Francesca Musiani
Biographic Data
| ID | 96168 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Francesca Musiani |
| GIVEN NAMES | Francesca |
| FAMILY NAME | Musiani |
| SIGNATURE | MUSIANI F |
| AFFILIATIONS | Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8343-6122 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 50 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 33 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 49 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Switzerland by Design
International audience
Vers une souveraineté fédérée
Les services de messagerie fédérés, traditionnellement considérés comme « alternatifs », vivent actuellement une montée en popularité qui coïncide avec le développement de stratégies de souveraineté numérique de la part de nombreux États en Europe, et des institutions européennes elles-mêmes. Cet article propose d’explorer comment les différentes propriétés techniques des solutions fédérées (telles que l’interopérabilité, l’auto-hébergement, la p…
Can encryption save lives? Secure messaging and its infrastructure as loci of convergence between cyber warfare and conventional warfare
The controversies surrounding the right to privacy of individuals in a hyperconnected world are longstanding debates, where particular emphasis is placed on encryption technologies, which encode information by converting its original representations into alternative forms that computers cannot decipher, thus ensuring the security of communications. These technologies are at the heart of a public controversy, in which privacy advocates a clash wit…
Reassessing “infrastructuring digital sovereignty”
This perspective contribution takes stock of recent research conducted through the theoretical lens, grounded in science and technology studies (STS) and more specifically infrastructure studies, which I have previously defined as “infrastructuring digital sovereignty” (Musiani, 2022). With this concept, I address “digital sovereignty” beyond its strictly legal interpretations and its rhetorical uses in political discourses by understanding it “f…
Safer spaces by design? Federated socio-technical architectures in content moderation
Users of secure messaging tools, especially in communities attuned to the risks of state-based and other forms of censorship, increasingly hesitate to delegate their data to centralised platforms, endowed with substantial power to filter content and block user profiles. This article analyses the role that informational architectures and infrastructures in federated social media platforms play in content moderation processes. Alongside privacy by …
Analyser la souveraineté numérique au sein de l’Union européenne
International audience
Data localization as contested and narrated security in the age of digital sovereignty
The construction and effects on national boundaries have become central topics in public and academic debates on digital sovereignty. Both state and non-state actors increasingly consider jurisdictions and traditional governing structures as means to capture and regulate digital data flows. This article delves into the intricate phenomenon of ‘data localization’, conceptualizing it as a socio-technical assemblage reflecting the evolving expectati…
Digital Authoritarianism in the Making
On the genesis of digital authoritarianism in the Russian Internet space, from peace to war. How did the authoritarian dynamic that is currently plaguing the Russian internet (Runet) come to dominate a digital space that was initially free? Digital Authoritarianism in the Making reveals the policies regulating the Runet, resituating them within their historical context starting in the early 2010s and ending with the start of the full-scale war ag…
The past, present and future of research on communication policy and technology
This conversation is an account of the panel discussions held during the Communication Policy and Technology 50th Anniversay pre-conference, co-organised by the Communication, Policy and Technology (CPT) Section and the Global Media Policy (GMP) Working Group of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), and the Department of Communications & New Media and the CivicTech Lab at the National University of Singapore …
Quic, or the battle that never was
This article investigates the development and deployment process of QUIC, a new standard of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) that is fostering momentous architectural change in the ways in which communication and data packets transport happens on the Internet. We present QUIC’s standardization process as an analytical site to capture recent evolutions in the balance of power between the so-called “Big Tech” actors, other actors of the I…
Les « nains » de l’Internet sont-ils écologiques? Réflexions historico-environnementales sur les architectures de réseau décentralisées
Depuis le début du numérique en tant qu’ensemble de technologies d’information et de communication, des individus et des communautés expérimentent avec des systèmes sous-tendus par des architectures techniques distribuées et décentralisées. Cet article propose un ensemble de réflexions sur la façon dont l’étude des dynamiques de décentralisation et de distribution sur Internet peut éclairer certains aspects du lien entre transition écologique et …
Vers un « État-automate
L’article aborde l’introduction et la mise en fonctionnement de dispositifs soutenus par l’intelligence artificielle (IA), dans l’action publique. Au cours des dernières années, les États et les gouvernements – y compris la France – ont de plus en plus recours à ce type d’instruments dans des domaines très variés. L’utilisation d’outils algorithmiques de prise de décision par les pouvoirs publics est susceptible d’avoir des effets structurels pro…
Partie III - Capitalisme et contestations
L'ensemble d'articles proposés en cette troisième partie du numéro aborde la dialectique entre les logiques de production capitaliste qui structurent l'espace numérique d'aujourd'hui, et les contestations dont elles font l'objet. Les auteur·ices articulent une discussion de leurs expériences de terrain - avec différentes façons de se rapporter aux technologies, à leurs développeurs et à leurs utilisateurs - et des leçons qui peuvent en être tirée…
Governance by Infrastructure (Part II)
This collection of articles is the second part of the special issue published by First Monday in February 2024 (https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/issue/view/747). The original thematic series of case studies on ‘Governance by Infrastructure’ is extended here with three new case studies, an article on methodology, and a closing commentary. Their publication concludes an adventure that we began in 2021 with the preparation of a workshop held…
Governance by information infrastructures
The term “infrastructure” has evolved to span a wide range of disciplines, reflecting its diverse applications and conceptualizations. This paper argues that information infrastructures (II) represent a distinct and increasingly significant socio-material form, crucial for understanding governance by infrastructure. We examine the origins and evoluIon of II, emphasizing the socio-material differences between II and other technological forms such …
Les études de la gouvernance d'internet à l'épreuve des terrains sensibles
L'article discute les défis d'éthique de la recherche auxquels est confrontée une sociologie qualitative sur deux terrains sensibles - le développement et les usages de messageries chiffrées dans des contextes à haut risque, et les stratégies de contournement de l'autoritarisme déployées par les acteurs techniques de l'Internet russe. L'article aborde notamment trois aspects : il reflète les défis rencontrés dans le travail empirique et théorique…
Une socio-histoire de Wuala (2007-2011). Façonner du « stockage social » en pair-à-pair
Tout comme d’autres services Internet, et alors que les technologies en pair-à-pair (P2P) rencontraient l’explosion des réseaux sociaux, le stockage n’a pas échappé aux expérimentations décentralisées et distribuées. Cet article montre comment les trois dynamiques que sont le stockage en ligne, le réseautage social et le P2P se sont concrétisées dans une startup, Wuala, entre 2007 et 2011. Il explore cette expérimentation et la resitue dans son c…
Infrastrutture digitali, governance e trasformazioni del lavoro
Nel corso dell'ultimo decennio, gli studi sociali della scienza e della tecnologia (science and technology studies o STS), in particolar modo gli infrastructure studies, hanno contribuito ad aprire nuovi orizzonti di ricerca relativi allo studio della governance delle tecnologie che strutturano le nostre società digitalizzate. Questi contributi suggeriscono che il potere e del controllo negli ambienti digitali si esercitano in modi spesso informa…
Infrastructuring digital sovereignty
Today, a number of high-profile initiatives across the globe are concrete implementations of the ‘digital sovereignty’ principle: i.e., the idea that states should ‘reaffirm’ their authority over the Internet and the broader digital ecosystem, to protect their citizens, institutions, and businesses from the multiple challenges to their nation’s self-determination in the digital sphere. According to this principle, sovereignty depends on more than…
Towards an Infrastructure-Based Sociology of Digital Sovereignty Practices
"Digital sovereignty" is the idea that states should “reaffirm” their authority over the Internet and protect their citizens, institutions, and businesses from the multiple challenges to their nation’s self-determination in the digital sphere. According to this principle, sovereignty depends on more than supranational alliances or international legal instruments, military might or trade: it depends on locally-owned, controlled and operated innova…
Ruser sur les réseaux
Le marché des fournisseurs d’accès à Internet (FAI) en Russie s’est développé dans un contexte favorable. L’État y est intervenu de façon très limitée, et plus de 3000 FAI existent aujourd’hui en Russie. Cette décentralisation, ainsi que la topologie des réseaux russes, rendaient le contrôle de l’Internet russe (RuNet) compliqué. Cependant, depuis les années 2010, une série de lois a été adoptée afin de gouverner le RuNet en accord avec la vision…
Messageries fédérées
Infrastructure-embedded control, circumvention and sovereignty in the Russian Internet
Pursuing the autonomisation and “sovereignisation” of their national Internet (RuNet) since the early 2010s, authorities in the Russian Federation are establishing increasingly stricter regulations on Internet innovation and practices. Since 2018, the team of the ResisTIC (Criticism and circumvention of digital borders in Russia) project explores how different actors of the RuNet resist and adapt to the recent wave of authoritarian and centralizi…
The Telegram ban
When, in April 2018, the Russian Internet watchdog Roskomnadzor orders to block Telegram — the country’s most popular messenger — Internet users in the country respond with a diverse set of digital resistance tactics, including obfuscation and circumvention protocols, proxies, virtual private networks, and full-fledged hacks. This article analyzes the “Telegram ban” and its ramifications, understanding it as a socio-technical controversy that unv…
A market of black boxes
In recent years, the Russian Internet has developed according to strong centralizing and State-controlling tendencies, both in terms of legal instruments and technical infrastructure. This strategy implies a strong push to develop Russian-made technical solutions for censorship and traffic interception. Thus, a promising market has opened for Russian vendors of software and hardware solutions for traffic surveillance and filtering. Drawing from a…
A market of black boxes
In recent years, the Russian Internet has developed according to strong centralizing and State-controlling tendencies, both in terms of legal instruments and technical infrastructure. This strategy implies a strong push to develop Russian-made technical solutions for censorship and traffic interception. Thus, a promising market has opened for Russian vendors of software and hardware solutions for traffic surveillance and filtering. Drawing from a…
Practice, Plurality, Performativity, and Plumbing
Recent scholarship provides the opportunity for an assessment of the underexplored but promising marriage between science and technology studies (STS) and Internet governance (IG) research. This article seeks to provide such an assessment by reviewing and discussing, in particular, three volumes: Laura DeNardis's The Global War for Internet Governance (2014, Yale University Press), The Power of Networks: Organizing the Global Politics of the Inte…
Investigating Evolving Discourses On Human Rights in the Digital Age
This article investigates how human rights in the digital age can be considered as an overall frame accommodating fundamental rights and freedoms that relate to communication processes, and related challenges, in societies worldwide. The article brings together different disciplinary backgrounds (communication studies, linguistics and sociology of networks) and complementary empirical analyses of the content, structure and relevance of evolving d…
Paris and Nice terrorist attacks
The attacks suffered by France in January and November 2015, and then in the course of 2016, especially the Nice attack, provoked intense online activity both during the events and in the months that followed. The digital traces left by this reactivity and reactions to events gave rise, from the very first days and even hours after the attacks, to a ‘real-time’ institutional archiving by the National Library of France ( Bibliothèque nationale de …
Standardising by running code”
After Edward Snowden’s revelations, encryption of online communications at a large scale and in a usable manner has become a matter of public concern. The most advanced and popular among recently-developed encryption protocols is currently the Signal protocol. While the Signal protocol is widely adopted and considered as an improvement over previous ones, it remains officially unstandardised, even though there is an informal draft elaborated towa…
Edward Snowden, l’« homme-controverse » de la vie privée sur les réseaux
Cet article donne un aperçu des différents enjeux et débats qui contribuent, depuis juin 2013, à qualifier Edward Snowden d’« homme-controverse » des questions de surveillance et vie privée sur les réseaux. À la fois révélateur de pratiques à la légalité pour le moins douteuse et catalyseur de l’indignation citoyenne, Snowden a été capable de mobiliser des publics entiers sur des enjeux en apparence technique, et de remettre en discussion des not…
Net Neutrality as an Internet Governance Issue
Les évolutions récentes de l’Internet et de sa valeur économique globale placent le « réseau des réseaux » au cœur de rapports de force économiques et politiques. Si l’Internet est conçu de manière à éviter le contrôle centralisé, les relations de pouvoir sont loin d’être absentes de sa gestion et posent des questions plus larges que la seule évolution technique. Cet article présente les débats actuels sur la neutralité du net dans le cadre plus …
Une « charte » pour les droits des internautes
Les récentes discussions autour de la liberté, la sécurité et la protection de la vie privée des individus sur l'Internet concernent la nature même de ces droits - leur existence, leur attribution et leur reconnaissance - ainsi que les procédures et instruments de leur légitimation. L'article porte sur les récents débats concernant la création d'une déclaration ou charte des droits de l'Internet, et en particulier sur ceux qui concernent le droit…
The past, present and future of research on communication policy and technology
This conversation is an account of the panel discussions held during the Communication Policy and Technology 50th Anniversay pre-conference, co-organised by the Communication, Policy and Technology (CPT) Section and the Global Media Policy (GMP) Working Group of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), and the Department of Communications & New Media and the CivicTech Lab at the National University of Singapore …
Les architectures P2P
L'article soutient l'idée que les architectures techniques de réseaux peuvent soutenir une approche novatrice de la protection des données personnelles. En s'appuyant sur le cas de Faroo, un moteur de recherche développé sur une architecture en pair-à-pair, l'article analyse le formatage par l'architecture de dispositifs socio-techniques pour redéfinir et répartir différemment l'allocation des droits - notamment le contrôle sur les données person…
Net Neutrality and Communication Research The Implications of Internet Infrastructure for the Public Sphere
The principle of net neutrality posits that packets circulating within the Internet should be treated equally, regardless of content, platform, source, recipient, or service. This chapter explores the implications of the net neutrality debate for communication research and the public sphere. First, the divergent disciplinary contexts of net neutrality-related research are introduced. Then, we adopt a public sphere framework to discuss areas of ne…
Investigating Evolving Discourses On Human Rights in the Digital Age
This article investigates how human rights in the digital age can be considered as an overall frame accommodating fundamental rights and freedoms that relate to communication processes, and related challenges, in societies worldwide. The article brings together different disciplinary backgrounds (communication studies, linguistics and sociology of networks) and complementary empirical analyses of the content, structure and relevance of evolving d…
En informatique, impossible d'imaginer une science non ouverte
Privacy as Invisibility
This article addresses the ongoing, increasing privatization of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing systems – the emergence of systems that users may only join by personal, friend-to-friend invitation. It argues that, within P2P systems, privacy is increasingly coinciding with “mere” invisibility vis-à-vis the rest of the Internet ecosystem because of a trend that has shaped the recent history of P2P technology: The alternation between forms of perva…
Une « charte » pour les droits des internautes
Les récentes discussions autour de la liberté, la sécurité et la protection de la vie privée des individus sur l'Internet concernent la nature même de ces droits - leur existence, leur attribution et leur reconnaissance - ainsi que les procédures et instruments de leur légitimation. L'article porte sur les récents débats concernant la création d'une déclaration ou charte des droits de l'Internet, et en particulier sur ceux qui concernent le droit…
Net Neutrality as an Internet Governance Issue
Les évolutions récentes de l’Internet et de sa valeur économique globale placent le « réseau des réseaux » au cœur de rapports de force économiques et politiques. Si l’Internet est conçu de manière à éviter le contrôle centralisé, les relations de pouvoir sont loin d’être absentes de sa gestion et posent des questions plus larges que la seule évolution technique. Cet article présente les débats actuels sur la neutralité du net dans le cadre plus …
A second-hand market for digital goods
Surprisingly little research has focused so far on the emergence of second-hand markets for the large and somewhat fuzzy class of objects usually labelled as “digital goods”, even though it is a niche that has recently attracted both considerable investments and considerable legal controversy. This article, offering far more questions than answers, argues why it is an interesting and complex research topic for interdisciplinary scholars of techno…
Net Neutrality and Communication Research The Implications of Internet Infrastructure for the Public Sphere
The principle of net neutrality posits that packets circulating within the Internet should be treated equally, regardless of content, platform, source, recipient, or service. This chapter explores the implications of the net neutrality debate for communication research and the public sphere. First, the divergent disciplinary contexts of net neutrality-related research are introduced. Then, we adopt a public sphere framework to discuss areas of ne…
Edward Snowden, l’« homme-controverse » de la vie privée sur les réseaux
Cet article donne un aperçu des différents enjeux et débats qui contribuent, depuis juin 2013, à qualifier Edward Snowden d’« homme-controverse » des questions de surveillance et vie privée sur les réseaux. À la fois révélateur de pratiques à la légalité pour le moins douteuse et catalyseur de l’indignation citoyenne, Snowden a été capable de mobiliser des publics entiers sur des enjeux en apparence technique, et de remettre en discussion des not…
Practice, Plurality, Performativity, and Plumbing
Recent scholarship provides the opportunity for an assessment of the underexplored but promising marriage between science and technology studies (STS) and Internet governance (IG) research. This article seeks to provide such an assessment by reviewing and discussing, in particular, three volumes: Laura DeNardis's The Global War for Internet Governance (2014, Yale University Press), The Power of Networks: Organizing the Global Politics of the Inte…
Les architectures P2P
L'article soutient l'idée que les architectures techniques de réseaux peuvent soutenir une approche novatrice de la protection des données personnelles. En s'appuyant sur le cas de Faroo, un moteur de recherche développé sur une architecture en pair-à-pair, l'article analyse le formatage par l'architecture de dispositifs socio-techniques pour redéfinir et répartir différemment l'allocation des droits - notamment le contrôle sur les données person…
Towards a (De)centralization-Based Typology of Peer Production
Online peer-production platforms facilitate the coordination of creative work and services. Generally considered as empowering participatory tools and a source of common good, they can also be, however, alienating instruments of digital labour. This paper proposes a typology of peer-production platforms, based on the centralization/decentralization levels of several of their design features. Between commons-based peer-production and crowdsourced,…
"Reclaiming the Internet" with distributed architectures
The papers in this First Monday special issue were originally part of the final symposium of the research project ADAM (Architecture Distribuée & Applications Multimédias, French acronym of Distributed Architectures and Multimedia Applications). This introduction elaborates on the issues at stake in the study of distributed network architectures beyond engineering sciences; it explores their political, social and legal implications and shows, by …
Le gouvernement des technosciences
Reviewed by: Le gouvernement des technosciences: Gouverner le progrès et ses dégâts depuis 1945 ed. by Dominique Pestre Francesca Musiani (bio) and Valérie Schafer (bio) Le gouvernement des technosciences: Gouverner le progrès et ses dégâts depuis 1945. Edited by Dominique Pestre. Paris: La Découverte, 2014. Pp. 315. €27/$42.95. This book, edited by historian of science Dominique Pestre, is ambitious in its goals, its theoretical framework (build…
Digital Heritage and Heritagization
In 2016, the celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the Internet Archive foundation brings to our attention an early initiative of digital preservation and heritagization: no later than five years after the birth of the World Wide Web, and at a moment when it had not yet conquered the general public, Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle was already thinking about its global archiving This initiative can be connected to the preoccupation o…
Migrating Servers, Elusive Users
In response to the growing censorship of their national Internet, Russian users, content producers and service providers have developed several resistance tactics. This paper analyzes these tactics with particular attention paid to their materiality. It first addresses the different levels of Internet “governance by infrastructure” in Russia, then focuses on the different tactics of individual and collective resistance and concludes by discussing…
Migrating Servers, Elusive Users
In response to the growing censorship of their national Internet, Russian users, content producers, and service providers have developed several resistance tactics. This paper analyzes these tactics with particular attention paid to their materiality. It first addresses the different levels of Internet “governance by infrastructure” in Russia, then focuses on the different tactics of individual and collective resistance, and concludes by discussi…
Souveraineté numérique
‘Digital sovereignty’
Créer un fablab à l’université
Le fablab de l’Université Paris-Diderot a ouvert ses portes fin 2016, dans un contexte institutionnel de déploiement d’une multitude de dispositifs liés au numérique, ayant pour objectif affiché de faire de Paris-Diderot une « université dans la ville » modèle. Comment ce discours institutionnel de développement du numérique dans l’enseignement supérieur se décline-t-il dans les pratiques quotidiennes qui ont donné lieu à la naissance et au dével…
Standardising by running code”
After Edward Snowden’s revelations, encryption of online communications at a large scale and in a usable manner has become a matter of public concern. The most advanced and popular among recently-developed encryption protocols is currently the Signal protocol. While the Signal protocol is widely adopted and considered as an improvement over previous ones, it remains officially unstandardised, even though there is an informal draft elaborated towa…
Paris and Nice terrorist attacks
The attacks suffered by France in January and November 2015, and then in the course of 2016, especially the Nice attack, provoked intense online activity both during the events and in the months that followed. The digital traces left by this reactivity and reactions to events gave rise, from the very first days and even hours after the attacks, to a ‘real-time’ institutional archiving by the National Library of France ( Bibliothèque nationale de …
Le Centre Internet et Société
Entretien dans une revue scientifique
Alternatives for the Internet
For over twenty years, alternative forms of organising and networking – fuelled by the Internet but sometimes pre-dating it – have been discussed as possible responses to the dynamics of concentration, centralisation and capture exemplified in the current pervasively digital world by Internet giants such as Google and Facebook. This article takes stock of the lessons learned by the authors in over a decade of research on decentralised/P2P network…
L’« Internet souverain » russe face au Covid-19
The internet and the European market” from a multidisciplinary perspective
David Howarth, Francesca Musiani, Julia Pohle and Dwayne Winseck were invited to discuss the main topic of this special issue, “The internet and the EU market.” This conversation at the crossroads of several research areas (communication studies, sociology, science and technology studies and political science) brought together leading experts who shared their experience, research and expertise on the internet, European integration, governance iss…
Political science (39 works) · Computer Science (25 works) · Law (19 works) · Politics (18 works) · Sociology (17 works) · The Internet (17 works) · Cybersecurity and Cyber Warfare Studies (16 works) · World Wide Web (14 works) · Business (13 works) · Humanities (11 works)