TY - JOUR AU - Musiani, Francesca PY - 2021/09/15 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - TOWARDS AN INFRASTRUCTURE-BASED SOCIOLOGY OF DIGITAL SOVEREIGNTY PRACTICES: THE 'PILOT CASE' OF RUSSIA JF - AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research JA - SPIR VL - 2021 IS - SE - Papers M DO - 10.5210/spir.v2021i0.11993 UR - https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/11993 SP - AB - "Digital sovereignty" is the idea that states should “reaffirm” their authority over the Internet and protect their citizens, institutions, and businesses from the multiple challenges to their nation’s self-determination in the digital sphere. According to this principle, sovereignty depends on more than supranational alliances or international legal instruments, military might or trade: it depends on locally-owned, controlled and operated innovation ecosystems, able to increase states’ technical and economic independence and autonomy. Presently, digital sovereignty is understood primarily as a legal concept and a set of political discourses. As a consequence, it is predominantly analysed by political science, international relations and international law. However, the study of digital sovereignty as a set of infrastructures and socio-material practices has been largely neglected. In this proposal, I argue that the concept of (digital) sovereignty should also be studied via the infrastructure-embedded “situated practices” of various political and economic projects which aim to establish autonomous digital infrastructures in a hyperconnected world. Although this contribution is also a call for a wider and comparative research programme, I will focus here on the “pilot case” of Russia, which is the subject of an ongoing research project. Ultimately, the analysis of infrastructure-embedded digital sovereignty practices in Russia shows how the Russian discourse on Internet sovereignty as a centralized and top-down apparatus paradoxically open up technical and legal opportunities for mundane resistances and the existence of “parallel” Runets, where particular instantiations of informational freedom are still possible. ER -