5.7: Key Terms

Algorithmic Accountability: The obligation to ensure that automated decision-making systems are transparent, explainable, and subject to oversight, including mechanisms to identify, contest, and correct harms caused by algorithmic decisions.

Artificial Intelligence (AI): Computational systems capable of performing tasks that typically require human intelligence, including learning, prediction, decision-making, and pattern recognition, often trained on large datasets.

Biometric Surveillance: The use of biological identifiers such as facial recognition, fingerprints, or iris scans to monitor, identify, and track individuals, often raising concerns about privacy, consent, and misuse.

COM-B Framework: A behavioral model emphasizing that effective action requires Capability, Opportunity, and Motivation; used to analyze how individuals and institutions engage with digital systems and governance.

Cyber-Sovereignty: The principle that states have the authority to regulate and control internet activity within their borders, including data flows, content, and digital infrastructure.

Data Colonialism: A system in which data generated by individuals and communities, often in the Global South, is extracted and monetized by powerful corporations or states, mirroring historical patterns of resource exploitation.

Data Justice: A framework emphasizing fairness, equity, and accountability in how data is collected, used, and governed, with attention to power imbalances and social impact.

Design Justice: A community-centered approach to technology design that prioritizes the needs, voices, and experiences of marginalized groups to ensure equitable and inclusive outcomes.

Digital Divide: Inequalities in access to digital technologies, as well as disparities in digital literacy, affordability, and meaningful participation in digital society.

Digital Geneva Convention: A proposed international framework to establish norms and protections in cyberspace, particularly to safeguard civilians and critical infrastructure during cyber conflict.

Digital Literacy (Civic Literacy): The ability to critically understand, evaluate, and engage with digital technologies, including awareness of algorithms, misinformation, privacy, and power structures shaping online environments.

Digital Political Economy: An analytical framework examining how value, labor, and power are distributed within digital systems, including issues of data extraction, platform monopolies, and global inequality.

Digital Self-Determination: The principle that individuals and communities should have control over how their data is collected, used, and governed, extending traditional notions of autonomy into the digital realm.

Human Rights-Based Approach (HRBA): A framework for policy and governance that ensures technologies and systems respect, protect, and fulfill human rights, emphasizing participation, accountability, and equity.

Metaverse Governance: The emerging challenge of regulating virtual environments where users interact socially and economically, raising questions about identity, ownership, jurisdiction, and rights.

Neuro-Rights: Protections designed to safeguard mental privacy, cognitive autonomy, and the integrity of human thought in the context of brain-computer interfaces and neurotechnology.

Polycentric Governance: A system of governance in which multiple, overlapping authorities operate at different levels (local, national, global), enabling flexible and collaborative decision-making.

Right to Explanation: The legal and ethical entitlement of individuals to understand how automated systems make decisions that affect their lives, particularly in high-stakes contexts.

Splinternet: The fragmentation of the global internet into separate, regionally or nationally controlled networks with differing rules, access, and governance models.

Surveillance Capitalism: An economic system in which human experience is commodified through data extraction, enabling corporations to predict and influence behavior for profit (Zuboff, 2019).

Techno-Authoritarianism (Digital Authoritarianism): The use of digital technologies, including AI and surveillance systems, by governments to monitor populations, control information, and suppress dissent.