Modes of Governance in Digitally Networked Environments : A Workshop Report

Over the past decade, researchers have become increasingly interested in the theoretical and practical issue of governance as it relates to information and communication technologies. However, while the field has grown with the proliferation and use of such technologies, its scope and focus are far from clear: what counts as governance in settings, in which people increasingly interact through networked digital media? How can we think about interaction, coordination and control in these environments? What is the role of technologies in creating and maintaining regimes of governance? And what methodologies and methods are appropriate for understanding them? This paper draws on an interdisciplinary workshop held at Oxford University to have a closer look at some of these issues. It suggests that a key to understanding the heterogeneity of workshop contributions is to attend to the performativity of governance and governance research, the analytic status of ‘technology’ and the conceptual and methodological devices we use to research it