Nation branding and internet governance: Framing debates over freedom and sovereignty

TY - CHAP

T1 - Nation branding and internet governance

T2 - Framing debates over freedom and sovereignty

AU - Aronczyk, Melissa

AU - Budnitsky, Stanislav

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © Cambridge University Press 2017.

PY - 2017/1/1

Y1 - 2017/1/1

N2 - Introduction Scholarly inquiry into the dynamics of internet governance is dominated by attention to its legal and regulatory implications. In the United States, internet research centres at many major academic institutions are hosted by law schools. However, the law affects not only legal relations but also social ones, and the question of who controls the internet concerns many principles of action outside jurisprudence and policy. In this chapter we examine the extent to which the communication structures articulated by states (as well as other actors, including corporations, activist groups and non-governmental organisations) are integral to the ongoing struggle to determine rules of engagement on the internet. In particular, we consider the role of national ‘branding’, or the use of strategic communication by national elites to create and communicate a particular version of national identity for international audiences.As debates over internet governance have escalated around the world, state leaders have sought to contribute their particular national perspective, hoping to influence an outcome favourable to their jurisdiction. Creating an internet strategy has become a critical component of states’ broader approaches to international communication. Nation branding consists not only of conveying a positive national image and set of national values to an international community but also of developing what Monroe Price calls ‘strategic architectures of media and information systems’: large-scale, systemic attempts to control or regulate patterns of information access, distribution and expansion to achieve various national objectives.Attempts by states and other powerful state- and non-state organisations to control global media and information flows obviously did not originate in the digital era. Neither did the strategic narratives these institutions wield to garner support for, and/or suppress opposition to, their motives and interests. But the particular types of globality engendered by the internet have contributed to greater convergence of geopolitical, technical, and economic concerns, even as they have given rise to distinct cultural and political visions of how to resolve such concerns. As other chapters in this volume attest (see Oster's and Warf's chapters), there is a clearly demarcated geography in cyberspace, one that requires attention to the political and cultural contexts in which debates over internet governance take place.

AB - Introduction Scholarly inquiry into the dynamics of internet governance is dominated by attention to its legal and regulatory implications. In the United States, internet research centres at many major academic institutions are hosted by law schools. However, the law affects not only legal relations but also social ones, and the question of who controls the internet concerns many principles of action outside jurisprudence and policy. In this chapter we examine the extent to which the communication structures articulated by states (as well as other actors, including corporations, activist groups and non-governmental organisations) are integral to the ongoing struggle to determine rules of engagement on the internet. In particular, we consider the role of national ‘branding’, or the use of strategic communication by national elites to create and communicate a particular version of national identity for international audiences.As debates over internet governance have escalated around the world, state leaders have sought to contribute their particular national perspective, hoping to influence an outcome favourable to their jurisdiction. Creating an internet strategy has become a critical component of states’ broader approaches to international communication. Nation branding consists not only of conveying a positive national image and set of national values to an international community but also of developing what Monroe Price calls ‘strategic architectures of media and information systems’: large-scale, systemic attempts to control or regulate patterns of information access, distribution and expansion to achieve various national objectives.Attempts by states and other powerful state- and non-state organisations to control global media and information flows obviously did not originate in the digital era. Neither did the strategic narratives these institutions wield to garner support for, and/or suppress opposition to, their motives and interests. But the particular types of globality engendered by the internet have contributed to greater convergence of geopolitical, technical, and economic concerns, even as they have given rise to distinct cultural and political visions of how to resolve such concerns. As other chapters in this volume attest (see Oster's and Warf's chapters), there is a clearly demarcated geography in cyberspace, one that requires attention to the political and cultural contexts in which debates over internet governance take place.

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U2 - 10.1017/9781316534168.005

DO - 10.1017/9781316534168.005

M3 - Chapter

SN - 9781107142947

SP - 48

EP - 66

BT - The Net and the Nation State

PB - Cambridge University Press

ER -