stefania milan

I was interviewed by Mindy Ran on 'who control the internet', as part of the a weekly broadcast 'by and about women' produced by the Women's International News Gathering Service (WINGS). WINGS has been 'raising women's voices through radio worldwide' since 1986. You can access the 28' broadcast from this page.

In February 4-5, I will take part in the 3rd intercessional meeting of the NonContracted Parties House (NCPH)of ICANN. The NCPH is one of the two structures ('houses') of the Generic Supporting Names Organisation (GNSO) of ICANN, in charge of managing the policy making with respect to top-level domain names. You can follow the meeting (and participate remotely) through the

On January 27-29 I attended the annual Computer, Privacy and Data Protection conference, this time dedicated to the theme '[In}visibilities and Infrastructure'. Together with Monika Zalnieriute (University of Melbourne), we put together a panel on 'Internet infrastructure and human rights' which was sponsored by ICANN. Participants include Sophie Kwasny (Council of Europe), Stephanie Perrin (University of Toronto), Corinne Cath (University of Amsterdam), Niels ten Oever (Article 19/University of Amsterdam), and Monika and myself. Watch out for a special issue of the journal 'Policy & Internet' currently in the workings: co-edited by Monika and myself, it will include articles from the session's participations and more. Read the abstract of the session below.

On January 26 I gave a talk at the Oxford Internet Institute. I was asked to contribute a reflection on big data and development. The talk, entitled Big data, data activism, and the global civil society was the first of the OII ICT4D series for this academic year. You can check out the webcast, and read the abstract below.

Ladies and gentlemen, after months of troubled gestation, here it is, finally out and on(line): 'Sand in the Information Society Machine: How Digital Technologies Change and Challenge the Paradigms of Civil Disobedience' , co-authored with Theresa Züger and Leonie Maria Tanczer was published in Fiberculture! Our article, which explores how civil disobedience evolves in relation to the digital, is part of the special issue #26: Entanglements – Activism and Technology, edited by Pip Shea, Tanya Notley and Jean Burgess with Fibreculture Journal Editor Su Ballard. You can read the article on the Fiberculture website, it is open access :-)

In January 7-8, I will be in Sevilla, Andalusia, to take part in the I Encuentro Internacional sobre Tecnopolítica y Comunicación Smart Cities, co-creación y gobierno abierto. I will join a bunch of amazing people for a two-day debate and networking event with a Latin focus. Tecnopolitica will be discussed in relation to citizenship, power and collective action. The event (read more in Spanish) is organised by the COMPOLITICAS research group, based at the University of Sevilla, animating, among other things, also the Observatorio Iberoamericano de Ciudadanía Digital. I am happy to be back in Sevilla: my first ever article was published by an academic journal of the University of Sevilla, back in 2005. Check it out online.

Starting from October 2015, a bunch of truly amazing people joined me to work on the DATACTIVE project. The 9-people team include 5 PhD students, 2 postdoctoral researchers, and one research assistant. We however work as a horizontal research collective, so role do not really matter. We explore the politics of big data broadly defined. We take a critical look at massive data collection, privacy and surveillance | social movements, activism and internet activism | internet infrastructure, cybersecurity and their governance | open data and civic tech networks...

I am happy to announce that a few new publications have seen the light over the last trimester:
* When Algorithms Shape Collective Action: Social Media and the Dynamics of Cloud Protesting, in Social Media + Society (open access!)
* Mobilizing in times of social media: From a politics of identity to a politics of visibility, in the book Critical perspectives on social media and protest: Between control and emancipation, edited by Lina Dencik and Oliver Leistert, Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 53-70
* Citizens' media meets Big Data: The emergence of data activism, co-authored with Miren Gutierrez, Mediaciones, 14(2015), pp. 120-133 (open access - English version)

Arg, days (and weeks and months) have been so busy lately that I have.. forgotten to update my website.
What have I done re Internet policy & digital rights in these few months, roughly October-December 2015? Let's try to recap:

On September 28-29 I will take part in the 1st annual public policy conference dedicated to strategic aspects of cybersecurity, or the European Cybersecurity Forum. Cybersec 2015 includes four streams (state / military / future / business), and aims at developing recommendations for the safe functioning of cyberspace. The "Future" stream deals with the challenges for the information and communication technology sector and the global information society. I will intervene in the breakout session dedicated to internet governance - cybersecurity issues.