Global Communication Policy regime: insert ‘public’ - press ‘Enter’

In the previous chapter we examined the competing logics behind the normative framework of the emerging information society as produced through alliances between private and public social actors representing interests in both the US and the EU. Although we identified two competing visions of IS, we showed how one coherent dominant discourse of the neoliberal IS emerged by the close of the twentieth century. We demonstrated the profound shortcomings of the dominant neoliberal IS policy discourse by highlighting the unevenness of access and narrowness of vision. We showed how civil society organizations have led the charge for equity in this process and have proposed a competing and democratic vision for change embodied in the WSIS Civil Society declaration (Civil Society Statement 2005). In this chapter, we explore the role of civil society as a new social actor in the shifting field of global communication policy, by taking a closer look at the novel institutional context of the WSIS. The space for civil society participation - however limited -allows new social actors outside state and corporate interests to raise claims about redistribution and recognition while negotiating the issue of legitimate representation. This chapter examines both the institutional constraints as well as the discursive parameters of this process.