'Mikkel Flyverbom's The Power of Networks is a timely and important contribution to the emerging interdisciplinary study of cyberspace politics. In an exceptionally well written and researched book, Flyverbom employs a form of ethnographic method to uncover the grounded practices that inform the many 'hybrid forums' and 'entangled authorities' of Internet governance. The book will be of interest to those who want a deeper understanding of the complexity and nuance of the many social forces shaping global cyberspace today.' Ronald J. Deibert, University of Toronto, Canada'Flyverbom presents an original ethnography of the political ordering processes of the digital revolution. He lays bare the relational practices within hybrid global forums in which multiple actors are mobilized to participate, contest, and dialogue. The book makes an important contribution to emergent global politics governing technologies, networks, meanings, and people within the United Nations system.' J.P. Singh, Georgetown University, US With an ever-growing number of users, the Internet is central to the processes of globalization, cultural formations, social encounters and economic development. These aside, it is also fast becoming an important political domain. Struggles over disclosure, access and governance are only the most visible signs that the Internet is quickly becoming a site of fierce political conflict involving states, technical groups, business and civil society. As the debate over the global politics of the Internet intensifies, this book will be a valuable guide to anyone seeking to understand the emergence, organization and shape of this new issue. In this vivid study, Mikkel Flyverbom captures how questions about the digital divide and the information revolution, dialogues with stakeholders, and networked forms of organization have become key features of the global politics of the Internet. Tracing the making and stabilization of this transnational issue in and around the United Nations over almost a decade, this book demonstrates how multi-stakeholder networks make new political domains accessible and unsettle established ways of organizing transnational governance. The Power of Networks offers a rich account of the practices and effects of organizing global politics and governance through dialogues and collaborations among governments, business and societies the world over. Offering a novel analytical vocabulary for the study of ordering, governance and organization in global politics, and its relationship to the growth of the Internet, this innovative ethnographic study of hybrid organizations and entangled forms of power in global politics shows how insights from actor-network theory and the Foucauldian governmentality literature can reinvigorate studies of transnational governance and organizational processes. It will appeal to anyone interested in emergent network issues in global politics, as well as practitioners and researchers focusing on multi-stakeholder processes, and students and scholars searching for a fresh perspective on organization, power and global politics.

We live in times of transparency. Digital technologies expose everything we do, like, and search for, and it is difficult to remain private and out of sight. Meanwhile, many people are concerned about the unchecked powers of tech giants and the hidden operations of big data, artificial intelligence and algorithms and call for more openness and insight. How do we - as individuals, companies and societies - deal with these technological and social transformations? Seen through the prism of digital technologies and data, our lives take new shapes and we are forced to manage our visibilities carefully. This book challenges common ways of thinking about transparency, and argues that the management of visibilities is a crucial, but overlooked force that influences how people live, how organizations work, and how societies and politics operate in a digital, datafied world.

Scholars from across law and internet and media studies examine the human rights implications of today's platform society. Today such companies as Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter play an increasingly important role in how users form and express opinions, encounter information, debate, disagree, mobilize, and maintain their privacy. What are the human rights implications of an online domain managed by privately owned platforms? According to the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, adopted by the UN Human Right Council in 2011, businesses have a responsibility to respect human rights and to carry out human rights due diligence. But this goal is dependent on the willingness of states to encode such norms into business regulations and of companies to comply. In this volume, contributors from across law and internet and media studies examine the state of human rights in today's platform society. The contributors consider the "datafication" of society, including the economic model of data extraction and the conceptualization of privacy. They examine online advertising, content moderation, corporate storytelling around human rights, and other platform practices. Finally, they discuss the relationship between human rights law and private actors, addressing such issues as private companies' human rights responsibilities and content regulation. Contributors Anja Bechmann, Fernando Bermejo, Agnes Callamard, Mikkel Flyverbom, Rikke Frank Jorgensen, Molly K. Land, Tarlach McGonagle, Jens-Erik Mai, Joris van Hoboken, Glen Whelan, Jillian C. York, Shoshana Zuboff, Ethan Zuckerman Open access edition published with generous support from Knowledge Unlatched and the Danish Council for Independent Research.

We live in times of transparency. Digital technologies expose everything we do, like, and search for, and it is difficult to remain private and out of sight. Meanwhile, many people are concerned about the unchecked powers of tech giants and the hidden operations of big data, artificial intelligence and algorithms and call for more openness and insight. How do we - as individuals, companies and societies - deal with these technological and social transformations? Seen through the prism of digital technologies and data, our lives take new shapes and we are forced to manage our visibilities carefully. This book challenges common ways of thinking about transparency, and argues that the management of visibilities is a crucial, but overlooked force that influences how people live, how organizations work, and how societies and politics operate in a digital, datafied world.