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GigaNet Annual Symposium 2021 (virtual)

GigaNet – the Global Internet Governance Academic Network – is now accepting extended abstracts for papers to be presented at its annual symposium. As of now, GigaNet 2021 is planned as a virtual conference alongside the United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF), held in a hybrid format in Katowice, Poland, on 6-10 December 2021.

Papers on any Internet/digital governance-related topic are welcome. Multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches are encouraged. There will be the possibility of a focused subset of accepted papers to be fast-tracked for publication in a relevant journal. Last year, a collection of papers presented at the conference were invited for a special issue of Telecommunications Policy. 

Welcome topics for this year’s symposium include, but are not limited to:

Internet Governance as a field of study

• Narratives, myths and frictions in the construction of the Internet governance field
• Internet governance cultures and power dynamics 
• Theoretical innovations and new methods applicable to Internet governance research

The evolution of Internet governance, institutions, and norms in the areas of: 

• Internet standards and protocols
• Internet infrastructure
• Platform governance
• Cybersecurity
• Governance of data streams
• Digital rights online 

Future-oriented Internet research agenda

• Emerging topics in Internet governance (e.g. environment)
• Digital sovereignty
• Interdisciplinary perspectives on the governance of new technologies (Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, virtual currencies), etc.

Internet Governance in time of pandemics

• New challenges and opportunities of digitalization 
• Health governance & COVID-tracing apps
• Freedoms, rights and limitations 
• Internet governance and emergency preparedness 

GigaNet is oriented around the presentation of research papers. The proposed extended abstract should be 800-1000 words long (excluding bibliography) and must describe:

1.   Research question(s),

2.   Data used, 

3.   Methodology, and 

4.   Main (expected) findings of the paper,

5. Contributions to literature and/or ongoing policy debates. 

Theoretical papers need not specify the data used but must have a clear research question and statement of the specific theories used and literature in which the analysis is situated. 

The extended abstract must be uploaded to the Easychair website by 17 June 2021, 23.59h (in the submitter’s timezone). (New extended date)

Reviews of individual abstracts will be double blinded. Please do not include names or any other personally identifiable information on the uploaded file or in the text of the submission itself on the EasyChair platform. (The platform records the author name(s) and contact information: the program committee chair will be able to see that information.) Full papers should only be submitted upon invitation, following the selection of abstracts. 

GigaNet encourages emerging scholars and researchers working with diverse methodologies to submit their work to the symposium. Proposals should be submitted in English. Participation in the GigaNet symposium is free of charge.

 Important dates:

Deadline for abstracts submission (extended): 17 June

Notification to authors of acceptances/rejections: 13 August

Accepted authors confirm attendance: 18 August

Full papers due: 15 October

GigaNet Symposium: 6 December

GigaNet Symposium at IGF – 2 November 2020

Join the debate on our live tweeting-> #GigaNet2020

Please register for the conference here. We will share the Zoom links with the people registered. There will be parallel sessions running in Stream A and B, with separate links provided. Participants accessing the conference via the IGF website will be redirected.

Steam A: 13:40-13:55 UTC – Welcome and Introductory Remarks

Dmitry Epstein, GigaNet Chair
Roxana Radu, GigaNet Program Chair 2020

14:00-15:15 UTC – parallel sessions 1

panel a1: Platform governance

Chair: Meri Baghdasaryan, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School (United States)
Discussant: Peng Hwa Ang, Nanyang Technological University (Singapore)

• The Regulatory Politics of Platform Content Governance: Institutional and Normative Constraints in the German NetzDG Process. Robert Gorwa, University of Oxford (United Kingdom).
• YouTube is not yet regulated by Ukrainian law: Internet regulation in the proposed draft law of Ukraine on the media. Svitlana Jaroszynski, Florida State University (United States).
• Democratic legitimacy and global platform regulation. Blayne Haggart, Brock University (Canada) and Clara Iglesias Keller, WZB Berlin Social Science Center (Germany).
• Reforming the liability of non-hosting intermediaries. Sebastian Felix Schwemer, University of Copenhagen (Denmark), Tobias Mahler, University of Oslo (Norway) and Håkon Styri, Norwegian National Security Authority.

PANEL B1: INTERNET GOVERNANCE AND THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Chair: Yik Chan Chin, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (China)
Discussant:  Alejandro Pisanty, National Autonomous University of Mexico

• Common Grounds to Protect IXPs: The Key for the Internet Resilience in Times of COVID 19. Patricia Vargas Leon, Information Society Project, Yale Law School and Tufts University (United States).
• When reality hits: the demands brought by Covid-19 and the lack of guaranteed Internet access in Brazil. Laura Pereira, UNESP (Brazil).
• Literature review and coding analyses of COVID-19 tracking mobile application of India. Abhishek Royal, Universitas Gadjah Mada (Indonesia) and Mohammad Atif Aleem, Tata Consultancy Services (India).

15:20-16:35 UTC – parallel sessions 2

PANEL A2: DATA GOVERNANCE

Chair:  Ioana Stupariu, Central European University (Austria)
Discussant: Claudio Lucena, Paraiba State University (Brazil) & FCT (Portugal) 

• From pandemic control to data-driven governance: the case of Health Code in China. Wanshu Cong, McGill University (Canada).
• A Data Sharing Discipline. Steven Weber, University of California, Berkeley (United States).
• Conceptualizing beneficial interests in the political economy of data: A theoretical inquiry. Arindrajit Basu and Amber Sinha, Centre for Internet & Society (India).
• The disregarded global potential of data protection law. Stephan Koloßa, Ruhr University Bochum (Germany).

PANEL B2: STAKEHOLDERS AND THEIR ROLE IN INTERNET GOVERNANCE

Chair: Alison Gillwald, Research ICT Africa & University of Cape Town, Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance (South Africa)
Discussant: Rasha Abdulla, American University in Cairo (Egypt)

• The role of the epistemic communities in the ‘constitutionalization’ of Internet Governance: the case of the EU High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence. Nicola Palladino, University of Salerno (Italy).
• Idea entrepreneurs: the case of the 2020 United Nations OEWG and Cybersecurity. Nanette Levinson, American University (United States).
• What is civil society and who represents civil society at the IGF? An analysis of typologies of civil society in Internet Governance. Nadia Tjahja, UNU-CRIS, VUB, Sunium (Netherlands), Trisha Meyer IES, VUB (Belgium), and Jamal Shahin, University of Amsterdam (Netherlands).
• Internet Governance in the “Post-Truth Era”: analyzing key topics in “Fake News” discussions at IGF. Chelsea Horne, American University (United States).

16:40-17:55 UTC – parallel sessions 3

panel a3 – GOVERNING STANDARDS & INFRASTRUCTURE

Chair: Bruna Santos, Coalizão Direitos na Rede (Brazil) 
Discussant: Farzaneh Badii, Yale University (United States)

• What rules the Internet? A study of the troubled relation between web standards and legal instruments in the field of privacy. Julien Rossi, COSTECH-UTC (France).
• Rising China and the global Internet: assessing China’s challenge to the global Internet Governance system and the international liberal order. Riccardo Nanni, University of Bologna (Italy).
• The Technology We Choose to Create: Human Rights Advocacy in the Internet Engineering Task Force. Corinne Cath, University of Oxford (United Kingdom).
• Norm conflict in the governance of complex, transnational, and distributed infrastructures: the case of Internet routing. Niels ten Oever, University of Amsterdam (Netherlands).

PANEL B3: CYBERCONFLICT & CYBERSECURITY

Chair: Amit Sheniak, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel)
Discussant:  Carolina Ines Aguerre, GCR21-UniDUE (Germany) and CETYS UDESA (Argentina)

• Proliferation of cyber norms: limitations of traditional diplomacy in discussing cyberconflict. Stefania Grottola, Global Studies Institute, University of Geneva (Switzerland).
• Information as power: evolving US military information operations and their implications for global Internet governance. Milton Mueller and Karl Grindal, School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology (United States).
• Cybersecurity governance through principles of international law. Rolf H. Weber, University of Zurich (Switzerland).
• Cybersecurity capacity building: cross-national benefits and international divides. William Dutton, Sadie Creese, Patricia Esteve-Gonzalez, University of Oxford (United Kingdom), and Ruth Shillair, Quello Center, Michigan State University (United States).

Stream A: 18:00-19:00 UTC – GigaNet business meeting

2020 GigaNet Symposium Program Committee

Program Chair: Roxana Radu, Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford & Geneva Transformative Governance Lab, University of Geneva

Alison Gillwald, Research ICT Africa & University of Cape Town, South Africa
Berna Akcali Gur, Kadir Has University Law School, Turkey
Carolina Ines Aguerre, University of San Andrés, Argentina
Corinne Cath, University of Oxford, UK
Courtney Radsch, Committee to Protect Journalists, USA
Daniel Oppermann, University of São Paulo, Brazil
Dmitry Epstein, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Edison Tabra, Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, Peru
Gianluigi Negro, University of Siena, Italy
Hans K. Klein, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
Jamal Shahin, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
Jat Singh, University of Cambridge, UK
Joanna Kulesza, University of Lodz, Poland
Mando Rachovitsa, University of Groningen, Netherlands
Maria Bada, University of Cambridge, UK
Matthias Kettemann, Leibniz Institute for Media Research and Hans-Bredow-Institut, Germany
Milton Mueller, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
Nanette Levinson, American University, USA
Niels Oever, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
Patricia Vargas Leon, Yale Law School and Tufts University, USA
Rolf H. Weber, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Thomas Winzen, University of Essex, UK
Trisha Meyer, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Yik Chan Chin, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China