Dennis Redeker
University of Bremen
Fellow at CAIS from April to September 2021
University of Bremen
Fellow at CAIS from April to September 2021
Amid the global COVID-19 pandemic, nation states adopted policies that can limit the spread of the virus or misinformation about it. Some of the policies swiftly adopted have caused uproar among activists, who fear that human rights on the Internet are rolled back. This re-emergence of state authority as the spirit of the hour may be yet another stride in the slow movement towards sovereigntism in Internet governance.
This project analyzes the reactions to these policies by transnational civil society as a struggle between the emergent approaches of sovereigntism on the one hand, and rights-focused digital constitutionalism on the other hand. I will map and analyze the positions, mobilization strategies and resilience of transnational civil society actors to the enacted policies. How and to what extent does transnational civil society react by calling for a further constitutionalization of the Internet as a reaction to state power, thereby defending digital constitutionalism?