In the 2000s, China and Russia emerged as outspoken actors with global ambitions. To communicate their status aspirations, both countries introduced a range of nation-branding institutions and initiatives. Global Internet governance – the design and administration of Internet technology and related policymaking – is among the domains where China and Russia have asserted their national brands. The Chinese and Russian governments co-advance the brand narrative of ‘Internet sovereignty’ in opposition to perceived technological and governance hegemony of the United States. Given the power that private online intermediaries wield in the political economy of the Internet, national digital media champions, China’s Baidu and Russia’s Yandex, have been integral to their countries’ Internet branding efforts. The article examines how China and Russia have forged a public–private relationship with respective digital media champions in the context of building and branding an Internet sovereignty agenda.
Over the past two decades, Russia has championed the primacy of national governments in managing the global internet. Scholars attribute Russia's global internet governance philosophy and practices predominantly to its increasingly authoritarian and illiberal regime under President Vladimir Putin. This article, by contrast, explores how Russian ruling elites' view of Russia as an immutable great power has directed the subsequent Russian governments' pursuit of a state-based multipolar digital order. To illuminate cultural continuities in Russia's approach to global communication governance in the post-Soviet period, I examine its state-centric policymaking initiatives at the International Telecommunication Union and the United Nations in the 1990s.
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