Imagining 5G Networks: Infrastructure and Public Accountability

Authors

  • Robin Mansell Department of Media & Communications, LSE
  • Jean-Christophe Plantin Department of Media & Communications, LSE

Keywords:

artificial intelligence, datafication, 5G, mobile communication, standards, social imaginary

Abstract

This study explores the social imaginaries influencing choices about the architectural design and standards for the 5G mobile network to identify how the network level of the communication infrastructure is implicated in the commercial datafication process. We focus on ambitions to establish global market leadership in the provision of the 5G infrastructure. Based on a multimethod analysis of documentation, press coverage, and a case study of 5G’s radio access network standardization, the analysis provides insight into contradictions within a dominant digital innovation social imaginary that privileges national or regional economic 5G strategies and externalizes risks and threats around 5G networks to foreign actors (mainly China). It also shows how public values, including privacy and freedom from surveillance, as well as transparent public accountability, characteristics of an alternative social imaginary of digital innovation, are suppressed in the process of materializing a new communication infrastructure.

Author Biographies

Robin Mansell, Department of Media & Communications, LSE

Robin Mansell PhD (SFU Canada 1984), FAcSS, is Professor of New Media and the Internet in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has training in several social science disciplines including psychology, social psychology, politics and economics and is a strong advocate of interdisciplinary research when it builds on the strengths of disciplinary inquiry.Her research and teaching focus on media and communications regulation and policy, internet governance, privacy and surveillance, digital platforms, socio-technical features of data and information systems, and the social, political and economic impacts of innovation in digital networks and applications. Her current research addresses the political economy of ‘platformisation’ and ‘datafication’ and its consequences for society in diverse contexts around the world. 

Jean-Christophe Plantin, Department of Media & Communications, LSE

Jean-Christophe Plantin is Assistant Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. His research investigates the politics of digital platforms, the evolution of knowledge infrastructures, and the rise of digital sovereignty. Before joining the in 2015, he was Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Michigan (Department of Communication & School of Information). He has been Visiting Scholar at Fudan University, Northwestern University, and Sciences Po. 

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Published

2022-10-12

Issue

Vol. 16 (2022)

Section

Articles

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