The School of Communications Imagining the Internet team produced more than 600 video clips featuring 154 people from 55 nation-states at the 13th annual Internet Governance Forum, facilitated by the United Nations.
A 10-person documentary journalism team from Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center interviewed more than 150 Internet experts from 55 nation-states at the UN-facilitated Global Internet Governance Forum at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, France, Nov. 12-14, 2018. Events included important speeches by French President Emmanuel Macron and United Nations Secretary General António Guterres.
The team did journalistic coverage of an opening event and conducted a video survey at IGF to measure international communications experts’ attitudes regarding key issues tied to current trends and the likely future development and impacts of the Internet. During the team’s three days on site, eight Elon undergraduate students conducted 154 interviews and recorded, edited and began uploading more than 600 video clips. They asked these experts’ opinions on: the top internet issues, the best newly emerging digital technologies, enhancing digital cooperation globally and the overall future of the internet.
This year’s IGF drew nearly 3,000 participants from government, business, academia, the technology sector and civil society who gathered at UNESCO in Paris to illuminate issues and cultivate constructive discussions aimed at building the best global future and working toward the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Thousands more followed the forum online, with #IGF2018 trending on social media platforms.
Elon faculty members Alex Luchsinger and David Bockino, assistant professors of communications, and Elon students Jared Mayerson and Alexandra Roat led the documentary research contingent to Paris, with Janna Anderson, director of Imagining the Internet, running logistics and building and managing the Web pages for the project. The research team included undergraduate students Cammie Behnke, Samantha Casamento, Anton Delgado, Grace Morris, Jack Norcross and Sophia Ortiz.
“This is the 25th major global or national communications event an Imagining the Internet team has documented since 2005,” Anderson said. “Students are selected to participate due to their leadership in the classroom and with the Elon News Network or Elon Docs. This work has taken our students to Athens, Hong Kong, Rio de Janeiro, Sharm el Sheikh, Vilnius, Nairobi, Joao Pessoa, Guadalajara, Geneva, Seoul, Palo Alto, Los Angeles, Washington and other major cities of the world.”
Among the experts interviewed in Paris were people representing more than 55 sovereign states of the 206 in the world that are recognized by the UN, including Afghanistan, Argentina, Australia, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chad, China, Colombia, Congo, Costa Rica, Egypt, Fiji, Finland, France, Gambia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Japan, Mexico, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Nigeria, Pakistan, Poland, Russia, Senegal, Serbia, South Africa, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, United Kingdom, Uganda, United States, Uruguay and Zimbabwe.
The interviewees included top communications leaders from many national governments, global technology businesses, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the Internet Society, global civil society and civil rights organizations.
The Imagining the Internet team made much of its work available online while on site at the forum in Paris. Its comprehensive coverage on the Imagining the Internet site, still in the process of being posted, is available for review here. The team’s video playlists from IGF 2018 are also available on the center’s YouTube channel. The complete content will be fully posted in December.
The project was funded by the Imagining the Internet Center and the School of Communications.
The Internet Governance Forum is one of the processes of the UN’s World Summit on the Information Society. To learn more about IGF and the 2018 event, which had the theme “The Internet of Trust,” visit www.intgovforum.org.
Additional information about the Imagining the Internet’s coverage of previous Global IGF meetings is available online.