for this can be found in the lack of adequate philosophical reflection on the concepts of information and knowledge (Karvonen, 2001: 50). Stehr (1994: 92) argues here that especially the concept of knowledge has been treated as a black box: ‘although many and elaborate definitions of knowledge are offered, an equivalent effort toward a theoretical analysis of the decisive phenomenon “knowledge as such” is not thought necessary. The new qualities of scientific knowledge and its social consequences are merely postulated. In short, knowledge is essentially treated as a black box.’ As knowledge is more closely related to the (knowledgeable) subject, this can also account for the secondary role of the user. Yet another problem is that the possession of the tools of connectedness as a state of being is conflated with the possession of information and even knowledge, thus further advancing the commodification of information. In the two EU PrepCom documents under scrutiny, only one reference is made to the “possible threat of a widening gap between info-rich and info-poor” (EU, 2002b: 7). The use of signifiers as ‘e-Inclusion’ (EU, 2002b: 7) and ’digital opportunities’ (EU, 2002a: 13) allows the EU to avoid the dichotomous connotations of the gapmetaphor. This is further strengthened by the attention spent on the societal context of the digital divide – where the divide ‘only’ ‘reflects and exacerbates existing inequalities’ (EU, 2002b: 7) and where technologies are ‘not an end in themselves’ (EU, 2002b: 6). At the same time the two documents breathe technological optimism, which in some cases approximates technological

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determinism, for instance when it is stated that “[the World Summit] takes place at a moment that there is world-wide recognition that the society has, and continues, to change as a result of the past-paced changes of information and telecommunications technology and thereby driving economic, social, and cultural changes to extend never held for possible.” (EU, 2002a: 2) In other cases a technological deterministic position is only avoided by the use of words as ‘could’ and ‘potential’, as for instance in the following fragments: “in a development context, e-Inclusion could contribute to the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger [...].” (EU, 2002b: 7) & “ICTs have great potential as a tool to meet development policy objectives; such as the achievement of the Development goals set out in the UN Millennium Declaration.” (EU, 2002b: 8) Other elements which expose the EU position to this line of critique are the strong emphasis on the potential benefits of information, the conflation of information and knowledge, and the lack of a theoretical substructure supporting the use of these concepts. An example of the first element is the statement that “multilingual and affordable information can powerfully contribute to developing and sustaining democracy, and to economic development.” (EU, 2002b: 3) The conflation of knowledge and information can be illustrated by referring to the rather nonsensical and even tautological description of the topic ‘access to knowledge’ – next to ‘access to knowledge’ (see above) and ‘ICT policies aiming at poverty alleviation and economic wealth creation’ and ‘participation and new mechanisms for governance’, one of the key topics that constitutes the EU’s proposal for a ‘Global Deal’ – “access to knowledge which would address numerous access issues such as in relation to telephony, Internet, information, and knowledge, and in a variety of dimensions.” (EU, 2002a: 4)

Line of critique 3: decentring the divide A third line of critique attempts to decentre the digital divide discourse. A more modest attempt is oriented towards people with disabilities. In Kearns’ (2001) paper, which can be found on the ‘International Centre for Disability Resources on the Internet’ web site, people with disabilities are simply added to the more traditional list of socio-demographic categories that are said to be concerned, when the digital divide is defined as follows: “The “Digital Divide” is an obstacle that looks to segregate many groups of people from these technological developments simply due to their socio-economic status (SES), their geographic location, their education level, or because they have a disabling condition that is physical, sensory, or cognitive/psychological in nature.” The second and more important attempt to decentre the digital divide discourse is oriented towards a more international perspective, and aims to de-westernise the

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digital divide. An example of this position can be found at the Bridges.org web site (which includes the frequently used visual representation of the need to overcome the digital divide, which is rendered on the next page) where it is stated that: “’the

Source: Bridges.org web site

digital divide’ means that between countries and between different groups of people within countries, there is a wide division between those who have real access to information and communications technology and are using it effectively, and those who don't. […] More often than not, the ‘information have-nots’ are in developing countries, and in disadvantaged groups within countries. To bridges.org, the digital divide is thus a lost opportunity – the opportunity for the information "have-nots" to use ICTs to improve their lives.” As Servaes (2000: xi) remarks in the introduction of ‘Walking on the other side of the information highway’, many developing countries’ governments have attributed a leading role to ICT in their strategies for economic growth and are being encouraged by the IMF and World Bank9 to do so. The involvement of these Western-oriented development agencies still embedded in the paradigms of modernisation (Burgelman et al., 1999: 16), nevertheless strongly nuance the claim of the de-westernisation of the digital divide discourse. This implies that the same specific articulations that characterise the Western digital divide discourse, can be found in many (but not all) of the more ‘global’ reorientations of this discourse. Due to these similarities the ‘global’ digital divide discourse remains vulnerable for the previously outlined lines of critique. The EU PrepCom documents incorporate both elements of this line of critique. Firstly (and not surprisingly10) clear emphasis is placed on the specific position of disadvantaged – or even ‘marginalised’ (EU, 2002b: 9) – groups, for instance when it is stated that “another important aspect is to make ICTs equally available to men and women, and to the benefit of disadvantaged groups (elderly, disabled, youth, indigenous people, etc.).” (EU, 2002b: 6) A similar statement can also be found when ‘access to information and knowledge’ is elaborated: “Notably, information in the public domain should be of high quality, easily accessible for all, including the disabled.” (EU, 2002b: 4) Secondly, due to the nature of the Summit, focussing solely on the West would be virtually unthinkable. Some of the fragments mentioned above have already illustrated that the digital divide is (also) seen in a

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‘development context’ (EU, 2002b: 7). The second key topic of the EU’s proposal for a ‘Global Deal’ is the development of “ICT policies aiming at poverty alleviation and economic wealth creation” (EU, 2002a: 4), where the following ‘description’ is given: “debate between industrialised and developing countries in a relatively neutral field, a number of interests are shared, the perspective and the speed of growth in the sector give the feeling that there is still openness and a margin for a win-win exercise.” (EU, 2002a: 4) Despite the repeated use of signifiers as openness, dialogue, partnership and co-operation vis-à-vis the developing countries, their position and specificity (with the exception of the EU’s emphasis on respect for cultural diversity) remains virtually absent, while the European eEurope 2002 Action Plan features prominently as an example of the road ahead.

Participation as a complement to access Another group of attempts to decentre the digital divide discourse, which are aimed towards a more political11 rearticulation of the divide, are discussed separately. An example of this position is Gandy’s (2002) article entitled “the real digital divide: citizens versus consumers”, in which he sees “the new media as widening the distinction between the citizen and the consumer.” (Gandy, 2002: 448) The main concern here is that the ‘new economy’ will incorporate and thus foreclose the democratic possibilities of the new media (Kellner, 1999). The basis of analysis is provided by a distinction between a ‘consumer’ and a ‘civic model’ of network activity; the balance between both models will eventually determine the role of the Internet in post-industrial democracy. This political rearticulation of the divide offers major opportunities towards the inclusion of power and empowerment within this discourse, avoiding at the same time the technological deterministic, mediacentred, westernised and epistemologically biased position, and safeguarding the important notion of social exclusion. This rearticulation also implies the inclusion of yet another signifier in this debate, which has always (to a very high degree) complemented access: participation. In order to achieve this broadening of the scope, we now turn to the field of participatory communication for inspiration, bearing in mind that access does not become completely discredited, but continues to play (together with interaction – see Carpentier (2002)) a crucial role, especially as a necessary condition for participation. The following overview of the interpretation(s) of participation is structured by Servaes’ (1999: 84) thesis that the field of participatory communication is

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characterised by two points of view: Freire’s dialogical pedagogy and the already mentioned Unesco debates on access, participation and self-management in the seventies. Despite Freire’s focus on the educational process and the struggle against illiteracy and injustice, where the (mass)medial context is only minimally taken into account, Freire’s theory has had a considerable impact within the domain of participatory communication. Freire’s pedagogy of the hope is initially aimed against the traditional educational system, which he regards paternalistic and nonparticipative, since this system considers knowledge to be passed on as a readymade package instead of as the result of a dialogic meeting between subjects. In this fashion the educational system maintains and supports existing power imbalances. Freire aims to transform this system, allowing students (together with their teachers) to develop valid knowledge in a process of ‘conscientisation’. “Authentic participation would then enable the subjects involved in this dialogic encounter to unveil reality for themselves” (Thomas, 1994: 51). Participation is, in other words, situated in a context of the reduction of power imbalances, both at the broad social, political and economic level (the relations between oppressors and repressed) and at the level of the educational system, where students and teachers strive for knowledge in a non-authoritative collaboration that fosters partnership. The second point of view within the field of participatory communication has to be situated in the context of the Unesco debates about a 'New World Information and Communication Order' (NWICO)12 and a ‘New International Economic Order’ (NIEO). These debates, with the report of the 1977 Belgrade-meeting as transcript of this discussion, are among others oriented towards defining of the concepts access, participation and self-management. In this report “access refers to the use of media for public service. It may be defined in terms of the opportunities available to the public to choose varied and relevant programs and to have a means of feedback to transmit its reactions and demands to production organisations.” (reproduced in Servaes, 1999: 85) Participation and self-management are in the Unesco debates defined as follows: “participation implies a higher level of public involvement in communication systems. It includes the involvement of the public in the production process and also in the management and planning of communication systems. Participation may be no more than representation and consultation of the public in decision making. On the other hand, self-management is the most advanced form of participation. In this case, the public exercises the power of decision making within communication enterprises and is also fully involved in the formulation of communication policies and plans.” (reproduced in Servaes, 1999: 85)

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Participation and em/power/ment The above discussed approaches to participation might give the impression that the definition of participation goes uncontested. The opposite is the case, as for instance Pateman (1972: 1) remarks: “the widespread use of the term […] has tended to mean that any precise, meaningful content has almost disappeared; ‘participation’ is used to refer to a wide variety of different situations by different people”. This widespread use (or the floating) of (the signifier) participation has prompted the construction of hierarchically ordered systems of meaning in which specific forms of participation are described as ‘complete’, ‘real’ and ‘authentic’, while other forms of participation are described as ‘partial’, ‘fake’ and ‘pseudo’. As the illustrations that follow will illustrate, the defining element of this categorisation is the degree to which power is equally distributed among the participants. An example of the introduction of the difference between complete and partial participation can be found in Pateman’s (1972) book ‘Democratic theory and participation’. The two definitions of participation that she introduces are the definitions of ‘partial’ and ‘full participation’. Partial participation is defined by her as: “a process in which two or more parties influence each other in the making of decisions but the final power to decide rests with one party only” (Pateman, 1972: 70), while full participation is seen as “a process where each individual member of a decision-making body has equal power to determine the outcome of decisions.” (Pateman, 1972: 71) Other related concepts construct a hierarchically ordered system within the definitions of participation on the basis of the real-unreal dichotomy. In the field of the so-called political participation, for example, Verba (1961: 220-221) indicates the existence of ‘pseudo-participation’, in which the emphasis is not on the creating of a situation in which participation is possible, but on the creating of the feeling that participation is possible: “participation has become a technique of persuasion rather than of decision”. An alternative name which is among others used by Strauss (1998: 18) is ‘manipulative participation’13. Also in the field of participatory communication this difference between real/true participation on the one hand and pseudo-participation on the other hand is acknowledged. White, for example, refers to a paper of Deshler and Sock (1985) who have analysed the literature on development and participation, in function of the applied basic concepts. In this context they introduce the difference between ‘pseudo-participation’ and ‘genuine participation’. White (1994: 17) summarises the definitions used in this conference paper as follows, where (again) much weight is attributed to the presence of equal power relations: “People's participation in

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development in which the control of the project and the decision-making power rests with the planners, administrators, and the community's elite is pseudoparticipation. […] When the development bureaucracy, the local elite, and the people are working cooperatively throughout the decision-making process and when the people are empowered to control the action to be taken, only then can there be genuine participation”. A second author working within the tradition of participatory communication that uses terms as 'genuine' and 'authentic participation' is Servaes. In 'Communication for development' (1999) he writes that this ‘real’ form of participation has to be seen as participation “[that] directly addresses power and its distribution in society. It touches the very core of power relationships.” (Servaes, 1999: 198) The concept of power is in other words again central to the definition of ‘real’ participation. White (1994: 17) also emphasises this central link between power and participation: “it appears that power and control are pivotal subconcepts which contribute to both understanding the diversity of expectations and anticipated out-comes of people's participation.”

Participation at/in the WSIS In December 2001 the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution14 that (among other things) asked for the active participation by non-governmental organisations, the civil society and the private sector in the WSIS. This active participation in the Summit also includes the preparatory process and (thus) the PrepCom 1 and 2 meetings. In the European PrepCom 1 document, “the preparatory process is [considered] very important and representation from all interested groups should be sought in order to give a clear signal of an allinclusiveness.” (EU, 2002a: 8) This document refers to the public resentment “based on the perception that policy making processes are not sufficiently transparent and are taking place behind closed doors. Time has come for a political reaction: this UN Summit offers an excellent occasion to experiment with a new formula and show the public at large that inclusive processes are not only of interest to them, but also possible.” (EU, 2002a: 8). A few pages further, the document raises the stakes even higher, as the Summit itself is seen as a model for the future role of civil society (and commerce): “the preparatory process is almost as important as the political outcomes of the Summit itself. The format and positioning of the Summit will be key factors for an event which will attract attention and activate a decentralised follow up process, not only at political level but also in society at large.” Also in the European PrepCom 2 document, the decentralised nature of the follow up process is emphasised: “the Plan of Action will constitute a common reference and framework for implementation for all stakeholders, to be promoted in a decentralised way, under the lead of a multitude of stakeholders.” (EU, 2002: 11)

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In relation to this position three major critiques need to be formulated. Firstly, concerning the participatory nature of the preparatory process, the Interim Civil Society Plenary Coordinating Group has written a letter to the WSIS Secretariat Executive Director (Pierre Gagné) to raise two concerns regarding this process, which are summarised in the two following statements: “civil society participation is discouraged” and “civil society inputs are not receiving enough consideration”. At the CRIS web site (an acronym for Communication Rights in the Information Society), the following statement can be found: “The WSIS: A vessel adrift: For lack of leadership, clear vision and real political will, preparations for the World Summit on the Information Society are off to a difficult start. Although frustrated, civil society is getting organized.” (CRIS, 2002) When taking these statements from civil society representatives into account, it can hardly be maintained that the preparatory process is a model for future civil society participation. In this light the EU statement that “civil society involvement is vital in the take-up and social acceptance of the Information Society” (EU, 2002b: 6) might even be read as instrumental and cynical. Secondly, when analysing the articulation of the signifier participation in the two European PrepCom documents – and disregarding the strong discursive presence of civil society participation in the World Summit of the Information Society – it is surprising how little emphasis is placed on the participation of civil society and citizens in the Information Society as such. There are (only) two exceptions: one is the potential role ICT can play in the domain of e-Governance, as its “underlying goal is to meet the challenges of modern governance: efficiency, i.e. to enable public administration to reach a higher productivity, equality, i.e. to serve all citizens without discrimination, while being responsive to individuals’ needs, and active citizen participation through the use of ICTs.” (EU, 2002b: 7) More generally, the empowering potential of information is highlighted: “Information has a key role in strategies oriented towards empowering people with a special emphasis in this regard on the equal participation of women and men in the Information Society.” (EU, 2002b: 10) The second exception is the rather vague statement (which is also the third key topic of the proposed ‘Global Deal’) concerning ‘participation and new mechanisms for governance’. These mechanisms are situated “at global and national levels encompassing a) issues related to the sector like electronic communications regulatory frameworks, data protection, network security and Cyber Security, legal aspects of e-commerce and internet governance as well as b) more general issues related to the new citizenship in the information age.” (EU, 2002a: 13) These two exceptions only further illustrate the weak articulation of citizen and civil society participation in the two European PrepCom texts, which do not address the power imbalances that characterise the relations between

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governments, civil society and commerce, and between the industrialised and developing countries. Finally, the lack of attention for the existing structural power imbalances that result out of economic processes (both in industrialised countries and in the relationships between industrialised and developing countries) and the related tension between the people’s articulation as citizens and/or consumers in the new economy (discussed by Gandy (2002)), becomes apparent when the role of business is addressed in the second PrepCom document. With some optimism it is stated that the Bucharest Conference15 has not only shown a change in the perception of civil society, but also in the perception of “business [which] defines itself not only as a market player but sees its role in a wider political and social context, i.e. helping countries to develop ICTs and overcome the digital divide.” (EU, 2002b: 6) At the same time the EU – especially in relation towards developing countries – articulates users as consumers and pleads for their integration into the ‘international market’ and into a ‘competitive economy’, through the development of non-protectionist (or so-called ‘non-discriminatory’) legal and policy frameworks: “An trustworthy, transparent, and non-discriminatory legal and regulatory framework for electronic communications, including the conditions under which consumers have access to services, is a necessary condition for the mobilisation of private sector investment and the development of effective communication infrastructures and services, which in turn are the basis for a competitive economy.” (EU, 2002b: 4-5) This issue is explicitly included in the EU’s considerations for the WSIS action plan, when they suggest to “promote the establishment, by developing countries, of appropriate regulatory and policy frameworks including in particular areas affecting consumers, which would facilitate their integration into the international ICT market through increased foreign direct investment by the private sector.” (EU, 2002b: 9) Again, there is an exception to the lack of attention for the structural power imbalances, as the EU promotes the use of open source software, and creates a link to citizenship (and not to consumption). “widespread access to information and knowledge at affordable cost for citizens should be promoted also through a broader use of open source software with a focus on the eventual use and further development of the UNESCO software CDS/ISIS; along the same line use of a multiplatform approach and use of open platforms, and interoperability increase the freedom of choice.” (EU, 2002b: 4)

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Conclusion The digital divide discourse is considered problematic in many regards, because of its unilateral emphasis on access, and because of its specific articulation of the signifier access. As a first line of critique has shown, this articulation results in the exclusion of user skills and practices, relevant content and opportunities for feedback. A second line of critique is even more vital, as it challenges the truth claims of this discourse, on empirical, conceptual, ideological and epistemological grounds. A third line of critique attempts to decentre, de-westernise and politicise the digital divide discourse. Despite these different lines of critique some elements of the digital divide discourse are worth saving, more specifically a broadened notion of access, and the emancipatory discourse of a struggle against social exclusion that lies hidden somewhere behind the discursive complexity of the digital divide discourse. Although social exclusion cannot be reversed without tackling the factors that lead to inequality (following Wolf (1998) and many others) and ‘inclusive politics of inclusion’ form a necessity, access to ICT remains one of the many tools to achieve this aim, but not without broadening its scope and connecting the digital divide discourse to another signifier: participation (and the inseparable discursive elements of power and empowerment). In the documents for the meetings of the preparatory committee of the WSIS, the EU has succeeded in partially broadening the scope of the digital divide discourse, mainly by complementing the gap-metaphor with signifiers as ‘e-Inclusion’ and ‘digital opportunities’, and by their focus on the acquisition of skills, the respect for cultural diversity and the need for local and varied content. This discursive broadening of the meaning of access has not reached its full potential, as the EU’s articulation of citizenship does not take the citizens’ (democratic) needs as diversified users communities into account. The fetish of information (sometimes called ‘knowledge’) is seen as the sole mechanism for empowerment, thus strongly reducing the democratic potential of ICT, at the same time embedding ICTs within the divide’s technological optimism (or even determinism). Information and knowledge have become interchangeable concepts, and are used without a theoretical substructure. Moreover there is hardly any critical reflection on the prevailing power/knowledge relations, and their impact on for instance the production of content at the level of the ‘microphysics of power’ (Foucault, 1997: 42).

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At the level of participation, the EU has demonstrated the keen will to include all relevant actors in the decision-making process of the WSIS. The EU wishes to provide the “developing countries [with] an opportunity to be fully associated to the debate and decision process” (EU, 2002a: 4) and hold the opinion that “the various stakeholders [… including civil society …] should be part of the political process in which they have their own voice” (EU, 2002a: 12). By doing so, the EU has expressed the intention to support the creation of a new model for decisionmaking, for the future role of civil society (and commerce) and for “citizenship in the information age” (EU, 2002a: 12). Despite these (discursive) efforts, civil society’s frustration has shown that even their partial participation (using Pateman’s (1972) vocabulary) at the Summit remains problematic. Furthermore the EU does not address the matter of citizen participation in the Information Society as such (with some minor exceptions) and does not thematise communication as a human right, bottom-up processes as a valid political decision-making tool and structural power imbalances (generated by a diversity of political, social, cultural and economic mechanisms) as a threat to the propagated new models of citizenship. Because of these shortcomings, the EU does not manage to supplement the nodal point of access in these two PrepCom documents with a conclusively deepened articulation of participation and (at least partially) fails to live up to the expectations created towards civil society participation.

Notes 1

The author would like to acknowledge the support of the Flemish Community (Policy Research Centres Program – Programma Steunpunten voor Beleidsrelevant Onderzoek) in the preparation of this chapter. This text contains the views of the author and not the views of the Flemish Community. The Flemish Community cannot be held accountable for the potential use of the communicated views and data. 2 This chapter does not directly deal with the construction of signifiers as the ‘new economy’ and the ‘(European Information Society) and their truth claims. Others in this volume do take on this issue. 3 Recently the European Council of Seville endorsed an eEurope action plan for 2005. 4 See for instance Krumme (2002) and Bridges.org (2001). 5 The analysis of these two PrepCom documents is complicated by their strategic nature and by their place in the ongoing processes of negotiation. For this reason the use of these two documents remains illustrative, and cannot be extrapolated to the entire EU IS-policy without further analysis.

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Instrumental skills deal with the operational manipulation of technology, while structural skills relate to the use (and understanding) of the structure in which the information is contained. Strategic skills include the basic readiness to pre-actively look for information, the information-based decision-making and the scanning of the environment for relevant information (Steyaert, 2002, 73-74). 7 In the PrepCom 1 document one reference to the potential threats is made in the introduction, and it immediately countered by pointing to the potential benefits of ICT: 'despite the pervasive effect of ICTs, their impact on societies and economies is still only at the first stage. These changes are accompanied by a number of new challenges and threats but at the same time, they offer new potential and new models to deal with.' (EU, 2002a: 3) 8 Users of these discursive elements often bracket them, signifying their unease with the signifier. In other cases even the signifier ‘digital divide’ is bracketed. Despite the implied conditionality, the signifiers are still articulated as described in the paper. 9 The World Bank has for instance established GICT (the Global Information & Communication Technologies Department) in January 2000. 10 In the eEurope 2002 Action Plan, "eParticipation" for the disabled was already one of the priority areas (EU, 2000: 17). 11 Political is used here in the broad sense, not being restricted to a specific sphere and/or system, but as a dimension that is ‘inherent to every human society and that determines our very ontological condition’ (Mouffe, 1997: 3). 12 Or also: 'New International Information Order' (NIIO). 13 The well-known rhyme, which according to myth appeared sometime around the beginning of the seventies on a Paris wall, also takes advantage of this dichotomy between ‘real’ and ‘fake’ participation: 'Je participe, tu participes, il participe, nous participons, vous participez, ils profitent.' (Verba & Nie, 1987: 0) 14 th Resolution 56/183, adopted by the 90 plenary meeting of the General Assembly on 21 December 2001. 15 This is one of the regional preparatory conferences, for the Pan-European countries, held in Bucharest from 7-9 November 2002.

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References Annan, K. (2001), ‘Remarks by Secretary-General Kofi Annan to today’s launching of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Task Force’, New York: UN ICT Task Force, downloaded on 1/6/2002 from http://www.unicttaskforce.org/community/documents/74136902_SG.statement.20n ov2001.doc BBC News Online (1999), ‘Bridging the digital divide’, London: BBC News Online, downloaded on 1/6/2002 from http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/special_report/1999/10/99/information_rich_inform ation_poor/newsid_466000/466651.stm Bridges.org, ‘Welcome to Bridges.org’, (2001), downloaded on 1/6/2002 from http://www.bridges.org/ Burgelman, J., Nulens, G., Van Audenhove, L. (1999), ‘De geschiedenis herhaalt zich … altijd anders’, Noord-Zuid-Cahier, 24:4, pp. 11-24. Cammaerts, B., Van Audenhove, L., Nulens, G., Pauwels, C. (eds) (2003), Beyond the Digital Divide: fighting exclusion, fostering inclusion, Brussels: VUBPress. Carpentier, N. (2002), ‘Bridging cultural and digital divides. Signifying everyday life, cultural diversity and participation in the on-line community Video Nation’, Recreatief Vlaanderen Working Paper, 5, http://www.recreatiefvlaanderen.be/srv/pdf/srcvwp_200205.pdf Children's Partnership (2002), Online Content for Low-Income and Underserved Americans: An Issue Brief, Los Angeles/Washington: Children's Partnership, 2000, downloaded on 1/6/2002 from http://www.contentbank.org/ataglance_issuebrief.asp CRIS (2002), ‘News. The WSIS: A vessel adrift (31/12/02)’, downloaded on 15/1/03 from http://www.comunica.org/cris/index.htm Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2002), ‘Content and themes for the World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS)’, downloaded on 15/1/03 from http://europa.eu.int/information_society/topics/telecoms/international/wsis/danish_s tatement%20_content_themes.pdf de Sola Pool, I. (1983) Technologies of freedom, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press. Deshler, D., Sock, D. (1985), ‘Community development participation: a concept review of the international literature’, Paper at the International league for social commitment in adult education conference, Ljungskile, Sweden. DG for Press and Communication (EU) (2002), ‘Towards a knowledge-based Europe. The European Union and the information Society’, Brussels: EC, downloaded on 15/1/03 from http://europa.eu.int/information_society/ newsroom/documents/catalogue_en.pdf

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on the Internet’, downloaded on 1/6/2002 from http://www.icdri.org/using_partnerships_to_bridge_the.htm Kellner, D. (1999), ‘Technologies, welfare state, and prospects for democratisation’ in Calabrese, A., Burgelman, J. (eds.), Communication, citizenship and social policy (Lanham: Rowman/Littlefield), pp. 239-256. Krumme, G. (2002), ‘Internet Access & the Digital Divide: Information Inequality at Local & Global Levels’, downloaded on 15/1/03 from http://faculty.washington.edu/krumme/internet/divide.html Laclau, E., Mouffe, C. (1985), Hegemony and socialist strategy: towards a radical democratic politics, London/New York: Verso. Mouffe, C. (1997), The return of the political, London: Verso. Nielson, P. (2002), ‘Empowering the poor. The future of information and communication technologies in development’, ACP-EU Courier, 192, downloaded on 15/1/03 from http://europa.eu.int/comm/development/publicat/courier/courier192/en/en_034_ni.p df Pateman, C. (1972), Participation and democratic theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rice, R. (2002), ‘Primary issues in Internet use: access, civic and community involvement, and social interaction and expression’, in Lievrouw, L., Livingstone, S. (eds.) The handbook of the new media. The social shaping and consequences of ICTs (London: Sage), pp. 105-129. Rogers, E. (1996), Diffusion of innovations, 4th ed., New York: The Free Press. Servaes, J. (1999), Communication for development. One world, multiple cultures, Cresskill, New Jersey: Hampton press. Servaes, J. (2000), ‘Introduction’, in Servaes, J. (ed.) Walking on the other side of the information highway (Penang: Southbound), pp. xi-xvii. Silverstone, R. (1999), ‘Domesticating ICTs’, in Dutton, W. (ed.) Society on the line. Information politics in the digital age (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 251-253. Stehr, N. (1994), Knowledge societies, London: Sage. Steyaert, J. (2000), Digitale vaardigheden. Geletterdheid in de informatiesamenleving, Den Haag: Rathenau Instituut. Steyaert, J. (2002), ‘Inequality and the digital divide: myths and realities’, in Hick, S., McNutt, J. (eds.) Advocacy, activism, and the Internet. Community Organization and Social Policy (New York: Lyceum Press), pp. 199-211. Strauss, G. (1998), 'An overview', in Heller, F., Pusic, E., Strauss, G., Wilpert, B. (eds.) Organizational Participation: Myth and Reality (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 8-39.

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Thomas, P. (1994), ‘Participatory development communication: philosophical premises', in White, S. A. (ed.) Participatory communication: working for change and development (Beverly Hills: Sage), pp. 49-59. UCLA Centre for Communication Policy (2000), Surveying the Digital Future. Los Angeles: UCLA. UN ICT Task Force (2002), ‘Plan of action’, New York: UN ICT Task Force, downloaded on 1/6/2002 from http://www.unicttaskforce.org/about/planofaction.asp US Department of Commerce (2002), A nation online: how Americans are expanding their use of the Internet, Washington: U.S. Department of Commerce, downloaded on 1/6/2002 from http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/dn/nationonline_020502.htm Van Dijk, J. (1999), The network society: social aspects of new media, Thousand Oaks: Sage. Verba, S. (1961), Small groups and political behaviour, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Verba, S., Nie, N. (1987), Participation in America: Political Democracy & Social Equality, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. White, S. (1994), Participatory communication: working for change and development, Beverly Hills: Sage. Wolf, A. (1998), ‘Exposing the great equalizer: demythologizing Internet equity’, in Ebo, B. (ed.) Cyberghetto or Cybertopia: race, class and gender on the Internet (New York: Praeger), pp. 15-31.

Communication Rights and the European Information Society Cees J. Hamelink Introduction For the sake of convenience and coherence I shall use in this chapter the notion of the ‘European Information Society’. I think it necessary however to preface this with some qualifying observations. • There is no European Information Society. There are in the European region societies that are confronted with ‘informational developments’. This notion refers to the growing significance of information products (such as news, advertising, entertainment, scientific data etc.) and information services (such as provided by the WWW), to the increasing volumes of information available, to the role of information technologies as part of society’s infrastructure and to the contribution of information handling activities to key economic transactions in finance and trading in modern societies. The confrontation with ‘informational developments’ occurs in different ways, at different levels, at different speed and in different historical contexts. Societies design their responses through policies, plans, and programmes both as centrally steered initiatives (for example by the European Commission) and as decentralized activities on national and local levels. The actors involved are both public institutions and private bodies and increasingly there are forms of public/private partnership. Society's responses may take the form of both legal instruments and self-regulatory arrangements. Most of these initiatives are driven by economic motives and are strongly technology-centric. The key questions for academic inquiry address such crucial sociological issues as: what will be the distribution of benefits of these developments (‘cui bono’, or who benefits?), which actors will be included and which ones excluded from political participation in decision-making about these developments (who decides?), and which actors will be accountable in case these developments have adverse social effects. • Discussing the European Information Society also raises the question about the Europe that should be addressed. The geo-strategically most comprehensive

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Europe? From Alaska to Siberia? This is the Europe of 55 member states of the OSCE. Or the more restricted Europe of the Council of Europe (with its 42 member states), or the smallest, but expanding Europe of the European Union? Moreover, beyond the geographical descriptor there is also the more substantial differentiation between a European conception that is driven by commercial and trading interests and a European ideal that is motivated by the tradition of human rights protection. These different Europe’s are not easily reconciled! • The European democratic deficit. Europe may be en route towards an information society but it does so without adequate democratic institutional arrangements for a broad social debate and civil participation in the decision making on Europe’s future. There is in Europe no broad public debate on how Europe can develop as a democratic project. The current EU decision making structure resembles more than anything else a TGV that races on at high speed with no alternative routes. Its political arrangement is an imposition from above which de-motivates citizens to take elections for the European Parliament seriously. There is at present not a European Public Space and its creation should be the foremost priority for any attempt to build the European Information Society. European politics is mainly shaped by the secret deals that the European political leadership makes. The European Parliament has no matching power to control, expose and correct these deals. The core of any democratic political deliberation should be formed by a shared value orientation (i.e. a normative consensus), a sense of ‘imagined community ‘ (i.e. a feeling of belonging), and a common purpose. The current efforts of the EU to construct a European identity through such legal instruments as the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (2000) are doomed to fail since identity is a matter of social psychological processes and not of regulatory initiatives. You cannot regulate people to feel European. People in the European region will only become Europeans when they feel comfortable with this notion and when they conclude that it benefits them in direct, concrete and material ways. Actually, the adoption of the European Charter next to the already existing European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1950) does not help to promote the European feeling. It rather strengthens the impression that there are several Europes.

Communication Rights in Europe Fundamental rights that are relevant to the ‘European Information Society’ are at present (in various legal provisions) found in connection with (a) the freedom of expression, (b) the protection of privacy and data traffic, (c) the security of information infrastructures, and (d) the protection of intellectual property rights.

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The Right to Freedom of Expression The basic legal instrument is the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR) of 1950. Its Article 10 reads: “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence , or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary”. A supra-national court supervises the implementation of the provisions of this regional legal instrument and thus develops over the years a jurisprudence that helps to understand the meaning of the various articles of the Convention. Over the past years a number of cases involving violations of Article 10 have been brought before the Court and through this case law important European jurisprudence on free speech is developing. Between the beginnings in the early 1950s till 1970 there was only one case in relation to Article 10. In the 1970s there were three cases, in the 1980s twelve and since then the caseload is only growing. Between January 1990 and July 1999 the Court handed down some seventy judgments. In 50% of these cases the Court concluded that there had been a violation of Article 10. Between July 1999 and May 2002 the Court concluded in 36 cases that there was a violation of Article 10. Most cases address forms of direct and indirect interference by state authorities in the freedom of expression. The Court uses as basic rationale in judging forms of state interference that free speech “constitutes one of the essential foundations of a democratic society and one of the basic conditions for its progress and each individual’s self fulfilment”. According to the Court the notion of free speech is applicable not only to “information and ideas that are favorably received or regarded as inoffensive, but also to those that offend, shock or disturb: such are the demands of that pluralism, tolerance and broadmindedness without which there is no democratic society”. The Court has repeatedly stated that in a democratic and pluralist society free speech is particularly essential to the political

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debate. “Free elections and freedom of expression, particularly political debate, together form the bedrock of any democratic society” (the Bowman versus the UK case of 9 February 1998). In this context the Court has stressed the essential role of the media. In the case Bladet Tromso & Stensaas v. Norway of May 20, 1999, the Court stated: “One factor of particular importance for the Court’s determination in the present case is the essential function the press fulfils in a democratic society”. The rulings of the European Court can be organised under the following headings (see http://www.echr.coe.int/).

1. Political Polemics Exemplary is the Janowski versus Poland Case of January 21, 1999: On 2 September 1992 Mr Janowski – a Polish journalist-- intervened when he saw two municipal guards ordering street vendors to leave a square in Zdunska. He argued with the guards and told them they had no legal basis for their action. The Zdunska public prosecutor instituted a criminal proceeding against Mr Janowski and charged him with having insulted the municipal guards. On 29 April 1993, the District Court convicted Mr Janowski and sentenced him to eight months’ imprisonment suspended for two years and a fine plus the court costs. Against his appeal, also the Regional Court found him guilty of having used such insulting words as ‘oafs’ and ‘dumb’. The Court found that Janowski had insulted state officials. His remarks were not part of a public discussion and he was operating as a private person, not as a journalist. Civil servants should allow for criticism but not to the same extent as politicians. To strengthen their credibility with the general public it may be necessary to protect them against verbal violence. As the Court states, “it cannot be said that civil servants knowingly lay themselves open to close scrutiny of their every word and deed to the extent to which politicians do and should therefore be treated on an equal footing with the latter when it comes to criticism of their actions”. The Court concluded that the Polish authorities did not overstep their margin of appreciation in assessing the necessity of the measures. With twelve votes against five the Court held that there had been no breach of Article 10. The margin of appreciation rule that the Court refers to is intended to leave space to national authorities to judge the pressing need for interference with free speech. Starting point here is the position that “it is in the first place for the national authorities, notably the courts, to interpret and apply domestic law. The Court’s s rule is limited to verifying whether the interference which resulted from the

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applicant’s conviction of that offence can be regarded as necessary in a democratic society” (Lehideux & Isorni vs France). Following Bladet Tromso the Court defines the margin of appreciation in this way: “According to the Court’s well-established case law, the test of ‘necessity in a democratic society’ requires the Court to determine whether the ‘interference’ complained of corresponded to a ‘pressing social need’, whether it was proportionate to the legitimate aim pursued and whether the reasons given by the national authorities to justify it are relevant and sufficient…In assessing whether such a ‘need’ exists and what measures should be adopted to deal with it, the national authorities are left a certain margin of appreciation. This power of appreciation is not, however, unlimited but goes hand in hand with a European supervision by the Court, whose task it is to give a final ruling on whether a restriction is reconcilable with freedom of expression as protected by Article 10”. Whereas on the one hand the margin of appreciation is circumscribed by the need to show a pressing social need and by the essential role of the press in democratic societies, there is a much wider margin for national authorities in relation to matters of public order, in situations where there is incitement to violence or when “matters liable to offend intimate personal convictions within the sphere of morals or, especially, religion” are at stake (Wingrove v. UK, 25.11.1996). With regard to the latter, the Court has argued that “what is likely to cause substantial offence to persons of a particular religious persuasion will vary significantly from time to time and from place to place, especially in an era characterized by an ever growing array of faiths and denominations. State authorities are in principle in a better position than the international judge to give an opinion on the exact content of these requirements with regard to the rights of others as well as on the ‘necessity’ of a ‘restriction’ intended to protect from such material those whose deepest feelings and convictions would be seriously offended”. The margin is greater in cases of insults against officials, incitement to violence, or cases that refer to morals or religion. The problem with this flexible approach to the margin of appreciation is that the Court distinguishes in its protection of Article 10 between different situations where state restrictions obtain. The scope of the national margin of appreciation varies but, in the absence of explicit criteria, there is a margin of arbitrariness. In the field of political polemics also the Oberschlick versus Austria (No 2) Case of July 1, 1997 is interesting. The periodical Forum reproduced a speech held on 7 October 1990 by Mr Jörg Haider, leader of the Austrian Freedom Party. The editor of the magazine, Mr Gerhard Oberschlick, commented on the speech and called Haider a Trottel, an ‘idiot’. On 26 April 1991 Mr Haider brought an action for defamation and insult. On 23 May 1991 the Court found Mr Oberschlick guilty of

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having insulted Mr. Haider and sentenced him to a fine and also ordered the seizure of the relevant issue of Forum. In his application to the European Court Mr Oberschlick alleged that his conviction was contrary to Article 10 of the Convention. The Court stated in its judgment that the use of the word ‘Trottel’ should be seen as part of a political discussion in response to Haider’s speech. As the Court expressed, “the applicant’s article and in particular the word Trottel, may certainly be considered polemical, but they did not on that account constitute a gratuitous personal attack as the author provided an objectively understandable explanation for them derived from Mr Haider’s speech, which was itself provocative”. The necessity of interference with the author’s freedom of expression was not shown, concluded the Court, and it found that there been a breach of Article 10.

2. Racism and Revisionism The Lehideux & Isorni versus France Case of September 23, 1998: On 13 July 1984 the daily newspaper Le Monde published a one-page advertisement bearing the title ‘People of France, you have short memories’. The text basically called for a more positive attitude towards Marshal Pétain and his role during World War Two as French Head of State. On 10 October 1984 the National Association of Former Members of the Resistance filed a criminal complaint against Mr Lehideux as President of the Association for the Defence of the Memory of Marshal Pétain, against Mr Isorni as the author of the text, and against the publication manager of Le Monde, for publicly defending the crimes of collaboration with the enemy. In the judicial process that followed, the highest French court judged (16 November 1993) that the text defended a person convicted of collusion with the enemy and concluded that the finding of the lower court in favor of the complainants did not infringe the right to freedom of expression as protected by Article 10 of the European Convention. Mr Lehideux and Mr Isorni submitted an application to the European Commission on Human Rights which found their complaint admissible. The case thus proceeded to the Court which concluded that the criminal conviction of the applicants was disproportionate and not necessary in a democratic society. According to the Court there had been a breach of Article 10. The Court clarified that the protection of Article 10 would not hold if the cruelties of the Nazis had been justified in a publication or if the Holocaust would have been denied. In its ‘obiter dictum’ the Court said that Article 17 of the Convention takes the protection of Article 10 away from those who deny the Holocaust.

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3. The Use of Confidential Documents The Case Bladet Tromsoe & Stensaas versus Norway of May 20, 1999: The newspaper Bladet Tromsoe published some articles on the hunting of seals. In the first article scientist Lindberg, inspector for the Ministry of Fishing, talked about the unacceptable ways in which the animals are killed. The hunters got an opportunity to do their story. Then the newspaper published the official report by Lindberg for the Ministry. The report was withdrawn from publicity since there were allegations of criminal conduct that needed investigation and the accusations of Lindberg were not proven. The newspaper and editor Stensaas were sentenced for slander. The Court expressed the need for careful scrutiny in cases where government interference may discourage the participation of the press in debates on matters of public concern. It confirmed the ‘watch dog’ function of the press even if reputation and name of people are at stake. The Court’s majority confirmed that the seal hunters have a right to the protection of their name and reputation and the right to be held innocent until their guilt has been proven in a court of law. However, the allegations were part of the contents of the Lindberg report and the newspaper had good reason to believe the report was reliable. The Court saw no evidence that the newspaper acted not in good faith! Therefore, the Court concluded that the interference with the applicant’s freedom of expression was disproportionate. The Court sentenced the Norwegian government to a compensatory payment of 693.606 Norwegian crowns. As may be expected the Court’s opinions are not always without dissent and controversy. In this case the three dissenting judges argued against the consenting majority: “In our view the fact that a strong public interest is involved should not have the consequence of exonerating newspapers from either the basic ethics of their trade or the laws of defamation”. They concluded that the judgment “sends the wrong signal to the press in Europe…Article 10 may protect the right for the press to exaggerate and provoke but not to trample over the reputation of private individuals”. The dissenting opinions found the judgment undermines the basic ethics of the profession which imply that journalists should carefully check facts and should not trample over the reputation of private individuals.

4. Protection of Journalistic Sources The landmark case is William Goodwin versus The United Kingdom (March 27, 1996). This case provides the legal basis for the journalistic privilege in Europe. Until this case the protection of journalistic sources was only recognized in voluntary professional codes.

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Journalist William Goodwin who worked for The Engineer received confidential information about financial problems at the company Tetra Ltd. He intended to publish an article on this. The company complained that the information in the article originated from a confidential business plan and requested a prohibition to publish the information. A court of law supported the request that would be valid for all British media. Moreover, as the judge found that ‘the interests of justice’ are at stake, Goodwin was ordered to reveal his source. Also in appeal the House of Lords confirmed “the importance to the plaintiffs of obtaining disclosure lies in the threat of severe damage to their business”. Goodwin got a fine of 5.000 British Pounds for contempt of court and took his case to Strasbourg. The European Court stated that freedom of expression constitutes one of the essential foundations of a democratic society and confirmed that the protection of journalistic sources is one of the basic conditions for press freedom. The Court finally judged that the disclosure order couldn’t be regarded as having been necessary in a democratic society. The Court took a principled position in favour of the journalistic privilege and did not make it dependent upon certain conditions, like how information was gathered. Relevant in the case was the concurring opinion of one judge who suggested that the injunction was an utterly unacceptable form of prior restraint; and even if there had been no injunction the disclosing order would have been illegitimate! The Goodwin case is particularly important since the Convention does not provide for the freedom to gather information. This is a difference with the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that provide for the right to ‘seek’ information and ideas. The Court concluded very strongly “Protection of journalistic sources is one of the basic conditions for press freedom. Without such protection, sources may be deterred from assisting the press in informing the public on matters of public interest”. Failing this protection “the vital public-watchdog role of the press may be undermined and the ability of the press to provide accurate and reliable information may be adversely affected”. The Court proposed that an order to reveal sources “must be limited to exceptional circumstances where vital public or individual interests are at stake”. The Court also proposed that in these cases the national margin of appreciation is restricted since the interests of the democratic society are here at stake. The Court saw the legitimate interests of the Tetra company but considered that they weighed less than the vital public interest in protecting confidential sources. A relevant dimension of this case was also that the Court made reference to the field of professional self-regulation through codes of conduct. “Protection of journalistic sources is one of the basic conditions for press freedom, as it is reflected in the laws and the professional codes of conduct in a number of

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Contracting States and is affirmed in several international instruments of journalistic freedoms ”. Also in the cases Fressoz & Roire v. France and in Bladet Tromso, the Court referred in its argumentation to the ethics of journalism. The reference was used against state interference and in support of professional secrecy (a.o. in Bladet Tromso, Goodwin and De Haes & Gijsels). However, reference to the failure of journalists to heed the provisions of professional ethics has also been used to justify state interference, as in the Praeger & Oberschlick versus Austria case of 26 April 1995, where the Court argued that the applicant could not invoke compliance with the ethics of journalism.

5. Freedom of Expression in Turkey The complex and tense situation in Turkey has led to several cases involving journalists who wrote about or in favour of the PKK, the Kurdish Political Party. In most cases the government was considered guilty of breaching Article 10, but in some cases the Court also decided that there was hate speech or incitement to violence and thus legitimate interference. The case of Zana versus Turkey of 25 November 1997: Mr Mehdi Zana, former mayor of Diyarbakir, while serving sentences in the military prison of Diyarbakir, remarked in an interview with journalists, ”I support the PKK national liberation movement; on the other hand I am not in favour of massacres”. The statement was published in the national daily newspaper Cumhuriyet on 30 August 1987. By means of an indictment of 19 November 1987, the Diyarbakir military prosecutor instituted proceedings in the Military Court against Mr. Zana charging him with supporting an armed organisation whose aim was to break up Turkey’s national territory. The Turkish National Security Court held in its judgment of 26 March1991 that Mr Zana’s statement to journalists amounted to a criminal offence. When the case ended up with the European Court, the judges found Mr Zana’s statement contradictory and ambiguous. “They are contradictory because it would seem difficult simultaneously to support the PKK, a terrorist organization which resorts to violence to achieve its ends, and to declare oneself opposed to massacres”. The Court finally judged that the penalty imposed on the applicant could be regarded as answering to “a pressing social need” and that consequently there had been no breach of Article 10. The Court voted twelve against eight. The dissenting opinions found that the restriction imposed by the Turkish government was not necessary in a democratic society. In one opinion, a dissenting judge stated, “Even if one accepts…that the maintenance of national security and public safety constituted a legitimate aim for

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the purpose of taking measures in respect of the statement made by the applicant, his conviction and twelve-month prison sentence cannot, in my opinion, be held to be proportionate to those aims, considering the content of the statement”. And in the rationale for his dissent, the judge wrote, “The mere fact that in the statement the applicant indicated support for a political organisation whose aims and means the Government reject and combat cannot, therefore, be a sufficient reason for prosecuting and sentencing him”. It is interesting to compare the Zana case with the Incal versus Turkey case of June 9, 1998. Mr Ibrahim Incal, lawyer by profession, was a member of the executive committee of the Izmir section of the People’s Labour Party, dissolved by the Constitutional Court in 1993. On 1 July 1992 the executive committee decided to distribute a leaflet criticizing measures taken by the local authorities against small-scale illegal trading and the sprawl of squatters’ camps around the city. The leaflet concluded with “The Driving the Kurds out policy forms part of the ‘special war’ being conducted in the country at present against the Kurdish people. It is one of the mechanisms of that war, the way it impinges on the cities. Because the methods used are the same, namely enslavement, violence, terror and oppression through compulsion. It is a psychological war”. The Izmir security police considered that the leaflet contained separatist propaganda capable of inciting the people to resist the Government and commit criminal offences. A criminal investigation was opened and Mr Incal was found guilty by the National Security Court and sentenced to six months and twenty days imprisonment and a fine. In a judgment of 6 July 1993 the Court of Cassation upheld the judgment. When the case came to the European Court the judges observed that interference with the freedom of expression of a politician who is a member of an opposition party, like the applicant, calls for the closest scrutiny on the part of the Court. The Court further stated that the limits of permissible criticism are wider with regard to the Government than in relation to a private citizen, or even a politician. “In a democratic system the actions or omissions of the Government must be subject to the close scrutiny not only of the legislative and judicial authorities but also of public opinion”. The Court was prepared to take into account problems linked to the prevention of terrorism. Here it referred to its judgment in the Zana case. However, the Court judged that Mr Incal’s conviction was disproportionate to the aim pursued and therefore unnecessary in a democratic society. It is interesting that the Court finds contrary to the Zana case that found Mr Incal cannot be held responsible for terrorism in Turkey.

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6. Operational Procedure In its operational procedure the European Court follows the standard practice that it first decides whether there was an interference of Article 10.1 and then examines whether the interference is justified. The questions then asked are: Was the interference prescribed by law? What is the basis for the interference in national law? Is the law precise enough? Did the applicant have adequate protection from arbitrary interference? Did the interference pursue a legitimate aim? Was the interference necessary in a democratic society? In other words can the interfering state authority demonstrate that there was a pressing social need for its intervention? The contracting states have a certain margin of appreciation in assessing whether a pressing social need exists but eventually the decision is with the Court. The question about the pressing need will be followed by the question whether the measures taken by the state are proportionate to a legitimate aim and whether the proposed reasons are relevant and sufficient? In several cases the Court has judged an interference to be not legitimate since the information that was censored by the state was already available in the public domain anyway.

Challenges for the Future A first challenge addresses an essential and far-reaching element in the Court’s jurisprudence, which is its interpretation of the right to receive information. According to the jurisprudence of the European Court, the European citizen has the right to be properly informed. In several opinions the Court has stated that not only do the mass media have a right to impart information, they have the task “to impart information and ideas on matters of public interest” and the public has a right to receive such information and ideas. The Court has ruled that the media are purveyors of information and are public watchdogs. This imposes a special public responsibility on the performance of the media. According to the Court, the media of information have a corresponding duty to provide information that properly informs their audiences. This is a vitally important position in view of the increasing commercialization of media and the trend towards trivialisation of information provided by them: the ‘sound bites’, the info-tainment formats, the ‘media-hypes’ which are a very provocative challenge to both practitioners and policymakers. The Court’s position also deserves to be elaborated. It will turn out to be very difficult to find more precise formulations than ‘properly informed’ and even harder to operationalize such formulations. It is, however, a task urgently needed and very pertinent to the current media climate.

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A second challenge deals with the relationship between the European Convention and the European Union. A peculiarity of the European region with regard to human rights is the fact that although individual EU member states have ratified the ECHR, the EU as an institution has not. This creates a situation in which it is unclear how robust the protection of human rights really is for EU citizens. At the end of 2000 the European Union has proclaimed at its meeting in Nice the European Charter on Fundamental Rights. The Charter formulates the freedom of expression in Article 11, “1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. 2 .The freedom and pluralism of the media shall be respected”. In the commentary on this article, it is stated that restrictions of the right to freedom of expression should not exceed the limitations of the European Convention, Article 10, paragraph 2. It is regrettable that the Charter only refers to the interference by public authority and effectively excludes the interference from private parties and thus undermines the possible horizontal effect of the Charter. As with the European Convention, also here the right to seek information is not explicitly mentioned. It is also unclear whether paragraph 2 on the pluralism of the media does imply a positive duty on the part of governments to promote this media pluralism. It would be a constructive step if the EU decided to ratify the European Convention and if the provisions of the European Charter would be implemented in accordance with the jurisprudence of the European Court. A third challenge concerns the accession of Eastern European countries. In recent years Albania, Armenia, Azerbeidjan, Bulgaria, Rumania, Russia and other Central and Eastern European countries have ratified the ECHR, and thus the number of parties to the Convention has risen to forty-three. The newly acceded countries bring different legal traditions and political experiences to the Court’s proceedings and it will be of critical importance that the level of protection secured by the Convention will not be lowered. The expanded membership may also confront the Court with more complex cases about situations where gross and systematic violations of human rights take place and this raises the question of whether the Court is adequately equipped to deal with this growing burden of the caseload. The fourth challenge regards the horizontal effect of basic rights. It may well be possible that in the years ahead there will be a considerable number of cases in which interferences with the right to freedom of information come from private parties. Will the Court be adequately legally equipped to deal with this? In the case of Fuentes Bobo versus Spain of February 29, 2000 (about an employee of RTVE, the Spanish public broadcaster, who criticized his employer and who was subsequently fired) the Court concluded that Article 10 also applies to horizontal

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relations. There is therefore a legal precedent but more work needs to be done as the so-called ‘Dritt-Wirkung’ or horizontal effect of constitutional rights remains a controversial issue. A fifth challenge for the Court will be the need to apply in its opinions very substantial lines of argumentation and avoid non-essential arguments. In some cases the Court has introduced peculiar (non-essential) arguments that tend to erode the principled nature of these cases. An illustration is the consideration in paragraph 55 of the Incal case where the Court refers to the fact that the security police had an opportunity to require changes in the leaflet. Also in the Goodwin case there is the odd consideration that the interfering party no longer had a claim to the exposure of sources since a judge had already prohibited the publication and thus limited the damage thereof. A sixth challenge will be the find a balance between the right to free speech and European efforts to secure safety of the Internet in particular for children. The Council of the European Union approved on 21 December 1998 an Action Plan on promoting safer use of the Internet by combating illegal and harmful content on global networks. Whatever the valid intentions behind this Plan it will imply limits on Internet contents and thus requires a careful consideration of the limitation of these limits. A seventh challenge will be the need to make the Court more accessible for European citizens. Given the current caseload this sounds like a very irresponsible proposition. It should be realized, however, that the institution of the Court is a great historical example of how the protection of human rights can become a reality indeed. The ultimate success of the Court’s functioning will depend upon its concrete effect on the lives of European citizens. It is evident that in this process a great deal could be done by national judicial institutions. In many cases national courts would have come to different conclusions if they had already introduced in their reasoning the test of the criteria that emerge from European Court’s jurisprudence. A last challenge is also provided by the need to have robust rules on access to information. Although the Council of Europe has declared work on a legal text on access to information a priority, no concluding document has been produced so far. The European Court has held in the Guerra & Others versus Italy case of 19 February 1998, that the Convention does not provide a general right of access to public information, but it does provide a specific right to information on environmental hazards. As mentioned before, the right to freedom of expression is also part of the provisions of The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (Brussels,

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October 2000). Article 11 of the Charter and more recently the right to freedom of expression was reconfirmed by the Bucharest Pan-European conference in preparation of the World Summit on the Information Society (November 2002). The participating states proposed a vision on an Information Society “where all persons, without distinction of any kind, exercise their right to freedom of opinion and expression, including the freedom to hold opinions without interference, and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”. It should be noted that the Bucharest Declaration does include the right to seek information!

The Right to the Protection of Privacy Throughout the 1970s several European countries began to adopt national data protection laws. These laws had several common features, such as “setting limits to the collection of personal data in accordance with the objectives of the data collector and similar criteria, restricting the usage of data to conform with openly specified purposes, creating facilities for individuals to learn of the existence and contents of data and have data corrected, and the identification of parties who are responsible for compliance with the relevant privacy protection rules and decisions” (OECD, 1980: 11). Differences between national laws existed in particular with reference to licensing requirements and control mechanisms, the definition of sensitive data, and the provision of individual access. When in the 1970s the data protection concern became an international issue, the prime venues for negotiation were the Council of Europe (COE), the European Communities, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The work of the COE was obviously inspired by the privacy provision in the European Convention (ECHR) of 1950 which states in Article 8: “(1) Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence. (2) There shall no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others”. It is important to observe here that the Convention protect citizens against interference by public authorities whereas increasingly the right to privacy is also under threat through the activities of private agencies (such as marketing firms and consumer databases).

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Following the Convention the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe adopted in 1973 and 1974 two resolutions concerning data protection. The resolutions recommended that member countries would take steps to implement basic principles of protection relating to the collection of data, the quality of data, and the rights of individuals to be informed about data and data processing activities. On this bases the COE began to prepare for an international arrangement through a Convention. This became the basic European instrument in connection with privacy protection: the Council of Europe Convention for the protection of individuals with regard to automatic processing of personal data. The convention was opened for signatures on 28 January 1981. On 15 June 1999 the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe adopted an amendment to the Convention that allowed the European Communities to accede to the convention. In the 1970s also the European Community began to study the possible harmonization of legal rules in connection with transborder flows of personal data and in 1978 the European Parliament held a public hearing on data processing and individual rights. The sub-committee responsible for the hearing prepared a report that was submitted to the European Parliament in 1979 with a resolution on the protection of individual rights in view of data processing. The OECD programme goes back to the late 1960s and its studies on computer usage. In 1977 the OECD Data Bank Panel held a symposium in Vienna to discuss privacy problems in the context of transborder data flows. The symposium presented a number of guiding principles that recognized, ‘(a) the need for generally continuous and uninterrupted flows of information between countries, (b) the legitimate interest of countries in preventing transfers of data which are dangerous to their security or contrary to their laws on public order and decency or which violate the rights of their citizens, (c) the economic value of information and the importance of protecting ‘data trade’ by accepted rules of fair competition, (d) the need for security safeguards to minimise violations of proprietary data and misuse of personal information, and (e) the significance of a commitment of countries to a set of core principles for the protection of personal information’ (OECD, 1980: 14). In 1978 a new expert group on Transborder Data Barriers and Privacy Protection was initiated and was instructed to work closely with COE and EC to ‘develop guidelines on basic rules governing the transborder flow and the protection of personal data and privacy’ (OECD, 1980: 14). The work of the expert group led to the OECD Guidelines that were adopted in 1980. Although there are similarities with the COE Convention, the main difference is that the Guidelines are a non binding instrument, they define very general principles for a minimal international consensus, they contain no enforcement procedures, and their constituency is limited (although powerful). Another distinction is that the Guidelines apply to all personal data, also those handled

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manually. The COE Convention addresses only automatically processed data. The COE Data Protection Convention is a binding legal instrument for states that ratify it. As the Council is a regional body, the constituency of the Convention is limited, although the instrument is open for accession by all countries. The basic principles of the Convention are the right to confidentiality, the right to be informed about the existence of data collections, and the right to data quality. The Convention is formulated rather generally and leaves the methods to deal with these principles to national legislation. The Convention does not say how people are to know about data being collected about them or how to obtain remedy in case data registers refuse either access or rectification. There are also serious questions about the adequacy of the concepts that are used in the Convention. A core concept is the automated personal file. This was based upon the early situation in which large mainframe computers would hold files that could be accessed/processed by different users. Today files are ubiquitous, they are in personal computers, for instance. One can hardly apply the rules on all automated files. Also the notion of ‘machine readable’ has changed with the application of optical scanners. The concern about the quality of data (COE Convention Art. 5. or OECD Guidelines, Part Two, para 8) led to the formulation of a right of access for the data subject. This is insufficient if the data subject wants to get all the data correct. The data in different collections may be in and by themselves correct, but their combination may create inaccurate statements. If you combine correct data on gross income from one database and combine them with correct data from another database on net income and then present them as income, the outcome is no longer accurate. There is also the development towards more automated data collection devices. The data subject does not provide him/herself the information which is collected by electronic systems, such as traffic control systems. The Convention deals with the sensitivity of data (Art. 6) and refers to health, sex, and crime. The question is whether this is sufficient? How about data on political affiliation? Or data about race and religion? Sensitivity increases with the potential for discriminatory use of the data. What guarantees does the Convention provide against collective surveillance, for example the surveillance of suspect populations? ‘The majority of those subject to surveillance are not actually criminals, but only persons qualified by coincidence as members of the suspect population’ (Bing, 1992: 256). There is also a problem with the provision of the right of access as a fundamental right of citizens. The question is whether this really functions as an instrument of control. ‘It is a disappointing international experience that very few citizens make use of the right to access, regardless of how comprehensive this right is outlined in the different national statutes’ (Blume, 1991: 17). Yet there is sufficient evidence to suggest that ‘citizens feel very strongly about data protection and are worried

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about the extent of knowledge that public authorities and large private firms can acquire about them in our modern, information society’ (Blume. 1992: 17). Blume suggests that the fact that access has to be a personal initiative constitutes a major barrier to use this means of control. An alternative might be a system in which citizens would be informed about the data held about them. ‘Denmark has discussed such a system. However, besides the practical difficulties of such a system, a file of files would also create political problems. It would mean that the state had one big file or database containing all available information on all citizens, which when seen from the point of privacy would be very dangerous’ (Blume, 1992: 18). On 24 October 1995 the European Parliament and the EU Council issued a Directive (95/46/EC) on the protect ion of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data. On 25 October 1998 the European Union Privacy Directive took effect. The directive requires EU member states to implement personal data policies that include such principles as transparency, purpose limitation, data quality, special protection of sensitive data and the appointment of ‘data controllers’ responsible for all data processing. The Directive also stresses the need for individual redress thus providing the right of individuals to access information about themselves, to correct or block inaccuracies and to object to information’s use. Article 1 of the Directive demands of EU member states that they protect “the fundamental rights and freedoms of natural persons, and in particular their right to privacy with respect to the processing of personal data”. The EU Directive in fact recognizes the protection of privacy as a fundamental human right. The substantial basis of the Directive is found in the reference to the right to privacy as contained in the 1981 COE Convention. The Directive reiterates that rights are conferred on individuals, the data on whom are the subject of processing. These rights include that those individuals are informed that processing takes place, that they can consult the data, request corrections and object to processing under certain conditions, for example if the data are being processed for the purpose of direct marketing. The preamble of the Directive states that the processing of personal data must be carried out with the consent of the data subject. When decisions affecting data subjects are taken on the basis of automated data processing, the data subject must be able to know the logic on which these automated decisions are based. In the Directive EU Member States are asked to establish exceptions or derogations from data protection provisions in such a way as to strike a balance between different but equally fundamental rights such as the right to privacy and the right to free speech.

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On 23 February 1999 the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe adopted a recommendation which proposes guidelines for Internet users and service providers (among others on the means of protecting themselves) and advises on the implementation of data protection standards. The Guidelines also emphasize the users’ responsibility when process or transfer information about other people. On 12 July 2002 the European Parliament and the EU Council adopted Directive 2002/58/EC concerning the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector. In its Preamble, para (2) the Directive “seeks to respect the fundamental rights and observes the principles recognized in particular by the Charter of Fundamental rights of the European Union” . This concerns in particular Articles 7 and 8 of the Charter. And in para (3) the Directives assures that “confidentiality of communication is guaranteed in accordance with the international instruments relating to human rights, in particular the European convention for the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms and the constitutions of Member States”. Article 4 addresses security and provides “(1) The provider of a publicly available electronic communication service must take appropriate technical and organisational measures to safeguard security of its services…. and (2) In case of a particular risk of a breach of security of the network, the provider of a publicly available electronic communication service must inform the subscribers concerning such risk….” Article 5 deals with the confidentiality of communications and provides (1) that “Member States shall ensure the confidentiality of communications and the related traffic data by means of a public communications network and publicly available electronic communications services, through national legislation. In particular, they shall prohibit listening, tapping, or storage or other kinds of interception or surveillance of communications and the related traffic data by persons other than users without the consent of the users concerned, except when legally authorised to do so….”. The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (Brussels, October 2000) provides for the right to the protection of private communication and personal data in Article 7 which states, “Everyone has the right to respect for his or her private and family life, home and communication”. And Article 8 provides “1. Everyone has the right to the protection of personal data concerning him or her. 2. Such data must be processed fairly for specified purposes and on the basis of the consent of the person concerned or some other legitimate basis laid down by law. Everyone has the right of access to data which has been collected concerning him or her, and the right to have it rectified. 3. Compliance to these rules shall be subject to control by an independent authority”. The protection of ‘informational privacy’ as provided in this article is clearly based upon Article 8 of the ECHR and the EU privacy directive.

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Compared to Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms with regard to the protection of privacy the term ‘correspondence’ was replaced by ‘communication’. This obviously takes into account developments and innovations in information- and communication technology. The Charter provides no unequivocal recognition of the right of encryption and there is no explicit no right to anonymous communications. Yet, paragraph 3 of Article 8 represents an important step towards the establishment of an independent European data commissioner. In the course of 2001 the EU Council and Parliament have given more power to law enforcement agencies to monitor telephone, internet and email traffic. This allows these agencies to develop a fairly complete picture of people’s movements (from mobile phone records) and of their personal communications by phone and email as well as of their internet behaviour. To further reinforce this the Belgian government proposed in 2002 a text for a Draft Framework Decision on the Retention of Traffic Data and on Access to this Data in Connection with Criminal Investigation and Prosecutions. The text states that the use of telecommunications services has grown to the extent that the data relating to its use, and principally those relating to traffic are very useful tools for investigating and prosecuting criminal offences. Following this the proposal is made for the a priori retention of traffic data during a period of a minimum of 12 months and a maximum of 24 months. In order to protect the right to privacy Article 4 of the draft suggests that “Access to retained traffic data is given only to judicial authorities; Access to retained traffic data is not authorised when other measures are possible which are less intrusive in terms of privacy; Confidentiality and integrity of retained traffic data are ensured; Data to which access has not been asked are destroyed at the end of the period of mandatory retention”. Finally, it is remarkable that the Declaration that was produced by the Bucharest Pan-European conference in preparation of the World Summit on the Information Society (November 2002) contains no provisions on the issue of privacy protection.

The Right to Security Among some of the early signals that pointed at the problem of technologyvulnerability was the 1978 report by the Swedish Ministry of Defense Committee on the Vulnerability of Computer Systems (SARK) ‘The Vulnerability of Computerized Society’. In 1981 the Organization for Cooperation and Economic Development (OECD) held a workshop in Sigüenza (Spain) on the Vulnerability of the Computerized Society. In 1984 the Information Task Force of the Commission of the European

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Communities published ‘The vulnerability of the information-conscious societyEuropean situation’. In 1986 the Norwegian Vulnerability Commission presented a report called ‘The Vulnerability of a Computer Dependent Society’. In 1989 a committee of the British Computer Society reported that current skills in safety assessment were inadequate and therefore the safety of people could not be guaranteed (Forester and Morrison, 1990: 3). These various commissions and reports began to identify the risks that the use of international computer systems entailed. Such risks could be incorrect transmissions either by technical malfunction or by the intentional act of an intruder. Incorrect transmissions could include the transmission to the wrong address, or of the wrong content, or of both. Transmissions could also be afflicted by delays or by the unexplained loss of data. Another risk could be the unauthorized access to the data traffic or the data themselves or both. A third type of risk could be the possibility of communicating with fraudulent persons (Redeker, 1989: 19). Risks could also be caused by malfunctions of networks that take care of Electronic Funds Transfers and such malfunctions may be caused by environmental factors, by equipment failures, errors in design architecture, or by human errors in data processing. Such errors could cause inadvertent changes in the contents of payment instructions. The 1986 OECD study referred to the international dimension of computer-related crime due to the internationalisation of information and computer services. The study pointed to the need for an international response since “international cooperation in the repression of computer-related offenses... would facilitate transborder data flows” (OECD, 1986: 7). In the summary the study stated that international co-operation is recommended in both areas of civil and penal law. “As far as civil and administrative economic law is concerned, international harmonized solutions are necessary also in order to secure equal conditions of competition, to facilitate transborder data flow, and to avoid the transfer of undesirable or detrimental actions in foreign countries... It is important to develop common approaches to penal and procedural law in order to protect the international data networks, to enable the functioning of international instruments of co-operation in criminal matters and to guarantee that evidence gathered in one country is admissible in court in another country” (OECD, 1986: 64). The report stated very clearly that any other solution “would lead to ‘data havens’ and ‘computer crime havens’ and therefore lead to restrictions in transborder data flow” (OECD, 1986: 64). The purpose of international cooperation would be the repression and prevention of computer crime. It has been increasingly realized that international cooperation in the field of law enforcement and computer crime would demand directives regarding cases where several states are entitled to prosecute the same case, law enforcement authority

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on foreign territory and the harmonization of criminal sanctions. Harmonization is required if the emergence of computer crime havens is to be prevented. In October 1989 the OECD Secretariat submitted to the Committee for Information, Computer and Communications Policy (ICCP) a report on Information Network Security. The preparation of this report had been approved by the ICCP in October 1988. Following the report the ICCP appointed a Group of Experts to draft guidelines for information system security. On 26 November 1992 the OECD Council adopted the Recommendation and the member countries adopted the Guidelines. In its recommendation to the member countries the Council pointed to the “increasingly significant role of information systems and growing dependence on them...the sensitivity and vulnerability due to risks arising from available means of unauthorized access, use, misappropriation, alteration and destruction’. In the memorandum annexed to the Guidelines the group of experts has highlighted the growing dependence on information systems and its concern for the possibility of information system failure. ‘Failures of information systems may result in direct financial loss, such as loss of orders or payment, or in losses that are more indirect or perhaps less quantifiable by, for example, disclosure of information that is personal, important to national security, of competitive value, or otherwise sensitive or confidential” (OECD, 1992: 17). The Guidelines are presented as a general framework within which member countries can develop laws, codes of conduct, technical measures and user practices. Central to the instrument are a set of nine principles. The accountability principle which provides that responsibilities and accountability of those involved with information system should be stated explicitly. The awareness principle which provides that those interested should have access to information about measures for the security of information systems in order to foster confidence in such systems. The ethics principle which implies that the provision and use of information systems and the security of information systems should take into account the legitimate rights and interests of others. The multidisciplinary principle which states that the development of security measures and practices should take the whole range of pertinent viewpoints and forms of expertise into account. The proportionality principle which suggests that security needs vary and security measures should be in line with the value of information systems and the severity of potential harm. The integration principle which says that security measures should be coordinated and coherent security systems should be designed. The timeliness principle proposes that the timely response to security breaches is vital. The reassessment principle suggests that the dynamic development of information systems renders a periodical assessment of security measures necessary. And the concluding democracy principle says that the security measures should be in line with legitimate interests in use and flow of data and information.

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The Guidelines conclude with a set of recommendation to member countries on the implementation of security measures through policy development, education and training, enforcement and redress, exchange of information, and cooperation. Presently, the OECD Guidelines represent the core of an emerging political practice and eventually a robust and effective agreement in connection with the concern about data security. The Convention on Cybercrime adopted on 23 November 2001 by the member States of the Council of Europe represents the first international legal instrument to address crime and criminal investigation in relation to the new electronic environment (cyberspace). In connection with the protection of privacy one finds the most contested provisions in Articles 16 and 17 that deal with the preservation of data. The articles address the need to adopt legislative and other measures to obtain the expeditious preservation of specified computer data, including data traffic for a period of time as long as necessary, up to a maximum of ninety days to enable the competent authorities to seek its disclosure. This is particularly where there are grounds to believe that the computer data is particularly vulnerable to loss or modification. In terms of fundamental rights the Convention refers to the provision (Article 15) that all procedures are subject to conditions and safeguards for the protection of human rights and liberties as arising from such instruments as the ECHR and the 1966 UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Bucharest Declaration (2002) proposes that “A global culture of cyber-security needs to be developed: security must be addressed through prevention and supported throughout society, and be consistent with the need to preserve free flow of information”. The Declaration has nothing to offer in terms of the protection of basic human rights in this process of developing cyber-security. On 7 August 2002 the OECD has adopted the Guidelines for the Security of Information Systems and Networks. The Guidelines aim to promote a culture of security among all participants as a means of protecting information systems and networks. This OECD recommendation provides no rules on the protection of citizen’s rights to their privacy.

The Right to Anonymous Communications This is a strongly contested issue. In general, law enforcement authorities are concerned that anonymous communications seriously hinders criminal prosecution. There are also industry representatives who find full anonymity undesirable in relation to network integrity and anti-fraud actions. However others, and in particular privacy experts, claim that fundamental rights to free speech and privacy cannot be guaranteed without anonymous communications. The issue of

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anonymity represents a classic dilemma between conflicting public policy objectives and demands that a balance is sought between securing basic rights and permitting certain limits on these rights. The Declaration of the Ministerial Conference in Bonn on Global Information Networks (July 6-8, 1997) proposed the principle that where the user can remain anonymous off-line, this should also be possible on-line. By consequence the powers of authorities to limit basic rights should not be greater in cyberspace than they are in the off-line world.

The Right to the Protection of Intellectual Property Unlike the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (in Article 27:2), the European Convention (ECHR) provides no protection of intellectual property . As a consequence there is no recognition in Europe’s most important human rights instrument of the status of intellectual property protection as a fundamental human right. This is significant, because in case intellectual property rights are recognized as human rights this recognition shapes the political framework for all parties involved, producers, distributors, artists, and consumers. It implies that the protection of intellectual property rights is constituted by: the right to full participation in cultural life for everyone; the right of affordable access to information for everyone; the recognition of moral rights of cultural producers; the rights of creative artists; the diversity of cultural production, and the protection of the public domain. As human rights always imply responsibilities, the human rights-based conception of copyright would follow Larry Lessig’s proposal to add to ‘copyright’ a ‘copyduty’. As he writes, “We may well see the day when our students are taught not of ‘copyright’ but of ‘copy duty’ – the legal duty of copyright holders to assure public access” (Lessig, 1998). A human rights approach would give full meaning to the so-called ‘fair use’ doctrine. ‘Fair use’ is a principle in US copyright legislation that entitles the public to access and use copyrighted works in situations that would otherwise constitute an infringement on intellectual property rights. The principle (which is also known on UK and German copyright legislation, although not as liberally applied as in the USA) implies a limitation of the property rights of owners of intellectual products in cases of educational use, use for news media, criticism and review, private noncommercial copying and parody. Fair use limits the otherwise exclusive control of rights-holders over intellectual products and recognizes that in most cases copyrighted works could only have been created by using materials from the public domain. The fair use doctrine is under serious threat through the use of advanced technologies that allow rights-holders the control over access by third parties of

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works in digital form. The use of protective technologies (such as encryption, copy protection codes) strengthens the monopoly control of IPR owners. As consumers are likely to develop and apply circumvention technologies to undermine this control, the US administration and US motion picture industry have effectively lobbied the WIPO to incorporate in the 1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty the following Article 13, “Contracting Parties shall provide legal protection and effective legal remedies against the circumvention of effective technological measures that are used by authors in connection with the exercise of their rights under this Treaty or the Berne Convention and that restricts acts, in respect of their works, which are not authorized by the authors concerned or permitted by law ”. In the USA this provision was enacted in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which went much further than the WIPO agreement. The DMCA prohibits the manufacture, sales, or import of technologies that can be used to circumvent protective technologies. This could make it impossible for people who buy perfectly legal items and want to make extra copies for private use (the extra CD or DVD in the car or second home, for example). It may also become impossible to play a copyrighted item – legally acquired – on different platforms (not the CD player but your PC). The DeCSS case demonstrates where this could lead to. In 1999 Norwegian teenager Jon Lech Johansen was arrested on the accusation of creating a circumvention technology to crack the protection code for DVDs. Contrary to most media publicity cracking the DVD encryption was not an individual effort, but was the effort of the MoRE group that authored DeCSS. This is a software application to decrypt DVD movies that can be used among others to play DVDs on Linuxoperated computers. When the magazine Computer 2600 reported about this (and offered a link to the programme), the publisher was successfully sued by the Motion Picture Association of America. Fortunately, in January 2003 a Norwegian Court found ‘DvD Jon’ not guilty and judged that copying for personal use was not a legal offence. The Court found that the purchase of a legally produced carrier (such as a DVD disk) gives full access to its information. This would not be the case the Court emphasized if copies had been illegally obtained. In the Norwegian case the film business lost its claim upon the DMCA against ‘DvD Jon ‘, but this will certainly not deter the contents-industry from future operations against digital copying. Such operations threaten to erode the fair use principle and as this has far-reaching implications for people’s access to culture, information, and knowledge, the forthcoming United Nations World Summit on the Information Society (Geneva, 2003) should issue a strong statement on the need to protect the public dimension of IPRs. A statement from André Gide “Everything belongs to he who makes good use of it” fits very well into a human rights IPR

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framework and it should provide guidance to the future of intellectual property rights. In the European region the WIPO Copyright Treaty was implemented through the EU copyright directive ( Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and the Council on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society) In the Directive the EU went much further that the WIPO provisions on technologies that could circumvent measures to protect copyrighted works. “Article 6 (2) Member States shall provide adequate legal protection against the manufacture, import, distribution, sale, rental, advertisement for sale or rental, or possession for commercial purposes of devices, products or components or the provision of services which (a) are promoted, advertised or marketed for the purpose of circumvention of, or (b) have only a limited commercially significant purpose or use other that to circumvent, or (c) are primarily designed, produced, adapted or performed for the purpose of enabling or facilitating the circumvention of, any effective technological measures”. That goes beyond the WIPO WCT provision in Article 11, that countries should “provide adequate legal protection and effective legal remedies against the circumvention of effective technological measures”. Then under article 5 a long list of exceptions or limitations to copyrights is provided that do constitute a fair use exemption. However, the exemptions are (with a minor exception) optional. There is no obligation for Member States to apply the whole list. They can make their own choice. This is peculiar in the view of the fact that the Preamble of the Directive states several times that this is an effort at harmonisation! In any case, mandatory or optional, it seems an odd effort to present an exhaustive list of limitations in connection with technological conditions that may rapidly change. Moreover, in terms of communication rights the Directive has bypassed the essential matter of moral rights of authors altogether. This would seem to fit with the overall impression that the EU Copyright Directive serves the rights of the cultural industries much better than the rights of individual authors, composers and performers. The Directive has little if anything to offer for the protection of individual creative artists --the essential sources for copyrighted contents --against the powers (contractual and otherwise) of corporate publishing houses, broadcasters and music recording firms.

Conclusion If one assesses the current provisions for communication rights in European information societies from the perspective of European citizens, they are clearly unsatisfactory. Even more so now that communication rights are facing strong

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pressures from the ‘war on terrorism’ which seems a convenient argument for many governments to limit rights and freedoms in the field of free speech and privacy. Moreover, there are forceful commercial trends that tend to favour industrial interests over individual interests in the field of intellectual property rights. There is also the added problem with the trend that people are in the EU context increasingly seen as ‘consumers’ for whom modern communication technologies and networks offer commercial goods and services. They are not primarily seen as ‘citizens’ in need of public space for political deliberation. The 1997 European Commission ‘Greenbook on convergence in telecommunications, media and IT’ (December 3, COM(97) 623), for example, presents users of ICT exclusively as purchasers of goods and services on a market. There is little if any interest in ICT as vehicle for people’s political interactions and exchanges. Communication rights that would be more adequate from a citizen’s perspective would imply at a minimum: • A robust protection of the right to freedom of expression including a strong provision on access to information and an obligation on states to support mediapluralism. • A robust protection of privacy and confidentiality including strong provisions on the use of encryption and anonymity. • An understanding that these fundamental rights and freedoms can only be limited under the condition that restrictive measures should be temporary, proportional, effective and the only available alternatives. • A robust protection of the ‘fair use’ principle in relation to intellectual property rights including ‘copy duty’ provisions that oblige parties to facilitate the public dissemination of materials that are essential to public life (in politics and culture). This requires a positive formulation of the fair use standard in copyright legislation, i.e. the provision that fair use claims represent basic rights. They are currently mainly formulated as an exception to a standard protecting the interests of owners of copyright claims. It would seem that in most policy debates and media reports the essential question is about what the European region can do to promote the development of the European Information Society. It is however more relevant and urgent to turn this question around and reflect on what informational developments can do to promote a democratic European space. This is critical since a peaceful future for the economic, technological, and cultural aspirations of the European region depends upon the democratic quality of its political deliberations. If current informational developments are to contribute to this constructively, Europeans must begin – today -- with the design and implementation of a pan-European Bill of

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Communication Rights that robustly secures the pivotal position of European citizens in the future of their region.

References Blume P. (1992), “How to control data protection rules?”, International Computer Law Adviser, 6 (6): 17-21. Council of Europe (1990), Computer-Related Crime. Strasbourg: European Committee on Crime Problems. Forester, T. and Morrison, P. (1990), Computer Ethics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. I-Ways (2002), Digest of Electronic Commerce Policy and Regulation, OECD Adopts Guidelines for Security of Information Systems and Networks, 3-4, 2/2002. Lessig, L. (1998), Life, Liberty, Copyright, The Atlantic Monthly Unbound, 10.9.1998. OECD (1980), Recommendation of the Council Concerning Guidelines Governing the Protection of Privacy and Transborder Flows of Personal Data. C (80) 58 (Final) October 1. Paris: OECD. OECD (1986), Computer-Related Crime: Analysis of Legal Policy. Paris: OECD. OECD (1992), Guidelines for Security of Information Systems. OECD/GD (92)190. Paris: OECD. Redeker, H. (1989), “Liability in telecommunication systems: the German case”, International Computer Law Adviser, 4 (1): 18-21. Rodotà, S. (1992), “Protecting informational privacy: trends and problems”, in W.F. Korthals Altes, E.J. Dommering, P.H. Hugenholtz and J.C.kabel (eds), Information Law towards the 21st Century. Deventer: Kluwer, pp. 261-72.

Business Issues Facing New Media Robert G. Picard Most studies of new media for the past decade have concentrated on technological issues, on new media companies, and on content providers. Because it is based on contemporary developments, most of the literature has concentrated on the characteristics of new media, their technological underpinnings, and their perceived potential to affect society and markets. The authors of these studies have come primarily from technological and social sciences and their work has generally ignored the commercial requirements for the success of information and communication technologies (ICT) and new media products and services in market economies. Most of the studies have been highly positivistic in their approach, have asserted wide-ranging benefits from new media, and have assumed their attractiveness to the public. The scholarly and governmental studies mirrored the enthusiasm within the emerging industry. High new media growth rates in the second half of the 1990s were fuelled by relatively easy access to venture capital and stock funds that were made possible by booming national economies. Persons --primarily young-- with innovative ideas but little business experience and business education led companies for which seemingly endless possibilities existed. New technological breakthroughs, products, and services were introduced almost weekly. And then the dot.com bubble burst. The collapse in 2000 was led to companies in which basic business logic or ability to manage the business were absent. In many cases, problems in the companies had been unseen or ignored by novice managers who were blinded by growth rates, easy money, and their own optimism. Some had good ideas that were surpassed by better ideas, most financed their research and development through risk capital, and most were technology-driven rather than consumer-driven firms. In the end, the firms ran out of capital to continue operations, lacked workable business models, and often faced consumer indifference to their products or services.

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To be fair, however, the failure rates for new media firms were about the same for start-up firms in any industry. Among new firms, about two thirds die within 3 years and about three quarters within 5 years. After the bubble burst, the surviving new media companies tended to be those with better ideas, better products, better business practices, and better managers. Today, it is clear that new media must be understood as commercial entities that operate in the market economy. The basic requirement of a market economy is the existence of a market, that is, consumers willing to consume the product or service. A truism--apparently forgotten in much of the emergent industry--is that sellers must have a product worth acquiring, that there must be buyers who want to purchase, and that the product must be offered at a price buyers are willing to pay. Although the truism seems trite, the history of new media in recent years indicates that many companies did not comprehend this basic business logic and that the lack of comprehension was responsible for a good deal of the difficulties the industry has faced.

Supply and Demand In recent years, literature on business strategies for new media and the operation of firms for commercial gain has begun to emerge from business scholars, economists, and practitioners. Although generally supportive of ICT and new media, they have taken a more critical and realistic view of the technologies and their potential for success and failure. These studies have begun to lay out the necessities and requirements for successful introductions and operations of new media. Central to these studies has been the analysis of new media business models and strategies. Effective business models encompass how a business operates, its underlying foundations, it value-creation processes, its cost structures, the resources upon which it is dependent, its creative and production elements, its distributive activities and mechanisms, and its exchange activities and financial flows. They include a description of the potential benefits for the various business actors and the sources of revenues. Theoretical and applied analyses have investigated business models for new media activities and a number of significant contributions have appeared. Timmers (1998) explored 11 models that can be utilised in electronic commerce. Failures and changes in four fundamental business models employed by online content providers were explored by Picard (2000). Recently four models for mobile voice and data services, based on continuity of basic business models and their

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expansion across telecommunications technological generations have been suggested (Ballon, et al., 2002) and Afuah amd Tucci (2001) identified three generic strategies for firms attempting to gain advantages from Internet commercial opportunities. The application of business models in firms has led to in-depth examinations of the business models of nearly two dozen access providers, online portals, online content providers, online retailers, online brokers, and other firms were recently completed (Eisenmann, 2002). A basic element of the models is that the firms must have revenue streams to survive and grow. The primary sources can be consumers, advertisers, ecommerce activities, or a parent company that operates the new medium as an extension of existing products or services. There are many different means in which a business model can be constructed to provide necessary revenue. A much-tried method is the transfer of the advertising-support model from established print and broadcast media. The result has not been highly successful. Despite Internet use nearing an average of 25% across Europe, online advertising expenditures represent less than 2% of total European advertising expenditures (World Advertising Trends, 2002). Electronic commerce models have had limited success for some retailers and today reach nearly €2 trillion. Although this can be considered a success, ecommerce sales still accounts for less than 1% of total retail sales in the European Union. Part of the difficulty results from the explosive proliferation of new media, that is dramatically fragmenting audiences. Millions of ICT users spread their use among millions of host sites. The result is illustrated by the situation of online content sites. National content sites gaining 250,000 daily visitors are considered enormous successes and only about 3 or 4 sites in a nation achieve such visit rates. Taken in context, however, these 250,000 visitors represent only 2.5% of the population in a nation with 10 million inhabitants or of 1% in a nation with 50,000,000 inhabitants. Some advertisers are interested in audiences of these sizes, but have been unwilling to transfer large amounts of advertising expenditures to new media to reach them. The supply side of new media thus faces a variety of challenges in finding revenue, controlling costs, and developing sustainable business models. Good planning and good management alone are not enough to overcome the market and ensure success of new media, however. The biggest challenges come not from the supply side of new media but from the demand side. The choices of consumers will determine what consumer resources

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are devoted to new media and those choices will influence choices of marketers and advertisers who are critical to many business models. Unfortunately, a significant understanding of consumer behaviour is absent from most analyses of new media. This has produced two major problems in the views of consumers in most new media studies. First, there is an assumption of universal interest in the new products and services. Second, there is an assumption of universal adoption at some point. Both ideas are highly suspect because no media or communication device has ever achieved 100% adoption and nothing in consumer behaviour theory or research supports either idea. Most new media studies by non-consumer scholars are based on the adoption curve and uncritically accept the notion that this Bell curve represents adoption by 100% of the population or households (Figure 1). The problem with this view is that the curve does not represent the entire population but only those who ultimately adopt the new product or service.

Figure 1: The Adoption Curve

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Many proponents of new information and communication technologies seem convinced that because the technologies can serve good purposes, they will be automatically embraced by the public. The problem is that there are a range of impediments to success of ICT technologies brought on by competing interests in the technologies and that individual choices of consumers determine what consumer resources are devoted to new media (Figure 2). Ultimately, consumer choices will influence choices of marketers and advertisers, which are critical to many market-based business plans for digital media (Albarran, 2000; Picard, 2002). Only if the interests of the various stakeholders converge or can be

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accommodated and if consumers become willing to make expenditures does the likelihood of successful market introduction increase (Picard, 1998).

Figure 2: Convergence of Interests in Communication Technologies Audiences or Customers

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Advertisers Copyright 1998 Robert G. Pi card

The introduction of new ICT devices is not all just a matter of communications technologies, but also a matter of how digitalisation and modern communication devices are changing communication functions and abilities. They are changing communication from one-way to two-way communication and from passive to interactive communication. They are changing media from mass media to specialised media, are moving us from access to few media to many media, and freeing us from fixed location media and communication devices to mobile media and devices. At the same time, we are moving from having separate mass and personal communication media into mixed technologies that have multiple

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functions. And the technologies are changing the content available from merely national media to global media as well. Despite these significant functional changes, if one actually looks at the results of this situation we see that the digitalisation, new media, and information and communication technologies are part of an evolutionary rather than revolutionary change in communication ability. No real new communication ability is being created. They are not affecting communications in such fundamental ways as did the arrival of the printing press, the telegraph and telephone, photography and motion pictures, and broadcasting. What the information revolution is primarily doing is increasing the speed, flexibility and integration of existing forms of communication. The most revolutionary aspects are new economies of scope and integration that are changing the economics of production and distribution. These factors play significant roles in the choices of audiences and consumers regarding new media access and use.

Audiences and Consumers Increasingly Play the Central Role Perhaps the most critical change brought on by the functions and capabilities of ICT is the change in locus of control over the communication. And it is this change that is moving audiences and consumers to the centre of all business aspects of ICT. In the new bi-directional communications environment, ICT users can play a more active role in the information creation and selection process. Audiences influence the content of media more directly, gain selectivity and control, choose their own communications, use it in their own ways, and filter and personalise communication. Firms communicating with these users can learn more about their customers, provide better service, and more effectively customise and personalise services for specific recipients. If digital media are to be successful, consumer needs must be central parts of digital media strategies. One must be able to answer questions such as: What will they get they aren’t getting now? How is the technology or service relevant to their lives? How does it improve life or help them? Why is it valuable for them? Why should they use and pay for the new service? Many new media/ICT products and services have failed or had slow acceptance because they were searching for wants and needs to satisfy rather than answering those kinds of consumer questions. Trying to find wants and needs to satisfy reverses the normal pattern of product/service creation to fill wants and needs. It is

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not a problem-solution approach that more often leads to success for new technologies. Customer value is created through use of new communication capabilities. It provides immediacy that was previously absent. It provides flexibility in use and information handling, it provides mobility, makes it possible for common platforms to carry different types of content and communication, provides more control to users, provides response ability to communications, and permits more rapid searching for information. One also needs to understand that there are great differences between groups of consumers. The first purchasers are innovators and enthusiasts who love technology or want high performance, but these enthusiasts don’t represent all consumers. General consumers want solutions to their wants and needs and convenience of use. Success in new media products typically does not occur until general consumers acquire and use them.

Economics and Consumer Expenditures We also need to recognise that digitalisation does not change the laws of economics. It may change in business models and it often alters costs structures (particularly production and distribution costs), but it does not change any economic laws or remove need for capital, operational financing, or effective management. Because digital media lower costs and ease distribution, they actually make market investments more risky by increasing competition and removing existing advantages from economies of scale and scope and lower transaction cost. Digital media shift media from variable to fixed cost economics less affected by economies of scale, economies of scope, and transaction costs. As a result competitors tend to have similar costs and competition tends to focuses on quality, service, and image. Only a few large suppliers can typically become successful in such an environment. Consumer acceptance of media and communication products and services are determined by the extent to which they serve consumer wants and needs, the willingness of consumers to invest in hardware and software, their willingness to pay use charges, and their willingness to use their time differently. Thus, understanding consumer behaviour is a critical issue in the successful introduction of ICT.

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A significant but often ignored factor in consumer behaviour involves temporal expenditures. The time available for media and communications use is constrained by consumers’ overall time use. Many daily activities compete for this highly limited resource. Because humans spend about one third of the day sleeping and use another third for work, school, or other subsistence needs, only about one third of their day is available for activities ranging from household maintenance, daily travel, eating, and leisure (Areese and Albarran, 2003). Although there tended to be greater differences in the past, time use patterns are generally converging across the developed world and national and individual differences are diminishing (Gershun, 2002). Temporal expenditures for media tend to come from leisure time, travel time, and work time, but not all media and ICT can be used equally during these activities and the media use must be compatible with the time from which it is taken. Many of the new ICT technologies are having to find a place in the available time use or are being introduced with the thought of changing time use patterns. It is very difficult, however, to change personal time use patterns. An example of this is seen in television during the 1990s. The number of television channels in Europe nearly tripled and satellite and cable services were widely subscribed. The supply of television programmes to viewers jumped dramatically because broadcasters also increased their broadcast days and the total amount of programming hours offered increased proportionally with the number of new channels. Nevertheless, television viewing time increased only an average of 2 minutes per year, less than one half hour programme over the course of the decade (Figure 3).

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Figure 3: Average Daily Viewing Time (Minutes) in EU nations, 19901999 200 180 160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999

Source: Compiled and calculated by the author from time data in TV International Sourcebook 2001. London: Informa Media Group, 2001. In order to be successful, then, new media and ICT products and services must displace part of existing time use, must provide the same or better communications in a more advantageous manner, must be easily used at the time in which current use is made, or must find new time that can be allocated to the media/communications product. As a result one cannot expect consumers to use mobile Internet while driving a motorcycle or to use a computer while painting a bedroom, but these new media and devices can be used while riding on a bus or replace some television viewing time. In addition to time issues, consumers increasingly face monetary issues in new media. Although traditional print media are relatively low priced due to advertising, and free-to-air broadcasting or a low license fee broadcasting are available, new media require significant hardware and software expenditures. Consumers’ spending on all media comes from the personal spending involves a wide range of expenditures for food, housing, clothing, household and personal care goods, transportation, medical care, and other items. Their capacity to switch significant amounts of expenditures to media and ICT is somewhat limited.

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Today, Europeans expend about 4% of personal spending on media, and telephony expenditures are about 1%. The amount spent is slightly higher in Northern Europe than in the rest of Europe. When consumers consider new media and ICT, a number of factors are critical in their choices: whether the new technology is an improvement in providing functions on existing communication devices, whether the product or service is desirable, whether it is compatible with existing technology they own, the amount of use they anticipate will be made of the new technology, what types of switching costs would be involved (would one have to repurchase video recordings in a new format, for example), their level of belief in success of the technology, and the temporal and financial resources they have available. Because these types of questions are answered differently, patterns of acceptance of different media vary widely by nation and individual. So it is unrealistic to expect that everyone will have every new digital media and communication product and service. This is illustrated by the penetration patterns of current media and communication technologies in Europe. Even with these basic media and communication devices there is a wide difference in acceptance (Figure 4). Telephones, television and radio exceed 95% penetration in households and VCRs, magazines and CD players have between 50 and 90% penetration. Computers, Internet, mobile phones, newspapers, and cable and satellite services are available in fewer than half the homes.

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Figure 4: Household Penetration Rates of Selected Media and ICT products and Services in Europe 1 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 Newpapers

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Source: Eurostat, 2001 The range of new digital media and information and communications technologies being offered is stunning and increasing rapidly. It is tempting to argue that consumers will get used to the new technologies and acquire them. This is a highly positivistic view that ignores the significant gap between the rate of change in technology and changes in human attitudes and behaviour. Although the technologies of communication are changing rapidly, the responses to them by consumers are much slower. Part of this is occurring because the introduction of much ICT is based on market expenditures on both the production and consumption sides. Digital media development and operation are today relying primarily on market funding and must be understood within the context of financing all analogue and digital media. A classic example of the problems that occur when the market’s role in ICT is not recognised can be seen in the introduction of digital terrestrial television. Digital television has been implemented in a number of nations as an ill-conceived and doomed effort for policy and technology to triumph over the market. This effort has primarily been promoted by governments to support frequency reallocation, to

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support industrial development of their ICT sectors, and to promote national or regional images of ICT leadership for political and economic purposes. In the introduction digital television broadcasting requirements placed on broadcasters by policymakers made public service broadcasters bear the brunt of this digital transformation. Few public service broadcasters received additional financial support for the effort and were forced to rely on their existing license fees and advertising sales for financial resources. The increased costs of developing and operating digital transmission capabilities and digital channels have been the major cause of negative overall results for European public service broadcasters in recent years (Figure 5).

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Source: Compiled from data in European Audiovisual Observatory (2002). Statistical Yearbook 2002. Strasbourg: European Audiovisual Observatory. Even in markets where commercially funded introductions have taken place, there has been a wholesale rejection of digital terrestrial television costs by consumers, with notable failures in the United Kingdom and Spain. As a result, some European governments are responding to this case of market failure by considering subsidised distribution of digital TV boxes to speed the switch to digital television and the US is seeking to require TV manufacturers to put digital receivers in new television receivers. These are classic examples of forcing consumers to bear the costs for a technology they have clearly not embraced.

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Policymakers and broadcasters in some nations are taking notice of the problem and are making efforts to delay implementation of digital terrestrial television and in others nations they are trying to delay previously planned switch-offs of analogue broadcasting because of the lack of consumer switching to digital. These problems of funding digital television are part of broader issues of consumer willingness to purchase the range of media and communication products being offered. We must recognize that technologies, policies, and business plans themselves do not create demand and that the choices to purchase will be determined by consumer behaviour, not the wishes of technology manufacturers and policymakers. One of the ignored issues of new media and ICT products and services is that they increasingly transfer costs to users that were previously borne elsewhere or they require additional expenditures above current media and communication expenditures. And the current expenditures on these products are not insubstantial. Television reception, for example, is free or funded through a relatively low, broadbased license fee. But television viewing also typically involves new hardware purchases an average of every 7-10 years, with a €25-€50 annualised cost. In addition, radio listening is free with new receivers being purchased an average of every 7-10 years, at an annualized cost of €5-€10. On the print media side, newspapers cost European consumers €200-€300 annually for news-stand purchases and €300-€600 annual for subscriptions, while magazines cost €2-€5 per issue at news-stand and €12-€35 for annual subscription. If one looks at the consumer costs that are currently being expended and those that will incur for new digital media and communications, one immediately sees that they will increase substantially. A simple CD player requires a €50 to €250 hardware investment and then payment of €15 to €20 per title purchased. Purchase of a DVD player means a €250 to €1,000 hardware investment, with costs of €20 to €30 per title purchased and €3 to €5 per title rented. Because of changes preparing the way for digital television, consumers need to reinvest in receivers for wide screen television. This represents a €1,000 to €5,000 hardware investment. Where digital television is available, consumers must make an additional €300 to €500 hardware investment and then spend €180 to €360 average annual cost for advanced services. To access the Internet, consumers must make a €1,000 to €2,500 investment in a personal computer, plus pay €300 to €1,000 annual costs for access and phone fees. If consumers want mobile Internet services, they must make a €330 to €1,000 hardware investment and then pay €600 to €1,200 average annual cost for advanced services.

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These are not minor costs in term of average household expenses. Selecting the range of digital media and communication spending would approximately triple current annual household expenditures. To anyone who has followed personal spending changes over time, this represents a completely unrealistic expectation for any category of spending. The costs included in this description are only for major technologies that currently exist and do not include any new types of digital products or services that will require expenditures. Nevertheless, it is abundantly clear that consumers will be unable to fund the entire range of the growing number of ICT possibilities and will thus make individual choices among them. Another factor promoting different use patterns and wide differences in demand are variations in costs of using ICT products and services. An example of this is seen in the cost for using the Internet (Figure 6), where costs in some European nations are double those of others. The law of supply and demand thus becomes a factor in the choice to use and the amount of use.

Figure 6: Costs for Internet Access in Selected European Nations

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In addition, expenditures will be influenced by income levels, which vary widely among segments of the populations and nations. Even within the European Union average income levels vary. These types of financial limitations are particularly problematic to the view of widespread uptake of ICT because consumers and market funding are the basis of nearly every current business plan. Because of the expenditure issues, consumers can be expected to make individual choices among the technologies and some technologies that could be beneficial will fail. This will occur because when new media are introduced, they must become successful in a relatively short period of time (often 2 to 4 years) or their producers and financiers will abandon the products and services for ventures with more revenue-producing and profitability potentials. Ultimately, the choices made may not reflect the wishes of policymakers and social engineers who wish to have specific parts of the technologies adopted to support their social, political, or cultural agendas.

Summary Creating successful business from new media and communication technologies and services is a far more difficult activity then merely developing a good technology or service, creating a business plan, and offering the new media to consumers. It requires convincing them to part with their time and money. If new media are to become successful commercial activities, companies offering the products and services and policymakers supporting them will have to devote more attention to consumers and the market. They will need to recognise limits to acceptance of the new technologies and plan accordingly. Firms will need to target groups of consumers more selectively and governments will need to consider policies that respond to market failure for those information and communication products and services that are most important for social and political goals. There is great potential in ICT but that potential must be viewed realistically, within the constraints of the market economies that are being asked to introduce and support them.

References Afuah, Allan, and Christopher L. Tucci (2001), Internet Business Models and Strategies. Boston: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

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Areese, Angel, and Alan B. Albarran (eds.) (2003), Time and Media Markets. Mahweh, N. J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers. Ballon, Pieter, Sandra Helmus, Roland van de Pas, Henk-Jan van de Meeberg (2002), ‘Business Models for Next-Generation Wireless Services’, Trends in Communication, No. 9. Davis, William (1999), The European TV Industry in the 21st Century. London: Informa Publishing Group. Eisenmann, Thomas R. (2002), Internet Business Models: Text and Cases. Boston: McGraw-Hill/Irwin. European Audiovisual Observatory (2002), Statistical Yearbook 2002. Strasbourg: European Audiovisual Observatory. Gershun, Jonathan (2000), Changing Times: Work and Leisure in Postindustrial Society. Oxford University Press. IP Deutschland (2002), European Key Facts. Internet 2001. Köln, Germany: IP Deutschland. Picard, Robert G. (2000), ‘Changing Business Models of Online Content Services: Their Implications for Multimedia and Other Content Producers,’ JMM—International Journal on Media Management,” 2(2):60-66. Picard, Robert G. (2002), The Economics and Financing of Media Companies. New York: Fordham University Press. Picard, Robert G. (1998), ‘Interacting Forces in the Development of Communication Technologies: Business Interests and New Media Products and Services,’ European Media Management Review (No. 1), pp. 16-22. Timmers, Paul (1998), ‘Business Models for Electronic Markets,’ Electronic Markets, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 3-8. TV International Sourcebook 2001, London: Informa Media Group. World Advertising Trends 2002, Oxfordshire, U.K.: NTC Publications.

Perspectives for Employment in the Transition to a Knowledge Society Peter Johnston

The Lisbon Strategy: The Changing Nature Of Work In A Knowledge Economy The future of work and employment in a networked knowledge society must be seen in the context of four inter-related trends: the continued professionalization of work in a service economy; the trend to higher information–value in all products and services; globalisation of the economy, notably now for services, and the accelerating pace of change. These trends lead some to great pessimism about the future of employment, as manufacturing industry declines in economic importance and the employment structures associated with it begin to evaporate: in 1900, 60% of jobs in the UK were in farming, mining and manufacturing; by 1950, these sectors provided 40% of jobs; and in 1999, they provide only 16%. Others see reason for great optimism as a ‘long boom’ associated with a transition to a networked global information society spreads prosperity to a much higher proportion of the world population. In this vision, everyone in this society can have skills, ideas, experience, creativity or time that others are willing to pay for. In fact, the job losses have been more than compensated by new job creation in services: the total UK working population was 20 million in 1950; it is now at a record 27 million, with most of the new jobs in education, health-care, finance and food/catering services. What infrastructures and market mechanisms will mediate this new economy? Will they be accessible to all, or will the knowledge economy be only for the educated elite?

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policies of the Commission of the European Union.

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Professionalization: Unpaid Activities Become Paid Services In the Western, Christian culture, work is the central feature in life: it determines a person’s status in society and provides both the necessities of life and material wealth. During the industrial revolution, largely within the last 200 years, work has also largely become synonymous with employment; it has become a profession for most people (although this trend is far from complete and will continue into an information society), and dependent on organised structures – whether private companies, government administrations or networks of self-employed individuals. The trend towards the commercialisation of work has accelerated in the last 20 years with increases in overall prosperity, with the complexity of social organisation, and with the continuing shift towards a service economy. This trend currently continues to encroach on the set of previously unpaid activities done mainly by women in the house, as women are increasingly drawn themselves into paid employment. The recent changes are best illustrated in the areas of core ‘housework’ tasks of cooking, child rearing and cleaning/washing.

New Value Chains The fundamental process of adding value by conceiving and producing products and services doesn’t change. The ownership and linkage of different parts changes, and the relative ‘weight’ of different parts changes, as we move into an information society. If the value chain is (artificially) separated into the five phases of design, production, advertising/packaging, retail and after-sales services, the relative ‘weight’ in terms of investment and employment have changed dramatically in the last 20 years from an industrial to a service paradigm. The industrial paradigm was characterised by the dominance of the mass production. Henry Ford’s Model T was a triumph of production engineering. However, in today’s emerging information society, more than 70% of the retail value of a car is related to immaterial features – only 16% reflects the price of raw materials (steel, plastic and rubber). The informative content (microprocessors and software) is worth more, and the advertising, retailing and after-sales services represent about 40%. The design and retail phases have become both more critical to commercial success and the most expensive. This trend will continue; the highest value-added will be in immaterial design work; in advertising, retail and after-sales service, with the latter taking the dominant place as ‘car manufacturers’ migrate up the value chain to become ‘mobility service providers’.

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Globalisation With the completion of the liberalisation of world trade in Uruguay Round; the recent political commitment to further liberalisation for services in Doha; and the shrinking of distance through global communications networks; economic activities are more than ever integrated and interconnected around the world. This has led to fears in Europe that capital, enterprise and jobs will increasingly move to countries where labour is cheap. These fears are largely unfounded; and the evidence of the last decades is more optimistic: firstly because the idea that there is a fixed volume of work to share around is a fallacy. The more people in employment, the more jobs there will be for others everywhere in the world. Global job creation has been exceptionally high in the last 25 years -- in developed countries (the USA, Canada, Japan have seen indigenous job creation of over 65 million jobs) at the same time as over 500 million jobs have been created in the developing countries of Asia. Secondly, the OECD ‘job study’1 of 1998 showed that new job creation has been strongest in those countries which have invested most in information and communication technologies. More jobs were created in the US between 1975 and 1995 than in the 20 previous years: because of the IT revolution. Since 1985, about 50% of new jobs were in the managerial and professional service sectors, and 70% were high-skill, high pay.

An Accelerating Pace of Change We all suffer from this: And perhaps our generation is the one that has had to live through the critical period in which for the first time the lifetime of a ‘job’ has become shorter than our working life. In previous centuries and generations, skills and professions were learned for life: ‘Apprenticeship’, then school education and vocational/professional training, prepared people for a lifetime of work as a carpenter, a miner, a doctor or an accountant. Yet during our working lives some of these professions have almost disappeared in Europe. This has its effect in the labour market: the average duration of ‘employment’ has become shorter -- now about 6 years in the EU -- but not by as much as many people feared: ‘lifetime employment’ is not disappearing when organisations are able to re-skill and re-deploy people in a flexible and effective way. Nevertheless, there is a growing mismatch between skills learnt when young (up to 25) and the skills required for new jobs today: especially with the ageing workforce in the EU.

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Life-time learning has therefore become a key priority in the eEurope Action Plan and in European employment policies: ‘investing in employability and adaptability of people’ through a revitalised and advanced education and training system; workplace re-skilling; self-training; new access to training and conversion courses for older workers. There is already a ‘skills gap’ for IT and e-commerce specialists, especially those with softer ‘social skills’ of team-working, creativity and communications2. The private sector is already the major investor in ‘management-training’ and will need to broaden this type of ‘work management’ and ‘creativity’ training to most people in knowledge-related activities. The faster pace of change also increases stress in work: more than 41 million EU workers are affected by work-related stress each year. The European Week for Safety and Health at Work 2002 will aim at tackling this growing problem by increasing awareness of these and other psychosocial risks as well as promoting and developing preventive measures. At the Stockholm Summit, Heads of State also addressed the ‘quality of work’, both in the life/work balance; and in terms of workplace safety. The Commission has now proposed to develop by 2003 a comprehensive Community strategy to promote health and safety at work, to achieve a substantial reduction in work accidents and professional illness.

New Work Opportunities For All? What Do We Mean by ‘All’? In 1993, the Commission raised the stakes in the ‘full employment ‘ debate by highlighting the relatively low level of participation in the formal labour market in Europe (60%, compared with 70% in Japan and 75% in the USA), as well as the disparity between jobs and those seeking employment (the traditional ‘unemployment’ figures). In March 2000, the European Heads of State set a new strategic goal to raise the employment rate to near 70% and to increase the proportion of working-age women in employment to more that 60% in 2010. In Stockholm, in March 2001, these goals were reinforced by intermediate targets for women in 2005 and for older workers in 2010. In March 2001, European Heads of State reviewed progress. Europe enjoyed 3.5% growth in 2000, and unemployment fell to its lowest level since 1991. However, in the current slowdown, renewed efforts must be made to accelerate structural change, notably to get more flexibility and creativity into work.

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Innovation and technology change are still driving job creation. Investments in ICT have contributed over 0.5% per year to growth since 1995, and job creation has been particularly strong in the ICT and related business services with over 3.5 million new jobs. In the last 5 years, high-skill non-manual ‘eWork’ has accounted for over 60% of the new jobs: 1.5 million in the high-tech sector itself, and over 5 million with higher education qualifications In most EU-countries, the same goal of a higher participatory workforce is addressed through policies to re-integrate the ‘excluded’ – whether through racism, lack of skills, disability, homelessness or misfortune. It is anyway clear that we are going to need much more flexible, part-time, and local work opportunities to get another 10% of the potential workforce into employment (going from 60-70% of the total workforce), especially as an ageing workforce will be more conscious of ‘quality-of-life’ issues and less mobile: we will have 10 million more people over 50 in the workforce by 2010, and the proportion of people with disability is likely to increase from 11% today to 17% in 2020.

User-Friendly Work-Tools and Work Organisation Clear choices will have to be made to increase participation in the workforce: • Do we invest in making work-tools easier to learn and use; or do we invest in retraining everyone in their use every time they change? • Do we invest in road and public transport systems to allow more people to travel to work, or do we invest in ‘bringing work opportunities’ nearer home? Of course these choices are not black and white: they are questions of balance in investment. This has already started to shift: The explicit focus on ‘user friendly’ information society technology development at EU level; and the modest trimming back of road-building programmes in the UK and NL. In its proposal for a sustainable development strategy, the Commission proposed to de-couple transport growth from GDP growth in order to reduce congestion and to promote more balanced regional development by reducing disparities in economic activity; maintaining the viability of rural and urban communities. There is nevertheless far to go. The average commuting times and distances are greater then ever. The annual public and private investment in IT training for the workforce is greater than ever, and still rising fast.

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New Organisation and Employment Structures The third major question is what social structures will organise this global market for services – one in which most people have to manage their own affairs, or one in which security and stability will be provided by private companies and government organisations?

Effects of Scale The ability to find customers for a specialist skill depends on a large enough pool of potential clients. This is why the variety of services in cities has always been greater than in small towns or villages: it is why the Internet has a wider variety of services/information than any corporate intranet; it is why bio-diversity is less when habitats are fragmented; and it is why economic growth in an information society is so intimately linked to globalisation of the service sectors in our economies. But the scale of markets, and the complexity of inter-related services also influences the organisational ‘ecology’ of the economy. For the same reason that you don’t get large animals in small habitats, you don’t get large companies in small towns. But when you integrate smaller economies, larger economic units become viable. The completion of the single market in Europe allowed companies in some sectors to amalgamate (by merger or acquisition). Similarly the current economic globalisation is producing a new set of global giants in accountancy, banking, media, IT, telecoms, oil and insurance. These grants will be world leaders in technology and service development; they will ‘set the standards’ for price and quality of service; and they will ‘structure markets’, but they will collectively represent a diminishing proportion of world direct employment. They will increasingly dominate the newspapers and stock exchanges, but it is their increasingly wide networks of smaller suppliers and collaborators that will provide employment. The largest volume of new job creation will remain at the bottom of the business size spectrum: small businesses (<250) represent over 80% of employment in Europe and generate proportionally twice as many new jobs as large companies. We therefore have the intriguing prospect that a new generation of global giants will set the economic environment for work; they will develop the tools and set the models and expectations for work, but most people will have to use these tools in dramatically different circumstances – of small companies, working near home without the various support services offered by larger organisations.

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Growing Complexity At the same time, the growing complexity and amount of ‘embedded knowledge’ in products and services, is making all activities more interdependent than ever. Car manufacture now depends on specialist suppliers of machine tools, special materials, chemicals and financial services. The world of business is not therefore being polarised into a few large and many small independent companies; but is restructuring as fewer global focal points for a large number of interlocking and highly dependent networks of supply and co-operation. The implications for work and employment are relatively re-assuring: firstly, that this trend is not towards a model of individual and autonomous self-employment in a chaotic free market; but rather towards a model in which even self-employment will be in a framework of ‘networks of co-operation’ which will have some stability over time beyond an immediate ‘project’ or ‘job’ – the proportion of people in selfemployment has in fact declined from 15.4% to 14.4% in the EU since 1988 and is lowest in the most developed knowledge economies (US: 7.7%). The recent results of research in the EU STAR project has confirmed that the myth that ‘e-lancing’ will be the employment model of the future is without foundation. However, in the knowledge economy, integration of people into the culture of the organisation, will depend more on ‘stakeholder’ commitments and benefits, rather than proximity. A key issue will be the degree of stability and ‘social protection’ associated with the employment ‘networks’. Some new models have emerged: temporary employment agencies offering holidays, sickness and maternity leave/benefits to staff ‘on their books’ for a long time; the ‘big-five’ accountancy/business service ‘partnerships’ such as Anderson, PWC, etc. providing a framework for ever-changing teams to move from one project to the next with continuity of employment. These organisation frameworks which allow different skills to be pulled together at short notice in ever changing combinations can not only make more effective use of skills for clients, but can also provide security and continuity for the individuals involved.

Mobility of People and Work The localization of work will also change. With ‘telework’ and ‘virtual enterprises’, the geographic spread of companies will broaden. Companies will develop different activities in different countries, and employees will also disperse. In 2000, there are already about 10 million ‘teleworkers’ in Europe3, and over 20 million in the USA4. The Gartner Group predicts that 130 million people will telework by 2003. A UK survey indicates that the one million UK teleworkers in 1999 will grow to over 50%

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of the working population by 2010. A recent IDC survey predicts that there will be 28 million eWorkers in Europe by 2005. The survey results from the EU EMERGENCE project show that over 50% of businesses in Europe already make use of external services provided over communications networks. Work and employment for all will require structural change in society; radical change in the way organisations manage their activities, provide service and employ people. eWork is central to these changes, and has a special place in the European model: • For global competitiveness, European companies will need to maximise efficiency in use of skills because of high wage costs; they will need to minimise ‘non-wage’ costs; and they will need to provide high-quality services by being closer to their customers: eWork contributes to all three goals. • The geographic mobility of Europe's workforce is substantially less than in the US, and decreasing. Over 25% of Americans move state to work; less than 3% of Europeans move to another country to work -- and with the economic convergence of Portugal, Spain and Ireland, the figure is decreasing. The barriers to mobility are no longer regulatory -- the Single Market exists in employment market -- but people are ‘culturally anchored’ to their regions of birth more strongly in Europe than in the US. eWork can compensate for poor labour force mobility, by greater ‘virtual’ mobility of work. • People's quality-of-life is increasingly important, and the proximity of home and work is critical to it. As we move towards a shorter working week and to greater involvement in part-time work; proximity will become more important. eWork is part of the solution. Finally, the European Union is now committed to sustainability as an overall policy goal in the Amsterdam Treaty. Structural change in production and work organisation is crucial.

Corporate Governance New approaches to ‘governance’, both within the EU and globally, will be essential to progress. Globalisation and network-based activities raise extra-territorial governance issues, some of which can only be handled collaboratively between multi-national businesses and civil society organisations: Structural change in lifestyles and business practices throughout the world – will need the commitment of civil society and the business community.

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It is European policy to encouraging a greater sense of corporate social responsibility and to establish frameworks for businesses to integrate environmental and social considerations in their activities. Some of the most far sighted businesses have realised that sustainable development offers new opportunities and have begun to adapt their reporting arrangements accordingly. The Union’s efforts to achieve sustainable development ultimately depend on widespread ‘ownership’ of the strategy by individual and businesses. However, we cannot expect that businesses take on the same broad social and environmental responsibilities as Governments. While the three main categories of concern in sustainable development, the economic, social and environmental dimensions are all pertinent to both governments and businesses, their focus is inevitably different. While governments must concern themselves with the overall stability of the economic environment, and with the sustainability of economic resources for essential public services, businesses must ensure their continued profitability and renewal. Milton Friedman once said, “There is only one social responsibility of business – to increase its profits…” He (and more recently Martin Wolf in the FT) have seen meeting this and other responsibilities as a zero-sum game – efforts towards others goals can only be at the expense of profits. Others fortunately now see a more holistic relationship in which businesses constantly evolve to meet society’s goals and, in doing so, achieve continued profitability in new markets. There is good evidence for this is now in the success of ethical investment funds. For socially sustainable development, European governments have consistently seen their priority as the increase of participation in employment, with more and better job opportunities for a better-trained workforce leading to greater social inclusion and cohesion. Businesses must look firstly to the well-being and creativity of their own workforce. These concerns are reflected in the now established provisions for health and safety at work, but also now in the new concerns for the ‘quality of work’ – as highlighted at the Stockholm Summit – and in the requirements for life-long, in-work learning of new skills, and in-work entrepreneurship and creativity. Over the last century, ensuring workers’ health and safety has become recognised as ‘good business’, underpinned by legislation. Increasing the ‘quality of work’ along with skills and creativity is now also increasingly recognised as ‘good business’, especially in the ICT sector where skills are still in short supply and need to be continually renewed. For environmentally sustainable development, the diversity of business activities presents considerable difficulty – the Global Reporting Initiative has identified 36

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potential indicators of environmental impact. However, for the knowledge-based ‘eeconomy’, a number of simplifications and priorities can be identified: • Firstly, and because a substantial part of activities and services are knowledgebased and immaterial, a holistic view of a company’s activities must be taken, rather than a product-based view. The ‘office-based’ activities of research, design, administration and customer-service have often more impact than manufacturing and product use themselves. This is well illustrated by the Ericsson Report for 2000: twice as much energy and nearly twice as much (585/335 ktons) of CO2 were associated with office work as with production. Opportunities for more efficient use of energy and office space (and for greater creativity and added-value) exist in new office designs, more energy-efficient buildings, and greater use of telework arrangements. Greater value can be added to services with the same resources. • Secondly, a company’s impact does not stop at the factory gate or office door. ‘Office work’ includes business travel, by car and air: ‘Air-miles’ can represent a significant contribution total energy use, CO2 emissions and congestion. These can be significantly cut by eWork and video-conferencing. Similarly, the total person car-kms associated with commuting and inter-office travel can be significantly cut by telework arrangements. Supply chains and distribution chains can be rationalised, notably through e-commerce developments: Warehousing and inventories can be minimised, and total transport tonne-kms or ‘truck-kms’ can be cut, cutting costs, improving efficiencies and reducing environmental impact and congestion; • Finally, no absolute standards or targets exist against which companies can compare their performance. Benchmarking between companies can also be difficult. Incremental and continuous improvement must therefore be sought, with year-by-year comparison on a ‘per-unit turnover’ basis. Successful company growth in turnover and profitability is then factored out of impact measures, removing any apparent conflict between growth and environmental impact. Leadership is being taken by the ICT sector itself: This sector best masters its own technology and must pioneer both the transition to a networked knowledge economy and sustainable development in it. This sector can also help to re-build common ground between the EU and US through a business-led approach to sustainable development. The global eSustainablitiy Initiative is the first manifestation of this leadership.

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References 1

OECD (1998), OECD jobs strategy: Technology, productivity and job creation: best policy practices, Paris: OECD.

2

ICEL (1999), Career Space: A report by the top European IT and telecoms companies, ICEL.

3

EcaTT survey for the European Commission: www.ecatt.com.

4

Status Report on e-Work Development: European Commission.

5

COM(2001)264 Final: 15/5/01.

6

The Interim Report on the OECD Three-Year Project on Sustainable Development: OECD, May 1999.

7

GDP grew 10-times more than total material use since 1950 in the USA, and increased by 35% with no change in total energy use from 1970 to 1990 (US EIA).

8

Cool-companies.org: eCommerce report 2000.

9

Case Studies of the Information Society and Sustainable Development; Information Society DG-Unit C1, May 2000.

10

Perspectives for Advanced Communications in Europe: PACE 93: DG-XIII, European Commission 1993.

11

Yuri Dikhanov and Michael Ward, Measuring the distribution of global income 2001. http://poverty.worldbank.org/library/view/13254

12

From $1300 to $2500 at 1985 PPP-US: UNDP Human development report 2001: www.undp.org

13

Creating a development dynamic: Final report of the Digital Opportunity Initiative, July 2001: UNDP, Accenture and the Markle Foundation, with the collaboration of the ITU, OECD and UNESCO.

14

Digital Opportunities for all: Meeting the challenge. Report of the G8 Digital Opportunity Task Force – 11th May 2001.

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The Eurobarometer figures on Internet penetration refer to the question "Do you use the Internet?" (sample: population above 15 years). The results of other surveys may deviate according to different definitions.

16

IDC 2001 – http://www.nua.ie/surveys/index.cgi?f=VS&art_id=905356721&rel=true

17

http://www.nua.ie/surveys/index.cgi?f=VS&art_id=905356572&rel=true

18

Understanding the digital divide – OECD 2001.

19

Green Futures May/June 2000.

The Political Internet: between dogma and reality Andrea Ricci The third wave? Schemes or subjective definitions are often used to detect the start, the end and the most important phases of complex social dynamics. Schemes and definitions serve the purpose of easing access to knowledge. They may sometimes constraint knowledge development too. In the futurists’ parlance, after tele-democracy (in the eighties) and e-democracy (in the nineties), Internet voting (from the year 2000 onwards) should be considered the ‘third wave’ of a long and dogmatic debate on the role of IT and the Internet in political communication and participation. If one observes this debate retrospectively, it’s easy to note that the structure of the arguments, the overall rhetoric and many of the proponents, have not changed, notwithstanding the change in technologies, the criticisms raised against their faithful approach and the worsening of political participation levels in the United States and abroadi. Christopher Arterton (1985) in Teledemocracy reconsidered had already dismissed the arguments of Naisbitt (1982), Toffler (1980), and Becker (1981), three pivotal ‘wave’ generators (then, and still to date). After examining 13 tele-democracy projects, Arterton had concluded that the key to explain the success of certain political participation experiences was the overall campaign strategy, more than the individual role played by digital media: “Among the projects examined, competition for the attention of potential voters has been the most persistent problem encountered by project organizers, especially by those who have sought to conduct plebiscites. The plethora of media is the single most difficult institutional barrier they face… [those who have chosen broadcast television because that medium has the most extensive reach to the citizenry, have discovered that] despite the capabilities of the medium, repetition and the use of multiple channels (my italics) are necessary

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to involve anything approaching all the people. The most successful of these plebiscitarian projects, the Des Moines Health Vote, relied upon frequent public service advertisements, newspaper articles, radio talk shows, and even billboards and bus placards in addition to top public affairs broadcast programming… The project amply demonstrated the capacity of technology to involve citizens in policy discussion, but it also documented how costly and extensive are the exertions needed to achieve even a 25% rate of involvement.” Arterton has pointed to the detrimental impact of channel/content multiplication on the effectiveness of IT-based political campaigns. Both cable TV, videotex, and computer conferencing systems exhibit “limitations as vehicles of political discourse”. Then, and today, new media are elite resources, which may divide digitally, as much as they can connect: “As a medium of dialogue, each of these vehicles may be conveniently used by modest numbers of communicators; the emerging technologies do not promise that everyone can have his or her individual say in a national dialogue. Another major problem, shared with cable television, is that videotex and computer carry material pertaining to a wide variety of human activity. As a result, in a single medium, politics comes into direct competition with these other facets of life for the attention of citizens.”

E-democracy Ten years on, the explosion of the World Wide Web, the Clinton-Gore Presidency, and the elevation of ‘Information Society policy’ to the status of planetary priority for both developing and developed countries, all become factors that induced a second, much more powerful wave of (strictly) the same debate. The novelty of the E-democracy debate is without doubt the widespread consciousness that the World Wide Web is indeed to offer – thanks to its flexible service platform – a much larger palette of options for those interested in using the new medium for political communication. The ‘Bias of the Internet’, its specificity, its signature as mass medium, is to confer on political communication some new, rather unique, features: hyper-textuality, multimediality, ubiquity. The second major new fact is indeed the endorsement of an entire political class of a mass communication medium (the Internet) as vehicle for social change. Nothing quite like that occurred since decades. Today, through the various mechanisms of global governance (G7/G8, the ITU, the World Wide Web consortium, ICANN, OECD, Unesco, World Bank, the numerous regional political cooperation fora)

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talking about ‘Internet and politics’ or the ‘politics of the Internet’ has become mainstream habit of politicians worldwide. A corollary of this dynamic is the emergence, within a few years, of a Political Internet, a specialised sub-set of the entire network geography, generated and maintained by the formal and informal actors of the political system. Four meta-sites or Web directories offer an idea of the size (in links)ii of certain subsections of the political Internet. These sub-sections correspond to what we can call the formal actors of the political system online (governmental sites, media sites, political parties web sites): Political Resources on the Net

Managed by former Italian MP and MEP Roberto Cicciomessere in Rome the site was created in the mid-90s as an e-democracy project. The platform which gathers political parties, movement sites, political initiatives sites, media and government sites is the largest (also in terms of themes/genres covered) collection of all four. Several contributors participate to the site update.

Richard Kimber’s Political Science Resources

Managed by Dr Richard Kimber at the Keele University the site aims at providing, in addition to numerous political parties’ web sites a whole list of political science resourcesiv

Governmen ts on the WWW

Managed by Gunnar Anzinger the site is presented as “Comprehensive database of governmental institutions on the World Wide Web: parliaments, ministries, offices, law courts, embassies, city councils, public broadcasting corporations, central banks,

5 levelsiii 28172 Links 21933 external links (77% of the site) 20% of failed links Traffick ranks Avg. Traffic Rank: 80,443 * Other sites that link to this site: 1,174 8 Levels 12643 links 10310 external (81% of the site) 12% of failed links Avg. Traffic Rank: 41,480 * Other sites that link to this site: 971 4 levels 22366 links 22101 ext. 98% of the site 16% of the links are broken

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multi-governmental institutions etc. Includes also political parties. Online since June 1995. Contains more than 17000 entries from more than 220 countries and territories as of July 2001”. “Electionworld.org focuses worldwide elections on a country basis. Documentation, edition and design are exclusively worked by electionworld.org and its editor. Electionworld.org is edited by Wilfried Derksen. He studied law at the Nijmegen University and practicizes law in the Netherlands. He is the international secretary of the Dutch socialliberal party Democraten 66 (Democrats 66) and president of the Foundation International Democratic Initiative D66, the foundation related to D66 which supports like-minded parties in Central and Eastern Europe and outside Europe. Elections around the world depends on its regular contributors. Contributions were regularily made by: Mourad Ben Abdallah, Gunnar Antzinger, Hubert Descans, Franco Ferrari, Roberto Ortiz de Zarate, Juan Jorge Schäffer, Gary Selikow, Alejandro Solá, the editors of Klipsan Press and the editor of Rulers”.

Avg. Traffic Rank: 40,984 * Other sites that link to this site: 3,042 6 levels 4209 links 3549 ext. 84% of the site 12% broken Avg. Traffic Rank: 97,118 * Other sites that link to this site: 511

Although the definition of what is a political web site remains to be agreed, these directories are among the biggest collections of relevant political material on the Webv. Regardless how extraordinary and laudable in nature, these directories remain (quite like Yahoo and other Web Directories) man-made, endemically incomplete and outdated. Panta rei, Everything flows on the Internet, and moreover, taxonomically, there is much more to be studied than the actors at the core of the political systemvi: the deep political web of those political actors which are at the periphery or completely outside the formal political system. Supported by the same Naisbitt, Toffler and Becker the e-democracy wave revealed new specialists. One of them, Mark Bonchek (1997), author at MIT of a significant and timely dissertation, summarised in ten points the theological corpus on the Internet as a political medium.

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Bonchek’s ten points were constructed much like the rhetoric of ten years before: the main emphasis was on highlighting how the Internet (the Web) bias was to change the mechanics of traditional politics: Bonchek’s 10 Hypotheses on the effects of the Internet on the flow of political information 1- All channel structure of political communication in which all political agent are directly connected to each other 2- Disintermediation, i.e. bypassing of traditional intermediaries, and a shift from gatekeeping to brokering for these intermediaries 3- Formation of virtual organizations based on shared interests rather than shared geography 4- Integration of social and issue networks, such that personal relationship form more easily around political issues and personal relationships are enhanced in existing issue-oriented networks 5- Greater propagation of political information through duplication and retransmission between social networks across weak-tie relationships 6- Increased volume of political information 7- Integration of personal, broadcast and network media either simultaneous transmission, repackaging, and rebroadcast 8- Resource bias in who uses the Internet for political communication towards those with higher income and education 9- Heterogeneity of source for political information, expanding the diversity of opinion which citizens have access and may be exposed to 10- Narrowcasting of customized and targeted messages to specific communities of interest The overall atmosphere of widespread enthusiasm for the multiplication of new cases of adoption of the Internet by traditional political actors, was not – in the midnineties -- conducive to critical thinking. The fact that all the political agents were not and still are not directly connected to each other could not counteract the general impression that Being Digital was both a right and an obligation. The idea of disintermediation simultaneously seduced political and business analysts; thus producing in both environments a rhetoric which promoted, once again, the idea of a revolution instead of relative change. The endemically disorganised and anarchic nature of political newsgroups was to reveal itself progressively; in the mid-nineties the idea that groups of activists could discuss more than 60,000 topics online conditioned much of the early scholarly works. It was indeed urgent – at that time – to scrutinise the few known cases.

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While many academics somehow ceded to these ‘research constraints’, much of the informed opinion started to mimic the conclusions of the proponents of edemocracy. A very large corpus of articles on e-democracy developed between 1992 and 2000, blurring the distinction between e-democracy and e-government: In 1992 Clinton and Perotvii dominate much of the coverage for their keen interest in promoting e-democracy: the idea of the electronic town-hall emerges and the first online Presidential debates are organised on GEnie first, and then on other online systems. Few years later, with the second and third Presidential elections (1996–2000) electronic democracy becomes ‘part of the electioneering bandwagon’ (Clenaghan, 1997). In 1994 Vice President Al Gore states, together with powerful members of the Congress that ‘the Infobahn must promote electronic democracy’ (Henderson, 1994). Peter Lewis, from the New York Times, titles his articles on the 1994 Congressional Campaign ‘Internet emerges as a vital link in political arena’ (Lewis, 1994). During the election G. Scott Aikens, a Minnesota graduate student, moderates the cyberspace debate for the Minnesota Electronic Democracy project. The project creates two significant spin-offs in the following years: the www.e-democracy.org web site and Democracies Online (www.e-democracy.org/do) an annexed site created by Steven Clift, an e-democracy evangelist bound to become one of the most visible proponents of e-democracy. The same year another well-known consultant, Esther Dyson, declares to the press “Computers create a community and give power…the electronic democracy is inevitable” (Higgins, 1994). New political debates online, all re-using the Bulletin Board System model, proliferate in the States. The House Speaker, Newt Gingrich, launches Thomasviii, the interactive computer program supposed to open the Congress’s work to the US population at large. In 1995 public protest against French nuclear testing at Mururoa Atoll drives New Zealand’s first experiments in electronic democracy (McDonald, 1995). In 1996 the Canadian Calgary Herald reports: “Electronic democracy is going to be a huge thing between now and the end of the millennium. Those politicians who are with it quickest have the most to gain” (Alberts, 1996). In 1997 the British press notes the country’s first steps into the Political Internet (McGoobin, 1997); Altavista pulls up more than 2000 pages related to ‘electronic democracy’ (Futrelle, 1997). In 1998 more than two thirds of the 1998 US congressional candidates, had operating web sites. For the Senate, 75%, or 51 candidates, had web sites (Dulio, 1999). The posting of the Starr Report on the Web is described as historic (Harmon, 1998), even if as the press covering the event adds “while some 70

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million Americans now have access to the Web, nearly 200 million others don’t”. The same year, Roza Tsagarousianu, Damian Tambini and Cathy Brian edit Cyberdemocracy (Routledge 1998). Presented by the press as a truly international book (Grossman, 1998), the work describes the experiments in cyberdemocracy in Santa Monica (PEN system), Amsterdam’s Digital City, and Manchester’s Information City initiative. In the public discourse, a very thin line separates e-democracy from e-government, electoral-political participation and participative democracy at local government’s level. The headlines explicit the new conceptual framework as follows: “Government makes online connection; Electronic democracy”. One of the most quoted features of the Internet becomes its ability “to cut red tape” (Nisperos, 1998). “Electronic democracy” – commentators say – “is inspired by two overlapping dislikes – of bureaucrats and of politicians – and by two ideas for making these groups more likeable” (The Economist, 1992). In 1999 The Times (Gould, 1999) suggests : “The formal political process, with five-year election cycles and little formal opportunity to participate in the meantime, seems antiquated. Caught between competing trajectories, one towards global forces, the other to fast and responsive local choices, the British Parliament appears, to many people, both impotent and irrelevant. It is here that the electronic revolution can be decisive, either further increasing the sense of a Parliament that is out of touch and disconnected, or helping to harness the enormous potential of the new electronic technologies, if not quite to build a new electronic democracy, at least to help to give Parliament new relevance and new connection in a world changing so fast it sometimes seems to be spinning out of control. Electronic modernisation can be the key to greater democracy. If change is shaped and guided, if the State enables rather than abdicates, the modern world can be both fairer and more democratic”. The same year other sources (Rust, 1999) propose the next conceptual transition: from e-democracy/e-government to e-voting: “Though political participation on the Internet is still developing, many proponents of e-politics advocate an emerging form of government known as electronic democracy, or voting online. Still in preliminary stages, proponents hope the concept will increase political participation and voter turnout. Although no government system is based on electronic democracy, the concept has been put to the test on smaller scales”. The dissenting opinions (Varn, 1993, Bimber, 1998) on e-democracy and its variants, albeit sound and relatively numerous, do not reach adequate visibility. New anecdotal evidence is about to prepare the next ‘wave’.

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Internet Voting The third wave, the American debate on Internet Voting, is fuelled in the US by the widespread concern generated by the contested outcome of the 2000 US Presidential elections. The launch of Internet based voting was, according to the authors of a Harvard PIRP/Booz Allen & Hamilton (PIRP/B.A.H.) recent work (Butcher, 2001) in this field, a response to a paradox: “The most technologically advanced nation, fails to provide its citizens a new president because of an outdated analogue voting technology”. In the year 2000 Internet voting represents for many –this is really not new at all -- the ‘next logical step’ in the saga of ‘new uses for the Internet’. Proponents of Internet-based voting suggest that several factors explain the growing interest shown by a wide range of ‘stakeholders’ in corporations, research institutions and (local) government. These factors are once again the same ones that were – mutatis mutandis – promoted almost 20 years ago: Internet is cheap, Internet eases access to voting process, Internet provides access to useful information, etc. If one analyses the size and scope of the cases quoted in the PIRP/B.A.H. paper, it is difficult to agree that they represent ‘significant voting initiatives’. The Arizona experience (during the Democratic Primaries in March 2000) is the sole exception. This said, the lawsuit (which concerns equal access to minority voters) promoted against the proponents of the trial by the Voting Integrity Project is – alone – such a serious attack to the entire edifice of the so-called ‘Internet voting enthusiasts’, that one can expect a difficult future for this kind of projects. In parallel to constitutional issues, Internet voting is slowed (if not blocked) by very significant security problems: it is virtually impossible to give the highest degree of protection to information that travels on public networks, and is produced (in a distributed way) by a vast number of un-checkable sites. Technically it is possible, like many other things. Practically, it means building thousands of military-qualityInfosec/I-voting sites. Although the study recognises many of the existing issues, it is hard for the authors to resist to rhetoric of transformation/revolution: “The information age has begun to transform many cherished democratic traditions and practices”, “the internet has changed the way citizens interact with one another and with their elected representatives” and “the internet has demonstrated a capacity to inform voters as never before possible” (p. 6).

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Why ‘has changed’ and not ‘can’ change, ‘could’ change, ‘may’ change? And moreover, who really absorbs all this information? And ultimately, is this information really useful to determine the final vote?

New contexts, classic questions Voting via the Internet (regardless of the type of solution) remains highly conditioned by at least three factors: (a) strong security, (b) the development of a trust mechanism among users, and (c) a strong State intervention to fund the provision of strong security, ‘minitel-like’ equipment at the level of the end voter. (Large) Internet penetration, per se, is not enough to become a causal factor for Internet voting from home. In other words, the fact that Internet usership is increasing does not mean that I-voting is ‘inevitable’. Even if Internet voting was to become a reality tomorrow, it would only provide voters ‘another’ opportunity to vote (unless, of course, it was made mandatory to vote by this mean). It would be almost comparable to allowing people to vote on Sunday, or to vote late at night, or to get a day off to go to vote etc. It would be instrumental, but not enough to be a structural cause for a (political participation) process.

Between dogma and reality Again, like decades ago, proponents of internet voting continue to produce aphorisms, while the scientific community at large is aware that non consumption of media is a quantifiable phenomenon everywhere, both in developed and in developing countries. Interestingly, next to financial, cultural or skills gaps, which are the typical causes of the digital divide in developing countries, there is also an emerging phenomenon of media avoidance in developed countries. In other terms: former media (over) consumers who deliberately decide to ‘un-plug’ and stop watching the TV or reading newspapers. Tele-democracy, e-democracy and finally internet voting are three facets of the same intellectual drive, which appears to be the result of two simultaneous pressures: • One exerted by the political science community at first, then by political analysts at large, to identify a likely remedy to the crisis of post-war mass political parties, and the decline of public confidence in the political elite.

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• The other by the industry which tends to support the idea that part of its business has become a political priority. Even before tele-democracy, elements of the same debate started to appear in the late sixties, when numerous political scientists started to note that, with President Kennedy’s campaign, techniques had started to modernise through the introduction of a marketing approach, the first campaign databases and geographical information systems. According to some observer this was the birth of the New Politics (Penn, 1968), a phenomenon, which was later, re-defined as image politics or personality politics (Boorstin, 1964). Strangely enough, this historical context seems to be out of sight for most of the contemporary proponents of the ‘new’ Internet-based politics. The binomial Internet and politics seems to capture the attention of a very specific scientific community. Research associations (or networks) in the field of sociology and political science do not seem to have developed a specific, autonomous research strategy in this fieldix. The majority of those who actually got interested in these phenomena had an IT background or were elected officials at local or national level; most of them got easily conditioned by the rhythm of the ‘revelations’ concerning the new opportunities provided by the Internet. Many got also engaged in what seems to be a shift from a laudable inductive approach, into a form of dogma, a loss of historic perspective.

Other research questions, the same old questions This debate could find a new course if the attention of political science or sociology scholars – for example – increased. Political Internet specialists should raise few of the oldest and most relevant questions in political science to understand the reality of this phenomenon. The first question is, of course, ‘why do people vote?’. What explains that in “the country that has both the highest media and technology density per capita”, one finds 84 million ‘non voters’ in 1992 and 100 million ‘non voters’ (more than the actual number of voters) in 1996? (Doppelt, 1999). Deepening this question (why people vote) equals digging into the relationships between the ‘personal sphere’ and the ‘public sphere’ in the psychological dimension of the potential voter. The point is understanding what makes him/her ‘care’ enough to do something. What is ‘close’ and what is ‘far away’. What affects him/her and what doesn’t.

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The Internet could be the tool to increase proximity with things which are in reality much further away. But it is yet to be confirmed whether the political content vehicled by the Internet today, really ‘affects’ potential voters. The factors which explain the variance ‘vote’ are ideological, psychological, personal, in a word. Environmental questions (like the possibility of voting from home or from an electronic boot) are only marginally relevant to the end voter. Many other factors are capable of explaining the same amount of variance. In other words, (from a voter’s perspective) being motivated explains a lot of votes; being ‘supported’ by the Internet (in whichever way) explains fewer votes. The second question is “what people actually do with the Internet” (instead of what they ‘could’ do). This intellectual approach is, at least with regard to the e-democracy or I-voting debate, capable of modifying the course of research. Political TV studies have showed that what really matters in this type of political communication is the ‘emotional potential’ of the medium; to a lesser extent its accuracy, speed or richness in content. The key point is ‘how much and what’ comes out from the ‘Internet filter’ when the Internet is used to motivate people to vote. If voters have to choose between two charismatic leaders, can they perceive better the ‘person behind the personal’ through Internet based political communication or do other media outperform political web sites? If compared to the TV or the radio, what is the degree of ‘high fidelity’ provided by the Internet- based re-production of political reality?

A functional/operational approach to the study of the Political Internet The Political Internet must be framed in a truly systemic/cybernetic perspective: it’s a sub-system of the Internet which responds to a specific function; it does contribute to the homeostasis of the whole system and it does serve the interests of a given community. The Political Internet must also be analysed operationally: this means reaching deeper levels of understanding on how the Web works, how its ‘voice’, its ‘signature’, its bias --as Innis said-- affects political communication. A good starting point for this type of research is the enumeration of the material pre-conditions for a successful online political presence. The following seem to be the most obvious ones: a) political information must exist online

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h) i)

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users must have access users must have time users must be politically motivated (civic culture/political socialisation) users must have motivation to search and retrieve online and not in any other way (cross-media competition) users must find political information online users must overcome the biases of the Web (lack of the rhetoric of arrival) – publishers must use the Web biases (hypertextuality, mutimediality, ubiquity) to increase the effectiveness of their sites users must be affected, convinced, gratified in some way by what is found on the Web users must consider that what is found on the Web either integrates previous knowledge or replaces previous knowledge (the Web medium outperforms other media).

Let’s try now to scrutinise the relevance of each one of them. As mentioned above, there is little doubt that something we can call the Political Internet exists today. It is not clear how big this is, since there is no widespread agreement on who participates to this online version of the political system and who doesn’t. If we consider the political system as inclusive of the informal and antagonist (anti-regime) actors, then the Political Internet is certainly larger than what accounted by the four major political meta-sites mentioned above. With regard to access online, we know that – in OECD countries – end-user costs (including learning curve), age, sex, do constitute divisive elements within society (Ricci, 1998, 2000). This happens to the Internet and to many other information (or, better, knowledge intensive) technologies. Both in developed and in developing countries, digital divide can be quantified. Alone, it represents, by far, the most important ‘reality test’ for e-democracy or Ivoting proponents. With regard to time management numerous surveys have already indicated that the Internet clashes with TV. But there is more than this. Time budget conditions not only the mere act of consuming media (I do or do not have the time to read, watch TV etc.), but also the type of medium finally chosen. Each media presents a ‘ratio’ between: time to consume/ Q of embedded information-knowledge / C access costs As Arterton already noted in his works in the eighties, the proliferation of media channels further increases the comparative edge acquired by certain media and further marginalizes others. From a broadcasters (or campaigner) perspective it

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may result more economic to invest in a media mix which excludes the Internet, just because the cost/contact ratio is not interesting enough to mobilise financial resources. There is also another economic dimension which plays a role for the Political Internet: the attention budget of the addressees of the given online communication. Why should the potential voter choose for ‘political’ content when consuming media? What drives the hierarchy of content consumption? Is Politics at the top or bottom of priorities in media consumption? And even if it was at the top, why choosing the net instead of other more trusted, cheaper, faster, ‘compelling’ media such as TV, radio, weekly magazines, or newspapers? Even if recent studies tend show that the time spent on the Internet is greater than the time spent on the television, the Television and the Newspaper have a greater role than the Internet as sources of trusted newsx. ‘Attention’ – like time – is a scarce resource. The attention budget creates (or not) the basic conditions for media consumption. Users/voters may have time, but not enough attention to deal with non-entertainment content online; unless, of course, politics online becomes as entertaining and as compelling as other, competing, knowledge/information objects. Attention conditions in its own way the choice of media. In this case the TQi/kC ratio becomes: Time/Cost/Clarity In other words, there is a ‘confusion factor’ which may be higher in certain news media (for example text centric media) and lower in others (multimedia news platforms such as All-News-TV Channels or Rich Content Sites). Information overloadxi and boredom increase the importance of the TCC ratio and tend to radicalise (and therefore simplify) the competition between news media. Aside from media related issues, without a keen interest in politics there is no search for political information online at all, and no any other type of politically relevant action (voting would the ultimate type of politically relevant action). The question then is: do media (including the internet) participate in political socialization? The answer is clearly yes, even for the Internet, which could be considered a likely co-factor of political socialization for the generation of those aged 15-18 years old in the mid-nineties.

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This said, the question is whether this type of political socialisation online happens once, for a given period of time, or it is a repetitive, on-going, lifelong exercise of reinforcement of one’s political convictions. In case a form of reinforcement practice was indeed practised through the Political Internet, a facilitated access to political culture online would be pivotal to the whole process. Let’s assume that voters can access the Internet, and are motivated to find political information online: is it that easy? Not really. Either voters have prior and clear knowledge of the existence of a party site onlinexii or the endeavour could be difficult. This is partly due to the so-called DNS highjacking, partly because of the non-unequivocal nature of certain party domains. For example more than 10% of the web sites observed in our empirical research are freely hosted by a third partyxiii. In many cases the party address looks like this: http://members.aol.com/AlgFis/ribat/a.htm Further evidence to this statement comes from the search patterns of online users. A WordTracker Top500Report activated between 17.11.2001 and 28.02.2002 shows that none of the following keywords appears to rank anywhere in the 500 most used keywords in the main search engines: Party, Politics, Republican, Democrat, Elections Finally, in addition to the so-called ‘Linkrot’ phenomenon (Nielsen, 1998), current research shows that the effectiveness of search engines is relative: much of the so-called deep web remains unavailable to the end userxiv. If one then tries to see whether the most logical starting point of an internet browsing session (a portal, a search engine) refers somehow to parties, one may discover that this happens very rarely. The survey of 82 major portals and directories visited in March 2002, both in the US and in Europe, shows that a minority (23.1%) showed the theme/subject ‘politics’ on its home page (one only pointed to ‘parties’, many had as alternative entries ‘society’, ‘government’, ‘law’). When, finally, the potential voter has reached the site the very nature of the Web can further minimise – notably when the content is not cogent – the impact of the Internet as a tool for political communication: (a) on the Web people spend little time on each site, (b) reading web sites is different from deep reading of traditional printed publication, (c) sites are browsed in parallel using two or more open windows on the screen, (d) web sites structure can influence negatively the

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viewing experience: too many levels, or a bad management of the space and colour worsen, like in other traditional media, the quality of the overall reading experience Let’s summarize. In order to identify who votes for a given party, one has to engage in a reduction process: from the population at large, to those having the legal right to vote, to those who actually get into the voting lists and actually go to vote; to those that make that given political preference. If we start to analyse how operationally the Internet affects a given vote, one should reduce the population at large to those that have a PC, then those that have access to the Internet, then those that find time and attention to look for political information online, then those who find it, then, and this is the key factor, those whose attitude is changed or reinforced by the content seen online. The very few studies on the actual usage of political sites during regular elections suggest that only a sub-site of the internet population actually visited those sites during the campaign. The average visit duration is between 5 and 10 minutes longxv. The bulk of the visitors was either 25-34 years old (17.45% of the sample for algore2000.com and 21.87% for georgewbush.com) or 35-49 years old (28.13% of the sample for algore2000.com and 27.76% for georgewbush.com). Traditional media do remain much more relevant if compared to the Political Internet. This, however, does not tell us what effects do these sites induce on end users.

A taxonomy of the early actors The preliminary results of our researchxvi for the development of a Taxonomy of the Early actors of Political Communication online indicate that most of party web sites work at least according to two main dimensions: identity reinforcement and service provision. Almost in every site there is a reference to the party’s history; the party key leaders, anthems, logos, house organs, flags, merchandising objects are displayed as variants of the same identity definition. The programme or platform, pivotal for the definition of the ‘party essence’, is often ‘declined’ in a wide range or ‘variants’ (single document, list of white papers, FAQ, of lists of sections in the web site which deal with specific policy issues). Almost every site offers some degree of service to the Internet community: from basic (subscription to a party mailing list) to advanced one, like: paying party fees using a secure server; giving access to political speeches or campaign material using streaming audio and video; providing ‘the activists package’ to support the campaign (the package often includes banners, animated Gifs, electronic copies of the manifestos, campaign brochures etc.); sending complete affiliation; requests

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online; giving access to the party’s intranet; or providing a mail account with the party domain. Party web sites around the world are not developed equally. In our taxonomy we distinguish three macro-genres (Proto-sitesxvii, Meso-sites and Neo-sitesxviii); one for each major development step. Development is essentially conditioned by external factors: funding and leadership to play a major role, so do few external factors, such as competition at national level. Neosites – creative sites with a sophisticated space and colour management -- are a minority. Interactivity does exist in several alternative degrees: from the basic mail box, to the provision of the entire directory of addresses of the party organisation, to the implementation of chats and for a for party activists. Therefore, contrary to the core ideas of the promoters of e-democracy, the largest majority of the observed cases shows very poor interactivity solutions (unless we consider an e-mail address to be the best political party web sites can do to create a virtuous circle with their constituencies). The partial analysis of our research data finds that: 33,9% of the scanned party sites have only a ‘mail to webmaster’ feature; 3.4% of them allow user to mail to precise people; 2.6 % of them provide a partial or full directory to the party origanisation (phone and e-mail address, for example); 8,2% have implemented some sort of ‘forms’ to mail generic or specific question to the party; 8,2% of the scanned sites have an online forum in addition to one of the options above. This structural content analysis (of sites in English, French and Spanish) suggests that sites are often conceived to talk with people sharing the same political orientation: newcomers are seldom addressed, the opposition is either not mentioned at all or is attacked. This unilateral mode of communication is one of the indicators which separate persuasion (where two parties enter into a transactional process) from propaganda (Jowett, 1996). Because of this lack of interactivity, the unilateralist nature of this communication mode, most of the party sites online engage in Digital Propaganda: they really do not promote exchange, according to the often quoted model of the Greek agora, but essentially work – in a very traditional fashion – using a digital push mode.

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Known success stories? Contrary to what happens to trendy expressions such e-politics, I-voting, edemocracy, the activities of specific parties online make fewer headlines. Even less appears on public media on current political Web ‘success-stories’. Who does succeed online, then? The key feature for online performance measurement is the analysis of the so-called ‘server log files’, which record the type of traffic generated by the site. Log files are considered highly sensitive information by all webmasters. Very often, political webmasters refuse to publish their results given that their site statistics can be used by the opposition to prove that ‘that party does not meet the public expectations’. In our research we have found only a minority of political web sites which do publish their statistics online (7.1% of the observed universe). If we analyse their content we notice that political web sites often have a very modest audience, a significant part of which (ranging between 10-20% of the hits received by the server) of unclear origin: a good percentage of the hits comes from outside the given country or from .com .net .org TLDs. However, if we correlate these findings with the structural analysis of web sites, we could formulate several working hypotheses on the real conditions which favour online effectiveness of political web sites: • the most technically and aesthetically developed sites have greater chances to succeed. If, according to our hypothesis, the Political Web must win the multichannel competition, only compelling, multi-media, personalised sites can acquire a comparative advantage vis-à-vis the same political content available on TV, radio and press; • sites with a coherent and simple structure have greater chances to succeed since they match the current, widespread Web usage pattern (very short visits); • sites which benefit from multiple referrals (such a constellation of friendly sites) sending traffic from local (the provincial site points to the national one) or thematic sites (the youth organisation pointing to the main party site; an ‘event/conference site’ or an ‘issue/policy’ site pointing to the party site etc.); • sites with deep content (lots of internal links and multiple levels generated out of sheer content or through an active online discussion group) tend to capture and retain strong, engaged Internet activists.. Charismatic leaders sites [the ‘Daily Him’ or ‘Daily Her’, to re-use Negroponte’s concept] have – comparatively – greater success online since they often happen to have many of the characters noted above (depth, ‘personal’/multimedia content). This observation fits with the political science contemporary theories that depict

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parties and ideologies as declining entities and the individual leader and issue based politics as emerging phenomena. Original, unique, hard to find content sites definitely outperform others. In the current Internet economics, this type of content has greater value and suffers less from environmental noise, and channel competition. There are many reasons why Internet users may badly want to access a certain content online. Some of these reasons, such as reconnecting to one’s own country and culture, may be laudable: it’s the case of the numerous online diasporasxix. Other reasons may, on the contrary, be illegal or antagonistic vis-à-vis the established order in a given country. Anti-regime, insurgency, violent or militant propaganda sites are the eponyms of this model of political information: they are built to serve other ‘initiated’ users, their content is unique (un-published stories or photos, films and other evidence of massacres, reports from hard to reach battle zones, statements from insurgents or terrorist groups), and hard to find elsewhere. The information services provided by these sites are critical to the group’s survival: without the Web, the scattered, unlawful community could not probably work in the same way, and probably would not survive. In other words, the Internet is pivotal to this communication mode (illegal – sensitive content to few, initiated users); the Internet, in this communication mode, responds also to the uses and gratifications sought by many Web usersxx. In our hypothesis when illegal sites also adopt few or all of the techniques that make traditional, formal political actors succeed, they really achieve something they could hardly replicate using other media.

Conclusions Some proponents of E-democracy view Internet-based political communication as part of a program to reform the way democracy works in many western societies. For these authors, ‘Improved democracy’ is the result of a reform of campaign contributions, the modification of electoral rules (more proportional or more majority rule according to the context) and new, more efficient ways to express people’s choices. Others, often starting from the same premises, make a further conceptual step and advocate E-democracy or I-voting as the most concrete, effective way to introduce deliberative forms of direct democracy (voters decide all major political issues on a regular basis). This type of proponent of strong e-democracy (Citizens Power as Ted Becker calls it) tends to get inspiration and legitimacy from both Jefferson

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(The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government and to protect its free expression should be our first object) and Alvin Toffler (You don’t have to be an expert to know what you want). For these authors, the discourse of the waves is instrumental to prove that changes in politics is indeed happening and progress is inevitable. Sartori labelled this call for deliberative forms of direct democracy, the exasperation of activism (in political participation); the attitude of those that do not suggest a path to participate better, but simply ask “to participate more,…. with the view to learn how to participate”. Sartori (1993) reminds that sheer size of contemporary political issues makes it impossible to follow the model of ancient Greece. The problems are too complex, and often out of the community’s reach, out of the community’s sight. The community itself does not succeed in relating with its parts; it’s simply incapable of perceiving itself; it’s therefore an illusion to achieve, electronically, direct relationships between all the members of our (contemporary) communities. The public debate that would result from this, would be partial, amputated, and sense of direct relationship between all the members of the demos would simply vanish. At the same time, with this type of direct e-democracy, a large, non-expert audience (always a sub-set of the universe of those having the right to choose), would be called to decide on urgent, serious and even dangerous matters without any form of preparation. As Sartori (1993) puts it, we should pray God to preserve us from this push-button democracy (or the ‘triumph of the inexperienced’). This said, media interest in e-democracy shows no sign of declining. During the recent French and American presidential elections, for example, mainstream media, once again intrigued, covered extensively the online exploits of the candidates and the experiments of vote-swapping between Gore’s and Nader’s supporters (Eudes, 2000). Recent research papers by Foot and Schneider (2002), contest the normalization hypothesis (politics on the Internet resembles closely politics offline) and, once again, favorably reviews the US 2000 Elections online experience (Margolis, 2000). It is clear that there is interest worldwide in favour of discussing the relationship between Internet and politics; both inside and outside scholarly circles. The subject looks appealing for media and political science scholars, for industry and governments both at local and national level. When one scrutinizes the evidence that supports the idea that e-democracy or I-voting are driving the new politics, there are maybe a dozen cases (in the US or across Europe) that are worth studying. The scholars that have engaged in critical reviews have concluded that

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only the synergy between traditional and modern political media can increase political participation. It’s the overall campaign strategy that matters. Through our research we have understood that hundreds of political party web sites around the world have only basic e-mail to empower citizens. This is probably due to the fact that political webcasters consider the act of setting up a web site as a communication end in itself. E-mail alone, however, is far from being capable of delivering the kind of compelling, motivating political participation, sought by edemocracy proponents. The Bias of the Web, the way it works, hinders furthermore the activities of traditional parties online. By using, the same bias, legions of illegal and potentially dangerous groups are making the best use possible of the Political Internet. One of Innis’ greatest conceptual contributions was to demonstrate that communication media have historically had an impact on the character of knowledge (the Web, for example, offers greater command over space than over time). Innis (1999) also suggested that monopolies or oligopolies of knowledge (and power) are built by media ‘up to the point that equilibrium is disturbed’. In today’s Political Internet the knowledge oligopoly being created, seems to provide a comparative advantage to the antagonistic actors to the established political system than to traditional mass parties.

References 1st Add Elections Push… Deutsche Presse Agentur Nov. 4 1994 Alberts S. (1996), Politicians not getting full ‘Net value Calgary Herald Dec. 26 1996 Altintas K., F. Alimoglu, M. Batu Altan, K. Cagiltay, K. Seitveliyev, e-TATARS: Virtual Community Of The Crimean Tatar Diaspora http://www.iccrimea.org/scholarly/e-tatars.html; Anderson J.W., Cybernauts of the Arab Diaspora: Electronic Mediation in Transnational Cultural Identities http://www.bsos.umd.edu/CSS97/papers/anderson.html; Arterton F.C. (1985), Teledemocracy reconsidered in « The Information Technology Revolution » Ed. T. Forester MIT Press Cambridge pp. 438-450. Bacque R. (2000), Jospinpresident.net ou Chirac2002.com pour 250,000 francs sur la toile Le Monde April 19 2000 Bailey P., N. Craswell, D. Hawking, Dark Matter on the Web Proceeding of the W3 Conference on.ref. http://www9.org/final-posters/poster30.html; Bar-Ilan J., Ten days in the life of HotBot and Snap – a case study . http://www9.org/final-posters/5/poster5.html

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Becker T.L. (1981), Teledemocracy : Bringing power back to people in « Futurist » vol.15(6) pp. 6-9. Bonchek M.S. (1997), From Broadcast to Netcast : the Internet and the flow of political information, Harvard University Cambridge Mass., p.8, April 1997. Boorstin D.(1984), The Image : a guide to pseudo events in America Harper & Row. Butcher J., D. Sulek, E . MacDougall, K. Hines, A. Kertesz, D. Svec (2001); Digital Democracy: Voting in the Information Age, Harvard – P.I.R.P., Cambridge 2001 online reference : http://pirp.harvard.edu/publications/pdf-blurb.asp?id=564 Citizen power : webzine of the global democracy movement vol. 1 1996-1997, passim. Clenaghan C. (1997), Escape route aplenty with electronic democracy, Scotland on Sunday April 20 1997. Communications daily, Predictions on Perot : Clinton to employ more electronic democracy June 30., vol 12 nr.126 p. 4, 1992. Doppelt J. C., E. Shearer (1999), Non Voters: America’s no show, London: Sage. Dulio D. A., D. Goff; J.A. Thurber (1999): Untangled Web: Internet use during the 1998 election; World Wide Web in PS: Political Science & Politics, nr. 1, vol. 32; p. 53, March 1, 1999 Electronic democracy : hot wires to Washington The Herald Sun Aug 28 1995 Electronic Democracy : the PEN is mighty The Economist Feb 1. 1992 Eudes Y. (2000), www.nadertrader.org : un système inédit et efficace de troc de voix entre les partisans d’Al Gore et de Ralph Nader Le Monde Nov. 3 2000 ; EURESCOM study Impacts of Information Overload- Study n. P947 1999 online ref. http://www.eurescom.de/public/projectresults/P900-series/947d1.asp Foot K. A., S. M. Schneider (2002) Online Action In Campaign 2000 : An Exploratory Analysis Of The US Political Web Sphere Journal of Broadcasting and electronic media nr.2 Vol. 46 pp.222, June 1, 2002. Futrelle D. (1997), Net.Cetera : virtual democracy is still a long way from utopia, Newsday July 27 1997 Gallup’s Media Use and Evaluation : Gallup Poll Topics : A – Z – Media Use and Evaluation on. ref http://www.gallup.com/poll/indicators/indmedia.asp#RelatedAnalyses (data 2000 accessed 22.07.2001) ; Polix (IT) Poll http://www.polix.it/home/sondaggi/isongdaggiispo/polix/2027.htm Georgiou M. (2002), Diasporic Communities On-Line: A Bottom Up Experience of Transnationalism – Paper to be Published in the journal Hommes et Migrations, Oct. 2002 London School of Economics www.lse.ac.uk/Depts/Media/EMTEL/Minorities/ papers/hommesmigrations.doc; Gould P. (1999), Internet offers a new world of democracy The Times Nov 15 1999 Grossman W. (1998), Collected Works, New Scientist , March 14 1998

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Harmon A. (1998), Clinton scandal : a defining moment for the web International Herald Tribune Sept 21 1998 Harmon A. (1998), The Testing of a President : the Internet ; access to Clinton Data aids « E pluribus Unum » in the 90’s The New York Times Sept 20 1998 Henderson R. (1994), The Price of open access to the Infobahn in Nation’s Cities Weekly June 6 , 1994 Higgins S. (1994) , Electronic democracy wins votes : corporate PC users take to BBSs to express views ; online services ; PC Week vol 9, nr. 20, p. 19, 1994 Innis H. (1999), The Bias Of Communication UTP Toronto , reprint 1999 Internet campaigning click with the parties Business review weekly (Australia) Oct. 18 2001 Jowett J. S., V. O’ Donnell (1986), Propaganda and persuasion London : Sage. Korgaonkar P., L. Wolin (1999) A multivariate Analysis of Web usage in Journal of Advertising Research, Vol . 39 (March, April ) 53-68, 1999. Lewis P. (1994) The 1994 Campaign Technology : Voters and Candidates meet on Information Superhighway , The NY Times Nov 6 1994 Lewis P. (1994), Campaign 1994 : Internet emerges as vital link in political arena The Houston Chronicle Nov 6 1994 Margolis M., D. Resnik (2000) Politics as usual : the Cyberspace revolution Thousand Oaks : Sage Mc Donald M. (1995), Tests trigger an e-mail protest wave The Dominion (Wellington) July 17 1995 McGookin S. (1997), Financial Times April 4, 1997 Mezzana D., Internet/The strength of the online bonds : Networking, themes, services, politics and culture http://www.africansocieties.org/eng_giugno2002/eng_rubricadiasporaonline.htm; Williams I., Downloading Heritage: Vietnamese Diaspora Online http://cms.mit.edu/conf/mit2/Abstracts/IWilliams.pdf; Naisbitt J. (1982), Megatrends : ten new directions transforming our lives, New York : Warner Brothers. Nielsen J. (1998), Fighting Linkrot June 14, 1998 Http://www.useit.com/alertbox/980614.html Nisperos P. B. (1998), Host to host : electronic democracy at work, Business World Nov 5 1998 Penn K. (1968), Bobby Kennedy and the New Politics. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N. Ricci A. (2000), Measuring information society; Dynamics of European data on usage of information and communication technologies in Europe since 1995, in « Informatics and telematics », volume 17, Issues 1-2, pp. 1-167 2000

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Ricci A. (1998), Towards a systematic study of Internet based political and social communication in Europe in « Informatics and telematics » (Elsevier),vol 15 pp.135-161, 1998. Rust M. (1999), Cyberspace trendy tool for political campaigns Minnesota Daily via U-Wire December 2, 1999 Sahoo A. K., From Diaspora to Transnational Networks: A Comparative Study of Gujarati, Punjabi and Telugu Diaspora http://www.geocities.com/husociology/trans.htm Sartori G. (1993), Democrazia : cos’è Rizzoli, pp. 83-87, 1993. Schmitt E. (1996), Congress caught in Tangled Web , The Palm Beach Post July 10 1996 Séminaire sur la démocratie eletronique, Senat Francais, Paris 1995; Sorensen E. (1998), Investigating the President : posting Starr report on web is historic The Seatlle Times Sept. 11 1998 The Deep Web : Surfacing Hidden Value Bright planet White Paper on.ref. http://beta.brightplanet.com/deepcontent/tutorials/DeepWeb/index.asp; Toffler A. (1980), The Third Wave, New York : Bantam. Ubois J. (1992), We the people : electronic bulletin boards and the political process , MIDRANGE systems Oct 13, vol 5 nr.19 p. 49, 1992. Varn R. J. (1993), Electronic democracy: Jeffersonian boom or teraflop? disadvantages of electronically based citizen participation, Spectrum: The Journal of State Government, vol. 66, nr 2, p. 21 , March 22, 1993 Wayne L. (2000), E-mail part of the effort to turn out the voters The New York Times Nov. 6 2000

Notes i

« Overall participation in competitive elections across the globe rose steadily between 1945 and 1990. Between 1945-1950 the number of voters turning out to vote at each election represented 61% of the voting age population (i.e. all citizens old enough to vote). That turnout figure rose to 62% in the 1950s, 65% in the 1960s, 67% in the 1970s, and 68% in the 1980s. But in the 1990s, with the influx of a host of competitive elections in newly democratising states, the average for elections held since 1990 has dipped back to 64%. Interestingly the same turnout figures expressed as a percentage of the number of people registered to vote remained more constant throughout the 1940s to 1980s but then dipped more suddenly in the 1990s. In other words, while the participation rate of all eligible voters has dropped only marginally, the drop in the participation rate of those actually registered to vote has been more pronounced » International IDEA, Voter

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Turnout : a global survey « Turnout over time: Advances and retreats in electoral participation » URL http://www.idea.int/vt/survey/voter_turnout1.cfm ii The table shows statistics obtained using WebAnalyzer in March 2002. Alexa server ranks sites according to the usage of the “Alexa Bar”, a search add-on product of the company of the same name. For a technical description of this proprietary ranking method consult: http://pages.alexa.com/prod_serv/traffic_learn_more.html?p=Det_W_t_40_M2 For a larger list of directories consult the list of specialised WebRings http://dir.webring.com/rw?d=Government___Politics/Politics or http://S.webring.com/hub?sid=&ring=europolitics&id=&list Other relevant lists – notably covering (charismatic) political leadership – include: Zarate’s Political Collections http://www.terra.es/personal2/monolith/; WORLDWIDE GUIDE TO WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP http://www.guide2womenleaders.com/; Regents of the world http://www.inforegenten.de/regent/regent-e/index.htm; World Statesmen http://www.worldstatesmen.org/index.html; Rulers http://www.rulers.org/; States and regents of the world http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Rotunda/2209/index.html iii Levels in web sites are defined by the number of mouse clicks which are necessary to reach the information iv The site is conceived as a support to a political science course: it includes pointers to Area studies; Local & regional British politics; News and journals Constitutions; Other politics websites; Data archives; Political parties Elections; Political platforms Government websites; Political theory; International Relations; Political thought v Some are arguably the most complete of their kind: for example, with regard to electorally active political parties, ElectionWorld is the only site which gathers both official election results and the lists of existing (known) political parties online. vi Beyond parties, the most obvious agents of e-democracy, research should study the submerged part of the political Internet, the deep political web: the web of the movements, of the rebel groups, of the anti-regime sites, of the radical or violent groups, of the political diasporas and persecuted minorities. This part of the political web, notwithstanding the various successive waves of interest for the political Internet, remains entirely out of reach and mostly unknown both to the scholar community and the public at large. vii « Nobody has figured out what it means exactly, but the concept of electronic democracy – or an electronic town hall – captured the public immagination this year after Ross Perot announced the concept in this abortive presidential campaign » , J. Ubois, We the people : electronic bulletin boards and the political process , Midrange systems Oct 13, 1992 Vol 5 N.° 19 Pg. 49

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Electronic democracy : hot wires to Washington The Herald Sun Aug 28 1995 ; E. Schmitt Congress caught in Tangled Web , The Palm Beach Post July 10 1996 « No lawmaker is more responsible for pushing Congress into the on-line realm of the World WideWeb and electronic democracy than House Speaker Newt Gingrich.. » ix Few of the most relevant events in the field of Internet and Politics have been organised without a specific reference to the major Sociological or Political research organisations (ISA and IPSA). This is the case for recent European events such as: Séminaire sur la démocratie eletronique, Senat Francais, Paris 1995; modernizing Democracy through the Electronic Media International Conference of the Academy of the Third Millennium http://www.akademie3000.de 1997; Political Change for the Information Society, Rome http://europa.eu.int/comm/consumers/policy/developments/e_comm/e_comm02_e n.html 1999; Politics & Internet, http://www.kolumbus.fi/pi99/ Oulu and Tampere 1999; 1er 2e 3e Forum Mondial de la démocratie electronique Issy les Moulineaux France etc. x See Gallup’s Media Use and Evaluation : Gallup Poll Topics : A – Z – Media Use and Evaluation on. ref http://www.gallup.com/poll/indicators/indmedia.asp#RelatedAnalyses (data 2000 accessed 22.07.2001) ; Polix (IT) Poll http://www.polix.it/home/sondaggi/isongdaggiispo/polix/2027.htm xi For a recent and comprehensive analysis of the role of Information Overload in individuals and organisations see the Eurescom study ‘Impacts of Information Overload’ Study n. P947 1999 online ref. http://www.eurescom.de/public/projectresults/P900-series/947d1.asp The recent PEOPLE & THE PRESS BIENNIAL MEDIA CONSUMPTION SURVEY has also addressed the issue. QUESTION89: Some people say they feel overloaded with information these days, considering all the television news shows, magazines, newspapers, and computer information services. Others say they like having so much information to choose from. How about you...do you feel overloaded, or do you like having so much information available? Results: Overloaded -†26% Like it -†66 Other (vol.) -††6 Don't know/Refused -††2 The phenomenon of Information Overload is becoming an issue also for marketing research companies although recent studies show that experiences Internet users do not suffer from it: TechNews.com: Information overload not a serious issue Jun 08 2001: « Experienced Internet users do not generally suffer from information overload, according to a new study. For the study, which was published in the online journal The Next Big Thing, almost 3,000 mostly experienced Internet users were asked how they cope with the current glut of information and types of communication devices. Eighty percent of the respondents said their ability to cope

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with information overload was “better than most” or “excellent”. The study found that those who dealt with the most information were most able to cope, while those receiving the least data were the most overwhelmed. » online reference http://www.nua.com/surveys/index.cgi?f=VS&art_id=905356849&rel=true; ZDNet: Search engines cause ire among Net users Jan 03 2001: « According to a new survey, poor search engines and information overload are causing web-rage among Internet users. The survey by Roper Starch Worldwide found that on average, users get angry and frustrated after 12 minutes of fruitless searching. For 7% of respondents, it only takes 3 minutes before web-rage strikes » online reference http://www.nua.com/surveys/index.cgi?f=VS&art_id=905356304&rel=true; Newsfactor Network: Net users' patience only lasts 12 minutes « Information overload on the Internet causes users to feel frustrated and stressed, and can even lead to “Internet rage”, according to a new study. The study from UK firm WebTop found that 71 percent of British Internet users have suffered from Internet rage at least once. » Online reference http://www.nua.com/surveys/index.cgi?f=VS&art_id=905356650&rel=true xii Notably if the campaign strategy implies that the party or the candidates engages in a process of mutual reinforcement of the messages channelled by each medium (for example the radio ads point to the web site, the press ads point to the web site, the site reproduces the radio and press campaign). xiii A great number of pages are made available by the internet service provider www.angelfire.com or www.geocities.com later acquired by Yahoo see on.ref., http://pages.yahoo.com/nhp/government___politics/politics/parties_and_groups xiv The Deep Web : Surfacing Hidden Value Bright planet White Paper on.ref. http://beta.brightplanet.com/deepcontent/tutorials/DeepWeb/index.asp; P. Bailey, N. Craswell, D. Hawking Dark Matter on the Web Proceeding of the W3 Conference on.ref. http://www9.org/final-posters/poster30.html; J. Bar-Ilan Ten days in the life of HotBot and Snap – a case study . http://www9.org/finalposters/5/poster5.html; The GVU’ Tenth WWW User survey (1998) also provides interesting and, albeit not new, still relevant data about the « Problems Using the Web » : 9% of the responses (57,1% of the cases) indicate that « Broken Links » are a major issue, together with « finding new info » (7,1% and 45,4% of the cases) and « find known info » (4,7% and 30% of the cases). On. Ref. http://www.gvu.gatech.edu/user_surveys/survey-1998-10/graphs/use/q11.htm xv Only Gore in the week ending October 8 had an audience on n179.000 with n average time spent of 15 minutes ad 27 seconds. Ibidem http://209.249.142.22/press_releases/pr_001031.htm

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The research aim is to describe the nature, the methods and the identifiable achievements of the early actors of web-based political communication . The bulk of the analysis is carried out by scanning the « visible » part of the political Internet (more than 600 party web sites listed by two of the four inventories quoted in this paper). Ethnographic notes have been collected on those sites, and the research results have been collected in a database. The structural elements for a first taxonomy have been defined and applied to what observed so far. The data reported here are relative to two successive explorations of this vast amount of data online. The research will be completed with the structural (software based) analysis of the observed universe. xvii Proto-sites have poor control over Form and Function – they also provide minimal Interactivity xviii To an even greater extend than Meso-sites Neo-Sites have a very sophisticated space management , same applief for Color Management ; they often use sound and movement (through animated Gifs, Java ; Shockwave/Flash, QuickTime and other multimedia solutions). It’s in Neo-Sites that one can find the greatest amount of Innovation and creativity : Neo-Sites are often conceived with Trans-media approach : they try to merge in a single platform the best that press, radio and TV can offer in terms of content management. xix Several sites have played or still play the role of hub for numerous virtual communities online: http://www.ethioworld.com (Ethiopian diaspora) http://www.armeniadiaspora.com/ (Armenian Diaspora) http://diaspora-net.org/ (American-Greek, Canadian-Greek communities diaspora) http://news.asmarino.com/ (Eritrean diaspora) http://www.kurdistan.org/ (Kurdish Diaspora) http://www.afghanradio.com/ (Afghan Diaspora). See also J. W. Anderson Cybernauts of the Arab Diaspora: Electronic Mediation in Transnational Cultural Identities http://www.bsos.umd.edu/CSS97/papers/anderson.html; K. Altintas, F. Alimoglu, M. Batu Altan, K. Cagiltay, K. Seitveliyev, e-TATARS: Virtual Community Of The Crimean Tatar Diaspora http://www.iccrimea.org/scholarly/etatars.html; D. Mezzana Internet/The strength of the online bonds: Networking, themes, services, politics and culture http://www.africansocieties.org/eng_giugno2002/eng_rubricadiasporaonline.htm; (Map) Virtual Jerusalem – Jewish Communities of the World http://www.wjc.org.il/wjcbook/chartmap.htm; I. Williams Downloading Heritage: Vietnamese Diaspora Online http://cms.mit.edu/conf/mit2/Abstracts/IWilliams.pdf; M. Georgiou Diasporic Communities On-Line: A Bottom Up Experience of Transnationalism – Paper to be Published in the journal Hommes et Migrations, Oct. 2002 London School of Economics www.lse.ac.uk/Depts/Media/EMTEL/Minorities/ papers/hommesmigrations.doc; A. K. Sahoo, From Diaspora to Transnational Networks: A Comparative Study of

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Gujarati, Punjabi and Telugu Diaspora http://www.geocities.com/husociology/trans.htm xx

Social escapism, transaction-based security and privacy, information gathering, non-transactional privacy concerns. See P. Korgaonkar, L. Wolin A multivariate Analysis of Web usage in Journal of Advertising Research 1999 Vol . 39 (March, April ) 53-68

New roles for users in online news media? Exploring the application of interactivity through European case studies Brian Trench In discussions of the information society, technological developments and social relations are often intertwined. Hence the ‘wired society’ or the ‘networked society’ becomes both a statement about the telecommunications infrastructure and a metaphor for a society that is more equitable and more open. The notion of ‘digital democracy’ implies some necessary connection between the provision and adoption of certain technologies and the transparency of political systems. Much discussion of the impacts on news media and on journalism of developments in Internet technologies is marked by a similar elision. The technologies are ‘interactive’, so, it is argued, the provision and consumption of information will also be, in some sense, interactive. It has even been argued that mass media are disintegrating, giving way to user-based media without professional intermediation. Before the Internet became available to large user bases, The Daily Me – the ‘newspaper’ geared to the individual consumer’s needs or wants – had been proposed as a futuristic project. With the roll-out of the World Wide Web as a medium of commercial publishing, the Daily Me found a possible platform. A small but influential group of media professionals became new media advocates, arguing that the function of online media was to give readers what they wanted, through the harnessing means of information retrieval software. Leah Gentry, who had long experience in newspaper publishing, suggested that the assassination of the [US] president was a story that should properly be made available to all, but that, short of such extreme cases, the attention of news media in the online environment had to be focused on giving the readers ‘what they want’

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(Harper, 1997). From outside the media professions, Nicholas Negroponte proposed the notion of the newspaper ‘in an edition of one’ (Negroponte, 1995). This represented the achievement of the perfect marketplace, in which the individual consumer is directly linked to the production process.

Daily Me as a non-starter It is a reminder of how weak the technology community’s understanding of social and psychological factors in technology adoption often is that the Daily Me in its various forms has proved to be a non-starter. Even in the highly attenuated form of personalization services, as found on many Web news sites, the user- or consumer-generated news product has remained a marginal phenomenon. In the discussion in Europe of opportunities for news publishing arising from Internet and related developments, the market-based model of user-driven news has not found a strong echo. There are, however, many possible intermediate positions between an unquestioning reliance on the broadcast or transmission model of mass media and a reversal of relations to put the consumer in control. The opportunities presented by Internet technologies, and many practices that have grown up in the Internet environment, contain an implicit challenge to much received professional wisdom and theoretical understandings. They draw attention, for example, to how vague the role and image of the news audience are in the theory, professional textbooks and history-writing of journalism. It is one of the very many valuable contributions of digital media studies to media studies in general that they highlight weaknesses and gaps in established theories and models. Mass media have traditionally relied on their own judgement of what stories are worth telling, on a very largely one-way mode of communication and on an internalized image of their publics. It represents a significant challenge both to received images of journalism within the professional sphere, and to the closely related academic studies of journalism, to put the user/reader/viewer/audience (and the terminology presents its own problems) at the center of the picture. Largely independently of technological developments, there has been a vigorous advocacy in the United States of new forms of ‘public journalism’ or ‘civic journalism’, in which the journalist’s relationship with the community he or she ostensibly serves has been redefined (see, for example, Rosen, 1999; Kovach and Rosenstiel, 2001). Similarly, notions of communication as conversation have been explored in the context of journalism theory and practice. In a rare application of such ideas in a European context, Kunelius (2001) has reported an interesting

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experiment in applying the conversational mode in the reporting and analysis of public affairs in a Finnish town. In certain circumstances, however, conversation has already become more than a theoretical notion or experiment. It became a reality, for example, in the heightened publishing activity that followed the events of September 11th 2001. Not only did demand for online information, for multiple sources of information and, indeed, for all media surge in the hours, days and weeks after the September 11th attacks, but the ‘audience’ became part of the stories. The recycling of victims’ and observers’ e-mails into the pages of newspapers, of their mobile phone messages into radio, and of amateur video recordings on to television news, brought users into the making of news in remarkable ways. These experiences raise interesting and challenging questions about the definitions and demarcations of journalism as a professional and social practice, and about the boundaries of news. They hardly support the notion that journalism is redundant, because, as has been claimed, “everyone becomes a journalist” (M. F. Wilson, executive editor of The San Francisco Chronicle, quoted in Bardoel, 1996). But they do give some force to the criticism of journalists for failing to see that they are no longer the exclusive gatekeepers. Steve Yelvington, of Cox Interactive Media, insists that the content of community sites like slashdot.com based on users’ contributions should be seen as news (Yelvington, 1999). These experiences also give new force to the analyses, based on consideration of the possible impacts of the Internet, that received theoretical models of journalism based on models of gatekeeping and agenda-setting need to be ‘synthesized’ with a “theoretical approach that explores the role of journalism as a community builder” (Singer, 1998), that the traditional ‘vertical’ model of journalism is challenged by the development of ‘horizontal’ means of mass communication through the Internet (Bardoel, 1996), or that journalists are “losing their importance in communication as authoritative and autonomous producers of messages” (Demers, 1996). This kind of largely speculative analysis accounts for a significant part of the theoretical commentary on trends in media practice that has grown alongside the emergence of new media forms. A more active field of professional commentary, however, focuses on the ways in which media professionals exploit the interactive features of the World Wide Web to build new relations with users. In his earlier, more optimistic commentaries on new media developments, John Pavlik (1997) foresaw a renaissance of journalism through the adoption and adaptation of Internet-based technologies. By using features of the Internet that allow information to be presented in personally engaging manner – thus, in a new kind of relationship between producer and consumer – journalism would be transformed. Pavlik offered a view of online journalism’s development in several phases, with

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increasing innovation, and increasing responsiveness to users’ interests and inputs. His more recent analyses are rather less optimistic about the capacity of new media, as he once put it, to “transform journalism” but he claims to see “the emergence of … a two-way symmetric model of communication in 21st century news operations” (Pavlik, 2000).

The challenges of online news media Online news media have to face the challenge of a changed information environment. Many of the sources used in journalism are themselves active as direct publishers. Many individuals within the publics addressed by journalism are active as information-seekers, some too as information-providers. Users may have access to the source material from which news reports published in newspapers, magazines, and broadcast on television and radio are generated. On this basis, it may be argued that journalists need to give greater emphasis to the task of orienting readers within a sea of available information than to that of re-telling the stories. The most valuable contribution a journalist can make in many circumstances is to provide a map of the various positions with appropriate signposts to relevant material. Users may work different routes through news material, according to their own previous knowledge of the topic or their level of interest, assembling multiple meanings. The space in online news media to add context and explanation is, for all practical purposes, unlimited. Allied to discussion forums, this may be seen as redefining news as an open process, rather than as a closed product. Richer forms of communication between author and reader are made possible in the online environment. The reader can have access to the reporter's original data, can set the reporter's conclusions alongside their own or the reporter's own point of departure, and can submit their own comments to the authors and to other users. These possibilities and practices give added value to news material, but also facilitate diverse user experiences and producer-user interchanges. News that is made transparent in this manner is sometimes referred to as ‘open-source’ (see, e.g. Katz, 1999), in a conscious echo of the terms in which the technologies of the Internet have been developed. The Internet as a medium for journalism is culturally charged; it is not a neutral, technical space on to which the relative latecomers of online news publishing can inscribe whatever they choose. The values inscribed in the Internet as a cultural space influence the practice, or at least the context, of online journalism. On the basis of the possibilities for a more dialogical practice, we can identify certain

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professional values as potentially more important in online journalism than in more traditional forms. These values find concrete expression in the application of specific Web features. They speak to a changed relationship between producer and user. Arising from the consideration of the forms of online journalism, Jay Black has suggested (1998) that a new model of journalism may be emerging in which stories are presented as "data that are full, rich, textured and comprehensive", or "hypotheses tested and retested from multiple perspectives". Journalists' conclusions should be "publicly verifiable and replicable". Black also urged that journalists be more willing to accept feedback, give expression to more voices and, overall, be more accountable in their work practices. This was reflected in the 1996 revision of the professional code of the Society of Professional Journalists, in the United States. The revision was "motivated in part by a sense that new technologies for gathering and distributing information were subtly changing the nature of doing journalism" (Black, 1998). The revised code shifts the emphasis from that on objectivity to one on seeking deep truth from multiple sources, to ‘diversity’, ‘avoid imposing values’, and ‘dialogue with the public’ (Society of Professional Journalists, 1996). The greater accountability that Black proposes can be achieved through clear identification of the people and interests behind a site and of the sources used in compiling it. Visitors to a site can then make their own judgement about the validity or likely veracity of the information. The application of accountability can go further: where the source material of a news item – press release, official report, speech in parliament – is available on the Web, as it very often is, journalists can provide a link to that material, allowing the reader to see how it has been used. Active Net users are accustomed to looking at topics from various sources and viewpoints. On the assumption that increasing numbers of users will become ever more proficient in the medium, news stories could be presented as versions, allowing readers to see how they have been assembled. The construction of news could in this way be made transparent.

New Media ethics In accommodating to the greater responsiveness that ‘new media’ ethics apparently require, journalists can facilitate responses from and discussion among the readers, giving active encouragement in the form of propositions or questions on which contributions are invited, not merely as reactions to a piece of formal journalism but as elements of public discussion of the issue. The users' contributions might then be the basis of further professional-journalist inquiries and interviews with the ‘authoritative’ sources.

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Journalists who have grown up in the new media, or who have grown over into them, have become accustomed to treat answering such e-mails as an integral part of their job. However, journalists grounded in ‘old media’ tend to see it as an imposition, or a change of employment conditions to be compensated. Don Siegel, editor-in-chief of the magazine, The Onion, said: “We do feel more in touch with our readers on the Web, just because we get feedback from them, whereas our print version readers don’t really write” (Mackintosh, 2000). Longestablished music journalist Karl Dallas declared: “During 25 years writing for Melody Maker comment on my articles was fairly limited, and usually appeared, at the earliest, three weeks after publication. When I started writing about music on the Web, I immediately experienced a completely different timescale and relationship with my readers” (Dallas, 2001). David Talbot, pioneer Web magazine editor, described his publication Salon as part of a constant feedback loop: “We receive e-mails from around the world that challenge us and provide us with corrections and criticisms. It keeps us honest” (Power, 1999). An International Labour Organization report on information technologies in the media and entertainment industries reported a BBC News Online executive saying, “We’re now getting much greater involvement from the people in the story itself. The journalist’s business is becoming much more closely connected to its subjects, and this makes for better reporting and a better relationship between the news organization and its readers. Right now there are four people just sorting through readers’ e-mails, so every day we have this immense interaction with our readers. This is fundamentally changing journalism” (International Labor Organization, 2000). This acknowledgement of the importance of users’ contributions represents a higher degree of reflexivity than is usually apparent in traditional media. Internet publishers for whom the interactivity of the Web is more than a means of gathering marketing information and hosting opinion polls cannot avoid beginning to see themselves as others see them and, thereby, to question their own values and assumptions. This encourages journalism that is more open to self-questioning than is typically the case for print and broadcast journalism. Using multiple and diverse sources of information to construct stories, as the Web allows and as good practice indicates, also promotes continuous reflection on the manner of doing journalism. Further, Web journalists have the possibility of tracking the usage of the products they provide, how users move from one part to another, what are their preferences, and so on, through web site user logs. Such information can be valuable guidance in developing editorial policies and layout for a site.

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These, then, are sketched some of the possibilities of a changed orientation to users from the producer point of view. But what proportion of users want to follow these paths to additional information or to exchanges with producers and sources? Some studies suggest that enhancements are not wanted, that users prefer more predictable, sequential forms, or even that the demand for ‘interactivity’ has been over-stated (Poynter, 2000). Whether it is for such reasons, or for reasons of economy, the potential of new narrative forms and of various forms of interactivity has been weakly realized in online news services, particularly those attached to established media enterprises. A study of English-language Asian newspapers’ online editions noted that “scant use was made generally of the Net’s capacity for … allowing readers to add their content. Options for interpersonal interactivity were virtually nonexistent. Responsiveness to the user was spare as well, on average” (Massey and Levy, 1999). A 1997 survey of users of New York Times online forums showed that they contributed on average twice a week to those forums, but 74 per cent could not remember receiving any feedback from newspaper staff to their messages to staff or to forums (Schultz, 2000). Another US-based survey reported that 33 of 100 newspaper sites ran discussion forums – or, perhaps more significantly, that 67 per cent did not (Schultz, 1999). Clues as to the attitudes of European media professionals to feedback and interactivity can be found in surveys of Dutch and Flemish online journalists (Deuze and Paulussen, 2002; Deuze and Dimoudi, 2002). Interactivity comes second to speed and immediacy in their ranking of four key concepts but over three quarters of Flemish respondents rated interaction with readers important or very important. Over two thirds of Dutch respondents agreed with the statement that online journalists must sustain a strong interactive relationship with their readers. Nearly three quarters of Flemish and Dutch respondents rate providing platforms for discussion as an important or very important journalistic task. The findings are not unambiguous, however; when compared with Dutch journalists across all media, Dutch online journalists gave significantly less emphasis to giving the public a chance to voice their opinions. Acknowledgement of the user’s importance is an increasing part of media industry discourse. Responding to the invitation of a trade magazine to “name the biggest challenges facing journalists in 2002”, the editor of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, said: “The readers are in the driving seat: if they want their news on a Personal Digital Assistant rather than newsprint, that’s what we had better give them” (UK Press Gazette, 2002). Does Rusbridger’s statement reflect a real shift in professional attitudes that is reflected in a new accommodation of users’ contributions and demands? Or is it a form of demagogy that masks a marketing agenda?

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Case studies For some possible answers to those questions we turn now to case studies undertaken as part of the European Union-funded MUDIA project1. We looked at the roles assigned to users of web news sites in four EU member states, Denmark (DK), France (FR), Ireland (IE) and the United Kingdom (UK). Our approach was to select a sample of case studies in each country – 24 in total – that represented a mix of types, according to the character of the enterprise (‘traditional media’ or ‘Net-native’), the target group or groups, and the visible presence, at first view, of some of the usual interactive features of web sites, such as e-mail alerts, discussion groups and hyperlinks to external sites. The mix of traditional media and Net-native organizations was skewed somewhat by the need to take account of the activities of other partners in the MUDIA project. Thus, the French and UK samples comprised exclusively Net-native sites, because newspaper publishers and broadcasters in those countries were being surveyed for other purposes in the project. The Danish and Irish samples comprised a mix of traditional media and Net-native enterprises. In the overall sample of 24 case studies, 18 sites were classified as Net-native and six as belonging to traditional media. The country samples each included general news providers, and sites with more narrowly defined missions to provide news and information exchange on such topic areas as human rights, sport, health, technology or women’s issues. It should be noted that the 24 sites were all businesses in the common understanding of the term. Thus, amateur enthusiasts’ Web logs and community sites were not included; nor were participatory sites such as the various national versions of Indymedia. The case studies were conducted during the period between October 2001 and May 2002 and involved reviews of the 24 sites, semi-structured interviews with editorial personnel in each of the organizations, and a survey of editorial staff working for those organizations, together with a control survey of communities of online journalists in each of the four states. The review of the sites was conducted on the basis of a matrix developed for this study, and in which ten interactive functions were rated as representing low, moderate, or high levels of interactivity and assigned a score of 1, 2 or 3, respectively. The principal criterion for this rating as low, moderate or high was the extent to which the site user was facilitated and encouraged to participate in the site’s overall activity. The scoring system allowed for a maximum score of 20 points; the initial selection process ensured that the minimum would be more than zero. As it turned out the

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case studies fell into two larger groups, with ten rated at 13-15 points, one site alone in middle position at 11 points, and the balance of 13 sites rated at 3-9 points. It should be understood that the lower ratings reflected in some cases a generally weak interest in facilitating user involvement, but in other cases, a highly focused use of specific user-oriented services such as discussion boards. The top ten included at least two sites from each of the four countries, tending to confirm that we had achieved reasonably comparable sub-samples. Eight of the top ten were classified as Net-native, reflecting closely (80 per cent) the weight of this sector within the overall sample of case studies (75 per cent). It is already revealing of a difference between countries to which we shall return that the two traditional media organizations represented in the top ten are based in Denmark. All but two of the interviews with senior editorial personnel were conducted over approximately 40 minutes in their places of work. The two exceptions were interviews with representatives of French sites that were conducted by e-mail, because of practical difficulties in arranging face-to-face interviews. The interview guide referred to the respondent’s knowledge of their site users’ profile, the strategies used to build user loyalty, the means provided for the user to give feedback, the use made of the feedback information, the facilities for users to contribute to news content, the weight attached to user contributions in the overall publishing strategy, and related questions. The analysis of the interviews yielded dominant themes that were grouped under three broad headings – Delivery, Contribution and Editorial Integration. Under the first heading, Delivery, respondents described how they were responding to user demand by delivering services through a range of media alongside the Web, including, and specifically, e-mail and SMS (short messaging service) on mobile phones. Of the 24 case studies, all were rated as having made a commitment to multi-platform delivery. In some cases, this multi-platform delivery was represented as a form of personalization. The editor of Ananova (UK) coupled personalization and providing ‘breaking news quickly’ – but on topics that users have previously indicated are of particular interest. Ireland.com (IE) emphasized the ‘elective’ character of personalized news and, in this context referred to the use of databases as a means of storing news so that it can be ‘pulled down’. A common thread of most of the responses was the emphasis on the value of email to maintain regular communication with users. All sites surveyed offered a number of e-mail-based news products that required subscription. Irish Abroad (IE) and Enduring Freedoms (FR) stated that 80 per cent of their users had signed up for e-mail products, and Oneworld (UK) described e-mail as ‘the killer application’.

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Several sites offered e-mail alerts based on keywords that users have selected. Electric News (IE) referred to this as matching the users’ needs – “they can rely on us to filter a lot of the noise out”. By contrast with this heavy reliance on the older technology of e-mail for building relations with users, the sites surveyed were rather hesitant about committing to newer technologies such as delivery to PDAs (personal digital assistants). Perhaps reflecting the negative experience with WAP (wireless application protocol), in which services are little used, or have been discontinued, the respondents indicated they were waiting for a business model for delivery to PDAs to emerge before moving firmly in that direction. Many stated that they already had the technical capacity to provide such a service. According to Ingenioren (DK), “if there is user demand or if there was a business model for payment for fast news [via PDA] then we could prioritize it”. Under Contribution, the interview respondents discussed a range of means by which users could interact directly with the site, with the editors and journalists, and with other users. Fifteen of the 24 case studies were rated as providing a channel for user contributions, but the degree of emphasis on this aspect of the service differed much more across the case studies than in relation to the delivery theme. For Ananova (UK), promoting user contributions is explicit policy – “we like them to tell us their news”. So too for Football365 (UK), which started by providing news rather in the manner of popular newspaper but responded to user demand by increasingly emphasizing the users’ comments. Sport.fr (FR) defines its distinctiveness in terms of the possibilities for users to communicate with, and leave their mark on, the site. Irishhealth (IE) presents itself as a source of hard news but publishes all stories with a request for comment, as well as having discussion facilities around individual health themes. Oneworld (UK) has discussion boards on all subject areas and, at the time of our survey, was preparing to start an online collaborative broadcasting service, in which “filmmakers, activists, interested people and students” contribute video or audio clips to stories. However, several of the sites insisted strongly on the limits of such user contributions. Ireland.com (IE) was concerned that its activities should not affect perception of the newspaper, The Irish Times, whose resources, brand and ethos lie behind the site – “people know what The Irish Times is. We don’t want to tamper with that”. Similarly, the focus of the online edition of the daily newspaper, Jyllands-posten (DK), is on supporting the print edition and the web site does not include strategies for having users shape news content. One Net-native site, Electric News (IE), explained its choice not to include discussion boards on grounds of ‘what journalism should be’. But this site, like others who had also

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chosen not to provide discussion boards, acknowledged that such services are popular and can build relations. One form of user contribution found on many of the sites is the regularly updated user poll, on which the users are asked to click on buttons to indicate their ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to a given question. Although this is a very limited form of user contribution, operated under strict control by the service provider, it was reported to be popular with users. In some cases, several thousand votes were recorded daily. This may be taken as an indication of users’ wish to participate. However, this opportunity for participation is built on a model of journalism that largely obscures the users – for example, Jyllands-posten (DK) admitted that their journalists rarely checked the results of these polls. We found significant differences between online news services of existing traditional news providers (print or broadcast) and Net-native providers in the strategies adopted towards users. Net-native sites appeared to be attempting more actively to integrate user contributions in their services; they were readier to break away from traditional news structures in responding to user demand. Editorial Integration arose as a strong theme because it was partly in order to ensure greater user responsiveness and better cohesion between the several parts of media enterprises – particularly those with both online and print or broadcast services – that some of the sites surveyed set about integrating their operations in a single newsroom structure. This aspect of convergence was examined more closely in another of the MUDIA studies (see The European Multimedia News Landscape, posted at www.mudia.org). It presented itself for consideration here, under the study of user roles, because respondents saw editorial integration as a means of providing more differentiated content and thus a better, more user-oriented service. In the early days of online publishing within larger media enterprises, the online divisions were often physically removed from established newsrooms, and populated by staffs of different experience, age, qualifications and culture from those of the established journalists. Following widely reported examples in the United States, but also based on their own specific experiences of the disadvantages of separation, some of the case studies have brought their operations together. Onside (DK), which is the online sports service of the Danish broadcaster TV3, implemented a rotation system under which broadcast journalists spend some of their time in the online service, This was explained as a means of ensuring that the quality of content published online was equivalent to that of the broadcast service. Ingenioren (DK), a weekly technology newspaper with an online service, established through user surveys that they could meet user demand more effectively through integration of their services, and through the combination of the

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print journalists’ subject expertise and the online journalists’ user responsiveness. Jyllands-posten (DK) reported that the news editor of the online service had become “the most central person in our [combined] newsroom”. That respondent had taken integration a step further by retraining print journalists to think of the audio-visual aspects or possibilities of their stories in order to guide the production of multimedia content for the online service. One of the general features emerging from the case study interviews was the lack of detailed information held by the respondents on user demand and user profile. Only a small number of the 24 news organizations had conducted recent user surveys. The others were relying on older surveys many of which had been conducted by the marketing department and so were focused on the business model and not on identifying user demand for news content. Also, due to a general reluctance to implement mandatory registration sites tended not to be gathering information from their Web servers about user profile. The third part of the empirical study of user roles in online news comprised a survey of media professionals working in the 24 sites selected as case studies and, more broadly, in online journalism in the four countries in which those case studies were located. Online surveys present several methodological issues that affect their representativity, and there is little that researchers can do to eliminate those difficulties. We are making no claims that the survey responses can be generalized to online journalists in the four member states, but these responses do provide some comment and counterpoint to the findings of the case study interviews. The survey was conducted among media professionals engaged in producing online news content in the four member states selected for the case studies. There were two samples: online staff working for the news organizations in our case studies, and a wider group of online professionals working in other news organizations. Notice of the survey was sent to contact persons in each of the case study enterprises for further distribution to their staffs, and to mailing lists and web sites dedicated to discussion of online journalism. The questions under User Profile, Loyalty, Interactivity and User contribution took the form of statements on which respondents were asked to rank their opinion as to whether they: Strongly agree (coded 5); Agree (4); Mixed feelings (3); Disagree (2); Strongly disagree (1). The response from the sample of professionals working in the case study enterprises is estimated at about 40 per cent – we did not have a precise count of the total numbers involved. Responses came from 20 of the 24 case study enterprises. The response rate from the wider community of online journalists was much lower, but is impossible to estimate as there are no figures for this population. The response rate varied significantly across the four countries, with responses from Denmark accounting for nearly half (46 per cent) of all 138

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responses received. Responses from France, where the questionnaire was distributed in French, accounted for 16 per cent of all responses, with most of these coming from the wider journalism community. It cannot be claimed, therefore, that the survey is representative of views within this emerging professional sector, but it can be taken as a useful indicator of professionals’ perceptions of users’ roles in the broader communication process. There were no significant differences between the responses from the case studies sub-sample and the sub-sample from the wider online journalism community. Of the 22 statements on which respondents were asked to indicate their opinion, the six that attracted the highest level of agreement are listed below. A rating of 5 indicated strong agreement, and 1 strong disagreement. Including hyperlinks can make a news story more valuable to users Accuracy and reliability in news are the best way to build user loyalty E-mail alerts about news help encourage users to return to a site I welcome direct user feedback on my work Users of our site have more opportunity now to interact with reporters than they did five years ago It is important for editors and writers to read user contributions to discussion boards and online polls

4.32 4.23 4.09 4.01 3.92 3.86

From these and further responses a profile of online media professionals might appear to emerge that is strongly disposed to active engagement with their users. But setting these results alongside the reviews of the case study sites, and the interviews with those sites’ senior personnel, indicates rather a contradiction between perception and practice. The professionals surveyed wanted very much to ‘do the right thing’ for their users, e.g. include helpful hyperlinks, take account of their feedback, and read their views. The evidence from the site reviews and the interviews suggested that they did not do so to the same degree. A large majority of the stories published on the case study sites appeared without hyperlinks to external sites, and in Jyllands-posten (DK), for example, it was admitted that the journalists rarely visited the discussion boards or read the results of online polls – and this was in one of the more user-responsive of the case studies. The survey responses point to further contradictions, in that the statement, “I welcome direct user feedback on my work” (rated 4.01, and ranked fourth most strongly supported of 22 propositions), attracted significantly stronger support than the statement, “Users want to interact directly with reports and editors online” (rated 3.47, ranked 15). These responses suggest that professionals see user

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feedback as desirable in abstract, but much less so when it implicates them individually.

Conclusions Among the conclusions we drew from this series of case studies are the following: • There was little evidence of a ‘new paradigm’ in online journalism, in the sense that this might refer to disappearing boundaries between producer and user • The traditional model of journalist story-telling based on authoritative selection of the salient ‘facts’ survives strongly in the new environment • The traditional model of a newsroom based on clear hierarchies and role demarcations also survives strongly in the new environment • Interactivity in its many and varied forms is being applied at generally low levels, but unevenly across the online media sectors • Facilities for tracking usage of sites are little used; information captured by these means is not part of a feedback loop to editors, writers and designers We observed also that there were discernible differences between member states in the degrees of openness to innovation in producer-user relationships. These differences may be based in part on national journalism cultures, but also in part on differentiated responses to technological developments in the wider cultures of each country. Danish online journalists, whether working in traditional media or Net-native enterprises, were markedly more open to incorporating user contributions, and to professional and organizational innovation, than their counterparts in the other countries. French online journalists appeared least userresponsive and least innovative, with the British and Irish professionals in intermediate positions. These differences were reflected even in the levels of interest in our research itself, as indicated in the responsiveness to requests for interview and to the survey questionnaire. The national differences observed here conform to those observed in other cases, where, for example, EU member states have been grouped as light, medium or heavy users of communication technologies (Servaes and Heindderyckx, 2002). A similar pattern of three clusters was observed in the EU-funded media training project, JetPilot (1998-99), in which the present author participated. However, the strongest conclusion of the present project had to do with a factor that was not directly on our agenda – economic survival and the business model. Over the period of the interviews and surveys, and in the months immediately afterwards, significant changes occurred in the status of several of the enterprises, including the introduction of charges at Ireland.com, cessation or suspension of

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publication by Transfert, Infoscience, Central European Review (later to merge with another online service, Transitions Online), Megastories, and reductions in online staff at RTE, Ireland.com, and Ingenioren. Reduction in resources tended to mean a reduced effort in developing interactive features of web sites and promoting effective interaction between producers and users. Already in the late 1990s there were signs of retreat from the experimentation of the early phase of Web news publishing. In 1997, John Pavlik, a long-time observer of trends and practices in online journalism, set out a possible evolution of Web journalism from ‘stage one’, where the emphasis was on ‘repurposing’ of previously available news content, through ‘stage two’ where original content with hyperlinks and other interactive features is created, to ‘stage three’ where content is designed specifically for the Web and involves experimentation with new forms of story-telling (Pavlik, 1997). Pavlik posited that “new media can transform journalism”. Two years later, in the same publication, a journalist who spent two years with the online service of Fox News in the United States considered that Web journalism increasingly resembled forms that developed in television and news agencies and that “experiments in story-telling are on an indefinite hiatus” (Houston, 1999). It may be, therefore, that the shake-out of 2001 merely accentuated and accelerated developments already under way. It should be underlined, however, that the boundaries of the research reported here were set down in terms of the ‘media industry’. The sites surveyed were those of more or less conventional businesses; higher levels of innovation and, in particular, greater openness to interaction with users may well be found in the productions of hobbyists and hackers, in community sites and so-called Indymedia. Our assignment was to undertake a ‘prognostic study’ that would offer some guidance to industry players and professionals. For reasons that should by now be clear, we were reluctant to offer any prognoses. We were all too aware that had we done these studies two years earlier, our conclusions might have been very different and we might have felt greater confidence in pointing to future possibilities or probabilities. We might, consequently, have been more dramatically incorrect in our prognoses. Our difficulty in this respect relates to a wider problem of trend-spotting which we call the problem of past, present and future. The historical, or past, problem has been one of discerning the continuity and the novelty in online journalism. The descriptive, or present, problem has been one of determining which of the many strands of emerging and current practice can be taken as representative. The prognosis, or future, problem has been one of too often taking hopes as realities. This theoretical and methodological problem has been reflected in the inconsistent use of ‘will’, ‘may’, ‘should’, ‘can’ in discussion of current and emerging practices.

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When, for example, John Pavlik (2000), one of the most prolific US writers on online news practices, says that the inverted triangle form of news story is “becoming obsolete in the online news world”, what is the status of that statement? Is it an extrapolation from observation of past and present trends? Is it a prediction? Is it a hope? In the European context, Mark Deuze (2001) has contributed very valuably to the literature on online journalism. He bases one analysis on ‘ideal-typical’ forms of online journalism as elaborated by "an increasing number of professionals and academics”. Does this reference to increasing numbers give these ideal-typical forms added weight as identifiable practices or trends? Jim Hall (2001) writes in the introduction to his very useful Online Journalism: a critical primer: “Within five years more people in the developed world will get their news from the Internet rather than from a daily paper”. He might have been more qualified in his prediction if he had recalled, that Nicholas Negroponte (1995), looking five years forward from the mid-1990s, had written with the same certainty: “In the year 2000 more people will be entertaining themselves on the Internet than by looking at what we call the networks today.” These few examples are intended to underline the difficulty of identifying trends and emerging practices, and, thereby, of offering scenarios and prognoses. Some of this difficulty, as reflected in the published literature, may arise from the provenance and purpose of research in this field. Kopper and colleagues (2000) noted that most research on online journalism is conducted by media institutions and most is privately funded. It tends to be ad hoc, seeking to address conjunctural business or technical issues. From a European perspective, we are also bound to note that most of the defining studies have come from North America. Kopper et al. wondered, with justification, if public institutions were finding it difficult to “react to the pace of changes in mass communication”. It may be that companies, professional groups and, indeed, individual researchers are similarly challenged.

References Bardoel, J. (1996), ‘Beyond Journalism: a profession between information society and civil society’, European Journal of Communication, 11:3, pp. 283-302. Black, J. (1998), ‘Journalism Nethics’, Convergence, 4:4, pp 10-17. Dallas, K. (2001), ‘Now The Punters Talk Back’, The Journalist , April 2001. Demers, F.(1996), ‘Impacts des nouvelles technologies de l’information et communication: déstructuration (et restructuration?) du journalisme’, Technologies de l’Information et Société, 8:1, pp. 55-70.

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Deuze, M. (2001), ‘Online Journalism: Modelling the First Generation of News Media on the World Wide Web’, First Monday, 6:10 (2001), posted at http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue6_10/deuze/ Deuze, M. and C. Dimoudi (2002), ‘Online journalists in the Netherlands – towards a profile of a new profession’, Journalism, 3:1, pp 85-100. Deuze, M. and S. Paulussen (2002), ‘Research Note: Online Journalism in the Low Countries – basic, occupational and professional characteristics of online journalists in Flanders and the Netherlands’, European Journal of Communication, 17:2, pp 237-245. Hall, J (2001)., Online Journalism: a critical primer, London: Pluto Press. Harper, C. (1997), ‘The Daily Me’, American Journalism Review, April 1997 Houston, F. (1999)., ‘What I Saw in the Digital Sea’, Columbia Journalism Review, July/August 1999 International Labour Organisation (2001), Symposium on Information Technologies in the Media and Entertainment Industries: Their Impact on Employment, Working Conditions and Labour-management Relations, Background Document, Geneva: International Labour Organisation. Katz, J. (1999), ‘Jane's open-source breakthrough: model for news media’, posted at http://www.freedomforum.org/templates/document.asp?documentID=11383 Kenney, K. (2000), A. Gorelik and S.Mwangi, ‘Interactive Features of Online Newspapers’, First Monday, 5:1 (2000), posted at http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue5_1/kenney/ King, E. (1998)., ‘Redefining Relationships: Interactivity between News Producers and Consumers’, Convergence, 4: 4, pp 26-32. Kopper, G., A. Kolthoff and A. Czepek (2000), ‘Research Review: Online Journalism – a report on current and continuing research and major questions in the international discussion’, Journalism Studies, 1:3, pp 499-512, 2000. Kovach, B. and T. Rosenstiel (2001), The Elements of Journalism – what newspeople should know and the public should expect, New York: Crown Publishers. Kunelius, R. (2001), ‘Conversation – a metaphor and method for better journalism?’, Journalism Studies, 2:1, pp 31-54. Mackintosh, H. (2000), ‘The Revolution will not be Televised’, The Guardian (24 February, 2000) Massey, B. L. and M. R. Levy (1999), ‘Interactivity, Online Journalism and Englishlanguage Web Newspapers in Asia’, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 76:1, pp 138-151. Negroponte, N. (1995), Being Digital, London: Hodder and Stoughton. Neuberger, C., J. Tonnemacher, M. Biebl and A. Duck (1998), ‘Online – the Future of Newspapers? Germany’s Dailies on the World Wide Web’, Journal of Computer-

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Mediated Communication, 4:1 (1998), posted at http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol4/issue1/neuberger.html Pavlik, J. (1997), ‘The Future of Online Journalism: bonanza or black hole?’, Columbia Journalism Review, July/August, pp 30-36. Pavlik, J. (1999), ‘New media and news: implications for the future of journalism’, New Media and Society, 1:1, pp 54-58. Pavlik, J. (2000), ‘The Impact of Technology on Journalism’, Journalism Studies, 1:2, pp 229-237. Power, C. (1999), ‘Internet grabs headlines from traditional media’, The Irish Times (22 October 1999) Poynter Institute (2000), Stanford Poynter Project, posted at http://www.poynter.org/eyetrack2000/ Rosen, J. (1999), What Are Journalists For? New Haven: Yale University Press. Schultz, T. (2000), ‘Mass Media and the Concept of Interactivity: an Exploratory Study of Online Forums and Reader Email’, Media Culture and Society, 22:2, pp 205-221. Schultz, T. (1999), ‘Interactive Options in Online Journalism: A Content Analysis of 100 U.S. Newspapers’, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 5:1, posted at http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol5/issue1/schultz.html Servaes, J. and F. Heinderyckx (2002), ‘The ‘new’ ICT environment in Europe: closing or widening the gaps’, Telematics and Informatics, 19, pp 91-115. Singer, J. (1998), ‘Online Journalists: foundations for research into their changing roles’, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 4:1, posted at www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol4/issue1/singer.html Society of Professional Journalists, Code of Ethics (1996), posted at www.spj.org/ethics_code.asp UK Press Gazette (2002), ‘The challenges ahead’, UK Press Gazette (4 January 2002) Yelvington, S. (1999), ‘What Every Editor Should Know about Online Reporting’, presentation to NetMedia conference 1999, posted at http://www.yelvington.com/netmedia/1999/netmedia.html Yeshua, D. and Deuze, M. (2000), ‘Online Journalists Face New Ethical Dilemmas: Report from The Netherlands’, posted at http://home.pscw.uva.nl/deuze/publ15.htm

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Notes 1

MUDIA, Multimedia Content in the Digital Age, was funded under the EU’s Fifth Framework Programme of Research (Information Society Technologies). The project was co-ordinated by Institute of Infonomics, University of Maastricht, Netherlands. For the contribution to the project from the Centre for Society Technology and Media (STeM), Dublin City University, research assistant Gary Quinn undertook the field work.

Social and Human Capital in the Knowledge Society: Policy Implications Luisella Pawan-Woolfe* 1. The Lisbon Summit of 2000 set very ambitious goals: the EU is to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy by 2010, with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion. These challenges are the key priorities for European Employment and Social Policy. The knowledge society sets a framework but also the means to achieve these goals. Employment and social policy is pursued within the EU Strategy for sustainable development. Again, the knowledge society is both an opportunity but can be a threat to social sustainability. The European Commission Conference ‘Social and Human Capital in the Knowledge Society: Policy Implications’ (http://europa.eu.int/comm/employment_social/knowledge_society/conf_en.htm) has shown that there is robust evidence that human capital drives economic growth. It has also shown that social capital makes a major contribution. For example, the role of strong communities and ties among parents, pupils and teachers in fostering learning. Human and social capital are associated with a wide range of so-called noneconomic benefits. Health, personal satisfaction and low crime rates are three such gains. Social and human capital are mutually reinforcing. Human capital plays an increasingly central role in the economic success of nations and individuals. ICTs, globalisation of economic activity and the trend towards greater personal responsibility and autonomy have increased the demand for learning. The key role of competence and knowledge in stimulating economic growth has been widely recognised by economists. However, the non economic returns to learning can be viewed as at least as important as labour market earnings. Enhanced personal well-being and greater social inclusion both stem from them.

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Social networks and learning organisations stimulate informal learning on the job and indeed in everyday life. Social and human capital enable individuals, communities and firms to cope with the demands of rapid change. 2. In the knowledge society new technologies are major drivers of economic and social change. Such change is pervasive and diversified. The current socioeconomic transformation is based on the massively increased ability of people to obtain and process information. Knowledge creation and utilisation have been radically altered. The social and human capital perspective permits us to focus on individuals and social relations. Such an analysis provides new insights into the nature of this knowledge revolution. One key question: are the changes brought about by the knowledge society sustainable? More precisely, is human and social capital increased or diminished? We live more and more in a networked society. Is this society inclusive or exclusive? Is the digital divide inevitable? Will it grow? What should we do to reduce it? ICTs allow people to participate in society, but may also exclude some. The impact of ICTs on civil society, participatory democracy and citizenship is of immense concern. Universal access/service does not guarantee equal participation, especially if it is not coupled with digital literacy for all. 3. Employment and social policymakers will certainly need to address how entrepreneurship and innovation will be strengthened by the knowledge society. Intellectual capital must be enhanced as a key complement of human capital. But the knowledge society risks being the non-stop work society. Sustainability within the knowledge society is a paramount policy objective. Human and social capital building bring to the fore economic, environmental, social as well as cognitive and psychological challenges. Social sustainability requires a quality of life and social cohesion. The knowledge society depends on sharing and transferring knowledge. Policymakers have often sought to bring about e-inclusion and other aspects with a top-down approach. We should in the future concentrate on encouraging a bottom-up set of initiatives. The local level is particularly important in furthering full participation in the knowledge society. If we compare the experience of the knowledge society between soon-to-be new Members and the old Member States in the European Union, we observe very wide divergences within and between the candidate countries, as

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indeed there are within the existing EU. An enlarged EU will have wider differences. But existing Member States and candidate countries can each learn from each other. Both have had successful specific initiatives raising human and social capital. The candidate countries will have to think and plan very carefully how they are to be best placed in the knowledge society within an enlarged EU. They will have to decide how to use national and Community programmes and funds to maximise social and human capital building. They must choose to what extent the Structural Funds they receive can and should concentrate on the more immaterial investments that underpin the knowledge society. Roads and bridges are of course important. Furthermore, they appear relatively quickly and cannot be missed by local electors. But the long-term health and dynamism of the knowledge-based economy depends on a well-qualified, highly skilled workforce, able to adapt to new technologies and methods of working. 4. I wish to stress the importance of having a national knowledge society strategy. A strong and appropriate educational base and above all the institutions for lifelong learning are a must. Low-cost access to broadband telecommunications is equally vital in candidate countries for a knowledge society for all. At the risk of being repetitive, employment and social policy must pay close attention to social and human capital building. In the knowledge society this is particularly vital for more and better jobs and social inclusion. But what exactly is the role of the Commission and indeed of other stakeholders in ensuring that we reach the Lisbon targets? The Structural Funds at this very moment are the subject of an in-depth review. The future orientation of the European Social Fund, as well as the other Funds, must take account of the mutually reinforcing nature of social and human capital. The European Employment Strategy must also do this to maximise the number and quality of jobs. Member States, both the current but also the future ones, will be intimately involved in the reformulation of these two related policy areas. Member States also choose the projects for funding by the Structural Funds; they must choose those which best fit the knowledge society. The European Social Inclusion Strategy, modeled to some extent on the Employment Strategy, is still in its first phases. Nevertheless, it too will evolve to take account of the developments within the knowledge society. The digital divide, especially as it is not primarily a technology issue, will be a key focus. Social capital building will be a particular challenge in the future. Policymakers need to monitor constantly the social evolution of the knowledge

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society. They also have a role in promoting awareness raising activities. 5. The Social Partners are important. The recent framework agreement on telework is a concrete step increasing human and social capital to the benefit of firms and workers. The social partners are themselves a key element of social capital. They increase the amount and the quality of knowledge transmitted to their members and to society as a whole. Unions will continue to adapt to new forms of work organisation and thus ensure strong representation of the workers. Worker can thus play an active role in the process of change. They can share in the ownership of -- and thus equally benefit from -- new ways of working. Employers have a direct interest in raising the capital of their workforce. They also have an interest in high levels of economic and social well-being in society as a whole. A skilled and motivated workforce needs good schooling. Public authorities finance and direct nearly all education in Member States. They will continue to be encouraged to aim for the highest levels of attainment in schools and universities. Public-private partnerships of all sorts are vital for effective lifelong learning in the knowledge society. The public authorities have an even greater responsibility to promote social capital building, in all its forms. Promoting ‘bonding’ social capital, for example, within families. Fostering ‘bridging’ social capital, for example, among business associates. Supporting ‘linking’ social capital, for example, across different social classes. Social inclusion policies currently aim at all three and should continue to do so. Gender is a source of social capital. Men and women have different networks. But, unequal access to employment or other aspects of society reduce the stock of social capital. Policies to promote gender and age equality raise social capital. The Commission and the Member States, and indeed the Social Partners, should continue to pursue them. Local communities spur social innovation and economic development; however, this is not automatic. For local communities to make the most of their own resources, integrated local development needs to be pursued. Local authorities, enterprises and civil society all have a role to play here.

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Individuals also have a role. Every person already makes some investment in their own intellectual capital. In the knowledge society individuals must make more and better investments in their own capabilities. Lifelong learning necessitates continuous, high-quality self-education. This is not the case just for the intellectual elite. Lifelong learning -- and thus individual investment -- is necessary for all people. Blue-collar workers, managers, parents, senior citizens, we all need to be lifelong learners. 6. Which areas require further analysis, exploration and research? Social capital and its relationship with economic, social inclusion and employment policies. As we heard, participation is everything. Measurements must also be pursued. Assessment and evaluation are equally important. Social capital is especially hard to quantify. More work needs doing on what to measure and how to measure it. Policymakers need to know if their policies are improving society. Commonly agreed indicators are essential. Benchmarking of strategies will help policymakers optimise social and human capital enhancement. What will the future bring? The Commission has already close co-operation with the OECD and ILO in the areas of social and employment policies. Social and human capital questions are clearly worthy of intensified joint work in the future And last – but by no means least – the links between policymakers and experts need to be developed further. New avenues of co-operation need to be explored in order to build on the social capital that this conference has created.

Note * This is an edited version of the speech Mrs Pawan-Woolfe held at the end of the European Commission Conference on ‘Social and Human Capital in the Knowledge Society: Policy Implications’, Brussels, October 28-29, 2002. I am grateful to Mr Robert Strauss – Head of the Knowledge Society Unit – and to Mrs Lidia Pola for their contribution to the preparation of this text.

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Reference European Commission Conference ‘Social and Human Capital in the Knowledge Society: Policy Implications’ – Proceedings online http://europa.eu.int/comm/employment_social/knowledge_society/conf_en.htm

Digital citizenship and information inequalities: Challenges for the future Jan Servaes 1. Every major innovation in communication related technology, from the printing press on, has always given rise to a mixture of hopes and fears. As an example, the development of radio in the 1930s, then of television in the 1950s, in a context of international tension and of escalating propaganda, made observers fear that large populations would become vulnerable to potential manipulators of opinion, attitudes and behaviors. Others, however, saw an unprecedented opportunity for mass marketing and the advent of mass consumption. It took functionalist theories to turn things around and shift from a vision of vulnerable audiences potentially manipulated by all powerful media to critical and organized audiences faced with weak media having no choice but to seduce the audience or disappear. As often, it now appears that truth lies somewhere in between. The potential effects of the divided evolution we are witnessing could be of particular magnitude for at least two reasons. Firstly, the trend towards convergence implies that many, if not most or all cultural activities may, at some point, be deeply affected by innovation. Secondly, while television, for example, was developed and then gradually entered households with only continuous innovations (today’s television set is functionally that of the 50s), the so-called new technologies are being used by an increasing number of people, at the same time as these technologies are still evolving rapidly and indeed barely taking shape. Any research or indeed thinking in the matter is like predicting the pattern of the flue epidemic: given the constant mutation of the virus, public health authorities can only make educated guesses as to its viral profile and how it will propagate and with what effect. 2. Surveys, like those Measuring the Information Society, show that large segments of European societies are not ‘inside’ the so called ‘knowledge society’ but ‘next to it’ or simply ‘outside’ it. This is at the same time a scientific finding and a political issue.

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The evolution of the Measuring Information Society survey results show: (a) that a multi-faceted media and communications system is in place in Europe – this new system is the sum of the traditional and innovative media all coexisting and all conflicting with one another to acquire a larger share of the financial/time budget of Europeans; and (b) that different kinds of ‘user groups’ coexist today in Europe that use in different proportions different clusters of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs). However, for policymakers in the Information Society, the important issue is how to mitigate information inequalities and possibly to prevent them. This becomes a very crucial task when there is some evidence that the prevailing tendency in the European Information Society is exclusive. Therefore, it is very important to understand the role of ICTs in relation to people’s ability to participate in society. The observed phenomena of social exclusion in the Information Society are pretty close to the conjecture that technologically richer media might imply poorer democracy, in the sense that the corporate media explosion could result in a corresponding implosion of public life. Furthermore, socio-political differentiation might be generated by either intended or non-intended processes of integration. The latter (unintended consequence) is known as ‘informational Balkanization’. The former is related to the two contradictory trends of globalization simultaneously producing both fragmentation and integration: In another paradoxical operation of cyberspace, it enlarges the public sphere and political action through the virtual world and reduces them in the real one. The impact of new ICTs on civil society, participatory democracy and citizenship is of immense contemporary concern. This impact is usually associated with the demand of universal access. But universal access/service alone does not suffice. The way Stephen Coleman puts it, “if citizenship requires universal access, democracy needs trustworthy channels of information and deliberation if it is to prosper” (2001: 124). In other words, modern European citizenship needs the demand for and provision of information in order to develop the proper rights and responsibilities in the conditions and complexities of the Knowledge Society of eEurope. 3. In spite of the recurrent claims of evermore user-friendliness, information and communication technologies use remains strongly subordinated to a set of specific skills. These evolve along with innovation, but tend to grow in importance as the complexity of the technologies as well as the scope of their applications extends.

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These set of skills go well beyond managing the interfaces needed to operate them. Broadly speaking, new media are increasingly associated with new writing, hence of new reading, not to mention new ways to organize, treat, retrieve and control information in its broadest sense. This so-called new literacy will soon lead developed societies into difficulties comparable to that of illiteracy in the 19th century. Like the illiterate of those times, the new illiterate will be, as we can clearly see from the diffusion patterns of new technologies, of lower social status, with the associated lower income and level of education. Medium term developments may lead to a dichotomized social body made of, on the one hand, wealthier, better educated and new literates having the skills and the means to access and use ICTs and, on the other hand, poorer, less educated and new illiterates kept out of the new tech scene and deprived of most technologies and hence denied access to an increasing amount of information and culture. Therefore, Francis Bacon’s famous saying – Knowledge is Power – could be replaced by ‘the capacity and speed to access, select and reproduce knowledge will determine power in the 21st century’. 4. The question of whether new media will grow at the expense of traditional media is of particular importance to the industry. Unsurprisingly, the first tangible signs of decreased television viewing among Internet heavy users are now showing in the United States. Also the MIS 2000 survey shows the impact of Internet browsing on people’s time-budget: a 73% reduction in time spent on TV viewing, 46% reduction in book reading, 34% in newspaper reading, 29% in radio listening, 28% less family activities, 27% in sports, and 24% less time spent with friends (INRA, 2000: 68). However, at the same time one also notices a rise in television viewing behaviour among certain socio-demographic groups as well. One core characteristic of many new technologies makes any kind of prediction even more audacious: integration. The Internet in its most popular form (the World Wide Web) seems to hold characteristics, which might grow into true media integration. All forms of media (broadcast) and interpersonal communication are likely, sooner or later, to be transposed or accessible via a unique interface organized around the Internet. In theory, a device that would be small enough to be portable, yet large enough to ensure perceptive comfort, could well replace everything from personal computer to Walkman, telephone to television and video recorder, fax and answering machine, newspaper and radio, movie theater and advertising posters, bookshop and libraries, shopping malls and city halls. Integration of all existing vectors of communication (and much more) would also give rise to an endless number of hybrid combinations prompting changes in

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behavior of such a magnitude that it would, if accessible to a large population, deeply reorganize social structures, as we know them. In this sense, the Internet can be considered as emblematic of the new technologies. Given that it takes skills (education) and money (equipment and running cost), using the Internet is to be viewed as a major landmark in new technologies penetration. Internet users have indeed gone over the hurdle that is most likely to keep people away from technology, and having done that are likely adopters of downstream technologies, as long as these remain within continuous innovations. Surprisingly, however, there is no linear relationship between proportions of non-users saying they are interested and of those saying they are planning to purchase an Internet connection within six months. Finland shows the highest proportion of interested non-users and near highest proportion of purchasers within six months. This is to say that the diffusion pattern of Internet can be seen, at this stage, as animated by a snowball effect or marketing hype. However, at the content side, it remains to be seen whether the Internet will not become another divide comparable to the ‘old’ media. As is usually the case with new technologies, the question is how much ICTs will be used on top of existing devices and/or will gradually replace them. 5. By way of conclusion we would like to present a number of recommendations for consideration to policymakers and researchers:

New directions for the policy maker To liberate it and to materialize further growth in Europe policymakers and corporations should envisage the introduction of a series of new priorities capable of adapting strategically the public choices to the cohesion issues which have became clear in the course of the last few years: First priority should be to increase the social dimension of the policy. Patterns of behaviour found in the MIS and in other surveys indicate that usage of electronic media is correlated to structural levels of economic development. There is a huge economic deficit that de facto impedes many to take the opportunities offered by the new technologies. Usage of ICTs can become a constituting element for a new categorization of social classes. Unless specific policies are put in place to reduce the gender gap, women risk to occupy the lower classes of the new ICT-based social segmentation.

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The second priority should be to develop new forms of awareness raising activities. Europeans perceive applications as relatively important for their life because their pertinence cannot be immediately perceived through generic promises. Waving the icon of the Internet does not per se mobilize customers. It is its pertinence to their professional and personal priorities that matters. The third priority concerns the support to cross country research. Measuring how many use a computer is not enough, surveys have to go deeper and must understand whether the ‘neutral’ information society has any chance to evolve in a ‘knowledge society’ or whether is going to become foremost an ‘entertainment society’. High PC/Internet penetration means little if PCs are mostly used as entertainment machines (and not as knowledge management or learning tools). The fourth priority should be the re-formulation of the economic drivers of the digital growth. Trans-nationality should be the shaping factors of the new policies for the development of e-commerce. The digital economy exists, the MIS shows it, but it is located beyond our borders and we need a market offer which is capable of turning the trans-national potential into revenues for local entrepreneurs. The European integration could find in the ‘digital internal market’ the milestone of the globalization era.

New directions for research Conducting research on a fast evolving subject is quite challenging. Yet, decision makers at all levels can only make adequate choices based on reliable research material, so that there is an urgent need for new and on-going research in at least six areas. Firstly, a multi-media approach to the new technologies should understand how the mutations of the media landscape affects each media, its audience, its content, its interaction with others. Are new media a threat to the established ones, or are they a unique opportunity for them to (re)gain audiences? Will convergence and digitalization lead to a new, distinct media, or will it gradually absorb all other forms into a unique interface? Secondly, ICTs are to be studied in a time-budget perspective. The time that people have available for communication activities and media consumption is limited. Traces of lower television viewing in heavy Internet-using households are beginning to be found, leading to essential questioning as to which activities are reduced to free up the necessary time to use the spreading new technologies. How does it affect reading books, magazines or newspapers, watching television,

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listening to radio, participation in cultural activities, community involvement, etc. How does the current evolution affect the work/leisure balance in people's timebudget? Thirdly, questions are raised about the content conveyed by these new technologies. How much do the new media represent new forms of information and communication, and how do these new forms affect the public's perception of the world? Beyond forms, people using these new technologies tend to have access to content that before was either out of reach, or simply did not exist. How will that affect their personality, their interests, their level of information and education, their behaviour, etc.? How different are the new forms of writing? How can they be improved? What skills need to be developed among audiences so as to make the best of these new forms? Fourthly, there is an urgent need for large-scale research about the social and cultural implications of the current evolution. While the communication companies tend to merge into worldwide giants, the technology tends to allow forever-smaller communities to emerge and consolidate. Specialized media, thematic channels, web sites and chat rooms allow individuals with narrow fields of interest to develop a particular passion, share it with people sharing that interest, and provide the means to gather individuals into groups that could not otherwise have existed. All personal investment into these groups (be it time or money) is made at the expense of other fields of interest, including that of the traditional communities. This might lead to a complete restructuring of social groups as we know them. Fifthly, the theories of globalization/localization have been challenged, criticized and modified, but few would deny that they do offer a fertile ground for research. We advocate a convergent and integrated approach in studying the complex and intricate relations between globalization/localization, consumption and identity. Culture is an important factor, either facilitating the transnationalization of national or local cultural industries, or impeding further growth of global media. Global media may be largest in terms of coverage, however their size shrinks significantly if measured in terms of viewing rate. While some national programs are successful because of their distinct cultural characteristics, others may achieve similar success by promoting foreign values. During a dynamic process of change, it is the interaction of factors that brings about endless possibilities. Finally, and this in fact applies to all above mentioned research areas, there is a need for more qualitative research on these matters. Karvalics & Molnar (2000), for instance, question: What do we know about the ‘average’ Internet-user, the Netizen? What about his personality, his universe of values, his social contacts and future? There are plenty

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of fears, reserves and aversions that describe the informatization process as a dehumanizing, Orwellian scenario. The complexity of the phenomena at hand cannot be fully appreciated by sheer quantitative research. There comes a point when the observations need to be explained and refined, and that can only be achieved by qualitative methods which, although more difficult to implement, although less operational in appearance, provide the indispensable level of detail necessary to appreciate behavioural phenomena of this magnitude. Let’s start!

References Coleman, S, (2001), “The Transformation of Citizenship” in Axford, B, and Huggins, R, (eds.), New Media and Politics, London, Sage. INRA (2000), Measuring Information Society 2000. A Eurobarometer survey carried out for the European Commission. Analytical report, International Research Associates (INRA), Brussels. Karvalics L. & Molnar S. (2000) (2000), “Our Netizen: myths and misbeliefs vs realities and perspectives”, Telematics and Informatics, vol. 17, no 1/2, pp. 129-140.

List of Acronyms AMARC:

Association Mondiale des Radiodiffuseurs Communautaires (World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters)

CEC: COE:

Commission of the European Communities Council of Europe

EBU: EC: ECCR: ECOSOC: EIS: EU:

European Broadcasting Union European Commission European Consortium for Communications Research United Nations Economic and Social Council European Information Society European Union

FIEJ:

Féderation Internationale des Editeurs de Journeaux et Publications

GATS:

General Agreement on Trade in Services

HDTV:

High-Definition TV

IAMCR:

International Association for Media and Communication Research International Communication Association Information and Communication Technologies International Federation of Journalists International Institute of Communications International Labor Organization International Monetary Fund International Press Institute Inter Press Service Information Society Information Technology

ICA: ICT: IFJ: IIC: ILO: IMF: IPI: IPS: IS: IT:

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ITU:

International Telecommunication Union

MEDIA:

Measures to Encourage the Development of an Audiovisual Industry in Europe

MFN: MIS:

Most Favoured Nation Measuring the Information Society

NGO: NTC: NWICO:

Non-governmental Organization New Communication Technologies New World Information and Communication Order

OECD:

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

R&D:

Research and Development

SEA:

Single European Act

TDF:

Trans-border Data Flow

UN: UNCTAD: UNDP: UNIDO: UNESCO:

United Nations United Nations Conference on Trade and Development United Nations Development Programme United Nations Industrial Development Organization United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

WARC: WIPO: WSIS: WTO:

World Administrative Radio Conference World Intellectual Property Organization World Summit on the Information Society World Trade Organization

Notes on contributors Jean-Claude Burgelman (PhD) is project leader at IPTS (Institute for prospective technology studies, one of the Joint Research Centres of the EU, in Sevilla, Spain). He is on leave as professor at the Free University of Brussels (VUB) where he teaches courses on the global information society. He published widely in the area of Belgian and European media and communication policy. He is the former director of SMIT, a research centre focussing on media, information and telecommunication. He is also a member of several pan-European research networks and boards of specialised scientific journals. E-mail: [email protected] Nico Carpentier (PhD) is a media sociologist working at the Department of Communication Studies of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). He is member of the research units SMIT and CEMESO. His research interests are mainly focused on the application of discourse theory in (media) domains as sexuality, conflict, journalism, (political and cultural) participation and democracy. He combines teaching and research for the Cultural Policy Research Center 'Steunpunt Re-Creatief Vlaanderen'. His publications include the articles Images of prostitutes. The struggle for the subject position (1999, in Dutch); Management of voices. Power and participation in North Belgian audience discussion programmes (2000); The identity of the television audience (2000, in Dutch); Managing audience participation (2001); Médias et citoyens sur la même longueur d'onde. Initatives journalistiques favorisantant la participation citoyenne (2002) ; and Community media: muting the democratic discourse (2003). E-mail: [email protected] Cees J. Hamelink (PhD) is Professor of International Communication at the University of Amsterdam, and Professor of Media, Religion and Culture at the Free University in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He is the editor-in-chief of the International Journal for Communication Studies: Gazette. He is also Honorary President of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), founder of

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the People's Communication Charter and Board Member of the International Communication Association and the international news agency Inter Press Service (IPS). Among the sixteen books he has authored is Cultural Autonomy in Global Communications (1983), Finance and Information (1983), The Technology Gamble (1988), The Politics of World Communication (1994), World Communication (1995), and The Ethics of Cyberspace (2000). E-mail: [email protected] François Heinderyckx (PhD) teaches media sociology and political communication at the University of Brussels (ULB). He is Director of the Group for the study of the media and ICTs. He is a consultant in survey research and ICTs and a member of the Academic Board of e-Forum (forum of European e-public services). He is the author of L’Europe des médias' (Brussels: Editions de l'Université de Bruxelles, 1998) and of La Malinformation (Brussels: Labor, 2003) and of numerous contributions to academic books and journals. E-mail: [email protected] Peter Johnston (PhD) is responsible for research and development of information society technologies related to new methods of work. He has worked with the Information Society DG of the European Commission since 1988. He has been responsible for the strategic planning of European telecommunications research (the RACE and ACTS programmes), and helped prepare the 5th Framework Programme. He has also had responsibility for EC actions in the area of telework stimulation, electronic commerce, multi-media access to cultural heritage, and for sustainable development in a knowledge economy. Dr Johnston has wide experience in international research co-ordination: from 1976 to 1984, he worked at the OECD, and from 1984 to 1988 he was responsible for research on pollution control in the UK Department of Environment. He read physics at Oxford University, and was a FulbrightHays scholar at Carnegie Mellon University and at Oxford University until 1976. E-mail: [email protected] Caroline Pauwels (PhD) is attached to the Communication Department of the Free University of Brussels (VUB) and the present Director of SMIT, a

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research center focusing on media, information and telecommunication. She lectures national and European communication policy. Her main domain of competence is in the field of European Audiovisual policy making, entertainment economy and convergence issues. In 1998 she was appointed to the Flemish Media Council (advisory committee to the Minister of Culture), in 2001 she became part of the Strategic Digital Forum of the Flemish community. E-mail: [email protected] Luisella Pavan-Woolfe was born in Trieste, Italy, and graduated in Political Science from the University of Padova. She taught in that university in the faculty of Anglo-American Law. Official in the European Commission since 1975, she has taken on various tasks for the Directorate General of Transport, Environment and Consumer Protection, and in the Secretariat General of the Commission. She has been with DG EMPL for the last seven years as Head of Unit and since 1998 as Acting Director for the European Social Fund. She was appointed Director of Horizontal and International Issues in April 2001. In this capacity, she is responsible for ‘mainstreaming’ ICTs in employment and social policy. E-mail: [email protected] Robert G. Picard (PhD), VTTS Professor of Media Economics and manager of the Media Group, Business Research and Development Centre, Turku School of Economics and Business Administration in Finland, is one of the world's leading academic specialists in media economics and management. Picard is author and editor of sixteen books, including The Economics and Financing of Media Companies; Media Firms: Structures, Operations, and Performance; Evolving Media Markets: Effects of Economics and Policy Changes; Media Economics: Concepts and Issues; The Cable Networks Handbook; and Press Concentration and Monopoly. He was founding editor of The Journal of Media Economics, which he guided through its first decade of operation. E-mail: [email protected] Paschal Preston (PhD) is Professor at the School of Communications and Director of the Centre for Society Technology and Media (STeM) at the Dublin City University in Ireland. E-mail: [email protected]

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Andrea Ricci graduated ‘cum laude’ in Political Science from the La Sapienza University in Rome under the guidance of Prof. Fisichella with a thesis on comparative experiences of political marketing. He obtained a MA in European Studies at the College of Europe in Bruges, and is currently completing the PhD-project A comparative analysis on the use of the World Wide Web in political and social communication at the Catholic University of Brussels (KUB). Other research fields include history of media, propaganda studies, audience studies, crisis communications, role of media and IT in international relations. As contributing editor of "La Repubblica" and several specialized IT publications, he was awarded the SMAU national prize for IT journalism. In 1995 he joined the European Commission and worked in the International Relations Unit of the Information Society Directorate General. In 2001 he joined the Security Unit of the External Relations Directorate General. E-mail: [email protected] Jan Servaes (PhD) is President of the European Consortium for Communications Research (ECCR), Vice-President of the International Association of Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), in charge of Research and Academic Publications, and Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication, at the Katholieke Universiteit Brussel (KUB). He is also director of the Research Center 'Communication for Social Change' (CSC), and Associate Editor (for Europe) of the International Journal Telematics and Informatics. He has been a Professor of International Communication and Development Communication at the Universities of Cornell (Ithaca, USA), Nijmegen (The Netherlands), Thammasat (Bangkok, Thailand), Brussels (VUB) and Antwerp (Belgium). He has taught, and done research and consultancy work in countries all over the world, including Argentina, Mexico, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, the Dominican Republic, South-Africa, and Thailand. He is the author of journal articles and books on international communication, media and information policies, development communication, and critical studies. His most recent books in English include Participatory Communication for Social Change (Sage, 1996); Media and Politics in Transition. Cultural Identity in the Age of Globalization (Acco, 1997); Communication for Development. One World, Multiple

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Cultures (Hampton, 1999); Theoretical Approaches to Participatory Communication (Hampton, 1999); Walking on the other side of the information highway (Southbound, 2000); The new communications landscape. Demystifying media globalization (Routledge, 2000); and Approaches to Development Communication (Unesco, 2002). E-mail: [email protected] Brian Trench (PhD) is Head of the School of Communications, Dublin City University, Ireland, and a member of the Center for Society Technology and Media (STeM) based in the school. Before joining the university he was a full-time journalist for twenty years working for national newspapers and radio, and contributing to a wide range of specialist publications. E-mail: [email protected]

Human knowledge has brought mankind from an oral to a literate culture, thanks to the invention of the print media. The development of the electronic media in the last century has paved the path for the information age, in which spatial and temporal constraints are lifted. The consequences of this revolution in human communications are multidimensional in character, affecting economical, political and social life on national, international and local levels. This book provides a detailed analysis and critique of the European Information Society. It is the first of a series arising from the intellectual work of European Consortium for Communications Research members. Contents include: • European Union ICT Policies: Neglected Social and Cultural Dimensions • Policy challenges to the creation of a European Information Society: • A critical analysis • Issues in measuring Information Society adoption in Europe • Access and participation in the discourse of the digital divide: • The European perspective at/on the WSIS • Communication Rights and the European Information Society • Business Issues facing New Media • Perspectives for Employment in the Transition to a Knowledge Society • The Political Internet: Between dogma and reality • New roles for users in online news media? • Exploring the application of interactivity through European case • studies

Jan Servaes (PhD) is President of the European Consortium for Communications Research (ECCR), Vice-President of the International Association of Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), in charge of Research and Academic Publications, and Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication, at the Katholieke Universiteit Brussel (KUB).

ISBN 1-84150-106-9

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