This first edition of the European multidisciplinary conference on global internet governance actors, regulations, transactions and strategies (GIG-ARTS 2017) is dedicated to the formalization, understanding and discussion of global internet governance, in all its dimensions, as a diplomacy issue and terrain. A special emphasis will be given to the role of the European Union, its member states and its neighbourhood in a field historically dominated by United States interests, especially those of private sector internet giants.

Rationale

 “Digital diplomacy” has recently been the subject of significant debates, events and activities at a variety of governance sites. The concept is often used without having been clearly defined and delimited. For some, it is restricted to the use of digital means, especially social networks, by diplomats to practice a kind of “Public Diplomacy 2.0”. In others’ views, it extends to foreign affairs and international relations with regard to all matters related to the digital environment, including internet governance.

There is undoubtedly a need to better understand recent transformations of diplomacy in the digital era, their drivers and their nature, whether and how they might change European and transnational power relations and, ultimately, which values they carry and channel on the global scene.

Moreover, in the global internet governance field specifically, where the technical, social and market innovations are quickly developing, there is a particular difficulty to keep pace with numerous internet innovations and make informed choices and decisions on issues that may appear mainly technical. Most significantly, still unresolved, highly sensitive issues challenge national, regional and global policymaking, in terms of sovereignty and other political, legal, economic, social, cultural and societal choices.

Finally, this important issue must be put in the context of the history of institutions building regarding the internet. The United Nations decision, ten years ago at the World Summit on Information Society, that internet governance processes should be institutionalized in an open and inclusive manner through multistakeholder participation, constituted in this regard an important mutation in diplomatic practices.

This first edition of the European Multidisciplinary Conference on Global Internet Governance Actors, Regulations, Transactions and Strategies is therefore dedicated to the formalization, understanding and discussion of global internet governance, in all its dimensions, as a diplomacy issue and terrain. A special emphasis is given to the role of the European Union, its member states and its neighbourhood in a field historically dominated by US interests, especially those of private sector internet giants.

Programme

Day 1 – Thursday 30 March 2017

• 08:30-09:15 – Welcome of Participants
• 09:15-09:30 – Conference Opening

09:30-10:30 – Keynote Session 1 Undiplomatic Ties: When Internet Blocks Intermediation

Moderator: Meryem Marzouki, CNRS and UPMC Sorbonne Universités, France

• Keynote Speaker: Prof. Yves Schemeil, Science Po Grenoble (Grenoble Institute of Political Studies), France

10:30-11:00 – Coffee Break

11:00-12:30 – Presentation Session 1. Internet Governance as a Science Diplomacy Terrain

Chair: Meryem Marzouki, CNRS and UPMC Sorbonne Universités, France

Respondent: Katharine Sarikakis, University of Vienna, Austria

• Modes of Internet Governance as Science Diplomacy What Lessons for Europe from the US Experience? Francesco Amoretti and Domenico Fracchiolla, Università degli Studi di Salerno, Italy
• Framing Internet governance in the context of International Relations theory, Julien Nocetti, IFRI – French Institute of International Relations, France
• The Habitus of Academics in Internet Governance: An Analysis Based on Bourdieu’s Theory of Fields, Dennis Redeker, University of Bremen, Germany
• The paradox of globalised networks: internet governance between global consensus and local priorities, Julia Pohle, WZB - Berlin Social Sciences Center, Germany

12:30-14:00 – Buffet Lunch

14:00-15:30 – Presentation Session 2. Diplomacy at the Crossroads of Globalisation and Digitalisation

Chair: Eric Brousseau, University Paris Dauphine, France

Respondent: Robin Mansell, The London School of Economics, United Kingdom

• Digital rights and market in Free Trade Agreements, Maria Francesca De Tullio and Giuseppe Micciarelli, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II and Università degli Studi di Salerno, Italy
• Contested Understandings: Cybersecurity Governance, Louise Marie Hurel, CTS-FGV – Center for Technology and Society, Brazil
• The impact of information and communication technologies on a global participatory process, Jerome Duberry, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Switzerland
• National sovereignty, global policy, and the privatization of telecommunications, Claire Peters, Bristol University, United Kingdom

15:30-16:00 – Coffee Break

16:00-17:30 – Presentation Session 3. Case Studies of European Policy Diffusion

Chair: Mauro Santaniello, Università degli Studi di Salerno, Italy

Respondent: Andrea Calderaro, Cardiff University, United Kingdom

• The struggle over Internet governance as a matter of policy diffusion: reflections on copyright and privacy, Katharine Sarikakis, Olga Kolokytha, Izabela Korbiel and Krisztina Rozgonyi, University of Vienna, Austria
• The EU and effective multistakeholderism in Internet Governance, Trisha Meyer Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium and Jamal Shahin, University of Amsterdam and Vrije Universiteit Brussel,
• The Netherlands and Belgium European models for the governance of Media and Information Literacy (MIL): what lessons for Internet Governance (IG)? Divina Frau-Meigs, Sorbonne Nouvelle University, France
• The diffusion of European values in the digital age: science diplomacy and the right to be forgotten , Jean-Marie Chenou, Universidad de Los Andes, Colombia

17:30-18:00 – UNESCO Special Session

UNESCO project: Defining Internet Universality Indicators

Presentation:UNESCO will present and discuss its new project of Defining Internet Universality Indicators and seeks to engage with various stakeholders for their inputs and contribution. The project is an immediate response and action following UNESCO’s adoption of ‘Connecting the Dots’ Outcome document in 2015 as its new approach to Internet issues as well as the successful development and application of the UNESCO IPDC Media Development Indicators. The project aims to elaborate appropriate Internet indicators which can serve to enrich stakeholders’ capacity for assessing Internet development, broaden international consensus, and foster online democracy and human rights towards knowledge societies engaged in sustainable development. This task will use the UNESCO concept of Internet Universality and related R.O.A.M principles as the guiding framework that promotes an Internet based on human Rights, and the principles of Openness, Accessibility and Multi-stakeholder participation.

Speaker: Xianhong Hu, UNESCO, France

18:00-19:00 – Cocktail

Day 2 – Friday 31 March 2017

09:30-10:30 – Keynote Session 2

Moderator: Meryem Marzouki, CNRS and UPMC Sorbonne Universités, France

Keynote Speaker: Prof. Joseph A. Cannataci, University of Malta and University of Groningen, Malta and The Netherlands; United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Privacy

10:30-11:00 – Coffee Break

11:00-12:30 – Presentation Session 4. Internet Governance Facing Digital Disruptions

Chair: Rikke Frank Jørgensen, Danish Institute of Human Rights, Denmark

Respondent: Jeanne Pia Mifsud Bonnici, University of Groningen, The Netherlands

• Opening the Black Box: The Search for Algorithmic Transparency in Europe, Rachel Pollack Ichou, UNESCO, France
• Not fudging nudges: What Internet law can teach regulatory scholarship, Chris Marsden, University of Sussex, United Kingdom
• Migrating Servers, Elusive Users: Reconfigurations of the Russian Internet in the Post-Snowden Era, Kseniia Ermoshina and Francesca Musiani, ISCC CNRS/Paris Sorbonne/UPMC, France
• Shaping words to shape policy process: discourse coalitions in the Internet Governance ecosystem, Mauro Santaniello and Nicola Palladino, Università degli Studi di Salerno, Italy

12:30-14:00 – Buffet Lunch

14:00-16:00 – Roundtable with Diplomacy Professionals

Framing a European Internet Governance Science Diplomacy

Presentation:Global internet governance raises specific challenges for diplomacy to make informed choices when faced with multifold digital disruptions, where decisions made at the national or regional level may have a much wider geopolitical impact. Moreover, recent global internet governance institutionalization processes have emphasized important mutations in diplomatic practices.

Other global issues such as environment, health, finance or world trade have already opened the way to a renewed interest in science diplomacy, as a means to address complex mutations of the global world politics, which are often characterized by their highly technical nature, but internet governance is surprisingly often neglected or reduced to its cybersecurity dimension in science diplomacy studies

Focusing on Europe as a global actor with comparative perspectives from other regions, this roundtable of diplomacy professionals aims at discussing, through some emblematic case studies, whether and how a European internet governance science diplomacy could be framed.

Moderator: Meryem Marzouki, CNRS and UPMC Sorbonne Universités, France

Speakers:

• Anne Carblanc (TBC), Head of Division on Digital Economy Policy, OECD, France
• Xianhong Hu, Program Specialist, Division of Freedom of Expression and Media Development, UNESCO, France
• Jovan Kurbalija, Director, DiploFoundation, Malta
• Elena Plexida, Policy Officer Internet Governance, European Commission DG CONNECT, Belgium
• Michael Remmert, Deputy Director, Directorate of Policy Planning, Coordinator of the Schools of Political Studies, Council of Europe, France
• Thomas Schneider (TBC), Deputy head of international affairs, OFCOM, Switzerland

16:00-16:15– Conference Conclusions

Practical information

Twitter: @GigArtsEU - Hashtag: #GIGARTS17

Mailing list for updates: https://tibre.lip6.fr/wws/info/info-gig-arts-2017

Venue and hotels nearby: http://events.gig-arts.eu/venue/

Conference Registration and Fees

Participants must register before March 15, 2017. Registration fees are 100€ for regular participants and 50€ for students showing proof of status. Registration fees include participant kit and all meals.

Please register at: http://events.gig-arts.eu/registration/

About the GIG-ARTS Conference

Organized by the GIG-ARTS Project (www.gig-arts.eu)

Co-Sponsored by the ECPR Standing Group on Internet and Politics, The Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNet), Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Supported by The French National Research Agency (ANR), The French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), UPMC-Sorbonne Universités, The Paris Institute for Advanced Study (Paris IAS)

The GIG-ARTS (Global Internet Governance Actors, Regulations, Transactions and Strategies) conference is a European annual multidisciplinary academic venue to present and discuss developments in Global Internet Governance (GIG) and their implications in and beyond this field of research. It is one of the outcomes of the GIG-ARTS project.

The GIG-ARTS conference aims to complement and bridge between existing venues, such as established International or European disciplinary conferences in the social sciences (e.g. IAMCR, ICA, ISA, IPSA, ECPR, EISA), where GIG scholars sometimes find their interdisciplinary research marginalized in terms of issues, areas and disciplines; or such as in the only venue specialized in GIG so far (the Annual GigaNet Symposium), organized as a pre-event of the UN annual Internet Governance Forum (IGF) since 2006, making it difficult to both focus on European developments and to accommodate a larger academic community than the one used to participating in IGF. The GIG-ARTS conference objectives are threefold: to foster the enlargement and diversification of this academic community in order to increase its visibility; to open more opportunities to young scholars, particularly from Europe and its neighbourhood; and to anchor its discussions in the European context, providing a space where the scholarly community can address regional challenges and contribute to regional discussions.

Each year, the GIG-ARTS conference will highlight a main theme. In addition to keynote speeches and academic presentations and discussions, at least one roundtable will feature a debate with practitioners around that theme.  The theme of the first GIG-ARTS conference edition in 2017 is: “Global Internet Governance as a Diplomacy Issue”.

Scientific Programme Committee

• Francesco Amoretti, University of Salerno, Italy
• Wolfgang Benedek, University of Graz, Austria
• Sergio Branco, ITS Rio, Brazil
• Eric Brousseau, Université Paris Dauphine, France
• Andrea Calderaro, University of Cardiff, United Kingdom
• Agnès Callamard, Columbia University, USA
• Joseph Cannataci, University of Malta, Malta
• Jean-Marie Chenou, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia
• Mikkel Flyverbom, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark
• Marianne Franklin, Goldsmiths, University of London, United Kingdom
• Jeanette Hofmann, WZB, Germany
• Rikke Frank Jørgensen, The Danish Institute for Human Rights, Denmark
• Joanna Kulesza, University of Lodz, Poland
• Nanette S. Levinson, American University Washington DC, USA
• Robin Mansell, LSE, United Kingdom
• Meryem Marzouki (Conference Chair), CNRS & UPMC-Sorbonne Universités, France
• Jeanne Mifsud-Bonnici, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
• Jo Pierson, VUB, Belgium
• Michèle Rioux, Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada
• Mauro Santaniello, University of Salerno, Italy
• Katharine Sarikakis, University of Vienna, Austria
• Joris Van Hoboken, IVIR, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Organizing Committee

• Eric Brousseau, Université Paris Dauphine, France
• Andrea Calderaro, University of Cardiff, United Kingdom
• Meryem Marzouki (Conference Chair), CNRS & UPMC-Sorbonne Universités, France
• Mauro Santaniello, University of Salerno, Italy