[EASST-Eurograd] communication +1 special issue on *Digital Sovereignty* OUT NOW (open access)
Christoph Borbach via Eurograd
Dear fellows,
I am pleased to announce that the communication +1
special issue on *Digital Sovereignty* is now
published (open access). The issue contains nine research
papers and one dialogue: https://openpublishing.library.umass.edu/cpo/issue/221/info/
Our introduction to the special issue (“The Digital Leviathan:
Medializing Sovereignty for Critical AI and Data Studies”),
which also summarizes and discusses all the contributions, can
be found here: https://openpublishing.library.umass.edu/cpo/article/id/3521/
Best wishes, and I really hope you enjoy reading the special
issue!
Christoph (christop...@uni-siegen.de)
_____
communication +1 • Volume 11 •
Issue 2 • 2025 • Digital Sovereignty
edited by Christoph Borbach and
Tristan Thielmann
This special issue explores digital sovereignty as one of the
defining yet most contested concepts of contemporary digital
politics. While sovereignty has traditionally been tied to the
nation state, current debates—ranging from platform governance
and data capitalism to the discourse on Sovereign
AI—demonstrate that power is increasingly mediated by
corporate infrastructures and algorithmic systems. Bringing
together inter- and transdisciplinary perspectives from Media
and Communication Studies, Critical AI and Data Studies,
Science and Technology Studies, Political Philosophy,
Sociology, and Information Systems Research, the special issue
examines how sovereignty is enacted, negotiated, and
reconfigured across diverse sociotechnical domains. Rather
than treating sovereignty as a stable property—of states,
organizations, or individuals—the authors conceptualize it as
a relational and transformative concept embedded in design,
digital practices, and technologies of datafication. The
contributions demonstrate that digital sovereignty is best
understood as a multi-layered site where infrastructures, data
ethics, and imaginaries intersect, foregrounding how agency
and autonomy are redefined within the entangled human–machine
ecologies of the digital age. In this way, the special issue
positions digital sovereignty as a central object of inquiry
for Critical AI and Data Studies, offering conceptual tools to
address its practices, ethics, platforms, and theories.
Dialogue:
• Stéphane Couture, Sophie Toupin, and Christoph Borbach:
“Sovereign AI, the fragmented internet, data crawlers, and the
opacity of consent forms: A dialogue on digital sovereignty,”
https://doi.org/10.7275/cpo.3555
Contributions:
• Tristan Thielmann and Christoph Borbach: “The Digital
Leviathan: Medializing Sovereignty for Critical AI and Data
Studies,” https://doi.org/10.7275/cpo.3521
• Leah Miriam Friedman: “Who is sovereign and how? Informing
data sovereignty initiatives beyond borders through analysis
of autonomous health movements,” https://doi.org/10.7275/cpo.2306
• Gwen Lisa Shaffer: “Trust, transparency and technology:
Providing digital sovereignty through a Digital Rights
Platform,” https://doi.org/10.7275/cpo.2250
• Renée Ridgway: “Designing digital sovereignty—an open
federated EU web index for search,” https://doi.org/10.7275/cpo.2245
• Anne Mollen: “Struggling with generative AI: Digital
self-determination along infrastructures of automation,” https://doi.org/10.7275/cpo.2247
• Jose Francisco Marichal: “Data rights reconsidered:
Reimagining digital freedom through Lefebvre’s Right to the
City,” https://doi.org/10.7275/cpo.2290
• Thomas Wendt: “Understanding digital agency: Digital
transformation as an organizational update of subjective
sovereignty,” https://doi.org/10.7275/cpo.2253
• Stephan Packard: “Post-digital, post-human sovereignty:
Combined imaginaries in current political communication,” https://doi.org/10.7275/cpo.2254
• Dennis Lawo, Gunnar Stevens, and Jenny Berkholz: “Three
actors, eight models: A relational lens on digital
sovereignty,” https://doi.org/10.7275/cpo.2158