Session
Organizer 1: Carlos Alberto Afonso, 🔒Instituto Nupef
Organizer 2: Bianca Correa, Legalite Research Center
Organizer 3: Jean Carlos Ferreira dos Santos, 🔒
Organizer 4: Tatiana Jereissati, 🔒
Speaker 1: Hugo Siqueira, Government, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Speaker 2: Carolyn Hamilton, Technical Community, African Group
Speaker 3: Samik Kharel, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
Speaker 4: Marielza Oliveira, Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization
Bianca Correa, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Tatiana Jereissati, Technical Community, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Jean Carlos Ferreira dos Santos, Technical Community, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Roundtable
Duration (minutes): 90
Format description: The round table format favors multistakeholder engagement with the presentation of different experiences and regional perspectives related to the preservation of memory online, allowing an informal debate on pressing topics, such as preserving the integrity of information, countering disinformation, protecting the right to information, promoting under-represented cultural heritage, preserving multilingualism and other issues. The 90-minute duration facilitates the discussion of complex issues characterized by open disputes and multiple perspectives from different sectors and regions, and also by allowing time for audience participation through questions and answers.
1. What are the new challenges brought by the Internet and the digital platforms to the preservation of collective memory? 2. How these new challenges relate to the promotion of information integrity, the protection of the right to information, the promotion under-represented cultural heritage, and other issues traditionally debated in the Internet Governance field?
What will participants gain from attending this session? Participants and attendees will benefit from the understanding on the role of the Internet as a vehicle for the preservation of collective memory and delve into the challenges and opportunities that relate to the digital archiving ecosystem. This multistakeholder debate will shed light on concrete initiatives and experiences, including key takeaways for advancing this discussion, paving the way for the construction of good policy practices.
Description:
The Internet has allowed the production and archiving of a plurality of contents and narratives online by individuals, including historically under-represented populations. The storage and linking capacities of the Internet play an important role in the preservation and organization of cultural heritage. Professional historians, archivists, museum curators and other traditional stewards of public memory face a new set of challenges to rethink their role in a changed “archiving ecosystem”. Internet has greatly impacted how memories are created, stored, accessed and shared. More recently, large proprietary digital platforms began to play an increasingly relevant role in defining what is to be seen, remembered and forgotten, given that billions of people and organizations produce and post content through their applications. They became an important stakeholder to the collective memory preservation, stablishing a new layer of complexity to the issue. Their private policies of content storage, moderation, distribution and amplification are not necessarily aligned with the public interest in the preservation of collective memory, given their commercial nature. Memories are mobilized by archives represented by images, symbols, values and codes which encapsulate common ideas that become part of an inter subjective symbolic system and can be corroborated, corrected, disputed. Moreover, the increasing role of digital platforms in preserving public memory has been associated to traditional challenges of Internet Governance, such as preserving the integrity of information, countering disinformation, protecting the right to information, promoting under-represented cultural heritage, preserving multilingualism and other issues. The workshop aims at bringing together multiple stakeholders to discuss the challenges and initiatives for the preservation of public memory online and also its relevance to the Internet Governance debate.
We expect to produce a report on different stakeholder perspectives, interests and positions about the challenges and opportunities for the construction and preservation of collective memory online and how digital platforms play an important role on the issue; 2. Promote experience-sharing on initiatives and good practices related to memory preservation online, including those related to preserving the integrity of information, countering disinformation, protecting the right to information, promoting under-represented cultural heritage, preserving multilingualism and other issues.
Hybrid Format: The workshop will be divided into three parts: the first will consist in an opening, followed by three presentations addressing, a) the challenges on the preservation of collective memory, b) Google initiatives to deal with archiving challenges, c) initiatives from different regions. Secondly, an open debate on how to address these challenges and how it permeates the internet governance debate. The last part will be devoted to Q&A. To ensure proper interaction between the audience, the session will count with onsite and online moderators. The onsite moderator will be responsible to oversee the interventions and interacting with the speakers, and also care for safeguarding the due balance to meet diversity expectations. The online moderator will take care of the flow of questions within all the online tools involved in the session. He/she will guarantee that the onsite moderator will be aware of questions and comments from the remote audience.
Report
1. Collective memory on the Internet is shaped by systemic inequities, technological limitations and political struggles.
2. Ethical, inclusive, and collaborative approaches are critical to preserving diverse and reliable digital memories.
3. Local initiatives and global collaborations can bridge gaps, ensuring collective memory reflects all voices and histories.
1. To address the digital divide, prioritize equitable access to technology and the Internet for marginalized communities. Invest in local initiatives to preserve cultural histories and amplify underrepresented voices, ensuring inclusive participation in constructing collective memory.
2. Promote ethical and collaborative governance by uniting governments, businesses, and civil society to manage digital memory responsibly. Enforce ethical AI practices, ensure transparency in data use, and adopt sustainable preservation methods to safeguard diverse and accurate memories for future generations.
The workshop session explored the challenges and implications of preserving collective memory in the digital age, bringing together a diverse audience and an expert panel to examine the intersection of memory, technology, and governance. The discussions addressed how the Internet and digital technologies shape, preserve, and sometimes erode memory, with particular attention to the political and cultural dimensions of these processes. The event highlighted the importance of preserving digital memory in the context of struggles for equity and democracy and examined various challenges and solutions to ensure access to collective memories across different sectors and regions. The on-site moderator opened the session with data from a Pew Research Center study, revealing that a significant portion of online content from the past decade has disappeared. This trend underscores the urgency of addressing the impermanence of digital information and the implications for collective memory.
The session featured a historical overview of digital memory practices, tracing the transition from analog formats to digital storage. The obsolescence of storage media (physical media) has resulted in the loss of many digitized archives, while selective storage processes often prioritize commercial and organizational interests over the public good. The role of artificial intelligence (AI) and 'datafication' in shaping memory was an important aspect highlighted during the panel, with an emphasis on how content processing and indexing introduce biases, perpetuate stereotypes, and create challenges for preserving accurate and diverse collective memories. Generative AI was highlighted as a significant disruptor, producing fabricated content that infiltrates the digital landscape and challenges the integrity of historical narratives. A critical example is the difficulty of generative AI in producing realistic images of diverse, everyday occurrences, while creating inaccurate historical depictions shaped by stereotypes.
The marginalization of underrepresented cultures and stories in the digital realm emerged as a critical issue. Participants emphasized the importance of multilingualism and inclusive cultural narratives to foster a more equitable collective memory. Vulnerable populations often face barriers to contributing to and shaping digital memory due to systemic inequities and technological disparities. The discussion highlighted the need for democratic infrastructure and meaningful access to technology to empower marginalized communities. Concerns were raised about the manipulation and misuse of data by governments and private organizations, which further jeopardize public memory's integrity. In regions like Nepal and South Asia, lack of infrastructure and access to technology perpetuates the invisibility of vulnerable groups in digital narratives.
The political and ethical dimensions of memory preservation were explored by the participants, with an emphasis on the need for ethical governance and collaborative approaches to curating digital memory. Initiatives from Brazil, such as Tempora Platform and Graúna Project, illustrated innovative efforts to archive government websites and document disinformation timelines and preserve information from civil society organizations in Brazil. These examples also demonstrate the complexities of balancing accessibility, technological constraints and resource allocation in preserving diverse narratives. The Graúna Project, an initiative from civil society, highlights the complexities of memory preservation in the digital environment, such as the need for robust infrastructure, sustainable investments, and collaborative efforts. The environmental costs of digital memory preservation were also addressed, highlighting the significant energy and water resources consumed by data centers and the ethical implications of allowing private organizations to dictate what information is stored or discarded.
The audience raised critical issues and questions during the discussion. An on-site participant from Germany highlighted the absence of gender representation in historical disaster records and questioned how stakeholders can address such data gaps. Another participant pointed out the disparity between affordable technologies for private business use and the lack of investment in public memory preservation. Questions also arose about the challenges in Brazil related to digital preservation, particularly regarding storage for scientific, educational, and cultural data, and how to reconcile the transient nature of public memory with the enduring permanence of internet records in geopolitical contexts. A remote participant from India made an observation regarding the mismatch between the transient nature of public memory and the permanence of internet records, particularly in the context of geopolitical dynamics, highlighting the need for solutions to address this disparity.
The session concluded with a call to prioritize inclusive and equitable approaches to preserving digital memory. Participants emphasized the need to develop policies that ensure the representation of diverse languages and cultures, address biases in AI systems, and invest in sustainable data preservation strategies. The workshop underscored the shared responsibility of governments, businesses, and civil society to manage digital memory ethically and transparently, safeguarding collective histories and cultural identities for future generations.