The Geopolitics of Internet Governance: Evaluating Civil Society at RightsCon

• In Event: Future Directions in the Politics of Data and Internet Governance

Abstract

Multistakeholderism, as enacted at the Internet Governance Forum and in other global institutions, promises a more equitable, representative, and democratic mode of governance for internet policy and governance, especially by including civil society alongside corporate, state, and private stakeholders. This potential has expanded as internet governance forums shifted online during the pandemic, eliminating travel barriers faced by civil society groups in less wealthy and/or further states. Therefore, scholars have studied civil society participation in internet governance events from the first phase of the World Summit on the Information Society through to the most recent IGF in an effort to better understand how civil society shapes internet policy through multistakeholderism.

However, the category of civil society itself is not well understood (see: Tjahja et al., 2021), and thus it is not always clear who is included in this stakeholder group. This is an important question because the inclusion of civil society is a key component of multistakeholderism’s democratizing potential.

This study addresses this question by examining civil society representation at the annual RightsCon conference, a global convening of digital rights activists. This conference is examined not as a particular case study but rather as an ideal site of civil society discourse, as RightsCon plays an increasingly important role in setting the global civil society agenda that is then reflected in other internet governance arenas, such as the IGF. This study is conducted through a meso-level discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1995) that analyzes the institutional context for discursive production, analyzing the RightsCon program through a critical geopolitical rubric. This approach builds on and also adds to the methodological approaches to studying internet policy discourse (e.g. Epstein et al., 2014a; Epstein et al., 2014b; Gurumurthy & Chami, 2016; Milan & ten Oever, 2017; Pohle, 2016; Wolff, 2016) in order to continue “opening the black box of multistakeholder policymaking… [through the] conflictual co-production of discourse in policy debates” (Pohle, 2016, p. 3). The data set includes 992 sessions coded by topic and theme, and 504 civil society organizations coded by geopolitical region and scope.

This study presents three findings. First, and least surprisingly, that organizations that represent interests from the global North and West are highly over-represented overall, although it also measures more precisely representation from all geopolitical regions. Second, it finds that 49% of global North and West organizations claim authority over global issues. Third, it finds that global North and West organizations shape policy discourse by driving specific topics such as misinformation, privacy, and internet shutdowns. This study offers a quantified assessment of the scale and shape of over-representation in internet policy discourse specifically among civil society. Finally, conceptual implications are discussed, including validating earlier critiques of multistakeholderism as less democratizing in reality than in theory, operationalizing critiques of civil society definitions in internet governance, and validating conferences as valuable sites of research.

References:

Epstein, D., Farina, C., & Heidt, J. (2014a). The value of words: Narrative as evidence in policy making. Evidence & Policy: A Journal of Research, Debate and Practice, 10(2), 243–258. https://doi.org/10.1332/174426514X13990325021128

Epstein, D., Roth, M. C., & Baumer, E. P.S. (2014b). It’s the Definition, Stupid! Framing of Online Privacy in the Internet Governance Forum Debates. Journal of Information Policy, 4, 144. https://doi.org/10.5325/jinfopoli.4.2014.0144

Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical Discourse Analysis. Addison Wesley.

Gurumurthy, A., & Chami, N. (2016). Internet governance as “ideology in practice” – India’s “Free Basics” controversy. Internet Policy Review, 5(3). https://policyreview.info/articles/analysis/internet-governance-ideology-practice-indias-free-basics-controversy

Milan, S., & ten Oever, N. (2017). Coding and encoding rights in internet infrastructure. Internet Policy Review, 6(1). https://doi.org/10.14763/2017.1.442

Pohle, J. (2016). Multistakeholder governance processes as production sites: Enhanced cooperation “in the making.” Internet Policy Review, 5(3). https://policyreview.info/articles/analysis/multistakeholder-governance-processes-production-sites-enhanced-cooperation-making

Tjahja, N., Meyer, T., & Shahin, J. (2021). What is civil society and who represents civil society at the IGF? An analysis of civil society typologies in internet governance. Telecommunications Policy, 45(6). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2021.102141

Wolff, J. (2016). What we talk about when we talk about cybersecurity: Security in internet governance debates. Internet Policy Review, 5(3). https://policyreview.info/articles/analysis/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-cybersecurity-security-internet-governance

Author

• Rohan Grover, University of Southern California