Following Michael Warner’s framework, this paper examines this example of a ‘self-creating and self-organized’ public that is ‘conjured into being’ (Warner 2002: 49) in particular ways embedded in the supraterritorial nature of the contemporary Internet. This case, how the Charter of Human Rights and Principles for the Internet evolved, as did those parties ‘collabowriting it’, provides insights into the forms, substance, and loci of how the ‘ Internet Governance Movement’ is being advocated and contested from a national and a transnational perspective. Digitally savvy and transnationally organised coalitions are pushing the envelope of traditional notions of ‘real life’ direct action, advocacy, and public engagement with issues of the day; human rights, privacy, and freedom of information in particular as the Internet features as tool of domination, preferred means of communication as well as mobilization platform. Both this conceptualization and this case-study permit an examination of how publics and counterpublics emerge in computer-mediated settings that are not premised on territorially bounded notions of public-ness, physically proximate social ties, or the history of the Westtphalian state-system. However I take Warner’s idea one step further by bringing his mainly counter-cultural and localised understanding of publics to bear on the way in which Foucault’s governmentality critique has been employed by critics of the relationship between commercial Internet products and services, digital activism, and governance issues for the Internet’s role in an arguably ‘post-national’ era (see Habermas 1998, Fraser 2005). These theoretical investigations are undergirded by a reconstruction of consultations and writing of the IRP Charter over the last two years. The paper ends by considering the future of this initiative as the IGF reconvenes for a second phase in 2011 and as human rights find their way onto Internet Governance agendas, in principle at least. Where next for this nascent public as human rights and principles for the Internet are put centre-stage by events such as the Wikileaks controversy, the ‘Arab Spring’, and increasing concerns about balancing security with civil rights and freedoms?
