Essay from the year 2013 in the subject Communications - Multimedia,
Internet, New Technologies, grade: 1,3, University of Pompeu Fabra
(Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals (IBEI)), course: Global
Governance, language: English, abstract: During the last two decades, a
revolution of the Internet has been witnessed, leading to significant
changes in our society. These changes, especially regarding availability
and dissemination of information, are well comparable to Johannes von
Gutenberg's invention of the letterpress in the fifteenth century. The
governance and maintenance of the Internet asks for considerable efforts
by powerful state actors, notably the United States of America. However,
the degree of Internet-usage is marked by a power-shift from state to
non-state actors. Regarding this issue, during an IBEI-lecture about
"Communication and Education in International Relations", César de Prado
used the term 'Transnational Cyber Power Diffusion' (De Prado, 2013),
inspired by Joseph Nye's (2010) concept of 'Cyber Power'. This paper
seeks to explain who is in charge of Internet governance, how power
within cyberspace is wielded, and what it may mean for future
developments. In order to achieve this, the structure of this paper is
fourfold. First of all, a short introduction is given, outlining the
history of the Internet's creation. Afterwards, the matter of Internet
governance is dealt with, connecting it to several aspects of Joseph
Nye's Cyber Power concept. In a third step, a case study is presented,
examining two relevant non-state actors, -Wikileaks and Anonymous-,
aiming at systematically fitting them into context. Finally, the
findings are summarized, analyzed and framed into an application of the
concept of 'Transnational Cyber Power Diffusion'.
