- Convenors:
-
Tony Roberts
(Sussex University)
Niranjan Nampoothiri (Institute of Development Studies)
Mary Abounabhan (Institute of Development Studies)
Caroline Khene (Institute of Development Studies)
Send message to Convenors
- Chairs:
-
Caroline Khene
(Institute of Development Studies)
Tony Roberts (Sussex University)
- Format:
- Paper panel
- Stream:
- Digital futures: AI, data & platform governance
Short Abstract
Amartya Sen argues that the expansion of freedoms & the removal unfreedoms are constitutive of development. This panel features examples of digital citizenship that expand agency freedoms & the power of digital authoritarian practices (surveillance, disinformation, shutdowns) to constrain freedoms.
Description
Citizens make creative use of digital technologies to expand their agency and freedoms in ways that advance 'development as freedom' as conceived by Amartya Sen. Digital technologies afford citizens new action possibilities to engage remotely in 'acts of citizenship' including but not limited to online deliberation, participatory budgeting and hashtag campaigns - even in countries where offline civic space it closed.
However, this 'digital citizenship' is increasingly constrained by repressive acts of 'digital authoritarianism' including state surveillance, coordinated disinformation, online gender-based violence and internet shutdowns. Removal of these "unfreedoms" is the focus of digital rights activists who seek to ensure that citizens are free to exercise, defend and expand their digital rights.
The panel will present papers that feature digital citizenship practice that expand agency, rights and freedoms, as well as papers that foreground the power of digital authoritarian practices. These episodes will be analysed through lenses including but not limited to Amartya Sen's concept of 'development as freedom' and/or rights-based development frameworks.
We welcome papers from all geographies and from scholars at all stages of their career.
Accepted papers
Paper short abstract
Analyzing UK and Caribbean Digital ID programmes, we expose how official empowerment narratives conceal agendas of control and colonialism. Disregarding inclusion and equality goals, Digital ID systems co-produce digital authoritarianism, serving surveillance capitalism over human development.
Paper long abstract
As Digital ID systems become a global standard, they are frequently promoted through optimistic official narratives of efficiency, safety, and transformation. Reimagining development in an uncertain world requires that we interrogate whether these technologies foster genuine digital citizenship or co-produce new forms of digital authoritarianism. This paper critically examines this tension through a comparative analysis of two distinct case studies: the United Kingdom’s proposed "Brit ID", and the push for digital identity across the Caribbean.
We argue that official government Digital ID discourses conceal ‘untold narratives’ of control, colonialism, and structural exclusion. Juxtaposing UK’s history of resistance to forms of ID and its recent failures with digital-only visas against the Caribbean’s reliance on externally driven development, integration and harmonization agendas (Grubb et al. 2024), we expose how lived realities often contradict policy goals. Therefore, Digital ID initiatives appear better explained by neoliberal logics of algorithmic power, profit, and colonialism (Bloom, 2017; Couldry & Mejias, 2019; Zheng et al., 2018) than by their explicit rhetoric. Furthermore, in both contexts, these systems disproportionately fail the most vulnerable, often exacerbating their marginalisation rather than alleviating it.
Theoretically grounded in concepts of technocolonialism (Madianou, 2019) and surveillance capitalism (Zuboff, 2023), our analysis suggests that these programmes reconfigure citizens as subjects of extraction rather than agents of development, creating mechanisms of "structural (dis)empowerment" (Mariën and Prodnik, 2014, p. 35). We contend that the current trajectory of Digital ID actively reinforces colonial-style dependencies and entrenches new infrastructures for surveillance and geopolitical control.
Paper short abstract
This paper analyzes how a Chinese NGO used big data for environmental accountability, expanding civic agency and rights. Framed through Sen’s “development as freedom,” and theories of digital citizenship, it addresses empowerment and authoritarian constraints in the digital age.
Paper long abstract
Digital technologies increasingly mediate citizenship, creating spaces for both empowerment and control. This paper examines a Chinese case where an environmental NGO leveraged big data to enforce policy compliance and corporate accountability.
By locating and linking publicly available ESG (environmental, social and governance) data with environmental standards (e.g., policies, regulations, and laws), the NGO exposed ‘frictions’ and ‘tensions’ in the actual implementation of those standards and acted accordingly to addressing corporate environmental accountability. Their work resulted in increasing public participation and eventually to policy adjustments, demonstrating how data-driven strategies can expand civic agency and rights.
The analysis draws from Sen’s “development as freedom”, emphasizing the role of information in enhancing capabilities, and rights-based development frameworks, which foreground accountability and participation. It also engages with digital citizenship theory (Isin & Ruppert, 2015) and data justice (Taylor, 2017), exploring how data practices enable new forms of civic action while remaining vulnerable to authoritarian governance. This duality reflects broader debates on technopolitics (Bijker & Law, 1992), situating the case within global discussions on digital governance.
By interrogating the tensions between digital empowerment and authoritarian constraints, the paper contributes to understanding how civil society actors in the Global South navigate power asymmetries through technology, (re)shaping development discourses in the digital age.
Paper short abstract
This paper examines Vietnam’s proposed digital citizen rating system, showing how “digital citizenship” is co-opted to legitimise state surveillance and exacerbate social stratification within a broader digital authoritarian regime that constrains citizens’ digital rights.
Paper long abstract
To accelerate digital transformation, Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security has recently proposed a draft Resolution on the development of digital citizens. The most controversial element of this proposal is a points-based digital citizen rating system, whereby individuals accrue scores through participation in state-approved digital activities. Citizens are categorised into three tiers of digital credibility, which determine access to benefits such as fee waivers for online administrative services and tax incentives. Although framed as a tool to promote digital inclusion and participation, the proposal has sparked public concern over social inequality, surveillance, and its perceived resemblance to China’s Social Credit System.
Drawing on Bacchi’s (2009) “What’s the Problem Represented to Be?” approach, this paper critically examines how digital citizenship is discursively constructed and mobilised within this policy proposal, and with what implications for agency, rights, and freedoms. The study draws on policy documents and media analysis, situated within Vietnam’s broader political restructuring, including the revision of the Cybersecurity Law (2025), the expanding institutional power of the Ministry of Public Security, and enduring practices of digital authoritarianism such as constraints on freedom of expression, media self-censorship, and weak data protection.
Preliminary findings suggest two key dynamics. First, the framework of digital citizenship is narrowly adopted to legitimise intensified surveillance and to reframe compliance as civic virtue. Second, rather than directly replicating China’s model, Vietnam advances a distinct strategy centred on a state-controlled “super-app” ecosystem that enables comprehensive governance of citizens’ digital identities, financial transactions, and online expression.
Paper short abstract
X’s Community Notes was sold as 'people checking people' a form of digital citizenship. However, with AI Note Writers, the platform introduces a form of digital authoritarianism that governs public knowledge by automating the production of context and narrowing citizen agency to procedural approval.
Paper long abstract
This paper examines X’s 2025 pilot of AI-generated Community Notes as a shift in how public meaning is produced and governed on digital platforms. Community Notes was presented as a participatory citizen-led alternative to top-down content moderation: users, as digital citizens, perform civic duties by collectively writing, rating, and deciding which annotations are helpful, and the transparency of that process confers legitimacy. The key question is who gets to author, legitimise, and circulate context in a platform now functioning as a civic infrastructure.
By introducing AI Note Writers the platform owners alter this democratic imaginary by relocating part of the labour of contextualisation while maintaining the appearance of community deliberation. AI drafting shifts the civic agency of contextualising X from digital citizens to algorithms and models. With this shift, Community Notes becomes an AI-scripted form of digital citizenship legitimised through platform definitions of credibility and usefulness.
The paper uses the concept of enclosure to describe how shared civic processes become platform-managed resources. Here, what is being enclosed is not content but the practice of collective interpretation: who is authorised to explain events and under what rules. AI-written notes shift this practice into a proprietary pipeline: models generate the framing, users validate it, and the platform governs visibility and criteria. This makes civic sense-making more scalable but less public and less contestable.
The paper argues that AI-written Community Notes risks turning participatory verification into an authoritarian enclosure of civic sense-making, with direct consequences for trust, democratic agency, and information access.
Paper short abstract
This paper examines AIdriven digital health platforms in India as contested spaces where digital citizenship expands agency and rights, while digital authoritarian practices—surveillance, exclusion, and algorithmic bias—constrain freedoms. Cases highlight co-production of capabilities and unfreedoms
Paper long abstract
This paper explores AI-powered digital health platforms in India as contested arenas where digital citizenship and digital authoritarianism co-produce human development outcomes. Platforms such as the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), AI-enabled telemedicine, and clinical decision support systems offer opportunities to expand citizens’ capabilities, improve health access, and exercise agency. Yet, these same platforms also expose users to algorithmic exclusion, state surveillance, biased decision-making, and digital marginalization, constraining freedoms and reproducing inequalities.
Drawing on Sen’s capability approach, the paper analyzes how real freedoms in health—the ability to access care, exercise informed choice, and participate in decision-making—are mediated by digital infrastructures. Case studies highlight citizen and civil society responses: the Internet Freedom Foundation’s petitions demanding ethical use of health data, NGO-led monitoring of telemedicine programs in Odisha and Tamil Nadu, and advocacy during COVID-19 AI-based triage implementations in Maharashtra and Karnataka. These interventions demonstrate how digital citizenship practices can resist authoritarian encroachments and expand agency.
The paper argues that human development in AI-driven health systems emerges from the tension between empowering digital citizenship and constraining digital authoritarian practices. By foregrounding resistance, advocacy, and community-led oversight, the paper shows that digital health platforms can become sites where capabilities, rights, and freedoms are actively negotiated, highlighting lessons for designing equitable, accountable, and citizen-centric digital health infrastructures in India and the Global South.
Paper short abstract
EndSARS protests showcased Nigeria 's digital twist where youths mobilized for police reform but the government hit back with shutdowns and surveillance. Using Amartya Sen's ideas, this paper argues digital freedom is crucial for rights and development
Paper long abstract
The activities of SARS- Anti Robbery Squad in Nigeria sparked widespread outrage when netizens began narrating the atrocities committed by this arm of the Nigerian Police, meant to protect but instead became a source of fear. In 2020, the #EndSARS protest erupted as a result of people's outcry on social media to end their activities. Nigerian youths led movements to mobilize and demand police reform, exemplifying "development as freedom" (Sen, 1999). This paper showcases the irony of digital citizenship in a restrictive society's digital movement. It explores the government's use of internet shutdowns and surveillance, highlighting tensions between digital activism and authoritarianism. Using critical analysis, the paper examines the relationship between digital citizenship, digital authoritarianism, freedom, and development in Nigeria. Applying Amartya Sen's capability approach, it argues digital freedom is essential for expanding agency and rights. The paper finds restrictive digital policies undermine development goals, emphasizing the need for inclusive governance. The author concludes that understanding the complex relationship between digital citizenship, freedom, and development in emerging democracies is crucial for sustainability.
Keywords: EndSARS, Digital Freedom, Digital Citizenship, Amartya Sen, Development, Nigeria
Paper short abstract
The paper examine the development freedoms and unfreedoms embedded in choices about DPI futures, arguing that DPI can either facilitate the inclusion and participation of citizens in civic and political life or automate and amplify existing patterns of exclusion and dis/advnatage.
Paper long abstract
Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) has become a site of development investment marketed as advancing SDG goals of legal identity for all and social protection provision. Critical voices express concern that DPI reproduces and automates existing inequality and in/exclusion. A stakeholder analysis of DPI actors in Ghana and Kenya is used to understand who is influential in shaping DPI futures, what interests are being advanced and who is being excluded. by current models of DPI and how is influential. This paper fills this gap in understanding who's freedoms are being expanded by DPI and who's expereiences unfreedoms and exclusion. The paper argues that many DPI futures are possible: ones in which DPI is an infrastructure of inclusive digital citizenship and ones in which DPI is an infrastructure of surveillance and digital authoritarianism. Through these lenses we uncover who has the most influence, power and freedom in digital public infrastructure and which excluded demographics need greater influence, power and freedoms moving forward. The paper calls for further research where power imbalances are investigated within specific contexts in order to build a future that protects agency and human rights.
Paper short abstract
This paper utilises Sen’s “development as freedom” to study how the #FixTheCountry Movement in Ghana (2021 - 2025) expanded digital citizenship whilst disinformation, misinformation and gendered online violence as well as cybersecurity governance produced new “unfreedoms” that chilled participation.
Paper long abstract
Sen’s “development as freedom” shifts attention from economic indicators to the real freedoms that people enjoy relatively to speech, expression, organise and influencing public policy. This paper deploys that lens to Ghana’s digital public space from 2021 to 2025, interrogating how digital citizenship expanded agency while digital authoritarianism narrowed it. This study examines three interconnected scenarios:
1.#FixTheCountry Movement’s adoption of hashtags, livestreams, and online deliberations to mobilise support and advocate for accountability and socio-economic justice; 2. The intensification of coordinated electoral disinformation and misinformation despite citizen-led verification and fact-checking efforts during the 2024 election cycle and
3.The consolidation of state regulatory power through data protection, cybersecurity, and communications governance and how these policy frameworks shape perceived risks of speaking and organising online digital spaces.
The study applies a mixed qualitative design by conducting discourse analysis of movement and counter-movement framing, policy document analysis of relevant legal and institutional frameworks in Ghana and semi-structured interviews with activists, journalists, fact-checkers, and digital rights advocates. The analysis develops two concepts. “Digital freedom work” captures the practical labour through which citizens translate online participation into concrete claims on the state and other power holders. Whilst “Unfreedom production” captures how surveillance-adjacent mandates, disinformation, and online gender-based violence raise the costs of participation and narrowing who can safely act as a digital citizen.
The paper argues that Ghana symbolises a central development dilemma: digital tools can widen agency quickly, but these gains remain fragile when safeguards and accountability do not keep pace with evolving control mechanisms.