Information Governance and Security
The big data generated by digital interactions between people, organisations, and artefacts is transforming the way that we live, work and think—posing numerous challenges to information governance and regulation, including of the Internet itself. We are exploring and analysing these challenges, and working out how they may be overcome through new governance rules, processes, and institutions.
Threat modelling procedures in cybersecurity rely on experts to identify vulnerabilities and potential attackers. This process often reflects the assumptions and concerns about causes of insecurity among researchers, many of whom focus on security perspectives from the point of view of governments and large organisations. There are, however, many ways that citizens can understand threats in robust ways from their everyday experience.
Following feminist approaches to knowledge creation and technology design, this project helps citizens draw on their own experiences and individual positionality to expand cybersecurity research in threat modelling and usable security design. It does so through a series of public workshops and focus group discussions on personal data privacy.
Rather than dictating what threats citizens should be worrying about, this project elicits and listens to citizens’ concerns to expand the scope of threat modelling in cybersecurity. This process creates pathways for citizens to engage in shaping future research directions for cybersecurity: ones that are grounded in the lived experience of those who are traditionally excluded from discussions of cyber- or information security. The project will culminate with a series of reports for public dissemination. The first, released in July 2021, sets out findings from those workshops.
By William Dutton (Editor)
The Oxford Handbook of Internet Studies has been designed to provide a valuable resource for academics and students, bringing together leading scholarly perspectives on how the Internet has been studied, and the future research agenda.
Viktor Mayer-Schönberger is Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at the OII. His research focuses on the role of information in a networked economy. His interests are in Big Data, digital economy, and institutions and governance in the data age. Previously, he was on the faculty of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
At the OII, he worked on the European Commission Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions funded Cyber Security Behaviours (CYBERSECURITY) project with Dr Bertrand Venard. This project aksed ‘what are the determinants of individual cyber security behaviours?’, aiming to understand the range of cyber security behaviours, using the example of students in France and the UK.
Dr Mayer-Schönberger has published eleven books, including the international bestseller ‘Big Data’ (HMH, co-authored with Kenneth Cukier, translated into more than 20 languages), ‘Learning with Big Data’ (HMH, co-authored with Kenneth Cukier) and the awards-winning ‘Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age’ with Princeton University Press (also available in multiple languages). He is the author of over a hundred articles and book chapters on the economics and governance of information, with work published in journals including Science, Foreign Affairs, and Journal of Internal Medicine.
