The geopolitics of digital rights activism: Evaluating civil society's role in the promises of multistakeholder internet governance

Highlights

• Multistakeholderism is often valued for including civil society in internet governance.

• Civil society's ability to represent diverse interests should be tested empirically at key discurisve sites.

• At RightsCon, US- and Europe-based organizations dominate the agenda by hosting sessions.

• Unequal inclusion in civil society undermines multistakeholderism's ability to democratize internet governance.

Abstract

Multistakeholderism is thought to play an important role in democratizing internet governance institutions and processes by including civil society. Therefore, scholars have studied the participation of civil society organizations, from the first phase of the World Summit on the Information Society through to the most recent Internet Governance Forum, to understand how they engage in and shape internet governance. However, this category is not well defined; therefore, it is not always clear whose interests are being advanced by civil society organizations. This study evaluates representation in civil society by examining the annual RightsCon conference as an ideal site of civil society engagement in internet governance in order to evaluate the potential of multistakeholderism to achieve the goals of democratization, representation, and inclusion. Through a meso-level analysis of discursive production at RightsCon that operationalizes a critical geopolitical rubric, this study finds that organizations that represent interests from the Global North and West are highly over-represented in three ways: in leading overall discourse, in claiming authority over global issues, and in driving specific topics such as misinformation, privacy, and internet shutdowns. These findings offer an empirical evaluation of global representation in internet governance, raising the stakes for further study about why and how the category of civil society meets expectations. Finally, conceptual implications are discussed, including evaluating earlier critiques of multistakeholderism as less democratizing in reality than in theory, affirming the analytic value of civil society discourse to policy research, and opening up questions about how a more precise understanding of civil society can contribute to multistakeholderism in internet governance.

Introduction

In October 2011, 498 participants convened at the first-ever Silicon Valley Human Rights Conference “to create something different: a civil society-led space where all stakeholders – from tech companies to government representatives to human rights defenders – could come together to build a rights-respecting digital future” (RightsCon, n.d.). The conference, which was sponsored by several tech companies, drew from the momentum of the Arab Spring, in part by incorporating activists from the Middle East (Fruchterman, 2011; RightsCon, 2011). It culminated in publishing the Silicon Valley Standard (Access, 2011), a set of 15 principles for protecting human rights in the information technology industry (RightsCon, 2021).

Since 2011, the summit has grown into an annual conference called RightsCon, which celebrated its tenth annual event in June 2021. Although the first iteration incorporated its Silicon Valley location into its name, today RightsCon articulates a global aspiration. In executive director Brett Solomon's (2021) reflection on the conference's tenth anniversary, he refers to the “global community” that convenes in response to “global convulsions”. Indeed, over ten years the conference has seen 23,381 participants from nearly every country in the world (Solomon, 2021), and for three consecutive years the UN OHCHR's Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council has attended and issued a joint statement authenticating the conference's significance.

This combination of scale, global renown, and focus on civil society gives RightsCon credibility in the field of internet governance. Indeed, to some, it is considered a more action-oriented alternative to the relatively performative and symbolic Internet Governance Forum (IGF) (Bharthur, 2019). Thus, as RightsCon has grown in prominence and its influence on policymaking has grown more material, it has emerged as an important forum for civil society discourse about digital rights activism. In other words, it can serve as an ideal empirical site to evaluate civil society's contribution to the promises of multistakeholderism.

Therefore, this study measures representation in RightsCon's annual conference program to evaluate the promises of multistakeholderism. According to multistakeholderism, civil society plays an important role in democratizing internet governance institutions and processes by including civil society. However, the category of civil society is not well defined; therefore, it is not always clear whose interests are being advanced by civil society organizations. An inclusive civil society sphere, measured by diverse geopolitical representation, is necessary to achieve this goal. Thus, this study asks the following research questions: to what extent is “civil society” globally inclusive? And how might discursive production in civil society affect its expected contribution to multistakeholderism?

This approach—demystifying the category of civil society by analyzing discursive production—builds on previous research that has examined the participation of civil society organizations, from the first phase of the World Summit on the Information Society through to the most recent IGF, to understand how they engage in and shape internet governance. Specifically, this study operationalizes postcolonial critiques of civil society (Chakravartty, 2007; Ferguson, 2006; Wickramasinghe, 2005) through a geopolitical analysis of organizational representation in policy discourse. This provides an alternative measure to assess representation, departing from traditional notions of geographic diversity and adopting a critical geopolitical rubric.

The analysis reveals striking inequality among actors that shape discourse by hosting conference sessions. In particular, the US, and to a lesser extent Europe, is over-represented in three ways: in leading overall discourse, in claiming authority over global issues, and in driving specific topics such as misinformation, privacy, and internet shutdowns. These findings offer an empirical evaluation of global representation in a key internet governance institution, revealing a disjuncture between theoretical expectations of civil society and how it actually operates in the field. Moreover, the particular shape and depth of inequality in representation offer new perspectives to unpacking the “fiction” of multistakeholderism (Hofmann, 2016). These findings open up questions about why and how multistakeholderism in internet governance fails to meet expectations, thus raising the stakes for further study about the category of civil society.