Digital rights in perspective: The evolution of the debate in the Internet Governance Forum

Abstract

The article discusses the transformations of technology in the last two decades, especially those related to privacy, based on the digital rights perspective. It debates how the concept of privacy is grounded on the distinction between public and private, a spatial metaphor no longer applicable in the face of the ubiquity of information and communication technologies. Hence, there is a premise stating the personal is increasingly more political nowadays, due to the phenomenon of surveillance capitalism. To anchor the theoretical debate in an empirically informed discussion, the work analyzes discourses about digital rights used in the main sessions of the Internet Governance Forum. The goal is to map the main Forum controversies about digital rights and their relation with contemporary democracies. Using a combined methodology based on both quantitative and qualitative data from the main sessions of the event, the analysis starts from a survey of the recurrence keywords related to the research; privacy, rights, surveillance, and freedom. From these results, a qualitative analysis of the discourses mobilized in these activities is conducted. The outcomes of the empirical analysis are then discussed from examples of technology regulation in the United States and the European Union. Among the main conclusions of the work, the emphasis lies on the need for transparency and accountability of the artificial intelligence algorithms.

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