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Following Jasanoff and Kim’s concept of “sociotechnical imaginaries,” this chapter examines the rhetoric, regulatory frameworks and policies employed in constructing imaginaries of digital sovereignty in China, Russia, and India – three member countries of BRICS and the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation). A central finding is that these sociotechnical imaginaries center on protecting national cultural identity, or “cultural sovereignty,” against the “free flow of information,” a motive echoing NWICO debates in the 1970s and 1980s and WSIS discussions in the early 2000s. The development of these countries’ digital sovereignty imaginaries is deduced from their unique histories and governance approaches. Furthermore, the SCO’s crucial role as a platform to promote the partly authoritarian Chinese conception of cyber/information sovereignty is demonstrated. Another key finding is that imaginaries of digital sovereignty relate to a non-secular understanding of the state in all three examined countries. In this sense, the global emergence of digital sovereignty is comparable to the evolution of Westphalian sovereignty from the confessional wars in early modern Europe. The chapter concludes that an informed debate on digital sovereignty must consider both the dangers of digital authoritarianism and the productive potential of digital decolonization.
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