Cyber Politics Research Articles

Cyber risk logics and their implications for cybersecurity

Abstract Cybersecurity in national and international security is frequently discussed in an existential register. However, most cybersecurity activities are normal and routine, including diverse practices of cyber risk management. The intricacies of cyber risk and its connection to security and threat politics have received surprisingly little attention in the cyber politics literature. This article addresses this gap through a twofold theoretical proposition. The first argues that cyber risk in policy and practice inhabits a continuum between ‘classical’ risk and security postures. The second proposes the existence of multiple risk logics, located at different points along this continuum. To illustrate this, we outline two distinct cyber risk logics: ‘risk as potential threats’ and ‘risk as uncertainty’. Through an exploratory case-study of cyber risk policy and guidance in the United Kingdom, we find indications of the simultaneous existence of these risk logics, including in specific organizational contexts. We propose that the ‘risk as potential threats’ logic, in particular, acts as a ‘bridge’ between conventional risk and security. We conclude by discussing how differentiating cyber risk logics facilitates a more finely grained appreciation of cybersecurity policy and practice and provides opportunities for disciplinary engagement with the organizational and institutional politics of cybersecurity and ‘the international’.

From empowering Internet to digital dominance: The past, present, and future of cyber politics in China

From empowering Internet to digital dominance: The past, present, and future of cyber politics in China

The Interplay Between Cybersecurity in Europe and the Development of the General Data Protection Regulation: A Study of Lateral Pressure

The securitization of cyberspace has been a specter to the political studies in various countries. This article focuses on the dynamic of speech act on implementation consent and its relation to the theory of lateral pressure formulated by Nazli in studying cyber politics. Since 2018, the European Commission has implemented GDPR as a basic law related to data transfer, collection and process (TCP). This policy has brought a fundamental problem to the activity conducted by the state and private sector. Moreover, it was also criticized that this policy has brought to the discrimination of algorithm that came to bias to the minority group. In speak of Methodology, we used qualitative research of 418 articles with the keyword ‘consent’ focusing on Social and Humanities Science in Journal Sage; after manual analysis, we found 146 articles related to the consent study and social science. The final project is to find out the significant tendency of how Europe has securitized GDPR through speech acts by correlating it to the Lateral Pressure Index. The potential implications of the finding could give theoretical preference in formulating a data protection base policy.

Cyber Politic as A New Perspective for People in Surabaya in Understanding Politics in the Digital Age

Cyber politic is a set of data, graphical representations, that can only be accessed through computers. Septanto describes cyber politic as an internet technology that develops to pay attention to the phenomenon of beliefs that arise from various social media. This study aims to identify a new perspective on the relationship between politics and digital media for the people of Surabaya in understanding cyber politics in the digital age. This study uses a descriptive qualitative approach and data collection conducted by the author through desk research, namely data collected based on existing sources. The analysis of the theory used is the effectiveness theory, interactive technology, network communication, and the internet. The results of this study show that cyber politic can be a new network communication that facilitates the electoral process in the digital age at this time. Cyber politic was created to provide convenience for every individual because many people today benefit from technology in finding sources of information, especially in politics.
 Keywords: Cyber Politic, Technology, Interactive

Indigenous movements, ICTs and the state in Latin America

ABSTRACT This paper presents an analysis of the evolving cyber politics landscape in Latin American countries from the perspective of the region’s Indigenous social movements. It examines the types of regulations and tools that Latin American governments have adopted to assert their control over the online world, how these measures constitute barriers for Indigenous organizations, and how social media and other ICTs are shifting the balance of power between Indigenous movements and the state. Based on three years of qualitative fieldwork in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Chile, this paper argues that the ability of Indigenous groups to use ICTs for political engagement is threatened by restrictive communications policies, libel laws, authoritarian national security legislation, and government use of surveillance technologies. Indigenous claims challenge established political and economic structures of power, but communities lack the resources to ensure their own information security, to detect online attacks and to defend themselves against authoritarian practices. As a result, Indigenous organizations are faced with censorship, self-censorship, and accusations of defamation and terrorism. This limits the potential of ICTs to serve as instruments of democratization.

Charismatic Leaders in a New Perspective: Reality in Estonia and Italy

The purpose of this explorative study is to put the existing theories on charismatic political leadership in a current post-web media context. It also seeks to better understand why “charismatic politicians” seem to have success in present-day cyber politics. The paper considers political charisma in a Weberian perspective and aims to explain what elements it includes in a current electoral environment characterized by a fast-changing media landscape. The paper places the existing theoretical models in the context of two European societies, by comparing Estonia and Italy as case studies. Estonia, a small ex-Soviet country has emerged in recent years as an advanced e-society with highly “internetisized” media. At the same time, Italy became known by the phenomenon of the “Berlusconization” of the media, a popular subject of study in political communication. The analysis considers existing research, mostly based on the work of Max Weber, and aims to test the index of charisma, developed by Pappas (2011), in the two observed countries. The paper concludes with a discussion on if and how charismatic political leaders fit a deliberative democracy. Finally, attention is drawn to the need for further systematic comparative research to better understand the phenomenon of charismatic leadership in the post-web media environment.

Interspecies care and aging in a gorilla 2.0 world

Two key figures analyzed in Donna Haraway’s monograph, Primate Visions: Gender Race and Nature in The World of Modern Science (1989) warrant further analysis in the emerging cyber politics of environmental conservation. These figures are Koko, a female lowland gorilla born in the San Francisco Zoo and her companion Dr. Francine (Penny) Patterson, a developmental psychologist who taught Koko how to communicate with a modified form of American Sign Language (ASL). Nine years after Haraway’s initial analysis, Koko and Patterson became early examples of conservation-related Web 2.0 engagement with their unprecedented inter-species America Online chat room encounter with 7811 member participants. Today, Koko has a Twitter account (@kokotweets), a Facebook page, a YouTube channel and a website where users watch videos of Koko celebrating birthdays and donate to ‘distant’ conservation projects. One project site is a gorilla reserve in Cameroon and another is a former pineapple plantation turned private nature preserve in Maui, Hawai’i. Inspired by recent analytical work in animal geographies and feminist political ecology, this article explores complex landscapes of caring, aging and conservation in a time of proliferating social media engagement from colonized sites of enduring privilege. The article argues that new media adds layers of violence, disciplinary techniques and co-dependence to the aging bodies, caring practices and landscapes that Koko, Patterson and others inhabit in California and in the proposed physical spaces of a repurposed pineapple field in Maui.

Book review: Politics of Indignation: Imperialism, Postcolonial Disruptions and Social Change, by Peter Mayo

Peter Mayo, Politics of Indignation: Imperialism, Postcolonial Disruptions and Social Change, Zero Books, London, 2012; 121 pp: 9781780995366, 9.99 [pounds sterling] (pbk) Around the end of 2010, Peter Mayo decided to explore writing online. I was quietly intrigued to see that Mayo had taken up 'blogging' and publishing online op-eds, since we had often discussed the opportunity social technologies afford academics wishing to reach out to people who would not normally gravitate towards university libraries, or who do not have access to academic journals online. Between 2010 and 2012, Mayo published several posts in online media outlets such as Truthout, Counterpunch and Gramsci Oggi, and clearly relished the new-found freedom to write and publish in real time, with a sense of urgency, about global events. The majority of the twelve articles in The Politics of Indignation are reworked versions of these original posts. Together with new material, the end result is what Mayo calls a compendium for our 'hard though interesting times' (p. 1): a slim book in which there is much to savour and unravel. There are two overarching, interrelated themes in this book. The first is an impassioned attack on the workings of neoliberalism and the vagaries of the marketplace; the second is a call to arms to resist the gradual destruction of critical spaces, not least spaces for critical education. Mayo casts a wide net for his inquiries, from Chile, Cuba and Nicaragua to Malta and other, more familiar territory: Italy, Turkey, Libya, Tunisia and Egypt. In the process, the narrative skirts around two 9/11s--one in Chile in 1973, and that of New York 2001--the Arab Spring, labour and racism issues in the Mediterranean, and even cyber politics. The focus on 'the global' underlines the historicity of the 'groundswell of dissent, indignation and tenacity' (p. 2) that has been rooted in public protests in the squares and streets of many cities in the past two years. Mayo wryly observes that today's tensions are simply another phase in the 'violence, symbolic and also physical, that marked the birth pangs of neoliberalism' (p. 3). Indeed, the chapters are punctuated by a search for revolutionary alternatives to neoliberalism, and a reminder of the heavy price that has been paid and continues to be paid by people prepared to offer resistance to the mainstream. Mayo takes pains not to romanticise revolutionary experiments, but his sympathies dearly lie with people and movements that work against the grain in pursuit of 'social-justice oriented disruptions' (p. 105). It would be easy to dismiss this book as being over-ambitious in scope, or even sparse in academic jargon, if you did not remind yourself that these chapters started life as online posts. The immediacy and economy demanded by the online medium has encouraged Mayo to couch his ideas 'in a more popular and accessible idiom' (p. 2), and the quality of the writing is the net beneficiary: consistently punchy and unashamedly opinionated, yet grounded as much in academic theory as in personal experience. A May Day demonstration in Taksim Square in Istanbul is an opportunity for Mayo to reflect on worker solidarity. The criminalisation of irregular migrants to Malta from the South, and their subsequent detention in closed centres, is the backdrop for a treatise on the way the 'carceral state' operates a caged environment that would render any human being insane. …

Stakeholder management online: an empirical analysis of US and Swedish political party web sites

PurposeGiven the seeming lack of research on the influence of stakeholder activities on organisations such as political parties in the online environment, the purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate how political parties use their web sites to serve and manage their relationships with stakeholders.Design/methodology/approachThis is a qualitative paper, in which a cross‐national comparative analysis has been conducted on four illustrative cases. Personal interviews and web site observations were used as the main data collection methods. Three concurrent flows of activities, i.e. data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing, have been applied in the data analysis.FindingsThe paper indicate that the stakeholders served by political parties on the web sites studied can be grouped into two categories: internal and external. This paper also revealed that another very important internal stakeholder group overlooked by previous studies is that of core party members.Originality/valueThe paper provides insights and new interesting empirical material which may help to strengthen the theoretical understanding stakeholder management in cyber politics.

Initial objectives behind US and Swedish political parties' web presence: communication professionals' perspectives

This study presents empirical evidence to help better comprehend how political parties are using their websites to achieve different objectives. A qualitative approach was used to investigate this phenomenon in a comparative cross-national perspective. Findings from the study indicate that there are many objectives for political party websites, which go beyond communication and information as suggested in the literature and also encompass support and awareness creation. This study represents an attempt to strengthen the theoretical underpinnings of why political parties go online and to ground more thoroughly our understanding of cyber politics through an empirical study.

``Town Hall" Meetings for the Masses or ``Social Clubs" for the Motivated? - A Study of Citizens' Discussions on the Internet

The growth of the Internet during the last decade has resulted in much scholarly attention. Supporters of the optimistic mobilization-theory argue that cyber politics and cyber discussions are comparable and sometimes even superior to traditional politics. Moreover this new form of politics has the potential of mobilizing new citizens into the realm of politics. Critics, however, argue from a reinforcement perspective that the effects of cyber politics are utterly limited. Even in a utopia with the digital divide in Internet access abolished, reinforcement proponents argue that politics on the internet still only appeals to the politically "converted" citizens. In this study I focus on six Finnish electronic discussion boards. The main question asked is whether these electronic debates display traits of either the mobilization or the reinforcement theory. Is cyber politics mobilizing the masses or do the discussions resemble social clubs for the motivated?

Fear and Loathing in Cyberspace

Stephen E. Frantzich, Computers in Congress: The Politics of InformationStephen E. Frantzich, Political Parties in the Technological AgeDavid H. Freedman and Charles C. Mann, At Large: The Strange Case of the Worlds Biggest Internet InvasionKevin A. Hill and John E. Hughes, Cyber politics: Citizen Activism in the Age of the InternetDinty W. Moore, The Emperors Virtual Clothes: The Naked Truth about Internet CultureTsutomu Shimomura with John Markoff, Takedown: The Pursuit and Capture of Kevin Mitnick, America's Most Wanted Computer Outlaw—By the Man Who Did ItZiauddin Sardar and Jerome R. Ravetz, (Eds.), Cyber futures: Culture and Politics on the Information SuperhighwayBruce Sterling, The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier