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#pre-AoIR: The Internet Rules, But How?

#Pre-conference Workshop to the AoIR 2016
The Internet Rules, But How?
A Science and Technology Studies (STS) Take on Doing Internet Governance
05 Oct 2016 | 9 am – 5.30 pm | HU Berlin, Dorotheenstr. 24, Berlin-Mitte

This pre-conference Workshop is part of the AoIR conference.

Over the last decade, the regulation and governance of the Internet at the national and international level have attracted growing attention by policy-makers and researchers. This is particularly the case in post-Snowden times which increased distrust of formal government institutions and their ‘dangerous liaisons’ with the private sector. Accordingly, observing and researching governing processes as they relate to the Internet is both timely and important.
Traditionally, researchers and practitioners in Internet governance (IG) focused on new institutions established to discuss and negotiate the technical coordination of the Internet or related policies. Recently, authors have criticized this institutional focus, and perspectives from Science and Technology Studies (STS) suggest to rethink and substantiate questions of ordering and governing the net. In this view, the ‘doing’ of IG more broadly consists in practices and controversies of the design, regulation, and use of material infrastructures, as well as digital uses and practices.
This preconference workshop seeks to nurture the growing interest in researching and observing IG from STS-informed perspectives. More broadly, the workshop aims to facilitate a discussion and an exchange of perspectives about the intertwined roles of design, infrastructures, and informal communities of practice in IG. This workshop is part of a broader effort of advancing an STS-informed conversation on Internet governance: it builds on the panel on STS perspectives on IG that took place during AoIR 2015 in Phoenix and a forthcoming special issue of the Internet Policy Review (to be published in early September 2016).

9:00Welcome
Keynote Laura De Nardis:  Internet Infrastructure Politics (and how to study this)
 9:45Session I. STS and Theoretical Perspectives on Internet Governance
Moderator: Jeanette Hofmann

  • Doing Internet Governance: Constructing Normative Structures inside and outside Intermediary Organisations | Tobias Mast, Markus Oermann and Wolfgang Schulz
  • Situated Governance: On Topological Limits to Internet Governance | Ashwin Mathew
  • Designing a Public Intervention: Towards a Sociotechnical Approach to Web Governance | Susan Halford and L. Moreau
  • Building an Authoritarian Counter‐Hegemony? Iran in the Global Debate about Internet Governance | Marcus Michaelsen
 11:15Coffee Break
 11:30Session II. Controversies: Unpacking Internet Governance
Moderator: Julia Pohle

  • Privacy Concerns in the Domain Name System | Samantha Bradshaw and Laura DeNardis
  • SNS Infrastructure as an Actor | Inbar Michelzon Drori
  • Critical infrastructure due diligence – ISPs, security and privacy | Joanna Kulesza
  • Migrating Servers, Elusive Users: Reconfigurations of the Russian Internet in the Post-Snowden Era | Ksenia Ermoshina and Francesca Musiani
 13:00Lunch
 14:00Session III. Round table: Doing STS-informed Internet Governance Research
Moderator: Francesca Musiani

  • Internet Policy as a Minority Rights Issue | Andrea Hackl
  • Search engine imaginary. Visions and values in the co-production of search technology and Europe | Astrid Mager
  • Searching the Governance in Internet Governance | Kirsten Gollatz, Christian Katzenbach and Jeanette Hofmann
  • Human rights and internet infrastructure. Sociotechnical imaginaries and grassroots ordering in internet governance | Stefania Milan and Niels ten Oever
  • Opening the black box of discursive production in multistakeholder policy-making | Julia Pohle
 15:30Coffee Break
 16:00Round table: Opening the Black Boxes of Today’s Internet (Governance)
Moderator: Christian Katzenbach

  • Laura DeNardis
  • Jeanette Hofmann
  • Tarleton Gillespie
  • Stéphane Couture
  • Dmitry Epstein

Organiser: Dmitry Epstein (University of Illinois, Chicago), Christian Katzenbach (Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Berlin), Francesca Musiani (ISCC – CNRS/Paris-Sorbonne/UPMC Paris), Julia Pohle (WZB Berlin Social Science Center).

The workshop is supported by the Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNet), the Internet Policy Review of the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG, Berlin), WZB Berlin Social Science Center, the Department of Communication, University of Illinois at Chicago, and the Institute for Communication Sciences (CNRS/Paris-Sorbonne/UPMC, Paris).

You can only take part in the pre-conference workshop as a participant of the AoIR conference. When signing up for the conference you have the option to register for this workshop.

Register now for AoIR 2016

Event date

05.10.2016 | 9.00 am – 5.30 pm ical | gcal
 

Location

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin | Seminar Building,  Dorotheenstr. 24,  10117 Berlin

Contact

Jenny Fadranski

Former Student Assistant: Human Ressources

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