In this article for the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC), Anna Oosterlinck, Senior Advisor on Global Advocacy at ARTICLE 19, considers the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) 20 years on. Twenty years ago, UN Member States made the decision to build an inclusive information society centred on people and development, resulting in commitments that included championing media pluralism, diversity, and independence, and access to trustworthy information. Today, our digital ecosystem, journalism, and democracy face profound challenges. Confronted by disinformation and a lack of trust in governments and international institutions, the ongoing WSIS+20 review tasks Member States to assess how technologies intersect with sustainable development, and how to build an information society anchored in universal human rights.
Oosterlinck outlines the many challenges, and a range of potential solutions and goals. And she urges everyone to take action, including engaging with governments to represent their perspectives, and to join coalitions of civil society, technical community, academia, and private sector – including the Global Digital Rights Coalition for WSIS. The time to speak up is now.
Read more below.
Independent journalism is under attack. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that 2024 has been the deadliest year for journalists in the past three decades. ARTICLE 19 reports that 27 countries experienced decline in media freedom in the past year alone; over the past decade, 6.2 billion people living in 99 countries experienced declining media freedoms. Around the world, democracy is under siege with 72% of the world population living in autocracies as of March 2025.
These are stark numbers at a time when the world needs independent public interest media more than ever. Independent journalists investigate and share information on issues of public interest, so that the public is informed and able to effectively participate in political, economic, and cultural life so that democracy thrives. Accurate, reliable and relevant information is key to addressing polarisation in society, holding governments to account, countering dis- and misinformation, and ensuring transparent, safe, and inclusive public debate.
Today, most of us get our news online, often from social media platforms, traditional media companies, and others. Combined with the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, this digital ecosystem is rapidly and constantly evolving, increasingly flooding us with disinformation, fake news and manipulated content. It has become very difficult to know what’s true and accurate, and what is manifestly false or fabricated. Prominent journalist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa said we live in ‘an information Armageddon’. She stated, ‘[W]ithout facts, you can’t have truth; without truth, you can’t have trust. Without these three, you can have no shared reality.’ This goes right to the heart of the challenges we face across the globe when navigating our information ecosystem. How can we resolve any problems, let alone see eye to eye, when we don’t share the same reality?
Twenty years ago, UN Member States came together and decided they wanted to build a people-centric, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society where everyone can create, access, utilise and share information. This unique UN Summit, commonly referred to as the World Summit on Information Society, or WSIS, has resulted in a set of technology neutral commitments, including championing media pluralism, diversity, and independence, and access to trustworthy information.
Twenty years on, UN Member States are currently undertaking a review of all WSIS commitments. In 2025, the WSIS+20 review, is happening against the backdrop of a very different world. It is an incredibly vast and wide-ranging review process: it touches on how technologies intersect with sustainable development; and what norms and structures are needed for global Internet and digital technology governance.
ARTICLE 19 has been advocating extensively to promote a WSIS anchored in universal human rights, to advance the multistakeholder approach to Internet and digital governance, and to strengthen the original WSIS vision and its institutions including the Internet Governance Forum.
The WSIS+20 review clearly matters to public interest media and journalists. The original WSIS aimed to foster diverse, independent and resilient media ecosystems, and to strengthen independent journalism and public interest media to provide access to relevant, timely, local, multilingual, and fact-based information. These original commitments need to be strengthened.