Structuring Online and Offline Discursive Spaces on Internet Governance. Insights from a Network Approach to Map an Emergent Field.

Abstract

Internet governance (IG) is quickly emerging both as a field of political practices at global level and as an object of interdisciplinary research. Although the debate on this matter has started with the birth of the Internet itself, three features characterize the contemporary phase of debate and mark its peculiarity in comparison with the past. In first place, Internet governance has become a global social problem soliciting the interest of a plurality of actors of different nature (governmental and non governmental). Nonetheless, despite this undeniable relevance, Internet governance remains characterized by a twofold uncertainty: in first place, thematic boundary uncertainty or, in other words, what is meant with Internet governance and who are actors involved in the discussion; secondly, political uncertainty or, in other words, what are preferred political arrangements to put Internet governance in practice efficiently thus keeping into account modifications intervened in its contents since a larger constituency of actors has stepped onto global stages in order to participate to the discussion. The status of global issue, boundaries and political uncertainty impose the necessity to develop multi-faceted methodologies for the study of contemporary phase of Internet governance discussion.

Keywords: Internet Governance, governance networks, social networks, issue networks, communication networks, discursive spaces, online and offline dimensions, GigaNet