Digital Sovereignty, but for Whom? Citizenship and Communication Governance in Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

Abstract: Media infrastructures, from undersea cables to satellites, constitute new regimes of governmentality by enabling and constraining communication flows.

Media infrastructures that carry the world’s internet traffic are critically overlooked foundations of digital sovereignty. As SpaceX – a privately owned satellite company – is on the path to become the main supplier of internet bandwidth around the world, traditional policy mechanisms that have governed communication infrastructures have been disrupted. This dynamic brings a series of regulatory challenges in geopolitical crises: shifting state borders are enacted and encoded through digital technologies, drawing links among layers of internet connectivity and the hegemonic regimes of surveillance and control they enable. In this paper, we document the case of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (2022-) to foreground an important precedent in the struggle over digital sovereignty.

Bio: Siva Vaidhyanathan is the Robertson Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia. He is the author of five books about digital and cultural industry and policy, including The Googlization of Everything — and Why We Should Worry (2011) and Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy (2018).

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