The Social Life of xG. Infrastructural Imaginaries

o Wider research context / theoretical framework The Covid19-Pandemic, and the EUs and UKs post-pandemic recovery plans, are catalysing transformations that characterize the Digital Age. The funding, expansion and maintenance of digital communication technologies are imagined as essential to economic recovery, political sovereignty and social cohesion, as well as to Europe`s future position in the world. SoLixG explores how the creation and expansion of new digital infrastructures in Europe, funded under the European Reconstruction Plan and the UK government, (re)configures notions and practices of democratic sovereignty, collective identities, and practices of bordering. o Hypotheses/research questions /objectives Infrastructural imaginaries are visions for what infrastructures are and do, who they serve and how, what values they embody, and what they make possible (Mattern, 2019). It is in these imaginaries and in the current techno-cultural and infrastructural conditions, where we find potential new notions of community, as well as their collision and friction with existing ones. We pursue two sets of research questions: 1) What are the infrastructural imaginaries harbored by the actors that fund, conceptualize (ie legally/academichink tanks) and implement digital transformations connected to the European quest for digital sovereignty. 2) What conflicts, negotiations and reconfigurations emerge where efforts to create new infrastructures meet existing ones. o Approach/methods Each research team will employ a mixed-method approach, combining expert interviews, semi-structured interviews, and ethnographic fieldwork. Building on and innovating methods of multi-sited ethnography with digital methods we aim to follow conflicts and challenges arising around the implementation of digital infrastructures and draw on a mixed-method approach including participatory observations and field notes, minutes of informal conversations, and on-site interviews, as well as netnography, document analyses and expert interviews. o Level of originality / innovation The project aims at creating new insights in the field of infrastructural studies in relation to the complexities of imaginaries of sovereignty, imagined communities and new constitutionalities by investigating the social life of technological environments. It innovates by integrating trans-disciplinary methods, advancing critical knowledge amongst actors of operational practices. o Primary researchers involved Univ. Prof. Dr. Manuela Bojadžijev, Humboldt University Berlin, GER (PL) Assoc. Prof. Dr. Roland Atzmüller, Johann Kepler University Linz, AT (PI) Prof. Dr. Helen Pritchard, University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland, CH (PI) Univ. Prof. Dr. Stefan Jonsson, Linköping University, SWE, (PI)