Participants in the Media in the making of information society dialogue in the WSIS II highlighted the pivotal role that media plays in local development. OneWorld South Asia organised the dialogue on November 14, 2005 during the ongoing Tunis Summit reports Atanu Garai of OneWorld South Asia from Tunis.
The dialogue highlighted the role community media plays in local development, stressing upon the needs of mainstream media to highlight local issues that helps bridging the digital divide.
It is noted that journalists are often less informed about the potentials of ICTs in development, particularly about the developments undergoing both at global level, such as the World Summit on the Information Society and at local level, such as through initatives like Mission 2007 which attempts to connect all Indian villages by the year 2007.
The key issues that the discussion attempted at exploring include the media, especially South Asian media, has not been engaging with the WSIS process in a manner that is very forthcoming. Yet there is a significant role that the media can play in creating an enabling environment for an information society.
Realisation of information society depends much on the creation of appropriate policy and infrastructural environments environments that provide different media actors including governments, private sectors and CSO to act in a free, appropriate, yet responsive manner.
Participants noted that many societies are not conducive enough to provide the different media producers required policy support. An example to this is India where civil society organisations are not allowed to set up community radio for the local communities.
For media to be able to advocate for peoples communications rights effectively, Tracey Naughton, who represents Media Caucus, pointed out the need to promote internet because of its all purpose and non-commercial nature.
Presentations by grassroots knowledge workers stressed upon the need for building capacities among local communities in media productions. The grassroots knowledge workers shared their experiences of producing content and sharing across the local communities.
The necessity of using pluralistic media for promoting local development is reiterated by many. In the Indian state of Uttaranchal, Rajendra Negi operates the community radio
highlighted medias role in local development in the WSIS II. Experiences of local content production by the grassroots knowledge workers - Kastoory, Tara and Latha who are representating the Grassroots Caucus at the World Summit are also shared at length with the participants.
The need for building capacity development especially through appropriate technological and financial mechanism was reflected in the meeting.
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