Events

Brussels, 9/9/11: 1st Dialogue on Platforms for Collective Awareness and Action

Summary: main messages from the dialogue (pdf)

watch the recorded webcast or follow on twitter #internetsocieties

This event took place on 9 September 2011 in Brussels, in the form of a broad dialogue between civil society organisations (e.g. environment, consumers, democracy), social media, industries, active projects, EU institutions and citizens.

It focused on online tools allowing individual expression, participation, creation of collective knowledge and situational awareness, which are already enablers of creativity and entrepreneurship for a growing number of networks of individuals, enterprises, non-profit organizations, local and global institutions.

The objective was taking stock of existing initiatives and defining a coordinated approach considering all open issues, for instance:

How to make the impact of ICT evolve from fancy gadgets to tangible lifestyle changes towards sustainability?

How strong, clear and broad is the evidence base for the use of online communities to drive individual situation awareness and individual behaviour change? What are the best practice do`s and don`ts? What are the issues for further research?

How to identify and involve the most relevant stakeholders who can act as credible "agents of change" and allow reaching the required massive scale of citizen trust and participation?

Do we need a top-down framing of the different initiatives, or can a thousand flowers bloom? And in this case, which open coordination mechanisms can ensure an effective synergy between genuine bottom-up initiatives, without hindering flexibility and independency?

How to cope with trust, privacy, identity, security and the ethical aspects which are associated with social networks, IoT and collaborative production tools within this context?

Do we need to set minimum quality guarantees for the content of the social media which can be developed in this context, or will users, and society in general, autonomously weed out the inadequate or possibly manipulative actions?

Which areas should be involved in a multidisciplinary research agenda, and how?

This event was part of the International high-level conference on "Internet and Societies: New Innovation Paths", organised by the project PARADISO. All presentations and speeches are available on such a website.