Robert Bodle

As we face an online environment of ubiquitous surveillance, it is worth noting the commercial forces that have provided the rational for tracking users, combining databases, and personalizing the web. Personalization is when online content conforms to the prior actions of the user in an algorithmically generated feedback loop. Examples of personalization include Google's personalized search, behavioral advertising, featured recommendations on Amazon.com, taste preferences on Netflix,, headlines on Yahoo! News, Twitter Trends, and Facebook’s News Feed rankings. The personalized web can provide convenience, efficiency, interestingness and relevance to users who are served with content that they themselves help to generate. However, there may be unintended consequences, biases, and costs including social discrimination, political polarization, coercion, and the erosion of personal autonomy and human volition. The chapter uses a political economy approach to identify the operational logics and unintended consequences for users.

Social network sites (SNS) are ideal sites of inquiry for assessing the developing dynamics of personalization services, which include opaqueness (the black boxing of technological processes), algorithmic-human interfacing and enactment, the reliance on big data including data trails and user-generated content, and the role of advertising as the driving factor. Facebook is particularly important as the dominant SNS and a strong indicator of industry trends that can migrate to other sites. A critical examination of the ubiquity of personalization services provides an important and valuable contribution to the understanding of the underlying logic of interconnectivity, the economic processes of value-creation, and the human rights and democratic implications of personalization. Looking at personalization services on Facebook as a case study, this chapter will analyze advertising trends on the network, examine the role of predictive algorithms and their implications for users, and arrive at conclusions to help formulate user empowerment and agency.

Published in the The Ubiquitous Internet: User and Industry Perspectives (Eds. A. Bechman & S. Lomborg), Routledge, December, 2014).

This chapter addresses the ethics of online privacy in emerging media by analyzing the privacy policies of Web search industry leader Google. Growing user activity is taking place at the interface between Google’s Search and its growing suite of personalized Applications & Services known as the “Google Cloud” (or “Search 2.0”). Account-based services in the cloud increase the data provided by users, and axiomatically also increase the privacy risks. Google acknowledges the growing concern over its unprecedented access and ability to exploit user information, and often responds to regulatory pressure by increasing its outreach and educational efforts. The author examines the company’s public communications including privacy videos, policies, and notices and finds Web 2.0 discourse that celebrates user empowerment through productivity and sharing, but that also shifts responsibility for privacy protection onto the user. This paper uses critical linguistic and discourse analysis to investigate Google’s privacy policies and education video series to identify the ethical implications of an interest-based, self-regulatory approach to privacy protection in the cloud.

Social Power
by Robert Bodle

Published in G. Barnett (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Social Networking (SAGE Publications, 2011).

Summary
Social media can help disseminate social power by enabling participation in social networks. Social power refers to the ability to influence others through relational ties. In the context of social networks, social power addresses the political power gained through connections over online networks, where those with more connections have more social power. Social power can be understood as both a latent and active resource, as a potential to be exercised and a kinetic and enacted force. It can also be wielded individually or collectively by groups and larger structures or systems. Social power refers to both the ability to influence others and the ability to resist the activities of other people; used to empower or disempower, grant or limit freedoms (social powerlessness). In democratic theory there should be a balance of social power where all people have the freedom and means to influence and resist the influence of others.

Social power is informed by many disciplinary approaches and frameworks, including psychology, social psychology, sociology, communication (interpersonal, group and political) and political science (e.g. international regime theory). Social psychology approaches examine how social power and influence tactics in interpersonal and intergroup dynamics can create and address social problems. Social power is closely related to the sociological concept of social capital in that they both address the value of connections, with distinctions in emphasis and outcomes. Social capital is focused on the outcomes of economic growth, socioeconomic equality or inequality, social cohesion, and collective action. Social power, as a distinct but related concept, is focused on achieving political outcomes, which includes transforming power relationships, shaping opinions, and effecting decision- making.

Social power in international regime (IR) theory is understood as power based on relational ties between people, where power is rooted in relationships. Social power is gained through being well connected, where a small minority of individuals can exert influence through the number of their connections (also called the minority-power effect). Social power in IR describes the application of this influence in the context of guiding outcomes through normative processes of consensus building and deliberation.

Social power is often called “soft power” or “governance” (“rowing not steering”), where power is not exercised through physical force or coercion but rather by framing issues and guiding outcomes. Government decisions can be guided by norms, rules, principles, and practices conveyed from state and non-state actors through informal and formal channels. These norms and principles are reinforced through networks that can form “regimes,” which help guide the formulation and implementation of policy recommendations and influence how agreements and decisions can be reached. In this way social power can influence public opinion and state decision-making behavior through guiding forms of persuasion.

Affordances of social networks and culture
Social power is well adapted to the affordances of network media and participatory culture. The technological and social (techno-social) affordances and interactive communication dynamics of social media (Web 2.0, or the read/write Web), such as visible “always on” social presence, transparency, accessibility, network structure and the formation of both strong and weak ties, can help achieve social power though social networks. Web 2.0 spaces, sites, and services encourage participation, and provide spaces to articulate personal networks that expand one’s linkages beyond friends (strong ties), to friends of friends (weak ties), in outwardly expanding relational patterns or networks. Social network sites (SNS), user content sites, blogs, microblogs, and other interactive online spaces promote participatory values of sharing, commenting, interacting, and linking. Participation on SNS can provide a means of gaining visibility and status, grow a network and enhance one’s social capital and social power (as opposed to material capital and power).

Another way to assess social power is within the context of network structure. Social science research methodology known as social network analysis (SNA) attempts to explain how social power can be disseminated or dispersed through relational ties by assuming that patterns of interactions shape social structures. Social structures, once established through mutual dependency, diffusion of resources, and patterns of associations, can enable or restrict certain outcomes or behavior. According to SNA, the successful diffusion of power lies not in the characteristics of an issue or the traits of an actor, but in the structure of the network (e.g. sparse vs. dense networks). Two different approaches to SNA include network-as-structure and network-as-actor and provide complementary but distinct approaches to analyzing networks. The network-as-structure approach examines the structure and flow of information exchange over a network. The network as actor approach looks at how particular relationships among individuals enable them to coordinate and produce collective outcomes. Both approaches help provide insight into the application of social power.

Traditional notions of position within pre-social models of centralized networks may claim that an actor who is positioned within the core is central in obtaining and exerting more social power than one who's positioned within the periphery. SNA reveals, however, that there lies power in distant relationships, remote linkages, friends of friends, and the importance of bridges and liaisons that link groups to other groups within more decentralized networks. Although SNA cannot determine social power, it attempts to account for the recursive ways that interpersonal ties can influence the structure of a network, and how the structure of the network can, in turn, organize or structure the nature of interpersonal ties. The structure of networks, the position of nodes, and the nature of ties within social networks are often examined as ways to estimate the vulnerability, strength, and/or efficiency of a network. Among the attributes of networks are size, centralization, density, and transitivity. Properties of nodes include closeness, betweenness, and centrality. Attributes of ties between nodes can be measured by frequency, direction, and strength. Even if comparative properties of linkages and networks can be analyzed in relation to social power, they cannot account for individual traits nor the content of messages, nor all of the ways that people can influence one another, even among unconnected nodes.

Network structure, culture and society locate social relations and activity within online networks. In networks, individuals are often connected on a horizontal, distributed, and decentered plain of autonomy. The lateral structure of social networks can obscure the perception of hierarchical structures and power differences among social actors. As a result of this leveling function, people identify opportunities to gain and exercise influence in a networked public sphere.

Social power and democratic participation
The online social network layer underlies many forms of interaction and has applications for civic engagement. Social media can provide the potential for democratic forms of participation, empowering people to exercise their voice, shape public dialogue, and influence outcomes that impact their lives. Social networks shift the ways information is circulated and shared, challenging traditional gait-keepers, disrupting the relationship between experts and amateurs, and altering the ways people can exert themselves in world affairs. Social media helps equip an active citizenry by providing important tools to influence public opinion, steer outcomes, and connect to the world. Further insights into the affordances and limitations of social media can help explain the power dynamics of social networks and help understand their potential to balance social power for individuals and groups.

See Also: social capital, network power, social network analysis, and public sphere

Further Reading
Castells, M. Communication Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Christakis, N. A., & Fowler J. H. Connected: The surprising power of our social networks and how they shape our lives. New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 2009.
Ham, Peter van. Social Power in International Politics. New York: Routledge, 2010. Kahler, M., Ed. Networked Politics: Agency, Power and Governance. Ithica, NY: Cornell University, 2009.
Mann, M. The Sources of Social Power: A history of power from the beginning to A.D. 1760, Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Mong, P. R. & Contractor, N. S. Theories of Communication Networks. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

This chapter explores the values, characteristics, and conditions of interoperability  provided by Open Application Programming Interfaces (Open APIs) used by Facebookto identify underlying tensions that may challenge the sustainability of the Web asan open, secure, and liberating communication space. Interoperability betweenmajor online social network services holds great potential for linking a broad range of platforms, spaces, and people together in exciting new ways. Open APIssupport interoperability by providing the tools to share data used to develop popular and useful Web applications, achieve seamless integration of social media services, and give rise to mutually beneficial third-party developer ecosystemsthat build on top of social media platforms. Yet, while Open APIs provide new waysof sharing and participating, they also provide a means for companies like Facebookto achieve market dominance, as well as undermine privacy, data security, contex-tual integrity, user autonomy and freedom. This paper examines interoperability enabled by Open APIs among competing online services (Facebook, Google,YouTube, MySpace and Twitter) to identify the tenuous push and pull of competitionand cooperation. The author provides a summary and analysis of Facebook’s Open API releases over the last five years, to determine the underlying conditions for sharing and identify the social implications of their technical features. This paper concludes by suggesting ways that users can make more informed decisionsabout their sharing and perhaps change the underlying conditions of interoperabil-ity all together by developing more secure and user controllable social networks,Open APIs, and online applications.

In O. Leistert, & T. Röhle (Eds.) Generation Facebook: Über das Leben im Social Net (Verlag, 2011).

In this chapter I look at how the affordances of social media, specifically class blogs (WordPress) and microblogs (Twitter) together, can help achieve social learning. Strategies and best practices are explored to address how social media can be utilized by educators to accommodate the heterogeneity of digital learners and engage new styles of learning.

We are grateful for the contributions of more than 600 scholars who have reviewed manuscripts considered for publication in NM&S. Reviewing submissions to a journal is a time-consuming task, but due to the efforts of these scholars in helping select and refine submissions, the quality of articles published in NM&S remains exceptionally high. We thank these colleagues for their contributions to this important decision-making process.

This paper argues that anonymity in networked digital communications is indispensable as an enabler of other inalienable rights including informational privacy and freedom of expression. Yet, an alignment of industry norms, practices, ethics, and techno-social design asserts a persistent identity ecosystem, making online anonymity more difficult to achieve. This paper reappraises the democratic uses, affordances, and human rights dimensions of online anonymity in order to advance an ethical justification for its protection.

The article explores and assesses the potential for democratic participation in Internet governance using social media sites and services. A framing question asks, “How can social media better serve coalition building and deliberative governance platforms on an international level?” This paper considers present-day challenges

This paper explores the values, characteristics, and conditions of interoperability provided by Open Application Programming Interfaces (Open APIs) used by Facebook to identify underlying tensions that may challenge the sustainability of the Web as an open, secure, and liberating communication space. Interoperability between major online social network services holds great potential for linking a broad range of platforms, spaces, and people together in exciting new ways. Open APIs support interoperability by providing the tools to share data used to develop popular and useful Web applications, achieve seamless integration of social media services, and give rise to mutually beneficial third-party developer ecosystems that build on top of social media platforms. Yet, while Open APIs provide new ways of sharing and participating, they also provide a means for companies like Facebook to achieve market dominance, as well as undermine privacy, data security, contextual integrity, user autonomy and freedom. This paper examines interoperability enabled by Open APIs among competing online services (Facebook, Google, YouTube, MySpace and Twitter) to identify the tenuous push and pull of competition and cooperation. The author provides a summary and analysis of Facebook's Open API releases over the last five years, to determine the underlying conditions for sharing and identify the social implications of their technical features. This paper concludes by suggesting ways that users can make more informed decisions about their sharing and perhaps change the underlying conditions of interoperability all together by developing more secure and user controllable social networks, Open APIs, and online applications.

This paper argues that anonymity in networked digital communications is indispensable as an enabler of other inalienable rights, including informational privacy and freedom of expression. This work traces how an alignment of government policy and private interests, norms, practices,and ethics assert a persistent identity ecosystem online. And it reappraises the democratic uses, techno-social affordances, and human rights dimensions of online anonymity to help shape discourse that can guide policy makers and other stake-holders towards its protection.

In this article I assess the challenges and opportunities of using online social network services as international platforms for development and for networking global civil society. A human rights framework and information ethics approach are used to identify principles as they are transposed to the internet, to evaluate dominant trends in social network sites (SNSs) and to theorise how human rights might be embedded into the technical design of new and existing online social networks. The central research question is ‘how can SNSs affirm and uphold a “people centered, inclusive and development-oriented information society” (WSIS 2005)?’ Ideal values and outcomes of a public service social network include interoperability, privacy, transparency, autonomy, participatory design, cultural and linguistic diversity, support for oral cultures and non-technical populations, open access and the commons. Affordances and functions of existing SNSs include sociability, sharing, interaction, homophily, social capital and power, and network effects. Examining tensions between values and affordances, public and private interests, can help guide the design and implementation of SNSs for international networking and development.

Recent studies lament the loss of historical specificity in Los
Angeles due to the destruction of landmarks and the removal of
ethnic neighborhoods, in addition to distorting representations
in the media that divide the city into narratives of celebrity
and crime. Selective de-industrialization, de-unionization and
the brutal demographic divisions that exist in the spatial
organization of LA also provide the preconditions for a loss of
regional identity and broad grassroots networking in the city,
home to 3.5 million Latino, black, Asian and white citizens that
inhabit its 464 square miles. Mike Davis, in his widely read
*City of Quartz*, suggests that the loss of public space in LA
is a central factor in preventing the mingling of its citizens,
preventing their ability to forge networks of solidarity that
can result from common experiences among classes, ethnicities
and races.

In this essay, I advance cyberspace as a location that can
potentially provide a common space to enable Angelinos to
overcome class, racial and spatial divisions. Norman Klein
argues the dematerialization view of cyberspace, dubbing online
regional practice as “the digitization of forgetting,” and its
ties to localism an impossibility due to the spatial
indeterminacy of cyberspace - “a spot un-rooted to any definite
spot on the surface of the earth” (Klein, 1999: p. 198). The
process of creating an Independent Media Center in Los Angeles
(LA IMC), however, establishes an offline/online nexus, creating
material conditions for social interaction and community-building;
ultimately enriching, rather than erasing, notions of
place, regional identity and community.

Presently, language differences, ethnic insularity, the digital
divide, and the daily grind of the working poor prevent many
ties easily achieved in theory. Yet, the process of building
alternative online media collectives does provide a viable model
for overcoming urban processes of erasure and alienation, an
experience common to those that inhabit the decentralized sprawl
of Los Angeles. People forging links across online and offline
spaces, I argue, can engage in new social relations, linking
bodies across divisions of race, culture and space, creating
local networks of solidarity.
_____________________________

“Radical Culture in the Digital Age: A Study of Critical New Media Practice,” examines the nexus between society and culture within oppositional new media practice, particularly in the ways ruling forces in cyberspace such as conglomeration, copyright maintenance, FCC policy, case law, network surveillance, and capital investment give rise to cultural responses that route around these mechanisms of influence and control, resulting in open source journalism collectives, radical net.art, hacktivism, and files sharing networks—a techno-popular front. This research and scholarship focuses on the pressure point between policy and practice, regulation and resistance. As cultural activists intervene by pushing the boundaries of legality and digital agency, they leverage the unique context of the Internet as a networked, decentralized, relatively non hierarchical environment that facilitates symbolic manipulation, technological innovation, political collaboration, and media distribution, benefiting a culture of resistance. While foregrounding the collaboration of offline and online efforts, this dissertation explores how radical uses of new media can contribute to new forms of social organization, activism in the arts, and a critical theory of new media. Ultimately, this work explores the radical potential of leading online practices of cultural resistance and indicates how new technology can be used by all of us to help secure a public commons in the face of corporate globalization.

This presentation looks at the conditions for sharing on Facebook and its over 300 million partner websites, by identifying the tacit agreement between internet companies and users – that we get useful and interesting online services in exchange for the disclosure of our personal information. Increased advertising revenue provides incredible incentives for mining user data obtained via social network sites and services. Although people are increasingly concerned about how their information may be used, it is still difficult to get the full picture, which, I argue, is intentional.

To get a fuller picture of the conditions for sharing, I analyse the relationships between Facebook and its third-party advertising ecosystem, utilizing extensive internet industry press coverage, Public comments by Facebook’s Developer Blog and management team, as well as Facebook’s public communications in interviews and trade conferences. I apply a political economy approach (Terranova 2000; Mosco 2009; Wasco & Erickson 2009) to evaluate the conflict of interest between market logic and user needs. Additionally, I apply the progressive and humanistic ideals of liberalism (McChesney 2007) and cross-cultural communication ethics (Ess 2009), to assess the social, cultural, and political implications of personalization.

I provide a current appraisal of Facebook’s human/algorithmic hybridization practices used to personalize the web experience for social advertising revenue. I then look at the intended and unintended consequences of personalization, which includes limiting our exposure to different points of view, enabling entrenched political polarization, and discouraging consensus, critical thinking, and tolerance of diversity and appreciation of people’s irreducible differences. Ultimately, this presentation argues for the need to change the conditions for sharing on social network sites (granular control, transparency of how information is used, and regulated security measures to protect our data), and suggests that opt-in defaults be the Internet standard for data-driven advertising practices.

Internet Research 11.0:  Technologies, Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR), Salford, UK (Oct 2012).

Personalization is a characteristic of the ubiquitous, interoperable and interactive web, where content conforms to the prior actions of the user (bringing together, for example, targeted ads, personalized search, featured recommendations on Amazon.com, Twitter trends, Facebook’s News Feed rankings), which relies on extensive user data. Although personalization services can be useful and relevant, they can also have negative consequences for user privacy and autonomy, social segmentation, group polarization, and deliberative democracy. This presentation examines the implementation of algorithms used to personalize content on Facebook and Twitter, and applies a political economy approach to help identify conflicts of interest between users, intermediaries, and advertisers. Deliberative democratic theory is used to imagine the ideal preconditions for algorithmic agency and for developing new approaches to private-public intermediation in the public interest.

Challenging Communication Research, International Communication Association, London, UK (June 2013).

The PRISM leak by security contractor Edward Snowden, while an employee of Booz Allen Hamilton, underscores the cooperation of state and private industry, governments and internet companies in conducting US intelligence and state security services. This collusion reveals a nexus of state power and social media services involved in conducting the work of cybersurveillance. Snowden’s PowerPoint slides reveal how several online companies, including Facebook and Google, participate in NSA’s PRISM program, providing United States National Security Agency access to social media content from company servers. The “social media surveillance industrial complex” (Fuchs, 2013) or private-public nexus of cybersurveillance and cybersecurity presents serious challenges to user privacy, freedom of expression, and personal safety. Additionally, PRISM presents challenges for businesses built on user trust, now revealed as assistants to state surveillance. These revelations call for an analysis and reappraisal of the regulatory oversight and governance of online spaces of social media production. However, this paper moves beyond a focus on institutions to examining the underlying logic of data-driven practices, namely the political economy of big-data, predictive analytics, and personalization that creates the ideal preconditions for oblique state surveillance (accumulating information that is already collected by social network sites, search engines, email services, etc.)

The Eighth Annual GigaNet Symposium (Global Internet Governance Academic Network), Bali, Indonesia (Oct 2013).

This roundtable was co-sponsored by Internet Rights and Principles Coalition and the Pirate Party of Turkey.

Tying into the theme of “Connecting Continents” and building on the youth panel from IGF2013 – Bali WS 55 “Online Anonymity,” this workshop brings together leading researchers, technologists, human rights defenders, private industry, and government representatives to assess the role of Internet governance in supporting the development of a more secure and enabling online ecosystem.

This roundtable acknowledges anonymous online communication protects the extrinsic good of liberty, political freedom, self-determination, autonomy, dignity, power, and the ability to think and speak without censorship, surveillance, or retribution (Ermert 2009; Hosein 2006; Tavani 2011; La Rue 2011; Article 8: Right to Privacy Online in the IRP Charter). Anonymity is essential for voters, political dissidents, and whistleblowers to communicate without repercussion or retribution; “a safeguard against political oppression” (Hosein, 2006, p. 129). Online anonymity also protects people from violence offline, including vulnerable and marginalized populations.

This roundtable drills down to the specifics of how anonymous communication is being used to uphold human rights, and how mass surveillance undermines them which includes protection from harm, safety from reprisal, freedom of the press, and freedom to engage in democratic participation (see: Human Rights Watch report “Witness:The Price of Mass Surveillance”). Case studies from several countries will be presented, including the IGF host country of Turkey, Ethiopia, Malaysia, and others. The roundtable will also include discussion of anonymity-enabling technologies and emerging projects, in order to envision and push forward a clear role for Internet governance to protect people, while connecting them.

The ability to speak anonymously enables broad democratic rights, is key to public participation and the functioning of an open and participatory democracy (Hosein, 2006). Warrantless surveillance and the inability to communicate anonymously in digital networked communication has a chilling effect on freedom of expression, activism, news gathering, and whistleblowing, and it greatly weakens the public’s right to know. It is essential to the practice of investigative reporting that anonymous sources be protected from harm and that whistleblowers communicate without repercussion or retribution. Although secure and anonymous communications support fundamental democratic rights and freedoms, there seems to be little public interest or political will to protect journalists and their sources, and to curtail intrusive government surveillance. This presentation seeks to establish the vital role of secure communications for journalism and whistleblowing, and assesses the current environment of online anonymity in journalism from techno-social, regulatory, and legal perspectives.


PANEL: Anonymity, Identity, and Journalism in the Snowden Era

The Snowden revelations exposed privacy violations of the US security state that includes dragnet surveillance of citizens’ Internet and phone communications characterized as “suspicion-less, computerized, impersonal, and vast in scope” (Angwin, 2014). While these leaks have gone far in raising issues of individual’s privacy online and via mobile devices, the role of secure communications (anonymity) for whistleblowers and investigative reporters has been largely ignored. NSA files and the US crackdown on journalists’ sources reveal that the protection of anonymous sources, vital for reporting and democracy, is less secure than ever. Under US Attorney General Eric Holder, “the Justice Department prosecuted more sources and whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all previous administrations combined, and many of those cases directly led to surveillance of reporters” (Timm, 2014). In 2013, the Justice Department secretly accessed phone records of Associated Press Journalists. The war on whistleblowers has led to “sources drying up . . . leaving only the ‘official’ voices available to reporters” and undercutting citizens’ right to know (Keane, 2014). One outcome of this panel is to raise awareness about the impact of surveillance practices on journalism.

On this themed panel, four panelists will examine the vital linkages between press freedom, digital rights, and journalistic standards. As a connective thread between presentations, speakers will theorize the role of secure communications for professional journalists, as well as for emerging practices of online protest, advocacy and reporting, including citizen journalism, blogging, and hacking.

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Participants-Presenters:

Brian Creech
Christian Oquendo Sanchez
James Hamilton
Robert Bodle

The Ninth Annual Internet Governance Forum (IGF) convened by the United Nations (UN), took place in Istanbul, Turkey September 2- 6. The IGF is the largest global multi- stakeholder meeting on Internet governance, and draws more than 1,500 representatives from governments, academia, civil society, the technical community and the private sector. Although it lacks decision-making power, the IGF can focus attention on human rights issues such as surveillance and development, set agendas for policy formation, and lay the groundwork for multi- stakeholder cooperation. The potentially sleepy UN event though, caused controversy this year by choosing a country where human rights critics have grown increasingly alarmed at the government’s restrictions of popular social media sites. Turkey’s Telecommunications Directorate (TIB), under court order, blocked citizens’ access to Twitter for several weeks. President Erdogan also imposed a ban on YouTube, reportedly to stop the circulation of posts linking to evidence of corruption within Erdogan’s administration. Reporters Without Borders ranked the country 154 in its 2013 World Press Freedom Index (http://en.rsf.org/turquie-turkey- enemy-of-the-internet-28-08- 2014,46856.html).

In São Paulo, Brazil, on April 23-24, 1500 stakeholders (government, private, civil society, academic, technical community) from 97 countries met to discuss Internet Governance (IG) issues. NETmundial or the “Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance, was organized by the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br), shortly after the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) took place in Bali, November 2013. NETmundial served to address revelations enabled by Edward Snowden that the NSA was indiscriminately collecting personal information of Brazilian citizens. NETmundial also coincided with the President’s signing into law the Brazilian Civil Rights Framework for the Internet or Marco Civil (Marco Civil da Internet, Law No 12.965).