On 14 July 2021, UNESCO organized a knowledge-sharing discussion on the major assessment processes and results of the Internet Universality and ROAM principles(Rights, Openness, Access and Multi-stakeholder approach) and indicators across five continents on the occasion of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) conference held online on July 2021.
The UNESCO Internet Universality ROAM-X Indicators build consensus, set up principles as aspirations and international standards to shape the Internet experience from the ROAM perspective. They are relevant to all countries, for use of all countries and stakeholders on a voluntary basis and transcend differences between countries.
The indicators remind us that our rights offline must be reflected online as well. These rights are enshrined in the UNDR, and it is important that laws and regulations are designed in an ethical way to support those rights.
David Souter and Simon Ellis highlighted that the framework’s high relevance in fostering sustainability and contributing to identifying digital gaps and inequalities to empower vulnerable groups online and offline, with a great potential to help implement and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, which stands at the core of the United Nation’s mandate.
Representing CETIC.br, Alexandre Barbosa further stressed that the ROAM framework and principles are a solid ground for policymakers to create effective policies to bridge existing connectivity gaps and digital skills gaps, and a practical tool to enable countries to assess the Internet development in a very comprehensive way.
Dr Matthias C. Kettemann from Leibniz Institute for Media Research, Fabio Senne from CETIC.br, Alain Kiyindou from Université Bordeaux Montaigne and Grace Githaiga from Kenya ICT Action Network - all stressed the importance of the data collection process and identified it as one of the major challenges in conducting the national assessment of ROAM-X indicators. As the framework relies on a diverse set of data sources, having a transparent methodological approach and using the best available data sources are critical for comprehensive implementation of the project.
Through the set of Internet Universality Indicators, UNESCO is in fact co-shaping Internet governance and internet freedoms themselves, not as an abstract or overarching ideal to be attained, but as a very concrete set of socio-technical problems to be solved, and of technologies and practices that can help solve them.
UNESCO calls all IAMCR community and researchers to Join the Dynamic Coalition on Internet Universality Indicators and get involved in the collaborative research of ROAM-X indicators at global and national levels. This would break down silos between academia and policy implementation, and enhance the collaboration between UNESCO and academic community to join synergies in building human-centered Internet and anchoring digital policies with humanistic values embedded in ROAM.