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In the following I want to lay out what hopefully may function as an initial program towards a “digital citizenship” -- a form of digitally enabled and enhanced citizenship for the Internet age; and one which takes as its basic assumption the Internet's transformational risks and opportunities. This is presented in the form of an election “platform” -- a set of principles and policies which gives citizens a choice as to directions they may wish to follow.
June 21, 2013
As everyone knows there have been some startling and shocking revelations concerning the surveillance activities of the USA's NSA. This has occasioned considerable to-ing and fro-ing from the US Executive Office, from the major Internet corporations implicated in these revelations, and from various elements of civil society.
April 15, 2016
Canada has a new and socially active government after 10 years of darkness and regression under our former Conservative Prime Minister. Among the areas that they have signaled (and provided budgetary support for) is the extension of Broadband Internet capability into Canada’s rural and remote regions. As well, the government has begun making steps […]
April 5, 2016
As some of you will know my blogpost(1) which presents a detailed critique of the A4AI (the Alliance for an Affordable Internet) “Best Practices” document; and blogpost(2) which presents a detailed alternative set of “Best Practices” were circulated over the last couple of weeks. These have generated quite a lengthy and sometimes heated discussion on […]
November 9, 2015
Thus "digital citizenship" is a newer and evolved form of citizenship and moreover one which is necessary to and appropriate in the digital age/the Information Society. This new form of citizenship has multiple aspects but for our purposes the two most salient elements are that with this new form of citizenship goes certain rights – at a minimum to be able to have access to and to effectively exercise citizenship rights in a digital age; and on the part of the State the obligation to ensure that the citizen is in a position to exercise their digital citizenship in an appropriate and effective way.
April 19, 2015
So I think that we can assume that the GCCS is meant to be one of that increasing stable of multistakeholder global Internet Governance unicorns whose intention is to replace more formal and “democratically constituted” global Internet Governance assemblies and processes. (It might be noted in passing that, the Chairman’s Report while mentioning “stakeholders” and “multistakeholders” as a central element of Internet governance 24 times (in a nine page document), failed to mention “democracy” or “democratic processes” even once.)
April 2, 2015
An initiative towards an Internet Social Forum (ISF) with a close association to the World Social Forum (WSF) was recently launched by a number of Civil Society organization at the WSF in Tunis. This specific initiative comes out of a continuing history of discussions and initiatives in the area of Global Internet Governance as flowing from the World Summit of the Information Society.
Gurstein's Community Informatics 
September 14, 2015
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