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Insofar as the digital layer cannot be detached from the current democratic challenges of the 21st century including neoliberalism, scales, civic engagement and action research-driven co-production methodologies; this chapter advances trends, aftermaths and emancipatory strategies for the post-pandemic technopolitical democracies. Consequently, it suggests a democratic toolbox encompassing four intertwined trends, aftermaths and emancipations including (1) the context characterised by the algorithmic nations, (2) challenges stemming from data sovereignty, (3) mobilisation seen from the digital rights perspective and (4) grassroots innovation embodied through data co-operatives. This chapter elucidates that in the absence of coordinated and interdependent strategies to claim digital rights and data sovereignty by algorithmic nations, on the one hand, Big Tech data-opolies, and on the other hand, the GDPR led by the European Commission might bound (negatively) and expand (positively), respectively, algorithmic nations' capacity to mitigate the negative side effects of the algorithmic disruption in Western democracies.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the tension in brand management created through the rapid transformation of social media, mapping the maintenance of increasingly complex B2B relationship dynamics with key intermediaries.

In-depth interviews with 17 social media practitioners from leading fashion brands, agencies and platforms in the UK and Australia informed this study. Analysis used grounded theory, and results were interpreted through the lens of network and stakeholder theories.

Social media platforms have evolved into critical brand stakeholders, serving as gatekeepers in an increasingly unbalanced system between provider and marketer. The perpetuation of a hierarchical power dynamic affects the development of both practitioner and firm capabilities with negative implications and consequences for organisational control of branded social media communications. Three theoretical propositions are offered relating to the nature of platform hegemony, the notion of social media democratisation and the limiting impact of rapid change on the formation of relational ties.

This study extends the conceptualisation of communal custody of brands in social media settings to incorporate a growing number of commercial stakeholders, challenging the traditional dyadic consumer-brand relational paradigm. This study sheds new light on the impact of digital transformation on power distributions in social media communities not hitherto addressed.

This chapter considers how to, following David Harvey (1973), produce a genuinely humanizing smart urbanism. It does so through utilizing a future-orientated lens to sketch out the kinds of work required to reimagine, reframe, and remake smart cities. I argue that, on the one hand, there is a need to produce an alternative “future present” that shifts the anticipatory logics of smart cities to that of addressing persistent inequalities, prejudice, and discrimination and is rooted in notions of fairness, equity, ethics, and democracy. On the other hand, there is a need to disrupt the “present future” of neoliberal smart urbanism, moving beyond minimal politics to enact sustained strategic, public-led interventions designed to create more-inclusive smart city initiatives. Both tactics require producing a deeply normative vision for smart cities that is rooted in ideas of citizenship, social justice, the public good, and the right to the city that needs to be developed in conjunction with citizens.

The definition and essence of a trade union is to provide a voice for the worker, enabling a balancing of the power gap between employer and employee. How does that shift in the gig economy when the worker lacks even the most basic elements of protection through employment law? This chapter interrogates the proposition that the trade union movement has until recently neglected to engage with the issues that these workers are facing and so has denied its own roots. One result of this has been the emergence of alternative forms of organising for collective voice. This shifts the boundaries between organisers of collective voice and representation with varying results. This chapter discusses the impact on trade unionism of the gig economy and critiques its approach and pace. It identifies the conflict engendered within the trade union of advocating for members only, as well as the shifting sectors in the broader economy and trade union responses to that. The importance of trade unionism moving forward is assessed through a series of interviews and secondary research using the lenses of social movement theory at macro-level, social network theory at meso-level and social identity theory at micro-level. These theories allow an interdisciplinary analysis of trade unions responses to assess the causes of responses of trade unionists to this emergent gigging workforce and its challenges. It identifies that there is a more recent intention and potential for trade unions to engage with giggers but that an innovative and international movement for voice is required.

The purpose of this paper selected by ICIL 2019 committee in Rome is to demonstrate the current importance of the internet in the protection of democracy in developting countries.

It is intended to make a comparison with the growing and current phenomenon of Brazilian disinformation with other contemporary phenomena related to new technologies through literature review methodology.

The Brazilian elections in 2018 represent an authentic model in a post-Cambridge Analytical phase where the myth of the sanctity of data has been broken. The big influence of the algorithmic revolution on democracies in Latin America has never been more evident. The misuse of algorithms created an artificial environment that does not put us in contact with different realities; the consequences of this conjuncture have the deepest impacts, especially in countries that rely on a deficient educational system.

Besides that, the broad use of zero-rating on the internet delivery in developing countries is also considered a factor of fake news dissemination. The information bubbles promote political polarization to the detriment of diversity – and the diversity is par excellence one of the pillars of democracy.

The research about the impact that the phenomenon of disinformation has on underdeveloped countries, it is essential to analyze the new role of the legislator in the elaboration of hypercomplex laws with multi-stakeholder interests that respect the essential core of digital human rights as the freedom of expression online.

Do digital technologies of early 21st century capitalism promote or reduce consumer sovereignty? This chapter addresses this question by examining John Kenneth Galbraith’s critique of consumer sovereignty during the post-war period of industrial society and looks at the insights he provides to understand the impact of platform capitalism on consumer sovereignty today. This chapter has the following sections: (1) I review the main postulates of Galbraith’s theory; (2) I highlight the main differences between traditional advertising and online behavioral advertising; (3) I explain how online behavioral advertisement strengthens Galbraith’s dependence effect and revised sequence theories; (4) I then discuss normative challenges raised by digital platform corporations to individual sovereignty; and (5) finally, I argue that platform capitalism is a mature form of Galbraith’s “new industrial state.”

This chapter develops a conceptual taxonomy of five emerging digital citizenship regimes: (1) the globalised and generalisable regime called pandemic citizenship that clarifies how post-COVID-19 datafication processes have amplified the emergence of four intertwined, non-mutually exclusive and non-generalisable new technopoliticalised and city-regionalised digital citizenship regimes in certain European nation-states’ urban areas; (2) algorithmic citizenship, which is driven by blockchain and has allowed the implementation of an e-Residency programme in Tallinn; (3) liquid citizenship, driven by dataism – the deterministic ideology of big data – and contested through claims for digital rights in Barcelona and Amsterdam; (4) metropolitan citizenship, as revindicated in reaction to Brexit and reshuffled through data co-operatives in Cardiff; and (5) stateless citizenship, driven by devolution and reinvigorated through data sovereignty in Barcelona, Glasgow and Bilbao. This chapter challenges the existing interpretation of how these emerging digital citizenship regimes together are ubiquitously rescaling the associated spaces/practices of European nation-states.

This chapter explores if alternative participatory co-creation approaches have the potential for deploying an emancipatory urbanism that is able to contest the urban dynamics of (digital) capitalism. It does so by focusing on the Barcelona case. Barcelona fully embraced a “smart citizen” approach in 2011 to become a European referent in smart urban strategies. However, in 2015, with the arrival of a new municipal government, Barcelona has situated itself contesting the “smart city” and at the forefront of alternative possibilities with its “technological sovereignty” strategy. This shift aims to remake the smart city agenda for citizens through the advancement of the right to information and guarantees to open, transparent, and participatory decision-making through new digital and platform technologies. The chapter argues, first, that “technological sovereignty” has been instrumental in re-politicizing the notions of (smart) citizenship and technology, deploying initiatives aimed at regaining public control on data and citizens participating in policy-making. Second, Barcelona’s technological sovereignty strategy, though framed as locally and bottom-up, is based on a global comprehension and diagnosis of the global dynamics of digital capitalism. However, sometimes, there still remains an over-optimistic stance concerning digital technology. Thus, for any alternative to the neoliberal smart city, it is necessary to decenter the debate from the technologies themselves or the local, and recognize that any emancipatory strategy is also about acknowledging that technology-led solutions are not autonomous of broader relations of production and complex political economy geographies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the underlying meanings, effects and cultural patterns of metadata standards, focusing on Dublin Core (DC), and explore the ways in which anticolonial metadata tools can be applied to exercise and promote Indigenous data sovereignty.

Applying an anticolonial approach, this paper examines the assumptions underpinning the stated roles of two of DC’s metadata elements, rights and creator. Based on that examination, the paper considers the limitations of DC for appropriately documenting Indigenous traditional knowledge (TK). Introduction of the TK labels and their implementation are put forward as an alternative method to such limitations in metadata standards.

The analysis of the rights and creator elements revealed that DC’s universality and supposed neutrality threaten the rightful attribution, specificity and dynamism of TK, undermining Indigenous data sovereignty. The paper advocates for alternative descriptive methods grounded within tribal sovereignty values while recognizing the difficulties of dealing with issues of interoperability by means of metadata standards given potentially innate tendencies to customization within communities.

This is the first paper to directly examine the implications of DC’s rights and creator elements for documenting TK. The paper identifies ethical practices and culturally appropriate tools that unsettle the universality claims of metadata standards. By introducing the TK labels, the paper contributes to the efforts of Indigenous communities to regain control and ownership of their cultural and intellectual property.

The attempt to establish a common European framework for core platforms' duties and responsibilities toward other actors in the digital environment is at the core of the recent scholarly debate surrounding the Digital Markets Act (DMA) proposal. In particular, the everlasting juxtaposition between the “data power” – as emerging from recent cases (Section 2) – that dominant tech companies enjoy and the concept of consumer sovereignty (Section 3) lies at the core of the proposal's attempt to identify digital core platforms as market gatekeepers. Accordingly, this chapter critically investigates the divide between power imbalance and consumer sovereignty in light of the architecture designed by the DMA, with a specific focus on its effectiveness in identifying gatekeepers' power drivers (Section 4). After highlighting the main critical aspects of the pertinent rules, opportunities for fruitful developments are then identified through the reframing of some of the notions considered in the proposal, and namely the role of “lock-in” effects and “data accumulation” (Section 5). Lastly, this chapter suggests that the DMA advancements – while desirable – are bound to be fragmentary in the absence of a wider appraisal of the nature of data power imbalance dynamics in the modern digital markets (Section 6).