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P044


"Infrastructuring" digital sovereignty: exploring infrastructure-based digital self-determination practices 
Convenors:
Francesca Musiani (CNRS - Centre national de la recherche scientifique)
Ksenia Ermoshina
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Format:
Traditional Open Panel
Location:
NU-3A57
Sessions:
Tuesday 16 July, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Amsterdam

Short Abstract:

This panel seeks to explore how the concept of digital sovereignty can be studied via the infrastructure-embedded “situated practices” of various political and economic projects which aim to establish autonomous digital infrastructures in a hyperconnected world.

Long Abstract:

Today, a number of high-profile initiatives across the globe are concrete implementations of the “digital sovereignty” principle: i.e. the idea that states should “reaffirm” their authority over the Internet and the broader digital ecosystem, to protect their citizens, institutions, and businesses from the multiple challenges to their nation’s self-determination in the digital sphere. According to this principle, sovereignty depends on more than supranational alliances or international legal instruments, military might or trade: it depends on locally-owned, controlled and operated innovation ecosystems, able to increase states’ technical and economic independence and autonomy.

The multi-faceted concept of digital sovereignty is gaining increasing traction, and is examined primarily as a legal concept and a set of political discourses. Recent work in STS has also begun to analyze digital sovereignty as a set of infrastructures and socio-material practices. This panel seeks to move further in this direction, by exploring how the concept of digital sovereignty can be studied via the infrastructure-embedded “situated practices” of various political and economic projects which aim to establish autonomous digital infrastructures in a hyperconnected world.

As the “digital sovereignty” label is increasingly mobilized, a perspective grounded in STS and more specifically in infrastructure studies is a useful and yet-underdeveloped theoretical and methodological innovation that allows to dynamically examine the co-development of material, institutional, and territorial components of digital sovereignty. The digital in “digital sovereignty” is ultimately a matter of situated and embedded materials that are of interest to politics and its scholars, and that specialists of technology and its sociology can contribute to untangle. The systemic transformations brought about by the “digital sovereignty wave” worldwide, in its variety of instantiations, must also be addressed as sets of practices of social ordering, intimately linked to how humans and organizations build, develop, use, co-opt and resist digital infrastructures.

Accepted papers:

Session 1 Tuesday 16 July, 2024, -
Session 2 Tuesday 16 July, 2024, -