Fabio Cristiano has today defended his thesis The Blurring Politics of Cyber Conflict: A Critical Study of the Digital in Palestine and Beyond.
External reviewer was Professor Anna Leander, Geneva Graduate Institute.
The thesis explores how the politics of cyber conflict redefine violence, sovereignty, and territory in and through cyberspace. It does this by studying how the digital mediates different facets and experiences of conflict and security in Palestine. Through a comprehensive and context-informed approach, this research theorizes cyber conflict as a phenomenon spanning beyond the conventional sites, agencies, and categories of international cybersecurity and warfare.
Through a comprehensive empirical approach, this research also contributes to cybersecurity scholarship by problematizing the epistemological relevance of traditional categories and thresholds of warfare and security for shedding light on the blurring politics of cyber conflict. Besides revealing the inadequacy of framing conflict in cyberspace as only an issue of warfare and security, the study of cyber conflict in Palestine also shows how the construction and operationalization of these narratives ultimately affect political life and individual liberties via (the seizure of) the digital.
More information about the thesis is available in the Lund University Research Portal