Elon University students, staff and faculty are playing a key role in informing policymakers and recording journalistic documentation of the first-ever Internet Governance Forum-USA. The event will take place at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, on K Street in Washington, D.C., Oct. 2.
IGF-USA is a multistakeholder effort to illuminate issues and cultivate constructive discussions about the future of the Internet. It provides a local forum in the US to engage civil society, government, technologists and research scientists, industry and academia, helping to create partnerships and coalitions that move dialogues forward and demonstrate best practices. The one-day event will focus on the changing Internet and the way forward for the international Internet Governance Forum, an initiative that is facilitated by the United Nations.
Students in Elon’s Interactive Media master’s program produced a video on young people and the impact of emerging technologies that will be used to kick off the first main-panel session of the conference. Ten additional students, faculty and staff will participate in the IGF-USA event, actively producing documentary journalism as they collect and distribute written and video coverage that will be posted on Twitter, WordPress and Imagining the Internet (http://www.imaginingtheinternet.org). The group will be compiling the official documentary coverage of the event.
Regional and national IGF meetings are taking place globally, including gatherings in East Africa, Europe (EuroDIG), Latin America, the Caribbean, West Africa, Spain and Italy. These events are organized on a local level and have no direct ties to the international IGF, however the UN Secretariat recognizes the importance of the regional and national events and reports from these meetings are shared at the international gatherings.