Abstract
Just like modern political regimes, the governance of digital networks has been often oscillating between the expansion of unconstrained powers—both public and private—and the thrust forward a more effective protection of fundamental rights. Currently, under the pressure of a mounting global public health and economic crisis, the progressive constitutionalisation of the digital environment stands at a crossroads. On the one hand, the increasing reliance of contemporary societies on digital networks during a state of emergency is raising awareness about the need for fundamental rights protection online. On the other hand, the global pandemic risks to further increase inequalities of access to knowledge and communication, and to legitimise the use of digital technologies for authoritarian and surveillance purposes. This chapter seeks to identify actors, processes and mechanisms that anchor citizens’ rights and constitutional values in times of crisis. Through a multidisciplinary approach including law, political science and communication studies, the authors analyse and discuss key opportunities for digital constitutionalism. In this way, the chapter outlines a set of possible paths of “anchoring” human rights and democratic values in the digital ecosystem.
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Notes
- 1.
See Google’s announcement, https://www.blog.google/inside-google/company-announcements/apple-and-google-partner-Covid-19-contact-tracing-technology/, and Apple’s announcement, https://covid19.apple.com/contacttracing.
- 2.
The Joint Statement on Contact Tracing can be accessed at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OQg2dxPu-x-RZzETlpV3lFa259Nrpk1J/view.
- 3.
Examples of democratic countries adopting centralised contact tracing systems are South Korea, Israel, Australia and Canada. The most discussed case of a centralised system is the Chinese Health Code.
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Acknowledgements
Dennis Redeker would like to acknowledge the support for this project by the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) through a residential fellowship in 2021. Mauro Santaniello would like to acknowledge the support for this research by the Italian Ministry for Education, University and Research (MIUR) through the grant PRIN 2017RFS2JY in 2021.
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Celeste, E., Redeker, D., Santaniello, M., Digital Constitutionalism Network. (2024). Anchoring Digital Rights: Digital Constitutionalism in Hard Times. In: Padovani, C., Wavre, V., Hintz, A., Goggin, G., Iosifidis, P. (eds) Global Communication Governance at the Crossroads. Global Transformations in Media and Communication Research - A Palgrave and IAMCR Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29616-1_13
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