Dear all, we are excited to announce additional confirmed speakers for the upcoming 2017 Symposium "Power Shifts. Media Freedom and the Internet": - Lynn St. Amour, Chair of the Multistakeholder Advisory Group of the Internet Governance Forum - Guy Berger, Director of Division Freedom of Expression and Media Development, UNESCO - Joseph Nasongo, Commissioner, National Cohesion and Integration Commission, Kenya They will join an already high-level group of experts in the symposium, including Chinmayi Arun (Centre for Communication Governance, Delhi), William Bird (Media Monitoring Africa, Johannesburg), Harlem Désir (OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Paris), Helani Galpaya (CEO LIRNEasia, Colombo), Mark Nelson (CIMA, Washington, D.C.), Nanjira Sambuli (World Wide Web Foundation, Nairobi) and many others: <http://fome.info/events/symposium-2017/programme> The symposium is organised and hosted by iRights.international (<http://irights.international/>) in cooperation with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung and will take place November 16-17, 2017 in Berlin. Please register here: <http://fome.info/events/symposium-2017/registration> ATTENTION: online registration ends November 8th; on-site registration will NOT be available. About the Symposium: In many countries, not only in the developing world, governments are pushing for more control over the Internet. Censoring content is a growth industry, and Internet and social network shutdowns in response to civil protest and unrest are on the rise. Online surveillance is exploding and people are being increasingly intimidated or detained because of their online activities. Therefore it is vital for civil society and the media to work together in order to shape the Internet of the future and ensure it remains in the service of democracy. And the role of international media assistance needs to be reconsidered in this context. At the 2017 Symposium of the Forum Media and Development (FoME) in Berlin, journalists, media managers, media development specialists, activists, academics and representatives from government and private companies from around the world will discuss recent developments, strategies and next steps with a range of international experts in the fields of media development and Internet governance. At the core of the symposium will be the following questions: - How to address Internet filtering and blocking in authoritarian regimes? - How to counter "fake news" without stifling freedom of expression? - How to minimize risks emerging from cyber security initiatives? - Should the media development community engage more in the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) processes? - Should media development focus its attention more to international digital media enterprises? - How to regulate or control the expansion of digital surveillance programs? - Should digital information literacy be more prominent on the media development agenda? FoME is an initiative of 20 organisations from German-speaking countries active in international media development, including iRights, CAMECO, Deutsche Welle Akademie, ECPMF, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Friedrich Naumann Stiftung, Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, IDEM, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, Reporters without Borders and others. For inquiries please contact fome@iRights.international All the best Lorena, Matthias and Martin from iRights.international