Digital Sovereignties

National sovereignty has been at the heart of debates in global communication studies since the development of propaganda studies to understand Nazi strategic communication nearly 80 years ago. Preoccupations over the nation-state, sovereignty, and national cultural identity have haunted successive paradigms: from early development communication to media imperialism scholars who attacked Western domination to globalization theorists who celebrated or criticized the crumbling of national boundaries. Digitization has brought a host of new challenges that have made sovereignty a fraught and complex issue in the age of social media platforms, cloud computing, drone technology, and mobile devices. How should we reconceive sovereignty in this context? Who or what is sovereign today? How has the exercise of sovereignty changed? And what is it to be subject to these new practices of sovereignty? Professor Kraidy and his team will conduct a one-day workshop on October 3, 2019 at the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication to focus on the transformation and theorization of sovereignty in the digital age.