This collection, edited by Sophie Vériter, Monica Kaminska, Dennis Broeders and Joachim Koops, includes six papers exploring and investigating European responses to COVID-related disinformation,... Show moreThis collection, edited by Sophie Vériter, Monica Kaminska, Dennis Broeders and Joachim Koops, includes six papers exploring and investigating European responses to COVID-related disinformation, specifically the responses of France, Sweden, Germany, the United Kingdom, Serbia, and Hungary.The coronavirus pandemic has emphasised the crucial role that information flows play in safeguarding public order and the safety of individuals. With an increasingly volatile (social) media eco-system and an unprecedented climate of uncertainty, false reports and harmful campaigns have flourished, highlighting the disruptive intentions of some geopolitical actors on the global scene.This research project investigates how European states have responded to information influence operations related to COVID-19, particularly investigating the role of foreign sources of influence. Our objective has been to better understand the new challenges – both in practice and research – that have arisen from national experiences. The questions that guided our research project have been: How has the context of a pandemic impacted the way European states counter information influence? Which policy trends have emerged and which results have they yielded? Which issues generated divergence and/or convergence across Europe?This publication looks at European responses to COVID-related disinformation, specifically responses of France, Sweden, Germany, the United Kingdom, Serbia and Hungary, with contributions by Corneliu Bjola, Semir Dzebo, Martin Fertmann, Elsa Hedling, Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer, Péter Kállai, Matthias C. Kettemann and Tamás Peragovics. Show less
A number of elements contributes to the absence of a centralized internet governance and coherent strategy for national cyber security across the Palestinian territory. With Israel in full control... Show moreA number of elements contributes to the absence of a centralized internet governance and coherent strategy for national cyber security across the Palestinian territory. With Israel in full control of network infrastructures, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Hamas administration retain limited sovereign functions with regards to cyberspace. Furthermore, the Palestinian governance of cyber security unavoidably echoes those territorial and political fractures that set apart the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank from Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem as well as from the Hamas administration in Gaza. These divergences are strikingly revealed in their dissimilar ways to engage with Israel: whereas the PA’s approach takes the connotations of a cyber security cooperation, Hamas extensively recurs to its cyber-wings to launch attacks aimed at breaking the Israeli cyber-blockade. As a peculiar case of fragmented governance and limited sovereignty, Palestine provides a unique perspective to situate the concept of cyber sovereignty outside its traditional authoritarian narratives and to reveal its emancipatory potential. Show less
The norm to protect the public core of the internet, originally advocated by the Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy, can be operationalised in two ways. Both a layered approach... Show moreThe norm to protect the public core of the internet, originally advocated by the Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy, can be operationalised in two ways. Both a layered approach and a functional approach to defining the public core of the internet provide productive ways to discuss safeguarding the functionality and integrity of the core logical and physical infrastructure of the internet from unwarranted state interventions. The article further discusses the tensions between the concept of ‘the public core of the internet’ and those of state sovereignty and national security. It describes two tiers of objection to the protection of the core internet infrastructure and suggests ways to mitigate them. It concludes that even though there are no easy answers to national security in the cyber age, in the long run, reducing ambiguity in cyberspace will benefit all states. Lifting the public core of the internet out of that ambiguity would be a good starting point. Show less
