Do terms like Internet Governance, Data Protection, Mass Surveillance, Edward Snowden and Intellectual Property Rights sound like the recipe of an event for internet nerds who normally don’t manage to see the sun and live behind their computer? Maybe, but this event turned out to be not like this at all. During the New Media Summer School 2014 in Berlin, 34 young participants from all over Europe and from a variety of different organizations met to learn more about this weird thing called internet and how to control it.

Internet Governance is clearly more and more in the focus of many young people, international policy makers and of course international organisations such as AEGEE. That’s why the questions around NSA, Snowden, Facebook and Google selling private data, liquid democracy and many others are important and more and more discussed. Therefore, young people need to gain knowledge about how to handle and be involved in these topics. Together, organisations like Internet Governance Forum, JEF, Young Pirates, Wikimedia Berlin, AEGEE-Berlin, Collab Berlin and many others organised the New Media Summer School (NMSS), which was a five day training taking place in Berlin. The days were filled with brainstorming, discussions and workshops on topics of internet security, protection of your personal data and the dilemma of intellectual property rights.

Since 2011, one of the aims of the NMSS is to prepare the participants to be “active” in the European Dialoque on Internet Governance (EuroDIG). This event lasted two days and consisted of a series of conferences, workshops and flash sessions, where people could exchange ideas and reflections with the possibility to be directly involved in European projects related on different topics of the Internet Governance (data protection, privacy, net neutrality, copyright, big data. etc.). All together trying to contribute to a constructive dialogue.

An interesting flash session was the session about the Global Internet Policy Observator (GIPO), a very recent project that needs people and organizations to contribute. In detail, the project is lead by the European Commission and its aim is to provide technical tools to support internet policy and governance, making information easily and widely accessible in order to enable a more inclusive participation of all stakeholders. This project is encouraged by the IGF (the most important Internet Governance Forum at a worldwide level). Now the project is under prototypization, but nevertheless, different stakeholders from all over the world are interested to be involved in creating a GIPO community.

This is only one of the many projects related to the Internet Governance field, where different stakeholder try to discuss together, finding the best solution to develop and/or improve the existing policy, thanks to this “wide dialogue”. Participants had the chance to have experts on their respective field talk about the anatomy of the internet, internet governance, self governance, net neutrality, copyrights, human rights, the Snowden revelation, privacy, mass surveillance, data protection, anonymity, the future of the internet and several other terms that at first sounded unfamiliar to many of us but as days passed became part of our vocabulary. During the preparatory events the participants aquired some valuable information about the issues that would be discussed during the conference and exchanged knowledge and ideas with other participants, professionals and organizers. Through the conference participants were given the chance to actively participate in the ongoing dialogue that was taking place in the plenaries, workshops and flash presentations.

The most important element of the EuroDIG was the dicotomy where everyone was both a producer and recipient of thoughts, ideas, arguments and messages. In this conference you could both influence the people around you but also be influenced by them. It was the interactiveness that made the EuroDIG successful and productive, as the issues under discussion were approached by a lot of different viewpoints. During the conference, participants from all sort of different backgrounds had the chance to meet each other and communicate as equals. During lunch being approached by academic professors, young entrepreneurs, businessmen, policy makers, tech people etc. was the norm. There was no sense that certain people’s opinion mattered more and participants were actually interested in hearing what you had to say no matter who you were or what was your background. During the plenaries issues that were raised in the tweets posted on the twitterwall were addressed and not disregarded as trivial.

The organisers from AEGEE Berlin and collaboratory were nothing but enthusiastic, helpful, patient and understanding, especially during the days when the heat in Berlin was just too much. The New Media Summer school was an overall interesting and thought provoking event that had a lot to offer to those who took part in it. It is an ongoing event as it is the dialogue on internet governance, the issues raised and discussed in it were, are and will continue to be of great importance in our day to day lives as users of the internet. It is important for all internet users to actively participate in the dialogue about its governance and not let decisions that concern us being made without being openly discussed in public.

Written by Mara Poniros, AEGEE-Peiraias; Holger Schmitt, AEGEE-Berlin; Pavel Zbornik, Comité Directeur and Giancarlo Nicolò, AEGEE-Udine.

With this article I would like to bring to you closer one topic which affects us every day; it is the magical Internet. Did you ever ask yourself the question what is behind the phenomenon that makes you be able to connect with all your friends across the world? Now I don’t refer to a technical point of view, which is out of reach and focus of AEGEE, but I’m wondering if there is somebody behind this phenomenon, some institutions or government. Are you interested?

Let me introduce you to the Internet Governance (IG), which is according to definition of United Nations:

Internet governance is the development and application by Governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet.

And what is the connection between IG and AEGEE? You might be surprised that there is a strong connection, especially in the field of young participation on big international events which discuss aspects of IG. In 2011 AEGEE organised, together with YEU, YFJ, JEF and Youthpress, an event in Belgrade prior to the European Dialogue on Internet Governance (EuroDIG). This partnership continued with last year’s edition of EuroDIG which took place in Stockholm and the Internet Governance Forum held in Baku and organised by UN.

European Youth representation at EuroDIG Stockholm 2012

What is behind these abbreviations like EuroDIG and IGF? IGF and EuroDIG are multi-stakeholder platforms aiming for discussions with all involved parties and this is the reason why they are so important. There are not so many places where you meet representatives of governments, CEOs of internet companies, human rights activists and youth. This was one of the reasons why this event was organized; to raise youth’s voice on a topic that is very important for our generation called “digital natives”, the generation that was born with internet access as a thing as common as TV.

This year our cooperation with other NGOs will include several activities and mostly the creation of a common platform which is called Network of EurRopean Digital Youth (NERDY), which gathers the aforementioned organisations and increase their cooperation in the field of IG. This year under this umbrella several activities will take place. The first one will be a workshop about IG at SpringAgora Rhein-Neckar, which will be followed by a  week-long capacity building training in Vienna at the beginning of May, and result in participation at EuroDIG 2013 in Lisbon.

Youth event prior to IFG 2012 Baku

You might think that these conferences are full of technology experts and geeks who use words that normal people don’t understand, but it is not like this. Topics which are discussed are more in policy-level and touch upon matters like copyrights, privacy, child protection, freedom of expression.

Furthermore, any member with an interest in the topic has the opportunity right now to apply for the event in Vienna.

Nobody has absolute control over the internet, as a global network is a living organism, however we can see that governments are trying to get control or try to apply laws which are currently used for classical media also to the internet. AEGEE is invited to express the opinion of European Students on this matter and it is on us to use this opportunity right, because it could infulence us all.

Written by Pavel Zborník, European Institutions and Communications Director