The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> PATRICK LEUSCH: Everyone, welcome. Everyone here in the workshop in Oslo at the IGF. Whenever you sit around the globe, I'm Patrick Leusch. I'm an international broadcaster. This has been co‑worked by the BBC and DW. Public Service Media and Meaningful Digital Access will deal with the lessons to each audience, via the Internet and the challenges they face reaching global audiences. You might understand that for at least for Europe, for public broadcasting, Internet, censorship, growing issue, but not so important. It is when you look at countries that start really limiting the access to information to put it that way.
On the global scale, there's a growing digital order and this poses a challenge for information providers for media makers and human rights communities and we're talking about safe space communication and we're talking about journalism also brought two audiences to the less and less free extent. What is linked to the concept of meaningful activity. We'll explain how the international broadcasters are running the problem.
On the other hand, at the second part, let's say, what's important is to understand what is the policy implications and the regulatory implications and where this meaningful, digital access needs to be strengthened from a policy and regulatory and legal framework.
There is room to improve by far, obviously, that's what we'll discuss with the following protagonist and you. Because we consider you as an expert community, be you online or in the room. You'll have space to discuss among yourselves and with us, obviously.
So, the panelist so far are first of all I mentioned Abdallah, he was policy advisor at the BBC. He was supposed to sit next to me. His flight was first delayed and canceled. No chance to come over. I'm turning to the second speaker on the screen, Paula Gori, who is the Secretary General of the European Digital Media Observatory. Next we have Poncelet. He is with the Jokkolabs. I hope Oliver is there to help mod. Abdallah, are you going to share your screen or the presentation?
>> ABDALLAH ALSALMI: I'm sharing my screen. Can you see it?
>> PATRICK LEUSCH: So far we see you.
I cannot see it on the screen. Now we can.
>> ABDALLAH ALSALMI: Thank you. I'm going to arrive later tonight. Hopefully we'll meet you over the week.
To begin to talk about meaningful access, it is really a good start to think of how technology and communications Evangelist tended to lump sum Internet users. They can send only text messages in WhatsApp is put in the same group with someone that is put in the group with super-fast Internet and have use the VR headset to play games. They came up with the concept and having the device. It is all about what the Internet users can make of the Internet. And the meaningful access has a number of elements. The definition is not set in stone. It is a bit flexible at the moment. The first one is about reliability and affordability.
Here we are talking about the cost of data and the largely between one country and another. Probably it is getter cheaper. Still in some geographic context, it is a prohibitive aspect. The second is appropriate devices. The idea here is about how many devices does a person have and do they have a keyboard in their device or not when they are using the Internet? So the more devices they have, the better specifications of the devices, the Internet experience is going to improve.
Number three touches on the digital divide and development is digital literacy and scales. The UN has been working on this. It is a huge subject. It also touches upon one of the points that some of our panelist will speak about today, which is the information. To what extent is the user able to enjoy their Internet experience without being subjected to organised anis information compared by governments or by companies or even by individuals.
Fourth is the relative content. More work needs to be done to make online content available in languages where people find it easy to speak and use the Internet. Last but not least, number five is a safe and inclusive digital environment. We get into the access and inclusive ask security councils. Is there Internet shutdowns and censorship? All of the elements come under as one of the requirements for a meaningful digital access. Now the UN has their own standard which is called universal meaningful connectivity.
Largely, it is similar to digital access. Differences. Universal meaningful connect or UMC is more of a development goal that some UN organisations, ITU, the International Telecommunications Union works on, Civil Society. The idea is to upgrade the experience of online access based on specific metrics that have to do with how many people are connected to the Internet and to what extent they are able to use data on the purposes.
What purpose is for Internet for? Business or social networking or looking for a job. The same is the sense that if people don't have access to the good connection, they can't look for a job or keep in touch with their family. They can't express freely. It really relates to the experience and quality of it of using the Internet while UMC is the goal in itself and policy. You'll find the good dashboard that shows you all of the countries in the world and members of ITU and where you can see where more work needs to be done.
For example, some of the scores, if it is up to 100 or 40 to 50 UMC is limited goes all the way up to 95 to 100, it means the target has been achieved. The last slide is about the position and in the challenges in obtaining the status of meaningful digital access. I'm going to stop here and get back to you, Patrick.
>> PATRICK LEUSCH: Thank you. For the introduction to the scene. It is very important. You mentioned different use cases with the exchange between people and issue which is ask security councils to the global administration.
What does it mean to BBC and others? If we could launch my presentation, that would be great. Thank you very much. As I said, we're an international broadcasters. I think, you know, roughly what we do. The map of the press freedom that you see here is the guiding line for what we do. There's limitations to that. Ask BBC, we provide in the legal languages and made by team for the countries. We're not reporting about Germany. To Gambia or Senegal. We are informing people in Russia about what's happening in Russia and Ukraine; right? We reach 320 million users a week.
If you look at the dispatching, you see that most of them are reached on the continents where there's a limited space of information by technical means, market means, or digital order. We'll have a closer look at eastern Europe. There's how the game plays when you look at moment. Independent content that would be denied through friendship and one‑sided reporting. That's what we are final impact should be.
Now on one hand, we are all journalist. We are used to create great journalistic content. What are we telling taxpayers when they pay for the great content and we cannot get it through to the audiences.
Since many years, we and others invest also in censorship and understanding and teaching people circumventing censorship. We share with the BBC and others. that relates to them. You understand in a couple of days there's a shutdown in Iran. There's a couple of groups working on the issue. Iran is a good example that you can build a skilled community that's able to access the content via a range of tools. It is quite efficient. That's how the Internet has been instructed. It is a better Internet from the beginning. It was an open one, let's say. But in the developing phase with limited connections to the outside global Internet at a certain point of time where it was easier to cut it or control it.
When you look at Russian Internet, for instance, that's a different story. Because this was a fully‑fledged, connected, globally Internet which is now interfaced because they don't know what works. They want something on hand. They want to avoid. This is testing. They are moving forward step by step and speed up the process to disconnect everything. All right.
In Iran, we use all of the media but there's censorship. They relate to the technologies, policies, means, matters, and it is a permanent cat and mouse to say what's the technology to censor the content or block or whatever. Then the mitigation measure is also adopted to these variety of matters. These matters vary from country to country. They vary from censorship policy to censorship policy.
You cannot remove digital censorship from the outside of technical center. You cannot decode. You can try to get around the wall. That's something that's very important to understand. We are not counter hacking or counterattacking. But we try to provide funnels, tunnels, or whatever to make people ask security councils to Internet they are kept away from.
The second condition is people in the country wanting access to the content. It is their decision at the end of the day. We provide the content; we provide an explanation how to access it. But it is their decision at end of the day. I can tell you that poses ethical questions on those doing this kind of stuff.
On one hand, it is also poses the question. Why does BBC or DW according to the law that recommends the mandate? What is the legal basis on which we can provide explainers to audiences that explains how to access VPNs or apps that has been co‑developed? We did the research on that. We asked to give it an answer. The answer was it is Article XIX. The access for information.
Article XIX on human rights. That's the legal basis. All of the countries that we're talking about that are censoring contents from us and others have sign the carta. From the legal perspective, this is safe play. Let's start a discussion. What else? Just to speed up a little bit, we provide Internet freedom via the app we work with Tor. When you ask security council’s Tor, you see our content. Which is very important.
We work with proxies, mirror servers, and a lot of other, you know, means to get people our access to our content. So we are quite skilled in reading what needs to be done to people access to this content. Because we do the work over the last 13 years. Nevertheless, it is always a kind of challenge. It is costly. You need the space for the mirror server, for mirroring content. You pay to Amazon for whoever for the service space. That really costs. But the circumvent works. Can you see from the access? This is a chart and you can see where the peaks. That's when there was shut down and protests and limitations on the Internet. People start seeking for information.
You can see from the chart in Russia. What happened? The day he died, you see the same peak. When there's crisis, people in the countries start seeking for alternative information. That's why public service media and media is so important for the audiences. Okay. Thank you very much.
This is the small tool that we co‑developed. It is called news media scan. If you install it, it shows which web sites are blocked and which is free and accessible. Nice monitoring. That gives you a glimpse on what's going on in your country. This is to give you an overview over what we do and how that relates to the ‑‑ very practically to the concept of meaningful, digital access.
Great, I would like to go over to Paula now.
>> PAULA GORI: Can you hear me?
>> PATRICK LEUSCH: Yes.
>> PAULA GORI: Thank you. EDMO is the observatory. It is one of the pillars to tackle the information. Really the natural that you can see as a multistakeholder in every platform that tries to understand the information.
(No audio)
>> PATRICK LEUSCH: Now Paula is frozen.
>> PAULA GORI: Can you hear me and see me? Good. Just quickly, I wanted to reflect a little bit on the link between UMC and the information. Because first I'll step back. Abdallah presented it very well.
When you build the infrastructure, think of, for example, the highway. We are all happy we have a highway. If without tools, it wouldn't be useful. There's a risk of having an accident or I don't know people walking on the highway and having death accidents and so on. There are a few rules. They are free on the highway. This is a few rules. This is the same that happens with connectivity. There's an infrastructure. We need the rules and principles that are globally share. It is hard to manage. This is somehow if you want my starting point.
When it comes to information in the prior session, the whole issue is quite complex. And also the solution is complex and if you want it to be made. Public service is one of the solutions. I think this is rightly so. At least in the EU, there's the policy of the EU it to invest a lot and support quality, independent quality journalism and support the infrastructure for this journalism to actually be accessible. We also have to be honest.
Some occasions, unfortunately, public service media is also sharing the information. We shouldn't be blind on that. There's some occasions in the countries it is happening. I think once we are honest on that, we can clearly invest. As you've already said, I think the crisis situation is those moments in which we really have the evidence that they are playing a key role. I think when we saw it all doing the COVID crisis, we were accessing the media before. We were all looking for information. We were all lost. We were accessing a lot of disinformation.
In the end, the media that everyone was relying on actually to get the safe information. Now for public service media to work, I think that ‑‑ to be reliability, I think what's important is transparency. You may be familiar with what we have in the EU. Which is the European Freedom Act.
According to the act, there should be transparency on the ownership and structure and funding. Why am I saying that? As directly said, the choice is on the users and citizens. While the public service media is not imposing them. They are just being there as an alternative or one of the alternatives. It is important for the citizens to be sure about who is behind and how they are funded and working.
This is an element that gives reliability. It helps the user trust. Of course, as we were saying, citizens can ask security councils any information they want and any source they want. In this space. And I just wanted to maybe also close, because I know that we are a little late in the session. I wanted to say something which is I think very important. I think there was an unfortunate coincidence. There was a shift from offline to online.
Also if you want in the way the public service media produced and shared the news, I talked to many journalist and there was a sort of mea culpa in the since that it is important to have more normative and positive approach to sell news. Otherwise the users and citizens are not interested in quality news. It is a pity. This is something I see that BBC and DW are examples of positive. They invest a lot of if you want new ways of producing content and sharing content. They try to be less sensationalist in the content and so on in the headlines.
Somehow, it is important that PSM play a role also in the trustworthy because of the structure, but also being attractive because of their content. I will close it here. I just wanted to thank you really for the work that you are doing. It needs some courage to do what you are doing. This is really in the interest of citizens.
>> PATRICK LEUSCH: Thank you very much, Paula. Very interesting points. We'll come back to one or two, particularly the building blocks that you mentioned on this trustworthiness which is extremely important when you look at content shared by a variety of distribution forms that you don't own. Particularly on the user habits.
What do you think?
>> PONCELET ILELEJI: When we look at media and digital access, I like to look at it from a grassroots level. What information do community radios able to provide to the citizens? In most of the cases, sub-Saharan and only 30% of the population have broadband connectivity. Gambia and my home, you have people who live in rural areas, they have Internet connection. They don't have meaningful connectivity. You know, because sometimes most of the big telco, they put their power in the big city. People in the villages and in rural areas and most parts of Africa, they get their information from all of the community. They link up to produce information.
The most important thing is public media ask security councils and tools. They can download information relevant to disseminate to the population. I'm talking and looking at it from a grassroots perspective. We have to know what does the average common man want in the rural area? We wants to get information on public health and community media. They have good news. What have a lot of people now doing?
They get their information spread through mainly messages apps like WhatsApp. Someone sends a message and it goes viral. It is fake. It is not true this happens. The strength for meaningful connectivity on information is strengthening our community based on the radio stations. That can be made possible through the big public like BBC and DW. They have to have partnerships so with local community radio stations give them digital literacy for it to be achieved.
Lastly, I'll say if you look at global digital compact, one of the key things that the digital divide. If you want them to be connected with the public media, they will be connected. Thank you.
>> PATRICK LEUSCH: Thank you. That's an important point. Just to understand what you are saying correctly, what you are referring to is the technical infrastructure first. Getting more people, more speedy, technically access to information via is policy to provide, let's say, high speed Internet in rural areas, particularly in Africa. Do I understand correctly?
>> PONCELET ILELEJI: Way have to get the broadband. How do you do it? It is by developing the capacities of community radio stations, so they have the capacity and they have linking it up. They get information to disseminate.
When you do that, the information and the average person in the rural setting might not be able to get because it doesn't have meaningful country. That's why I'm linking of that meaningful access I'm talking about. I'm linking it up with public media. The reference is the common sea level. They use for all of the things and you'll have all of the platforms. They provide all of the services and the health and agriculture. People need to have.
>> PATRICK LEUSCH: You are absolutely right. We work with the partners. We co‑develop the content. We provide trainings and it relates also to shifting and making shifting a local media into, yeah, online reporting and everything that comes with it.
Let me turn to you guys here in the room. Let me also ask our online moderator, Oliver, if there's a question that has been put forward so far from those who are connected online.
>> OLIVER INGS: I don't see any questions in the Zoom chat. Paula has her hand up. We should give the floor to her.
>> PAULA GORI: On the condition there's no questions from the audience. I want to go back to what Poncelet was saying. One is we don't know and we're not fact check. We don't know what's going through the private messaging app which is correct. We know the answers that's GenAI is giving to people. Whenever you ask an AI chat bot about something, it is giving you an answer and no one knows. It is between you and the chat bot which is creating an additional element, and the second element is ‑‑ I'm more familiar with the African continent. I remember some years ago, Meta and Google for sending drones in African regions. You could only ask security councils a limited number of web sites.
If this is the case and lots of information on the platform. They have access to the content which is the information or even worse they get the speech. This is quite important. Just again on the messages, it is linked to the urban areas. It is somehow replicated the word of mouth that we have in the past. It is saying way more scary. They are sensing the element that it comes from the online.
>> PATRICK LEUSCH: Uh‑huh. Thank you very much. We have a question in the room here. Sir, go ahead.
Yeah. It is working.
>> AUDIENCE: I have a question in general to all of the speakers. It is about ‑‑ it seems to us that fact checking is not enough. We need to go towards a more comprehensive approach, more realistic approach that means the legislation in the perform to be more effective. I know recently there's been a pledge launched by the EDU to the papers and platforms. Can you tell more about that, if you are aware?
>> PONCELET ILELEJI: If I can comment here. We shouldn't have regulation of content. It is goes against the freedom of speech. Immediately, you start trying to regulate content. There's a moral issue on the type that you produce. We have to be able to fact check.
If you see most of the messages, whether it is on the TikTok or WhatsApp and you get the information to post it and send it without fact checking it. You are supposed to be the educated one. Most of the people that carry all of the information is educated folks. We have to do a lot of stuff whereby the folks are now using the platform to misguide a majority of the populous. We have to work hard to change that. Regulation of the content is a no go for me.
>> PATRICK LEUSCH: Very strong commitment. Thank you. Paula, it relates to the role of the platform. I can say from my experience, public broadcasters from the media, a little bit different for special media than public. It is to play the platforms. I mean that you can read the platforms. We don't know what the platforms are doing with our content. You don't know what is in the black box.
We have expert teams sitting that check goes from the rooms in the black box and check goes out of the black boxes in terms of audience. Then they guess what the algorithm is doing why with your content. Then they advise to adopt the content according to the guessing, without knowing what the platform is doing.
Obviously, many journalists and comment producers are fitting between we have to get rid of the all of the platforms and how we can play them best. That's very difficult to play. But from your perspective, because I'm really at heart of sensing what it means. What is your assessment on that? From the regulatory point of view? I don't know we're going back to the European context. I'll widen up in the global context in a minute.
>> PAULA GORI: You have just frozen. I think I got the questions.
>> PATRICK LEUSCH: Always freezing.
>> PAULA GORI: Very important on the approach of the digital services act. This is the way the platform can pose. On what you were saying on content it's on platforms, I think it is still point that you are making is there no transparency in the algorithm. Probably even the platform. As far as I know, it is an algorithm that works. They somehow tweak it so much. Honestly, I fear in some occasions, they lost control.
Clearly, what we know is emotions fuel negative content. Especially the negative emotions. Whenever a content is emotionally strong, it is based on fear and division and threat. This is a way to trick the algorithm. My opinion is why unfortunately some media move to sensationalism content. It moves the algorithm more than the plain information that's without emotions and is not emotionally regulated. We have the global digital compact. I think we are agree on basic principle. Especially earlier. It is not about the content. The way you are working can be misabused. This creates risk to public security and public health. That's why the regulation is. We cannot get into the content.
>> PATRICK LEUSCH: Thank you. There's a lady standing next on the microphone
>> AUDIENCE: My name is Thora. My problem is scarcity of data and the black box. I have 20‑year experience. In my mind, I see it. I see the black box. As an academic, now the DSA is supposed to give me access. But it is not. Are you doing academic work? Why in the, what can we do to fix the problem? We are studying the outcome. That's a futile thing.
>> PATRICK LEUSCH: Thank you. That's really the right question. I was just about to try to link the different aspects that we've had now; right? So the access to the data is one regulatory thing and the DSA is at the heart of it. We understand that the slow and, you know, pushing that forward.
May be there's an overarching political item. The question is the following. This question goes to Poncelet and also to Paula. You guys here in the room and online. We have touched base on the censorship issue at beginning. It is part of the meaningful access to digital access; right? Poncelet has talk the about Africa and it is another level. I’m not saying there's no censorship, but it leads to skills of media and the access to data is another aspect. I have at least three different elements which are not easy to link together when we asked what needs to be done policy‑wise or on the regulatory pace Is to push these channels forward.
So what do you think where to attach? You mentioned, Paula, the DSA. There are things in place. Why aren't they working and what needs to be done to make them better work? UNESCO and global compact. Tell us, what to work on to make them better before and all of the elements that are in place that can provide for meaningful, digital ask security councils. Go ahead.
>> ABDALLAH ALSALMI: Yeah. Probably, I want to really look at issue of the international human rights access. Article XIX is really outdated. We need to look at it. The other issue is the multistakeholder model in IGF, it is good to mention it. We've been for a number of years; we've been hearing a lot about support for the multistakeholder model. It comes by some countries to re‑ship as we know it. We really need to kind of numberised efforts working towards real multistakeholder model.
My idea is to start with the local IGF by trying to build coalition, talk to your government, and try to push for an Internet that's really open and in a way regulated to protect its current openness and the fact it has no borders.
We really cannot continue to work on the legal loophole. I'm going to make the comparison now. If you look at satellite radio and satellite TV, they are protected by the rules of the international communications. Governments cannot jam them.
But the Internet now, it is not protected. Anyone can shut down the Internet without a due recourse to the legal background. They can black again with 12. It is about re-energizing the local IGF.
>> PATRICK LEUSCH: Thank you very much. Over to Paula.
>> PAULA GORI: I would love to have more time. Both ask security councils to public and private data. What happens is the public act. Once this is true, there should be no stalling. Having access can practice the UTR opinion it is fine to get access. We are covered on that side. We worked on the independent media services coordinator. We did digital service coordinators in between. I fully agreed with you.
Once we get ask security councils to the data, two main issues. The first is we all organisations be equipped financially and for the data. There's the risk of academic information. That's an issue if you look at the specific considerate. It is not only Europe.
For example, the eastern countries and so on. Countries like Italy, I don't know if they would be able to do that. The second policymakers shall be rated.
We understand so many things about the information and the impact. We have to change the framework of once we have the knowledge. It is only through the statement we have to knowledge. Just two points to quickly close.
>> PONCELET ILELEJI: If I look at it, I agree. The multistakeholder is key. This multistakeholder process involves us being able to dialogue with the governments and Civil Society and academia. If we don't, we'll be divides ourselves out. Instead of the building the Internet that's not fragmented, we have fragmentations at various levels. I will go back. We made us and it still applies today. We have to how the information we give out, we have to know it is correct and impactful to our society. That's is the key of this session today. We should never forget the majority of the people that want to impact the life. They don't have connectivity. Look at this. 2.6 billion people according to the studies.
Let us go back to the basics and try to use our public media, especially those grass root level. To build the world that we want and we'll get better information for the social economic development. Thank you.
>> PATRICK LEUSCH: Thank you very much. Last question from my side, two minutes left. Very short one. What is the biggest block we have to move away to go the path and strengthen and look deeper into the channels that are in the digital divide and come up with a better version. I put it very simple. With a better version of article XIX.
>> PONCELET ILELEJI: I have one simple equation. This is crafted. We're coming to the world summit with information society. If we have the global GDP interpretation, it equities to a stronger and strengthened IGF that improves lives.
>> PATRICK LEUSCH: Very nice.
>> ABDALLAH ALSALMI: I agree about the importance of the glitches made within the global digital compact as well as the review. My main concern here is we rely too much on governments.
As we can see, in democracies, you might end up with a government that doesn't look what you are doing. They oppose it or don't help you. I look at example of the rules by the Supreme Court in India, which made a landmark verdict regardless of digital life and spot of the individual's own right to life. I think the Civil Society could start by look working at the local level.
They can always work towards the opinions and finalise some aspects.
>> PATRICK LEUSCH: Thank you. Paula?
>> PAULA GORI: We put the whole conversation. They have it attractive for those that don't be in the policy. I think they could play a key role here. They are way more close to the citizens. They can be active.
>> PATRICK LEUSCH: Thank you. Thank you very much. I would like to thank my panelist. Thank you for your insights for the great discussion. Thank you all the audience here for your questions and comments. And nor participating online to this session on Meaningful Digital Access and what role for PSM. Thanks to Nora and the team and organising the technical leads for the session. Thank you very much.
>> PAULA GORI: Thank you. Bye.
