This edited volume brings together experts from around the world to provide coverage and analysis of infrastructure's role in Internet governance, both now and in the future. Never in history have conflicts over Internet governance attracted such widespread attention. High-profile controversies include the disclosures about NSA surveillance by intelligence analyst Edward Snowden, controversy over a decision by the US government to relinquish its historic oversight of Internet names and numbers, and countless cybersecurity breaches involving unauthorized access to Internet users' personal data. Much of the Internet governance ecosystem—both technical architecture and coordinating institutions—is behind the scenes but increasingly carries significant public interest implications. An area once concealed in institutional and technological complexity is now rightly bracketed among other shared global issues—such as environmental protection and human rights—that have considerable global implications but are simply incongruous with national borders. This transformation into an era of global governance by Internet infrastructure presents a moment of opportunity for scholars to bring these politicized infrastructures to the foreground.

Scholars from a range of disciplines discuss research methods, theories, and conceptual approaches in the study of internet governance. The design and governance of the internet has become one of the most pressing geopolitical issues of our era. The stability of the economy, democracy, and the public sphere are wholly dependent on the stability and security of the internet. Revelations about election hacking, facial recognition technology, and government surveillance have gotten the public's attention and made clear the need for scholarly research that examines internet governance both empirically and conceptually. In this volume, scholars from a range of disciplines consider research methods, theories, and conceptual approaches in the study of internet governance.

There is order on the internet, but how has this order emerged and what challenges will threaten and shape its future? This study shows how a legitimate order of norms has emerged online, through both national and international legal systems. It establishes the emergence of a normative order of the internet, an order which explains and justifies processes of online rule and regulation. This order integrates norms at three different levels (regional, national, international), of two types (privately and publicly authored), and of different character (from ius cogens to technical standards). Matthias C. Kettemann assesses their internal coherence, their consonance with other order norms and their consistency with the order's finality. The normative order of the internet is based on and produces a liquefied system characterized by self-learning normativity. In light of the importance of the socio-communicative online space, this is a book for anyone interested in understanding the contemporary development of the internet. This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

Contemporary governance is a contested field of competing institutional schemes and system of rules. This book analyzes new institutional trajectories, the renewal of old institutions or the emergence of new ones, to understand their interaction and how they can help renew collective action in a new world of global digital capitalism.

This book provides a nuanced exploration of contemporary digital data governance, highlighting the importance of cooperation across sectors and disciplines in order to adapt to a rapidly evolving technological landscape. Most of the theory around global digital data governance remains scattered and focused on specific actors, norms, processes, or disciplinary approaches. This book argues for a polycentric approach, allowing readers to consider the issue across multiple disciplines and scales. Polycentrism, this book argues, provides a set of lenses that tie together the variety of actors, issues, and processes intertwined in digital data governance at subnational, national, regional, and global levels. Firstly, this approach uncovers the complex array of power centers and connections in digital data governance. Secondly, polycentric perspectives bridge disciplinary divides, challenging assumptions and drawing together a growing range of insights about the complexities of digital data governance. Bringing together a wide range of case studies, this book draws out key insights and policy recommendations for how digital data governance occurs and how it might occur differently. Written by an international and interdisciplinary team, this book will be of interest to students and scholars in the field of development studies, political science, international relations, global studies, science and technology studies, sociology, and media and communication studies.

A groundbreaking study of one of the most crucial yet least understood issues of the twenty-first century: the governance of the Internet and its content

This book explores collaborations between the European Union (EU) and the CELAC ( Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) in science diplomacy, as well as the related areas of cyberdiplomacy and techplomacy. It focuses on how interregional collaboration could strengthen societal resilience in both LAC and EU member countries and contribute to realising the SDGs and Agenda 2030 objectives. The book explores the history of EU relations with LAC, and provides a conceptual basis for science diplomacy, including cyberdiplomacy and techplomacy in the context of international relations and diplomacy studies. It highlights how COVID-19 has accelerated pre-existing trends in diplomacy in EU and LAC, forcing diplomats online and making them confront scientific and technical issues as core parts of foreign policy agendas and future pandemic preparedness. The book also examines the role of science diplomacy between these regions in relation to the climate change debate and reflects on whether the EU-LAC collaboration in science and R&D can be taken to a policy level. It provides suggestions on ways in which the CELAC and the EU could collaborate, both in promoting a ruled-based cyberspace and in strengthening digital resilience, and situates this collaboration in the broader geopolitical, scientific and technological environments. Authored by experts in this field, this highly topical book is of interest to a wide readership interested in diplomacy studies, public policy, international relations, regionalism, and S&T studies.

A compelling argument that the Internet of things threatens human rights and security and that suggests policy prescriptions to protect our future The Internet has leapt from human-facing display screens into the material objects all around us. In this so-called Internet of Things—connecting everything from cars to cardiac monitors to home appliances—there is no longer a meaningful distinction between physical and virtual worlds. Everything is connected. The social and economic benefits are tremendous, but there is a downside: an outage in cyberspace can result not only in a loss of communication but also potentially a loss of life. Control of this infrastructure has become a proxy for political power, since countries can easily reach across borders to disrupt real-world systems. Laura DeNardis argues that this diffusion of the Internet into the physical world radically escalates governance concerns around privacy, discrimination, human safety, democracy, and national security, and she offers new cyber-policy solutions. In her discussion, she makes visible the sinews of power already embedded in our technology and explores how hidden technical governance arrangements will become the constitution of our future.

This book brings together papers that offer conceptual analyses, highlight issues, propose solutions, and discuss practices regarding privacy, data protection and enforcing rights in a changing world. It is one of the results of the 14th annual International Conference on Computers, Privacy and Data Protection (CPDP), which took place online in January 2021. The pandemic has produced deep and ongoing changes in how, when, why, and the media through which, we interact. Many of these changes correspond to new approaches in the collection and use of our data - new in terms of scale, form, and purpose. This raises difficult questions as to which rights we have, and should have, in relation to such novel forms of data processing, the degree to which these rights should be balanced against other poignant social interests, and how these rights should be enforced in light of the fluidity and uncertainty of circumstances. The book covers a range of topics, such as: digital sovereignty; art and algorithmic accountability; multistakeholderism in the Brazilian General Data Protection law; expectations of privacy and the European Court of Human Rights; the function of explanations; DPIAs and smart cities; and of course, EU data protection law and the pandemic – including chapters on scientific research and on the EU Digital COVID Certificate framework. This interdisciplinary book has been written at a time when the scale and impact of data processing on society – on individuals as well as on social systems – is becoming ever starker. It discusses open issues as well as daring and prospective approaches and is an insightful resource for readers with an interest in computers, privacy and data protection.

This edited volume presents ground-breaking empirical research on the media in political transition in Tunisia, Turkey and Morocco. Focusing on developments in the wake of the region’s upheavals in 2011, it offers a new theoretical framework for understanding mediascapes in the confessional and hybrid-authoritarian systems of the Middle East. In this book, media scholars focus on three themes: the media’s structure as an expression of governance, the media’s function as a reflection of the market, and the media’s agency in communicating between power and the public. The result is a unique addition to the literature on two counts. Firstly, analysis of similar players, issues and processes in each country produces a thematically consistent comparative assessment of the media’s role across the southern Mediterranean region. The first cross-country comparison of specific media practices in the Middle East, it covers issues such as women in talk shows, media’s relationship with surveillance, and comparative practices of media regulation. Secondly, actualising the idea that media reflects the society that produces it, the studies here draw on field data to lay the foundations for a new theory of media, Values and Status Negotiation (VSN), which evolved from the region’s unique characteristics and practices, and offers an alternative to prevailing Western-centric approaches to media analysis. Media and Politics in the Southern Mediterranean will appeal to students and scholars of politics, sociology, Media Studies, Cultural Studies and Middle Eastern Studies.