I currently work on several interrelated projects on the governance of digital technologies drawing from a wide range of theoretical and methodological approaches, including network analysis, content analysis, demographic analysis, historical narratives, and interviews.
The United States, the European Union, and China are commonly depicted as representing three competing models of digital governance. Their so-called market, democratic, and authoritarian approach supposedly reflects their respective preferences over which actors should control the development and use of digital technologies. We argue that more than representing different values, each model differs in how it resolves inherent tensions associated with governing a digital economy in a global context. When devising new digital policies, jurisdictions must navigate tensions between achieving three policy objectives: maintaining public control, achieving market dominance, and supporting open and interoperable digital ecosystems. Significantly, the more they push to achieve two, the more they are pulled away from realizing the third, reflecting what we call a “rubber band” effect. We use this argument to make sense of changes in the digital policy in each jurisdiction, highlighting in the process their greater dynamism than often assumed.
How do states react to the growing weaponization of digital networks? Following the Snowden revelations, highlighting the extent of American surveillance practices, various countries around the world adopted data localization laws requiring their companies to keep data about their users on their national territory under all circumstances (i.e., ‘hard data localization laws’) or in the absence of specific safeguards (i.e., ‘soft data localization laws’). These laws, in turn, require building new digital infrastructures for technological companies to be able to keep offering their services in these markets, with stricter measures imposing higher costs and notably requiring the building of local data centers. In this paper, we argue states will vary in their choice of data localization laws (hard or soft) and the costs they are ready to incur following the revelations of widespread American surveillance based on their geopolitical relation with the United States. Using a new dataset of data localization laws adopted between 1980 and 2019 worldwide, we conduct an interrupted time series analysis, highlighting that after the Snowden revelations, states geopolitically aligned with the United States are more likely to adopt soft data localization laws while those geopolitically distant from them are more likely to adopt hard data localization laws. In doing so, we underscore the importance of the political variables affecting the evolution of global information networks.
How do public and private rules affect the adjudication of online speech globally? In addition to creating their regulatory frameworks, platform companies increasingly adjudicate which content should remain online. Dissatisfied users can lodge complaints with them instead of bringing up cases in courts to protect their right to speech. The creation of Meta’s Oversight Board in 2019 is one of the latest and most prominent examples of this trend. Informally dubbed Meta’s supreme court, it is tasked with defining how to protect users’ expression on its platform. Using a novel dataset, we conduct a network analysis of references made to public and private norms in all of Meta’s Oversight Board decisions adopted between 2020 and 2024. We find evidence that international human rights law became central to its decision-making process. In an attempt to legitimize itself, we highlight how the Board uses international public law rather than transnational soft laws to interpret and apply Meta’s community standards. At the same time, not all international human rights law sources are equal in this process. Multilateral human rights treaties are more likely to be cited than any other source.