Algorithms are increasingly often cited as one of the fundamental shaping devices of our daily, immersed-in-information existence. Their importance is acknowledged, their performance scrutinised in numerous contexts. Yet, a lot of what constitutes 'algorithms' beyond their broad definition as "encoded procedures for transforming input data into a desired output, based on specified calculations" (Gillespie, 2013) is often taken for granted. This article seeks to contribute to the discussion about 'what algorithms do' and in which ways they are artefacts of governance, providing two examples drawing from the internet and ICT realm: search engine queries and e-commerce websites' recommendations to customers. The question of the relationship between algorithms and rules is likely to occupy an increasingly central role in the study and the practice of internet governance, in terms of both institutions' regulation of algorithms, and algorithms' regulation of our society.

This special issue makes an argument for, and illustrates, the applicability of a science and technology studies (STS) informed approach to internet governance research. The conceptual framework put forward in this editorial and the articles composing this issue add to the mainstream internet governance scholarship by unpacking macro questions of politics and power. They do so through the analysis of the mundane and taken-for-granted practices and discourses that constitute the design, regulation, maintenance, and use of both technical and institutional arrangements of internet governance. Together, this body of work calls to rethink how we conceptualise both internet and governance.

In response to the growing censorship of their national Internet, Russian users, content producers and service providers have developed several resistance tactics. This paper analyzes these tactics with particular attention paid to their materiality. It first addresses the different levels of Internet "governance by infrastructure" in Russia, then focuses on the different tactics of individual and collective resistance and concludes by discussing how forms of control enacted at different levels of infrastructure are reconfiguring the geopolitics of the Russian Internet.

International audienceThis paper aims at giving an overview of the different core protocols used for decentralized chat and email-oriented services. This work is part of a survey of 30 projects focused on decentralized and/or end-to-end encrypted internet messaging, currently conducted in the early stages of the H2020 CAPS project NEXTLEAP