Borders in Cyberspace: Rethinking Digital Sovereignty
In her latest research, "Borders in Cyberspace: Digital Sovereignty Through a Bordering Lens," Rachel Hulvey, assistant professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School and co-author Beth Simmons explore how states are increasingly treating the internet as a space to assert territorial control.
Far from a borderless domain, the internet is increasingly policed like a national frontier. Hulvey and Simmons demonstrate that governments around the world, regardless of regime type, are building “cyberborders” to manage the domestic visibility and accessibility of foreign information. These cyberborders include:
- Content removal requests to global platforms like Google,
- Blocking access to foreign websites, and
- Centralizing internet routing infrastructure to create chokepoints.
Their analysis of original data of global censorship patterns reveals a strong correlation between state-led efforts to control foreign information online and a state’s broader “border orientation”—a measure of how actively a country filters the movement of people and goods across its physical borders. In other words, countries that have more controlling orientations towards globalization are also more likely to restrict digital flows.
By viewing digital sovereignty through the lens of border politics and globalization, Hulvey and Simmons challenge the idea that censorship is the preserve of autocracies. Democracies, too, construct cyberborders—South Korea blocks thousands of culturally inappropriate websites, while Germany enforces strict hate speech rules on global platforms. Their study broadens the analytical framework for understanding how states exercise control online.
As artificial intelligence and geopolitical tensions reshape the digital landscape, Hulvey and Simmons’ work offers a timely framework.
Read the full article in International Studies Quarterly: Borders in Cyberspace