[Commlist] CFPICA2020: Conceptualizing a ‘Post-American’ Internet: Technology, Governance, and Geopolitics

*International Communication Association 2020 PRECONFERENCE*

*Conceptualizing a ‘Post-American’ Internet: Technology, Governance, and 
Geopolitics*

**

Date & Time: 9:00 am to 5.00 pm, May 21, 2020

Location: 2020 ICA conference venue, Gold Coast, Australia
Division Affiliation: Global Communication and Social Change

_Organizers:_

Yu Hong, Zhejiang University, China, (hong1 /at/ zju.edu.cn)

Philipp Staab, Humboldt University, Germany, (philipp.s.staab /at/ hu-berlin.de)

Daya Thussu, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong KongSAR, 
(dayathussu /at/ hkbu.edu.hk)

*_Description and Objective _***

The global internet is entering a ‘post-American’ era in a dialectic 
sense. Dominant ideas, interests, and arrangements emanating from the US 
continue to matter. They mingle, align, and delink with states, 
capitals, and social actors in various parts of the world. In a largely 
asymmetric fashion, they are assembled into the global internet 
comprising supranational entities, corporate infrastructures, production 
chains, and networked publics.

Nonetheless, global economic crises, and accompanying power shifts, have 
complicated the continuity and discontinuity of political economies, 
shaping and being shaped by the global internet. The rise of 
conservative nationalism and xenophobes in the global North has also 
exposed the fragmented nature of the existing order and provoked counter 
proposals, alternative narratives, and new arrangements. Indeed, the 
topography of the global internet and its governing landscape look very 
different today. For example, under the pressure from China and the US, 
many European countries have made increased efforts to build national 
ICT infrastructures. Questions also arise regarding both technological 
dependence and initiatives of the global South during their integration 
into global trade and communication networks. The debates about data 
localization are increasingly taking a nationalist turn in India, home 
to the world’s second largest internet users after China.

Digital transformation enabled by 5G networks drives another vector of 
change. New networked applications, such as the Internet of Things, 
smart city systems, and the Internet of Bodies, cross many boundaries, 
be they spatial, material, temporal, or social.  They draw much 
innovative energy from non-Western socio-economic contexts and are 
likely to extend commodification and surveillance of body, land, labor, 
information, and communication. Again, this happens against a backdrop 
of heightened geopolitical struggle over technology and renewed debates 
over governance.

In the ‘post-American’ era, internet technologies connect populations 
and things amidst unfixed values, contesting relations, and changing 
contexts. Thus, conceptualizing a ‘post-American’ internet encourages 
scholars to delve into formative disagreement spaces, emergent 
geopolitical processes, and dynamic political-economic structures. This 
also draws attention to a range of actors, whose collaboration and 
contestation re-work, and sometimes transcend, conventional protocols, 
procedures, and typologies, which include but are not limited to states 
and capitals, subnational and transnational regions, interstate 
relations and social formation, master narratives and social imaginations.

This preconference is intended to encourage focused discussion of 
socio-technical transformations, geopolitical reconfigurations in the 
emerging context of a digital ‘Cold War’, and institutional reactions 
and normative debates surrounding ICT-related governance and development 
in a ‘post-American’ era. We welcome theoretical and empirical studies 
from multiple conceptual frameworks, methodologies, and scales of analysis.

*Keynote speakers (TBD) *

**

*How to participate*
If you wish to present a paper at this event, please send an abstract of 
300-400 words. This must be submitted to *(dyzxlxt /at/ 163.com)*by*December 1, 
2019*. The organizers will consider these submissions and advise on 
acceptance by*January 20, 2020*.

With financial support from the College of Media and International 
Culture, Zhejiang University, *registration fees will be waived for 
paper presenters*(including two tea-coffee breaks and lunch). For other 
participants, it will be $90 for ICA full members and $45 for students

Note: it is assumed that presenters will be available to attend the 
event for the full day. If you are coming from overseas, we recommend 
that you arrive May 20, 2020, and make appropriate accommodation 
arrangements for that night.

*About Zhejiang University as the co-host*

Zhejiang University was founded in 1897 and is one of the earliest 
modern academies of higher education in China. Its College of Media and 
International Culture was established in 2006, of which the Department 
of Journalism was set up in 1958 and is one of the oldest journalism 
schools in China. Currently, the College has four departments and 
several research institutes, covering a wide range of research programs 
in communication studies, journalism studies, new media and critical 
theory, and international culture. The College is also home for Public 
Diplomacy and Strategic Communication Research Center, Zhejiang University.


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