Internet Impact on Socio-Cultural Transformations Discussed by Delegates of 46 Countries on Sakhalin

 

30-09-2013 

 

International conference Internet and Socio-Cultural Transformations in Information Society took place in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk 8–12 September 2013 within the framework of the Russian chairmanship in the UNESCO Information for All Programme. This first-ever international forum on the topic has become an attempt to develop a comprehensive understanding of the direction, dynamics, character, scope, driving forces, content and results of socio-cultural changes under the impact of the Internet and other ICTs as they are spreading worldwide.

 

The conference’s highlight was an interdisciplinary approach to discussing all these issues with the participation of both theoreticians and practical experts on information and communication, researchers in the social sciences and humanities – philosophers, sociologists, cultural anthropologists, historians and political scientists, as well as political and community activists, executives, creative writers, journalists and representatives of libraries, museums, archives, universities and other institutions of culture, science, education, civil society and private sector from 46 countries of the world.

  

The conference was organized by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, the Federal Agency for Press and Mass Communications, the Government of the Sakhalin Region, UNESCO / UNESCO Information for All Programme, the Commission of the Russian Federation for UNESCO, the Russian Committee of the UNESCO Information for All Programme and the Interregional Library Cooperation Centre.

 

Greetings to the conference were sent by UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova (Text in English; Russian translation), Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Gennady Gatilov, State Secretary and Deputy Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation Grigory Ivliyev, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Federation Council of the Russian Federation Mikhail Margelov.

  

Governor of the Sakhalin Region Alexander Khoroshavin, Head of the Federal Agency for Press and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation Mikhail Seslavinsky and Executive Secretary of the Commission of the Russian Federation for UNESCO Grigory Ordzhonikidze spoke at the Conference Opening Gala, presided by Evgeny Kuzmin, Chairman of the Intergovernmental Council and Russian Committee for the UNESCO Information for All Programme, President of the Interregional Library Cooperation Centre.

  

The first plenary meeting (moderated by the Deputy Prime Minister of the Sakhalin Region Irina Trutneva) included communications by Indrajit Banerjee, Director of the UNESCO Knowledge Societies Division; Aleksei Volin, Deputy Minister of Communications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation; Sinikka Sipilä, President of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA); Evgeny Kuzmin, and Ludovit Molnar, President, Slovak National Commission for UNESCO.

  

In debating conference participants pointed out the contradictory nature of social and cultural changes under the development of the Internet in modern society, bringing both new opportunities for human development and previously unknown risks of dehumanization associated with the development of new technologies.

 

Participants agreed on the following: 

 

• The Internet is not a technology of limited functionality, but rather a global systemic phenomenon with a tendency to self-development and producing a broad range of socio-cultural effects. On the one hand, Internet development and penetration lead to significant socio-cultural transformations. On the other hand, it is the societal development tendencies of the past decades that have stimulated the Internet and ICT penetration in all spheres of life.
• Discourses related to the concepts and policies of building information society and knowledge societies should embrace the understanding of ICTs as an essential but not sufficient component of converging nano-, bio-, information and cognitive (NBIC) sciences and technologies, being of paramount importance for modern technological development and able to impact global socio-cultural processes.
• The Internet defines the process and forms of culture mediatization. The Internet and new media have become a major space for group and interpersonal communications, generating new cultural meanings and ways of interaction. In particular, the following socio-cultural impacts should be noticed:

- The Internet creates a basic environment for the socialization of new generations, changing their values and ways of thinking.

- A culture gap between generations is thus getting deeper. Traditional mechanisms of cultural reproduction are broken down. Lagging behind in mastering new technologies, older generation is losing its status as a carrier of valuable cultural experience.

- A phenomenon of new escapism is coming into being which implies diving into the virtual space to avoid solving real world problems.

- Logocentric, narrative way of thinking is losing its dominance, getting supplemented and partly replaced by “clip” mentality characterized by a lower degree of logical connectivity, criticality, consistency.

- Consciousness immersed in cyberspace largely loses the ability for supra-situational activities and long-term planning. As a result traditional models of intellect-enabled basic processes of social control are defied.

- Internet development is an integral part of a global challenge to national cultures and national languages.

• Against this background the promotion of competencies (skills, knowledge and attitudes), united by the term “media and information literacy” (MIL) gains importance. MIL ensures responsible, safe and critical use of networks for free access, production and exchange of information and knowledge within all linguistic, cultural and social groups.
• Traditional copyright institutions and legislation should be updated in the context of digital environment to provide free access to information necessary for living and receiving quality education, as well as for scientific progress.
• Studies of contemporary socio-cultural processes under the impact of the Internet and other ICTs should be based on interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral approaches.

 

Sessions of three thematic sections and two roundtables were held during the conference.

  

The first section presented participants’ vision of the Internet as a socio-cultural phenomenon: 

 

• The Phenomenon of Internet in the Context of Macroevolutionary Culture Dynamics  

Andrey PELIPENKO, Chief Research Associate of the Research and Development Centre, Moscow Psycho-Social University (Russian Federation)

 

•  Digital Initiates: Digital Natives in the Coming Age of “Internet of Everything”

László KARVALICS, Chairman, Hungarian Committee for the UNESCO Information for All Programme; Associate Professor, University of Szeged (Hungary)

 

• 21^st Century Man in Cyberspace: Infinite Possibilities and New Perils

Yekaterina SHAPINSKAYA, Chief Research Associate, Russian Institute for Cultural Research (Russian Federation)

 

•  Internet Development: Devastating Consequences

Leonid KONOVALOV, Senior Regional Strategic Account Manager, Xerox CIS (Russian Federation)

 

•  Investigating the Effects of Using Internet on Cultural Attitudes of Shiite Clergymen

Hamid ABEDI DOYOMI, Researcher, Allameh Tabatabaeii University in Tehran (Iran)

 

• Internet and Its Influence on Quality and Authenticity of Audiovisual Documents

Dietrich SCHÜLLER, Vice-President, Intergovernmental Council for the UNESCO Information for All Programme (Austria)

 

•  Ethical Aspects of Communication in Information Society: the Case of Malawi

Emmanuel KONDOWE, Acting Deputy Executive Secretary, Malawi National Commission for UNESCO (Malawi)

 

•  Political Functions of the Internet: Russian Perception

Oksana DMITRIYEVA, Director of the Institute of Humanitarian Technologies for Social Computing, Sholokhov Moscow State University for the Humanities (Russian Federation)

 

 

The participants of the second thematic section argued on the nature and character of contemporary socio-cultural processes: 

 

• From Cultural Consumers to Cultural Prosumers: Citizens´ Co-Creation of Cultural Changes in Information Society

Susana FINQUELIEVICH, Director of the Research Programme on Information Society, National Council for Scientific and Technical Research, University of Buenos Aires (Argentina)

 

•  Society Virtualization and Glam-Capitalism

Dmitry IVANOV, Professor, Saint-Petersburg State University (Russian Federation)

 

•  The Internet, Global Governance, and the Surveillance State in a Post-Snowden World  

Michael GURSTEIN, Executive Director, Centre for Community Informatics Research, Development and Training (Canada)

 

•  Effect of Cross-Cultural Communication on Socio-Cultural Transformations in ASEAN Information Society

Pornntip YENJABOK, Assistant professor, Kasetsart University (Thailand)

 

•  Public Sector Information: Openness or Universality

Maciej GRON, Director of Department of Information Society, Ministry of Administration and Digitalization (Poland)

 

•  Regularities in the Behaviour of the Russian Internet Audience

Alexander SHARIKOV, Professor, National Research University – Higher School of Economics (Russian Federation)

 

•  Socio-Cultural Changes in Pakistan Due to the Proliferation and Impact of Internet and other ICTs

Nazeer HUSSAIN, Director of IT/Regional Centre, Higher Education Commission (Pakistan)

  

 

The third section On the road to knowledge societies provided an opportunity to share opinions on the possible directions and ways of the humanization of information society, development of strategies, policies and practices of knowledge societies building: 

 

• Digital Natives, Netizens, eCommunities. Civitas Solis or Nightmare?

Alfredo RONCHI, Secretary, European Commission – MEDICI Framework of Cooperation; Professor, University of Milan (Italy)

 

•  Addressing Ethical Challenges of Information Society

Andrejs VASILJEVS, Member of the Bureau, Intergovernmental Council for the UNESCO Information for All Programme; Chairman of the Board, Tilde Company (Latvia)

 

•  The Digital Revolution and the Need of National and International Information Policies and Strategies

Winnie VITZANSKY, Member, Danish National Commission for UNESCO (Denmark)

 

 

Each section also discussed a broad range of other issues related to the conference topics.

 

The communications at the plenary meeting of the second day focused on the perspectives of the character and dynamics of the ICT impact on society, as well as on the state-of-the-art in the field of copyright: 

 

• Reflecting on Information Society

Yuri CHYORNIY, Deputy Director, Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences, Russian Academy of Sciences (Russian Federation)

 

•  Impact of Information and Communication Technologies on Society

Renaldas GUDAUSKAS, Director General, National Library of Lithuania (Lithuania)

 

•  The Great Copyright Swindle

Jarosław LIPSZYC, President, Modern Poland Foundation (Poland)

 

•  Information Society and the New Copyright Concept

Vladimir KHARITONOV, Executive Director, Online Publishers Association (Russian Federation)

  

 

The following communications were made at the roundtable Linguistic Diversity in the Digital World: 

 

• Towards a Multilingual Cyberspace

Daniel PRADO, Executive Secretary, MAYAA World Network for Linguistic Diversity (Argentina)

 

•  Redefining Digital Divide Around Information Literacy and Linguistic Diversity in a Future Context of Access Provision

Daniel PIMIENTA, Director, Networks and Development Foundation FUNREDES (Dominican Republic)

 

•  Web-Based Vulnerable Peoples – Focusing on Language

Katsuko TANAKA, Assistant Professor, Nagaoka University of Technology (Japan)

 

•  Web Fonts for Multilingual Information Community

Sergey BOBRYSHEV, Commercial Director, ParaType Ltd (Russian Federation)

 

•  Activities of the Centre to Advance Multilingualism in Cyberspace

Liudmila ZAIKOVA, Head of the Centre to Advance Multilingualism in Cyberspace, North-Eastern Federal University (Russian Federation)

 

•  Moldavian Cultural Code. How Moldavian Culture Presents Itself at the General Eurasian Space

Constantin RUSNAC, Secretary General, National Commission of the Republic of Moldova for UNESCO (Republic of Moldova)

 

 

Another roundtable was dedicated to the role of libraries in the digital world. The participants were greeted by Evgeny KUZMIN, Chair of the Intergovernmental Council and the Russian Committee for the UNESCO Information for All Programme; Sinikka SIPILÄ, IFLA President, and Valentina MALYSHEVA, Director of the Sakhalin Regional Research Library (Russian Federation).

  

The following communications were presented and discussed: 

 

• Academic Libraries as Facilitators of the Digital Scholarship: Defining and Designing Online Research Support

Maria Carme TORRAS CALVO, Governing Board Member and Division Chair, IFLA; Library Director, Bergen University College (Norway)

 

•  Union Catalogue of Russian Libraries

Boris LOGINOV, Director General, National Information Library Centre (LIBNET); Director, Central Scientific Medical Library of the Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University (Russian Federation)

 

•  On the Way from Information Society to Knowledge Society: Searching for New Priorities and Modes of Interaction

Piotr LAPO, President, Belarusian Library Association; University Librarian, Belarusian State University (Belarus)

 

•  Youth Library Behavior

Irina MIKHNOVA, Director, Russian State Youth Library (Russian Federation)

 

The conference closing plenary meeting ended up with an impressive speech by Aharon AVIRAM, Chairman of the Israeli Committee for the UNESCO Information for All Programme, Professor of the Ben-Gurion University (Israel). He proposed a «green policy» concept as an alternative of digital development.

  

Plenary meetings, sections and roundtables were moderated by: 

 

• Evgeny KUZMIN, Chair, Intergovernmental Council for the UNESCO Information for All Programme; Chair, Russian Committee for the UNESCO Information for All Programme; President, Interregional Library Cooperation Centre (Russian Federation)
• Irina TRUTNEVA, Deputy Head of Government of the Sakhalin Region (Russian Federation)
• Jarosław LIPSZYC, President, Modern Poland Foundation (Poland)
• Vladimir NECHAYEV, Rector, Sholokhov Moscow State University for the Humanities (Russian Federation)
• Ludovit MOLNAR, President, Slovak National Commission for UNESCO; Professor, Slovak University of Technology (Slovakia)
• Tatiana MUROVANA, Executive Secretary, Russian Committee for the UNESCO Information for All Programme (Russian Federation)
• Indrajit BANERJEE, Director of the UNESCO Knowledge Societies Division (UNESCO)
• Verena METZE-MANGOLD, Vice President, German National Commission for UNESCO (Germany)
• Irina GONYUKOVA, Minister of Culture of the Sakhalin Region (Russian Federation)
• Andrejs VASILJEVS, Member of the Bureau, Intergovernmental Council for the UNESCO Information for All Programme; Chairman of the Board, Tilde Company (Latvia)
• Daniel PRADO, Executive Secretary, MAYAA World Network for Linguistic Diversity (Argentina)
• Vladimir FIRSOV, President, Russian Library Association; Deputy Director-General, National Library of Russia (Russian Federation)
• Rosa BERDIGALIEVA, President, Kazakhstan Library Association; Director of the Library, Kurmangazy Kazakh National Conservatory (Kazakhstan)
• Alfredo RONCHI, Secretary, European Commission – MEDICI Framework of Cooperation; Professor, University of Milan (Italy)
• László KARVALICS, Chairman, Hungarian Committee for the UNESCO Information for All Programme; Associate Professor, University of Szeged (Hungary)
• Winnie VITZANSKY, Member, Danish National Commission for UNESCO (Denmark)
• Susana FINQUELIEVICH, Director of the Research Programme on Information Society, National Council for Scientific and Technical Research, University of Buenos Aires (Argentina)

  

Working Group drafting the conference final document was headed by Victor Montviloff, International Consultant, Former UNESCO Staff Member (France). The draft document adopted by the conference as the Sakhalin Declaration is now being finalized and will soon be published. Conference materials will also be published in English and Russian.

 

UPD: The Sakhalin Declaration on Internet and Socio-Cultural Transformations

 

 

 

 

Conference participants (full size)

 

 

Conference Opening Gala 

 

 

Alexander KHOROSHAVIN, Governor of the Sakhalin Region (left) и Evgeny KUZMIN, Chair of the Intergovernmental Council and the Russian Committee for the UNESCO Information for All Programme; President of the Interregional Library Cooperation Centre 

 

 

 

Mikhail SESLAVINSKY, Head of the Federal Agency for Press and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation 

 

 

Aleksei VOLIN, Deputy Minister of Communications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation 

 

 

 

Indrajit BANERJEE, Director of the UNESCO Knowledge Societies Division (left), and Dmitry BRATYNENKO, Deputy Governor of the Sakhalin Region

 

 

Sinikka SIPILÄ, President of the IFLA, Secretary General of the Finnish Library Association

 

 

Grigory ORDZHONIKIDZE, Deputy Director of the International Organizations Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affaires of the Russian Federation, Secretary-General of the Commission of the Russian Federation for UNESCO

 

 

Press conference 

 

 

Irina TRUTNEVA, Deputy Head of Government of the Sakhalin Region

 

  

Ludovit MOLNAR, President of the Slovak National Commission for UNESCO, Professor of the Slovak University of Technology

 

 

Irina GONYUKOVA, Minister of Culture of the Sakhalin Region 

 

 

 

Sergey BAKEIKIN, Executive Director of the Interregional Library Cooperation Centre, Deputy Chair of the Russian Committee of the UNESCO Information for All Programme

 

 

 

Aharon AVIRAM, Chairman of the Israeli Committee for the UNESCO Information for All Programme, Professor of the Ben-Gurion University (Israel) 

 

 

Tatiana MUROVANA, Executive Secretary of the Russian Committee for the UNESCO Information for All Programme 

 

 

 

Alfredo RONCHI, Secretary of the European Commission – MEDICI Framework of Cooperation, Professor of the University of Milan (Italy)

 

 

Vladimir NECHAYEV, Rector of the Sholokhov Moscow State University for the Humanities (Russian Federation)

 

 

Andrejs VASILJEVS, Member of the Bureau of the Intergovernmental Council, UNESCO Information for All Programme; Chairman of the Board, Tilde Company (Latvia)

 

 

Irina REVA, Councellor of the Library&Archives Division, Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation

 

 

Andrey PELIPENKO, Chief Research Associate of the Research and Development Centre, Moscow Psycho-Social University (Russian Federation)

 

 

Daniel PRADO, Executive Secretary of the MAYAA World Network for Linguistic Diversity (Argentina)

 

 

Yuri CHYORNIY, Deputy Director of the Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences, Russian Academy of Sciences 

 

 

 

Victor MONTVILOFF, International Consultant, Former UNESCO Staff Member (France)

 

 

Susana FINQUELIEVICH, Director of the Research Programme on Information Society, National Council for Scientific and Technical Research, University of Buenos Aires (Argentina)

 

 

Dmitry IVANOV, Professor of the Saint-Petersburg State University (Russian Federation)

 

 

Maria Carme TORRAS CALVO, Governing Board Member and Division Chair of the IFLA, Library Director of the Bergen University College (Norway)

 

 

Michael GURSTEIN, Executive Director of the Centre for Community Informatics Research, Development and Training (Canada)

 

 

 

Marek HOŁIŃSKY, President of the Poland National Committee for the UNESCO Information for All Programme

 

 

Hamid ABEDI DOYOMI, Researcher f the Allameh Tabatabaeii University in Tehran (Iran)

 

 

Rosa BERDIGALIEVA, President of the Kazakhstan Library Association; Director of the Library of the Kurmangazy Kazakh National Conservatory (Kazakhstan), and Vladimir FIRSOV, President of the Russian Library Association, Deputy Director-General of the National Library of Russia

 

 

Dietrich SCHÜLLER, Vice-President of the Intergovernmental Council for the UNESCO Information for All Programme (Austria)

 

 

Daniel PIMIENTA, Director of the Networks and Development Foundation FUNREDES (Dominican Republic)

 

 

Piotr LAPO, Member of the Belarusian National Commission for UNESCO; University Librarian of the Belarusian State University

 

 

Winnie VITZANSKY, Member of the Danish National Commission for UNESCO

 

 

Ibrahim ABDUL RAHMAN, Director General of Information Department of the Ministry of Information, Communication and Culture (Malaysia)

 

 

Jarosław LIPSZYC, President of the Modern Poland Foundation (Poland)

 

 

László KARVALICS, Chairman of the Hungarian Committee for the UNESCO Information for All Programme; Associate Professor, University of Szeged (Hungary)

 

 

Vladimir KHARITONOV, Executive Director of the Online Publishers Association (Russian Federation)

 

 

Katsuko TANAKA, Assistant Professor of the Nagaoka University of Technology (Japan) 

 

 

Erizamsha HASSAN, Deputy Director of ICT Application Section of the Department of Broadcasting of Malaysia (left), and Thái Hồng LÊ, Principal Official of the Ministry of Information and Communication of Vietnam

 

 

Nikolay KHAUSTOV, Second Secretary of the Commission of the Russian Federation for UNESCO, Ministry of Foreign Affaires of the Russian Federation 

 

 

Alexander SHARIKOV, Professor of the National Research University – Higher School of Economics (Russian Federation)

 

 

Maciej GRON, Director of Department of Information Society, Ministry of Administration and Digitalization (Poland) 

 

 

Boris LOGINOV, Director General of the National Information Library Centre (LIBNET); Director of the Central Scientific Medical Library of the Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University (Russian Federation)

 

 

Nazeer HUSSAIN, Director of IT/Regional Centre, Higher Education Commission (Pakistan)

 

 

Leonid KONOVALOV, Senior Regional Strategic Account Manager of the Xerox CIS (Russian Federation)

 

 

Mohammed SHEYA, Deputy Permanent Delegate of the United Republic of Tanzania to UNESCO, Member of the Bureau, International Council for the UNESCO Information for All Programme (Tanzania)

 

 

Constantin RUSNAC, Secretary General of the National Commission of the Republic of Moldova for UNESCO  

 

 

Pornntip YENJABOK, Assistant professor of the Kasetsart University (Thailand) 

 

 

Liudmila ZAIKOVA, Head of the Centre to Advance Multilingualism in Cyberspace, North-Eastern Federal University (Russian Federation)

 

 

Fuad Ali AL YAMANI, UNESCO – Yemen Focal Point for Communication and Information, Ministry of Communications (Yemen)

 

 

Sergey BOBRYSHEV, Commercial Director of the ParaType Ltd (Russian Federation)


 

 

Verena METZE-MANGOLD, Vice President of the German National Commission for UNESCO (Germany)

 

 

Tatiana MANILOVA, Head of Artistic Organizations and Library Work Division of the Department of Culture, Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation

 

 

Renaldas GUDAUSKAS, Director General of the National Library of Lithuania

 

 

Valentina MALYSHEVA, Director of the Sakhalin Regional Research Library (Russian Federation).

 

 

Rolland RABESON, Director of ICT of the Ministry of National Education of Madagascar

 

 

Yekaterina SHAPINSKAYA, Chief Research Associate of the Russian Institute for Cultural Research (Russian Federation)

 

 

Irina  ZHILAVSKAYA, Head of Chair of Journalism and Media Education of the Sholokhov Moscow State University for the Humanities, and Vkadimir Nechaev, Rector of the University

 

 

Paško BILIĆ, Postdoctoral scholar, Institute for Development and International Relations (Croatia)

 

 

Oksana DMITRIYEVA, Director of the Institute of Humanitarian Technologies for Social Computing of the Sholokhov Moscow State University for the Humanities (Russian Federation)

 

 

Tigran ZARGARYAN, Director of the National Library of Armenia

 

 

Rexhep HIDA, Director of the Publishing House "Fan Noli" (Albania)

 

 

Irina MIKHNOVA, Director of the Russian State Youth Library

 

 

 

Irina SHEVCHENKO, President of the Ukrainian Library Association; Director of the Institute of Postgraduate Studies, National Academy for Senior Executives in Culture and Arts (Ukraine)

 

 

Ahmet ÇUBUKÇU, Assistant Communication Expert of the Information and Communication Technologies Authority (Turkey)

 

 

Svetlana DOLNIKOVA, Head of ICT Department of the Academy of Public Administration under the President of the Kyrgyz Republic

 

 

 

Conference participants: 

  

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Concert part: 

Hibla Gerzmava (soprano) 
 

 

Sergei Tarasov (piano)

 

 

 

Ethnic concert programme with participation of Nivkh, Russian and Korean performance groups