Global Cyber Governance Course Descriptor

Course Overview

This course provides students with an opportunity to engage with key themes in Global Cyber Governance.

With human activities increasingly shaped by, and shaping, global information networks, cyberspace governance and cybersecurity have become global priorities not only for nation-states and international organisations but also for industry and the general public.

Situated outside of traditional jurisdictional and geographical restraints, cyberspace shifts and problematises the authority and power of traditional national and international legal orders. At the transnational and international levels, cybersecurity raises new questions about how international law should be applied to the realities of networks and interconnected digital technologies. At the same time, there are many decentralised fora for decision-making by private actors (e.g., Google or Microsoft is not a ‘power’ in the traditional sense) that are central to questions of the design and governance of the internet.

Drawing on perspectives from Business, International Relations, Law, and Network Science, and providing a comparative view of cyber governance in different global contexts, the course will study norms and institutions and ask questions such as: what should be considered ‘good’ behaviours for states, international organisations, and other stakeholders involved in the process, decision-making, and practice of cyber governance?

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

Knowledge and Understanding

Subject Specific Skills

Transferable and Employability Skills

Teaching and Learning

This course has a syllabus and online learning resources, including structured assignments to facilitate progress.

The teaching and learning activities for this course are:

• 40 scheduled hours (lectures, seminars, workshops, and scheduled assessment activities)
• 110 private study hours (with structured assignments)

Faculty hold regular ‘office hours’, which are opportunities for students to drop in or sign up to explore ideas, raise questions, or seek targeted guidance or feedback, individually or in small groups.

Students are to attend and participate in all the teaching and learning activities for this course and to manage their directed learning and private study.

Indicative total learning hours for this course: 150

Assessment

Both formative and summative assessment are used as part of this course, with purely formative opportunities typically embedded within interactive teaching sessions or office hours.

Summative Assessments

Further information about the assessments can be found in the Course Syllabus.

Feedback

Students will receive formative and summative feedback in a variety of ways, written (e.g. marked up on drafts or through email) or oral (e.g. as part of interactive teaching sessions or in office hours).

Indicative Reading

Note: Comprehensive and current reading lists are produced annually in the Course Syllabus or other documentation provided to students; the indicative reading list provided below is for a general guide and part of the approval/modification process only.

• Clark, David D., John Wroclawski, Karen R. Sollins, Robert Braden. (2002) ‘Tussle in Cyberspace’ Proceedings of the 2002 conference on Applications, technologies, architectures, and protocols for computer communications.
• Broeders, D., & Van Den Berg, B. (Eds.). (2020). Governing Cyberspace: Behavior, Power and Diplomacy. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
• DeNardis, L. The Global War for Internet Governance (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2014) 227.
• Liaropoulos, A. (2016). Exploring the complexity of cyberspace governance: state sovereignty, multi-stakeholderism, and power politics. Journal of Information Warfare, 15(4), 14-26.
• Sweeney, B. (2016) ‘Cybersecurity Is Every Executive’s Job’. Harvard Business Review.
• Valeriano, B., & Maness, R. C. (2015). Cyber war versus cyber realities: Cyber conflict in the international system. Oxford University Press, USA.

Indicative Topics

Note: Comprehensive and current topics for courses are produced annually in the Course Syllabus or other documentation provided to students; the indicative topics provided below is used as a general guide and part of the approval/modification process only.

• Physical and ideational spaces
• The evolution of governance regimes in cyberspace: from global to local
• Non-state actors and institutions in internet governance systems
• Regionalism and regionalisation in cyberspace
• The future of cyber conflict in the international system