مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

According to Mueller (2010, p. 1), “a distinctive global politics is developing around the Internet” where some states have taken a technological determinist view that the Internet due to its open network design cannot be governed others believe that it is within a nation’s sovereign rights to govern the Internet within its territorial domain. Because Internet governance issues tend to be contentious, multifaceted, and interconnected among various stakeholders,2 multistakeholder governance networks have formed as potentially effective and legitimate structures to enable communication and cooperation (Mueller, 2010; Reinicke & Deng, 2000).

The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) was established in 2006 out of the United Nations-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society in response to criticism that Internet governance standards were being unjustly set by powerful nationstates and private sector stakeholders (Mueller, 2010). Since its origin, the IGF has sought to serve as a non-binding, multistakeholder forum where national, regional, and global stakeholders from developed and developing countries can openly discuss Internet governance issues and potential solutions (IGF, 2011).

Even though the IGF was formed to promote inclusivity, concerns that the forum has employed hierarchical processes that exclude stakeholders have emerged. According to Mueller (2010), developed country stakeholders have had the greatest influence on defining the structure of the IGF and issues addressed at IGF meetings. This is particularly problematic when considering the work of Epstein (2010) who asserts that participants in IGF meetings “build and polish a vocabulary that is used to describe, design, and eventually regulate the Internet” (p. 2). The terms used to describe Internet governance issues influence the perceptions of policymakers and the general public, which subsequently influences how policies are shaped and enacted by governments. Epstein (2010) argues that understanding the discourse from IGF meetings is important, as it is likely to be used verbatim in actual policies. Furthermore, understanding inclusivity of stakeholders in IGF processes is vitally important if IGF discourse influences the formation of law.