The Forum on Information and Democracy is issuing a worldwide call for contributions to help create the International Observatory on Information and Democracy. All institutions, experts, jurists and researchers working on the structure of the information and communication space and its evaluation are invited to contribute.
As announced during the first Summit for Information and Democracy in September 2021, the Forum is creating the International Observatory on Information and Democracy. The Observatory will run periodic evaluations of the global information and communication space. It will provide states and society as a whole with a global understanding of the structure of this space and how it impacts democracy around the world.
To define the methodology, objectives and resources of the Observatory, the Forum has launched a prefiguration group co-chaired by Shoshana Zuboff, Emeritus Professor at Harvard Business School and author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, and Angel Gurria, former Secretary General of the OECD. Its steering committee is currently composed of 10 prominent figures, including 2021 Nobel peace prize laureate Maria Ressa.
The call for contributions aims at gathering ideas and recommendations from experts representing different fields and regions. Contributions will feed the development of the Observatory, notably on the evaluation of the impact of digital platforms on democracy, the working methodology to write evaluation reports of the information and communication space, and the governance of the Observatory.
Similar to climate change, addressing information chaos will require an international process combining independent and periodic evaluations and annual summits. The Observatory, combined with the annual Summits for Information and Democracy gathering democratic countries, civil society and academia, will fill this gap.
The report from the prefiguration group will be published during the next Summit for Information and Democracy to be held in September 2022 on the margins of the UN General Assembly. This call for contributions is open until the end of9 May 2022. Contributors will appear in the final report, if they so wish.
About the Forum
The Forum on Information and Democracy is the implementing organization of the International Partnership for Information and Democracy endorsed by 45 countries. Founded by 11 NGOs and research centers, its mission is to implement democratic safeguards in the global information and communication space.
It provides recommendations for regulation and self-regulation to states through international working groups. It has already published two reports entitled How to end infodemics (2020) and A New Deal for journalism (2021). Its also has the mandate to evaluate the means, norms, and architectures of the information space. This will be developed by the International Observatory on Information and Democracy.