30 Jun 2025 Beyond Connectivity – Advocating Community at the World Summit on the Information Society

Today, 30 June, is “World Social Media Day” – a commemoration created by the website Mashable in 2010 that celebrates the transformative power of social media.

That transformation – with all its positive and negative real world impacts – is part of the information eco-system under scrutiny at the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) +20 High Level Event being held in Geneva, 7-11 July 2025.

The forum brings together government ministers, regulators, UN leaders, industry executives, and civil society advocates from over 150 countries to take stock of efforts since the Geneva Plan of Action, agreed in 2003 and set in motion in 2005, and make recommendations for the next phase of the world’s digital transformation.

Outcomes will contribute directly to the UN General Assembly’s 20-year review of WSIS, scheduled for December in New York, which may also take into account the implementation of the Global Digital Compact agreed at the UN Pact for the Future in September 2024.

Despite long-running civil society campaigning from the first WSIS, the gaps and solutions highlighted by the governments and their corporate partners have primarily focused on technical responses to access rather than a comprehensive, rights-based approach. Will this High-Level Event prove any different?

At this event, one of the international forums where civil society can significantly take part, WACC will be actively participating to foster local to global voices and community-focused solutions, adding its weight to broader civil society pressure for a people-centered information society.

Under the slogan, Communication for All: From Connectivity to Community, WACC will be stressing that 20 years on, we need a new digital paradigm, one rooted in communication rights and built to serve the public interest, not private profit.

This call is echoed by our civil society partners. At the opening session of the Internet Governance Forum on 23 June 2025, the Global Digital Justice Forum, of which WACC is a member, along with IT for Change, delivered a challenge – and a vision of hope:

We must reject the human-made dystopia that threatens to consume us; we must build digital governance together. The democratic deficits of the present digital order actively harm those at the margins – communities seeking legitimacy for visions of a digital society accountable to the planet and to future generations. At the Global Digital Justice Forum, we believe that there is no paucity of ideas to make real a global internet community connected by an ethic of pluralism, made up of the many smalls that are differently beautiful. These worldviews of another digital paradigm – demonstrated by social movements, workers’ organizations, tech communities, and civic groups everywhere – need a radical democracy of inclusive institutions.

Will our voices be heard? Sometimes the impact we make seems tinier than a drop in an ocean of political and private self-interest. But that will never stop those of us committed to justice, equality, accountability, and inclusion.

You can join in the advocacy at WSIS+20. WACC will hold the session “Communication is Humanitarian Aid: Safeguarding Rights in Times of Risk” on July 10 at 16:00-16:45 (UTC+02:00), and WACC General Secretary Philip Lee will speak during the Leaders TalkX session on 14:00–14:30 (UTC+02:00). Register for remote participation to follow sessions, and contribute your questions and insights on WACC Global’s social media channels or by email.

Our movement is growing, and together we will make a difference.

Image: ChatGPT