IMS Conference on ICTs and networked communications environments
New media and information and communications technologies (ICTs) have a growing impact on society and not least on how media operate and how the public sphere is organized. Advances made with these technologies present civil society with new possibilities and challenges and dramatically change the existing perceptions of democracy. The Internet potentially empowers everyone with a voice, and citizen or participatory media has flourished with the advent of technological tools and systems that facilitate easy production and distribution of media.
Affordable technology, and broader access to the Internet in particular, has created new ways of distributing information. Traditional public and corporate media outlets have enjoyed a long period of monopoly, but with the Internet a new electronic media freedom has paved the way for the emergence of numerous citizen media producers. ICTs provide access to an open, pluralistic and horizontal debate that contrasts with the hierarchal structure of the traditional media.
The background to the IMS Conference on ICTs and Networked Communications Environments: Opportunities and Threats for Press Freedom and Democratization was to examine the potential for change in media and democracy which ICTs and networked communications environments provide. The conference background paper focused on three specific areas affected by new media and ICT: 1) the way in which the media operate, 2) the potential they may hold for capacity building in relation to freedom of the press and civic engagement, and 3) how this might lead to a deepening of democracy both in democratic and repressive countries.
