Corinne Cath-Speth
Former MSc Student
Corinne Cath-Speth was a doctoral student at the Oxford Internet Institute. Her research focused on the politics and ethics of Internet governance and the management of the Internet’s infrastructure.
Recorded:
16 Jun 2021
16 Jun 2021
Speakers:
With Corinne Cath-Speth and Professor Gina Neff
With Corinne Cath-Speth and Professor Gina Neff
Below the visible aspects of social media and other Internet applications lies a vast infrastructure, where opaque companies and technologists exercise significant but rarely questioned power over the Internet. In this talk, recent OII-graduate Dr. Corinne Cath outlines some of the most pressing concerns regarding the role of these often opaque but crucial actors – The Internet’s reluctant sheriffs – as political gatekeepers and content moderators. Policy concerning Internet politics tends to focus on companies in the content business: social media companies, online retailers, and so on. But these companies would not function without the support of lower-layer infrastructure.
Dr. Cath draws from their PhD research, which included three years of ethnographic fieldwork, to examine how the architects and engineers of the Internet’s infrastructure, negotiate these roles to discuss with the OII community how to further shape a comprehensive research agenda on infrastructural accountability.
