WSIS Action Line C8: Key messages in preparation for the UNESCO MONDIACULT Conference in 2025

UNESCO Representative Laura Nunn Highlights Digital Transformation’s Impact on Cultural Diversity and Creative Industries

Laura Nunn, a representative from UNESCO’s culture sector, delivered a comprehensive presentation on the impact of digital transformation on cultural and creative industries, with a particular focus on the preservation of cultural and linguistic diversity. Her discussion revolved around Action Line C8, which aims to promote cultural diversity and encourage the production and dissemination of local content in the digital landscape.

Nunn outlined the three foundational principles of Action Line C8: the promotion and preservation of cultural diversity, the use of ICTs to enhance access to cultural institutions and expressions, and the support for local content and linguistic diversity. She highlighted the challenges posed by the rapid pace of technological advancements, which outpace policymakers’ ability to adapt, thereby threatening cultural diversity, artistic freedom, and cultural rights.

The COVID-19 pandemic was identified as a catalyst for increased online cultural activity, leading to a significant shift in the consumption of cultural content, exemplified by the fact that streaming services accounted for a substantial portion of music revenues in 2020. This shift has amplified pre-existing inequalities and vulnerabilities within the cultural and creative industries, such as the fair remuneration of artists, the informal nature of the sectors, and the digital divide in both access and content creation.

Nunn emphasized the importance of economic and social rights for artists, advocating for fair remuneration and the protection of intellectual property rights in the digital environment. She pointed out the difficulties in enforcing copyright laws online and the disparities in remuneration, particularly for artists in countries with less developed digital infrastructures.

The dominance of languages like English in the digital ecosystem was identified as a significant challenge to linguistic diversity, with minority and indigenous languages being overshadowed. This imbalance affects the visibility and discoverability of local content, with culturally dominant countries’ content being more easily found.

Nunn discussed the role of algorithms and the need for transparency in content moderation, underscoring the importance of transparency in the use of cultural sources to train AI models and in content moderation decisions to ensure fair remuneration for artists.

She presented UNESCO’s frameworks, such as the 2021 recommendation on AI ethics and the 2022 Mondiakult Declaration, as tools to guide policy action and advocacy. Additionally, the 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions was highlighted as a key instrument in supporting the development of dynamic cultural and creative industries.

The presentation concluded with a call to action for the WSIS community to support advocacy for the ethical digital transformation of the culture sector and to encourage cross-sector collaboration. Nunn advocated for the integration of culture into broader digital transformation discussions and for cultural actors to engage more actively in technological policy dialogues.

In summary, Laura Nunn’s presentation at UNESCO underscored the critical need for updated policies and collaborative efforts to address the challenges and harness the opportunities presented by the digital transformation of cultural and creative industries. It emphasized the importance of a human rights-based approach to ensure that the digital ecosystem benefits the creative community and the public at large, advocating for equitable and sustainable labour practices and safe working conditions online within the creative and cultural industries. The session highlighted the urgency of fostering cultural and linguistic diversity in the digital era and the role of international frameworks and conventions in guiding these efforts.

Laura Nonn:
Good morning, everyone. My name is Laura Nunn. I work at the culture sector at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. And I specifically work at the entity for the diversity of cultural expressions. So today, please bear with me, I will be on my own, but it will be fine. I will facilitate the session regarding Action Line C8 on cultural and linguistic diversity and local content promotion. So I really want to encourage you to take the floor whenever you want, and I will ask questions as well. So just as a little refresher, the Action Line revolves around three key principles. First, to promote and preserve cultural diversity. Second, to leverage the role of ICTs for cultural institutions and access to cultural expressions. And third, to support local content and linguistic diversity. So to start, I would like to give you a few elements of where we are at today in terms of the implications of the digital transformation and the rise of artificial intelligence on the cultural and creative industries specifically. So digital technologies have drastically impacted the way cultural expressions are created, produced, distributed, and consumed. A crucial issue today is that the speed at which technologies are developing far outpaces the amount of time policymakers need to respond to such challenges. So this really poses a threat to cultural diversity, artistic freedom, and cultural rights as a whole. What marked in recent years a turning point in the digital transformation of the cultural and creative industries, which encompass artistic expressions, creative expressions, as well as intangible cultural expressions, is really the COVID-19 pandemic that has led to an increase in online activity, which affected the distribution and access to cultural and creative content, and accelerated the digital transformation of the cultural and creative industries. Just to give you a number, in 2020 alone, 62% of total music revenues came from streaming. So that has, you know, marked a really turning point. What it has done mainly is that it has amplified the digital transformation, but also shed light on existing, before this digital transformation, inequalities and vulnerabilities of the cultural and creative industries in terms of fair remuneration of artists and cultural professionals, informality of the sectors, and of course the digital divide, whether in terms of access, but as well in terms of creation of content. So with the rise of AI and its impact on the film sector, on the publishing sector, on the visual arts, there is now a sense of urgency as it threatens the very nature of human creativity and may incur job displacement on a large scale for those industries. Last year, there were major strikes in the US by US writers and actors voicing concerns about transparency, intellectual property rights, and fair remuneration of their work in the AI ecosystem. And these speak to the tangible effects that are felt across the sectors. And generative AI raises multiple questions regarding the sustainability of the cultural value chain, in particular in light of the market concentration in the hands of large tech companies for creation and creativity. So the issue here that we face is that cultural policies responding to the digital environment are already behind in a way, and the multi-stakeholder governance of culture is often weak. And I say this not only for the global South, but really globally. And the reasons for that are multiple, but amongst them we can cite the lack of prioritization of resources for culture in government budget, the informality of the cultural and creative industries most often in most countries, or the lack of awareness as well of the contribution of culture, especially the cultural and creative industries, to sustainable development. So this poses a threat to the diversity of cultural expressions, but it has also the potential to actually prevent the cultural and creative industries from benefiting from the manifold opportunities that digital technologies and AI hold for them. For instance, it holds the opportunity to enhance creativity by offering new mediums for inspiration and collaboration. It also aims the opportunity to democratize access to creative tools and platforms, and potentially could reduce barriers for underrepresented groups. More than this, challenges have also arisen in terms of linguistic diversity, discoverability of content, and transparency. What we see today is that there is a marked imbalance with regards to the presence of linguistic diversity of cultural content in the digital ecosystem, whether cultural content is produced in original minority local languages, including indigenous languages or sign language, as well as cultural content that is being subtitled, dubbed, or translated into those languages. In terms of discoverability, we see that with the online digital ecosystem, we see that international content often comes from culturally dominant countries, which are more visible. That in turn means that for national and local content from countries with smaller cultural markets is becoming less discoverable. The issue of transparency is also central to the cultural and creative industries, notably on transparencies of cultural sources used to train the model AI, and transparency on how content is used. This is crucial because from this, fair remuneration can be negotiated for artists, if indeed we have transparency over this. There is also an issue of transparency in content moderation decisions, which is often automated, which means that according to automated arbitrary rules, artistic work can actually be deleted from online platforms. Simply put, there cannot be a real dialogue between cultures if all cultures are not equal and do not have the same capacity to express themselves and to be equitably disseminated, recommended, and discovered in all their diversity, including online. I would now like to highlight a few instruments that we have at our disposal to guide policy action, to inform stakeholders and actors across the cultural value chain, as well as to conduct advocacy. I won’t mention all of them, but I will mention two milestones, which are the 2021 recommendation on the ethics of Artificial Intelligence, which specifically mentions culture and the potential threats of AI to cultural diversity, linguistic diversity, and the diversity of cultural expressions. Another milestone is the 2022 Mondiakult Declaration. Maybe you are not aware of this, but the Mondiakult Conference brought together 150 ministers of culture and they adopted unanimously this declaration, which notes really the structural impact of the digital transformation on the culture at large. This declaration is really important as well because it affirms culture as a global public good and it also calls for a standalone goal on culture in the next sustainable development agenda. So it was a pretty big step in the world of cultural policies. I will now focus a bit on the 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, which is one of the UNESCO instruments that guide the work in terms of the digital transformation of the cultural and creative industries. So for those of you who may not know, this convention establishes the right to adopt policies to support the emergence of dynamic and strong cultural and creative industries. It’s also a turning point in cultural policy, this convention, because it recognizes the dual nature of cultural goods and services, which is cultural, social, as well as economic. So it’s really the core of the convention as well. And it also provides a plan of action for member states and civil society. And that’s what you can see on the screen. It ensures that artists, cultural professionals and creative practitioners, as well as citizens, have the capacity to create, produce, disseminate and enjoy a broad range of cultural goods, services and activities, including their own. So as part of this convention, it specifically calls, so I’ve highlighted on the screen two areas of monitoring for the convention, but it specifically calls for policies and measures that support diversity of the media and the diversity of content in the media, as well as policies and measures that support digital creativity, enterprises and markets, and facilitate access to diverse cultural expressions in the digital environment. So that is just to give you a bit of the institutional framework and the international framework with which we work at UNESCO. And actually, from this, so the Conference of Parties of the 2005 Convention in 2019 have adopted an open roadmap on the implementation of the convention, outlining 20 reference activities and five priority expected results. In 2023, so last year, the Conference of Parties has asked the 2005 Convention Secretary to establish a reflection group on the diversity of cultural expressions in the digital environment, which would provide policy recommendations to parties to the convention. So this reflection group is composed of 18 experts, and they are actually meeting this week for the first time in Canada. So this is just to mention that to us, it clearly demonstrates the need from member states and actors all across the cultural value chain to speed up policy work with regards to the digital environments and the cultural and creative industries. So with this in mind, and kind of these international frameworks, I would like to turn now to the specific issue of economic and social rights of artists, cultural professionals, and practitioners in the digital environment. So there is a consultation that was done with member states, with UNESCO member states, and according to that consultation, what comes out is that 46% declared to have policies, programs, or funding schemes that contribute to fair and equitable remuneration of artists working in the digital environment. However, the latter seems to be changing too quickly and too radically for governments to keep pace on those issues. In line with this, for artists to make a sustainable living and to have decent working conditions, it’s crucial to protect their intellectual property rights. And in this, it’s also important to provide artists and their intermediaries with legal knowledge and management skills to effectively monetize their work. However, substantial difficulties remain when it comes to effectively implementing and monetizing copyright and intellectual property laws within the digital sphere. And this is keeping in mind that outside of the digital sphere, intellectual property rights and the collection of royalties is still not a reality in many, many countries, and remuneration of artists is really lagging behind. So now with the digital sphere, it becomes even more of an added challenge. This difficulty stems from the nature of online content distribution and the ease with which control. content can be shared online and really creating challenges for copyright owners to trace and protect their works and receive fair compensation for their use. It’s also important to remind ourselves that digital transformation is being played out in different ways, at different speeds all over the world, in different countries. For example, in sub-Saharan Africa, a straight to mobile digital transformation is opening up opportunities for a huge diverse and useful generation of digital content creators, many of whom are artists. And this is in many ways a good sign and in many ways democratizing creative expression, while at the same time most creators lack access to basic economic and social rights. So in addition to fair remuneration, there’s also social security rights, pension rights, maternity leave, in an economy that is often informal and often hard to trace. So these models are meaning that those young full creators are banking on gaining exposure to the extent that at some point it will generate significant revenue. This model is powering large parts of the regional grid in Africa. Okay, all good. So this model, this economic model for creativity is powering large parts of the regional creative economy in Africa, from Afrobeat in Nigeria to fashion brands from Kenya to gamers in South Africa or graphic artists in Ghana. I also want to note that when referring to intellectual property, it’s important to consider two things. First of all, the dominant position of both a large competitive companies in the global market for copyright protected technological content and of countries, the dominant position of countries with large domestic markets who have become major exporters of cultural and creative products. So that it means that for countries with less extent of domestic markets, it’s actually more affordable to import cultural content than to create locally, and that really poses a difficulty for the diversity of cultural expressions. And for industries located outside those big markets, for the cultural and creative industries located outside of those big markets, reaching the level of production and exports of industrialized and emerging countries is a big, big challenge. And it creates a dynamic that most countries from the global south are recipients of cultural goods and services produced by these economies, and which complicates the artists coming from those countries to access international markets even further. There are some critics as well that note that copyright and related rights tend to disproportionately benefit major corporate players and the most renowned creators, rather than the majority among them. In the music sector, nearly all major streaming services use some version of the model that is called the big pool model, in terms of revenue generation for compensating artists. And under this modality, artists get a portion of a service monthly revenue based on the ratio of their plays to all the plays in the streaming industry. So this model particularly tends to benefit major label superstars who generate the bulk of their revenues through streaming. However, this really may have a profound effect on, you know, niche artists, local artists, local repertoire artists, especially in countries with smaller local markets. Another issue with the economic and social rights of artists and in this line with fair remuneration is illegal downloads, theft and plagiarism online, and the inconsistent global enforcement of protective legal regulatory and policy frameworks. And this makes it again challenging for artists to protect their intellectual property online. Additionally, there are to some extent a real threat to artistic freedom in the in the sense that artists often face censorship, self-censorship and online surveillance. Disinformation, misinformation and hate speech targeting artists weaken the protection and the promotion of the cultural diversity and ultimately threaten artistic freedom. This includes the surveillance of expressions for through social media, which makes artists vulnerable to suppression of their expression and or oppression. So the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, Irene Kan, notes additionally in this line the gender divide and that female artists are particularly targeted by online violence, sexist hate speech and disinformation, which aim to intimidate and silence their voices, which in turn undermines diversity and democratic debate and artistic freedom in the end. Another issue is the digital divide, of course, both in terms of access to the diversity of cultural expressions but as well in terms of creating cultural content and there are really inequalities of opportunities globally in regard to building sustainable artistic practice in the digital environment and many artists around the world lack the skills to embrace digital innovation and means they are not competitive internationally then with those who have the possibility to acquire those skills for artistic expression. So I just want to cite a quick example of a project we are conducting at UNESCO in Ethiopia, which aimed to increase the digital presence of female creators in the visual arts. So UNESCO supports this initiative and it’s really about building the capacity of those women to create fair market opportunities for them through the digital environment, so to showcase their work online, to engage with wider audiences and seize new opportunities and to access potentially international markets online. So this is why ensuring the rights of artists, cultural professionals and practitioners to fair remuneration, recognition of their work and socio-economic security in the digital environment, as well as fostering equitable and sustainable labor practice and safe working condition online within the creative and cultural industries is really crucial and it’s not only crucial for ensuring a human rights-based approach but it’s also crucial as well so that the opportunities yielded by the digital ecosystem benefit the creative community and the public at large. I’ve touched about this in the introductions because really digital platforms allow millions more artists to develop, distribute and sell their work to global markets democratizing creative expression, as I’ve mentioned in the beginning, and it also offers an opportunity for artists to collaborate internationally in enabling what we call digital mobility in a way that transcends physical movements restrictions that may happen with regards to the mobility of artists and online and digital platforms actually can make that happen. There is also a wide range of innovations in terms of creativity and artistic expression that are possible through those tools, whether in immersive and extended reality for the creation of new types of arts and expanding the horizon of creative expression and that would put artists really at the forefront of research and development in creative technologies and opening new ways of creating arts and engaging with audiences, so new experiments in terms of audience as well of artistic expressions. And the growth of online streaming is not necessarily a bad thing in itself, it’s the lack of regulations and inequalities that come from them and the market concentration in the hand of a few, but otherwise it actually provides, if well regulated, it provides a platform for the monetization of artistic work which can yield opportunities for young creators to actually make a living and a career in culture and in arts. So now I will move on to the second issue out of the many issues but which is related to diversity of cultural contents and particularly to linguistic diversity and it’s kind of the same dynamic, it’s kind of many many challenges but many many opportunities as well and I guess the culture sector is as well a bit globally and cultural policymakers are a bit unaware or lack skills and capacities to actually implement policies that will have an impact on the digital ecosystem and this is one of the things that we are trying to push as well for multi-stakeholder governance and in particular inter-ministerial cooperation when debating cultural policies so that other ministries that have the responsibility of the digital transformation can come in and bring in that expertise as well as civil society which usually holds a whole of knowledge on these changes. So with regards to linguistic diversity, the digital environment through cultural content distribution platforms offers immense possibilities to provide access to vast quantities of cultural content in a wide diversity of languages. So this subject must be approached in a broad and inclusive way to cover majority of minority languages, national and local languages and of course indigenous languages. However still in the digital ecosystem for the cultural and creative industries we can still observe the dominance of certain languages to name just one English and coupled with this obviously there is still the concentration of cultural offerings on major platforms as I have said before whose dominant position and business models are particularly based as well on recommendation algorithms and this could potentially reduce the profile and accessibility of cultural content available in other languages especially minority and indigenous languages. So for several actors across the value chain the situation poses not only a threat to the diversity of cultural expressions essentially but also a risk for the preservation of the languages and by extension their identity. Linguistic diversity of cultural content in the digital environment presupposes first and foremost the presence of cultural content in a multitude of languages for examples on platforms. So this constitutes the first challenge in terms of creation at the beginning before it’s disseminated it also needs support in terms of creation in those languages and as we can see there is a marked imbalance with regards to the presence of diverse languages in the digital creative ecosystem. One way out is to support online media diversity and a multiplicity of platforms of online platforms as we know media play a fundamental role as producers, commissioners, disseminators and mediators of cultural content. So just to cite one project as well that UNESCO has led in Mexico which aimed at enhancing the indigenous and community media sector including online as well as promoting cultural and linguistic diversity in the public and commercial media. two-pronged approach, fostering the emergence of online indigenous and community media that would then disseminate cultural content pertaining to those communities, but as well to make mainstream media, if we can call it that way, to actually regulate them so that they have quotas for content from those communities. Another layer of complexity that we see emerging with regards to linguistic diversity and the digital transformation is that now cultural content can now be subtitled, dubbed or translated by artificial intelligence systems. This is known as machine or automated translation rather than solely by human contributors. So again, it holds potential as well in terms of productivity, timekeeping, but as well to ensure linguistic diversity because of the speed of the automated translation. One issue that comes with that is that some consider those translations inadequate in faithfully reflecting what is expressed by the creators, such as intention or sensitivity, as well as nuance, irony or sarcasm. And the reason for this would be that automated translation uses statistics and probabilities to suggest a text in languages other than the source language, and thus there is no real analysis or understanding of the message being conveyed. And those systems are becoming more proficient in some languages, particularly in English, but as well in French and Spanish, more dominant languages. But this progress should be applied as well to minority and local languages and indigenous languages. And for indigenous languages, this point is particularly silent, salient, sorry, salient, as language is the main vehicle through which living heritage of indigenous communities often face hardship and are marginalized in a lot of societies. This is the vehicle to keep alive this living heritage and to be transmitted and contributing to a sense of continuity, belonging and mutual understanding, and also holds really philosophical viewpoints of the world. So this can be a major issue in terms of ethical translation of indigenous languages. And now we’ll move on to the third and final kind of big topic in relation to the digital transformation of the cultural and creative industries, which is the issue of discoverability and participation in cultural life, which relates more globally to cultural rights. So one way actually regulators and policymakers have tackled the issues of discoverability pre-online platforms was local content languages or social groups quotas for broadcasting companies and other. On the one end, this has worked really well. This has worked really well in terms of making, you know, diverse cultural contents, especially local content available. But it is to be reminded as well that quotas are not a magic solution to the lack of local productions or hardships that are faced by local creators. On the other hand, the applicability of local content quotas, as I said, originally designed for traditional and public broadcasting services, need to be rethought in this digital ecosystem. And this is because national regulatory frameworks are often inadequate in subjecting multinational companies of online platforms to national legal frameworks and to measures that promote and protect the diversity of cultural expressions. Indeed, this transnational digital distribution and broadcasting platforms are kind of evading national regulations that have previously set legal and technical obligation in terms of protecting local content, linguistic diversity and creators. So there is an emerging trend that is to consider the obligations that were previously set for more traditional public broadcasting to actually apply them to online service operators towards locally produced content. For instance, Mexico has been looking at the new federal cinematography and audiovisual law that seeks to impose to online distribution international platforms a 15 percent quota of Mexican production 25 years old. So there are policy regulations that are being developed. And there’s an added layer as well with this international digital creative economy. Major distributors of cultural content are now directly funding productions, which gives them as well the power to influence what cultural content is available to users online. So the transition from being merely broadcasters, distributors to producers of original content and video on demand platforms are giving much greater visibility to original content and exclusive new releases from their catalogues. And by acting upstream of the structuring of online offerings in these ways, the logic and forces which underlie the content industry and market, as well as the criteria governing production, dissemination and distribution of cultural offerings at the global level, do not spontaneously move in the direction of enhancing and promoting the diversity of national and local cultural content. The sense that those platforms that were distributors, which already gives them a lot of power in terms of what do they distribute, now they are producers as well of this creative content. There is also again the leveraging of algorithms to recommend content, which can hinder the discoverability of diverse cultural expressions and limiting exposure and opportunities for emergent artists or those coming from underrepresented communities. These major platforms, international platforms, without naming them, are often based in western countries and can be more likely to promote content that is produced in this and which can then contribute to a lack of representation and diversity. Just to give a little bit of a number in terms of policies, it appears that only 35% of member states have reported the availability just of statistics or studies with recent data on access to digital media, and only a handful of countries appear to have policies or measures in place to promote greater transparency in the use of algorithms. And where such measures are present, they tend to focus on the broader context rather than specifically targeting the creative sector, and there are many peculiarities, specificities of the cultural and creative industry that need to be addressed with policymaking in terms of recommendation and transparency towards recommendation. So this is why again encouraging the diversity of digital media, including the multiplicity of digital distributors of cultural goods and services and digital actors, while also ensuring visibility and discoverability of national and local cultural content can represent a potential solution. It’s a bit about promoting the diversity of cultural expression and promoting the diversity of the distributors, the producers, and the diversity of creators, and the channel through which creative, cultural and creative industries can thrive. So through one of the programs we have, which is aimed at supporting member states to create new regulatory environment for the cultural and creative industries, Uganda for instance has set up a national digital platform for local content called Kibanda Express, which was launched in 2021, and now the country is developing the skills of the audiovisual sector practitioners locally to access digital platforms, as well as raising awareness among the Ugandan population on the consumption of local content via digital platforms. And this is coupled by efforts obviously to bridge the digital divide and actually have people being able to access online content, which is not a reality in the majority of the countries. And I have five minutes left, and so I will stop there. Actually it’s the end, so for the last five minutes, thank you so much for your attention, and for the last five minutes I don’t know if anyone would like to comment, ask a question, or take the floor on these issues. I don’t know if it resonates with your work, culture is a little bit at the, you know, backside of the of those issues usually.

Audience:
Thank you very much for this presentation, very comprehensive. I think in the very beginning you started by mentioning the current WSIS, you know, description of the action line related to culture and linguistic diversity, etc. So in light of what, all that you presented, actually I think there is a huge need to improve or to suggest a redesign of the action line, and maybe I would be interested in, I mean, knowing your quick thoughts about that, how would you see WSIS evolving in getting more attention, giving more attention to culture and the digital, which was I think neglected for some time, and now is, you know, prominently getting visibility because of everything you said, basically.

Laura Nonn:
Yeah, I think WSIS would be actually a good opportunity, maybe indeed there would be, because of those fast-changing technologies, there would be a need to maybe update the action line in terms of the current challenges that the culture sector is facing, but the advocacy for the digital transformation and the regulation and the ethical of the digital, the ethics of the digital transformation in the culture sector, I think the WSIS community and this international platform can really play a role in this, in supporting this advocacy, and as well, crucially I think, is to mingle the sectors. As I’ve said before, I think one of the main difficulties is the silos in which we work, we work, and as well governments work, but as well actors work on the ground, and there are many reasons for that, pragmatism of time management, resource management and everything, but for this, this is really a cross-cutting issue that would require, I think, so more cultural actors to actually get involved into the WSIS community as well, to bring that side of things, that expertise, but as well really to benefit from the WSIS communities in terms of the technological policy and multi-stakeholder knowledge that this community holds for the cultural and creative industries, but now it’s speeding up, so hopefully, and especially artificial intelligence and the threat to creation and the creators’ very own existence in society accelerates this advocacy to put this subject way more visible on the international agenda, and the goal would be, there is the international agenda for culture through the Mondiakult platform, that’s one of them, but actually the goal would be to put culture in other spheres and other forums related to digital transformation. Thank you so much for your attention, have a good day, thank you, thank you very much, and I remain available for questions.