CriCon

Current major policy concerns about the governance of information and telecommunication infrastructures focus on three clusters of issues: privacy and the security of infrastructures; carrying capacity and interoperability of networks and their stability under various conditions of use; engagement of citizens in securing their welfare and rights in the governance of big data, and inclusion in the design practices of innovators and developers. These challenges shape not only national but also transnational policy priorities. It is exemplary of this that in the recently publicised European digital agenda, the issues of security, inclusion, stability and standardisation emerge as major priorities. In this framework, the governance of new sociotechnical entities within these three clusters have become central for policy-making, policy analysis and academic scrutiny. The centrality of governance stems from the technological innovations and socio-political changes which are shaping the challenges that information and communication technologies are facing. On the one hand, critical events such as terrorist attacks, natural catastrophes, accidents and the emerging cyber culture are transforming the information and communication technologies governance regime. On the other hand, new technological innovations like the ‘internet of things’, smart cities and smart phones are constantly introducing socio-economic and legal challenges. Contemporary studies on governance stress the importance of multilevel analysis as well as the understanding of governance as governing. Governance as governing is perceived as deliberate action space creation by state priorities, corporate interests and civil society engagement. In this space, technologies and innovations acquire meanings, uses and value. The conceptualisation, capacity, and capability allocation and creation, politics of expertise, and knowledge management are parts of a dynamic process of governance performed in this action space. The understanding of governance in such a multilevel and multi-actor framework proves to be challenging to the primary actors in the spheres of policy- making and civil society. The aim of the proposed project is to provide a technological and conceptual tool of analysis to answer this complexity. The ultimate goal of the project is to produce a digital platform which will serve as a historically- informed policy-making and citizen engagement tool in critical techno-political episodes concerning the telecommunications networks in three very particular geographies: Greece, Turkey and Cyprus. The particularities of these three countries stem from their complex experience of multiple governance regime transitions originating from local/regional socio-political challenges, their shared history of violence and tensions, and diverse relations with Europe. The proposed platform will be produced, based upon comprehensive field research, in order to reconstruct episodes that have been critical in the co-production of governance and telecommunications networks in each country. These will reveal accounts of states’ re-production and re-organisation in three clusters of telecommunications network issues in a region which differs qualitatively in multiple ways, both from European and Middle Eastern contexts. The research will provide insights into the regime making of each country, the transnational and geopolitical shaping of infrastructures and networks, the role of critical issues such as immigration in configuring and legitimising specific technologies and innovations, and the cultures of surveillance in informing state and corporate policies in the management of information and telecommunications. The digital platform will employ novel technologies, from event-based data modelling (temporal and provenance analysis), data management (e.g. digital libraries, linked open data) and data visualisation domains to provide an intuitive and semantically rich presentation of these episodes with advanced functionalities for interactive storytelling across these countries.
The project is hosted by the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.