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Luisa Cruz Lobato (Junior Visiting Fellow at the CCDP) is organising a roundtable to discuss the role of apps in global governance.
From humanitarian aid to providing knowledge on sanctions, mobile applications have become integral parts of international action. Among its uses, apps have become core to organizing and centralizing contextual and historical data on conflicts and providing situational awareness. Digital technologies have been long identified as sources of change in global politics. Alongside the ‘rise’ of non-state actors, the pace of technological innovation has challenged traditionally held conceptions of borders, authority and international politics, shifting power relations among states, and among states and their citizens, and reconstituting actors’ identities and issues. As the literary critic specialized in Science and Technology, Katherine N. Hayles (2012) notes, thinking through, with and alongside digital media has profound social, economic, institutional, political and cognitive effects, including on how we perceive our place and act in the world. This roundtable will discuss one such technology - smartphone apps - and its roles, uses and promises in global governance. In this field, the debate on digital technologies has comprised questions of how they facilitate access to information, increase participation in decision-making, foster alliances between humans and material objects, generate novel mediums of governance, inform power disputes, establish political hierarchies, among others. Based on this, participants will be asked to discuss and reflect on the relevance of apps for global governance, through the questions bellow. Participants are also welcome to expand on these questions and to present different questions, based on their research experiences and interests.
● What do apps do to global governance? What uses and promises do they bring forth?
● How do apps feed into, reinforce or challenge established hierarchies (state, class, gender, and race) in global politics?
● What are the risks presented by the ‘appfication’ of global governance?
List of participants:
Andreas Hirblinger, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Center on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP)
Jerome Duberry, Research Associate at the Albert Hirschman Center on Democracy
Luisa Cruz Lobato, Junior Visiting Fellow (CCDP).
Michael Kende (Chair), Visiting Lecturer (Interdisciplinary Programmes), Senior Fellow at the Internet Society, a Senior Advisor at Analysys Mason.
Thomas Biersteker, Honorary Professor, International Relations/Political Science.