Opportunities and Challenges in Southeast Asia, 2019 (Bangkok, Thailand) 27 is, “the practice of establishing and implementing policies, procedures, and standards for the proper development, use and management of the infosphere,” (2018, p.3) with the infosphere defined as, “that special place [...] that is seamlessly analogue and digital, offline and online” (Floridi, 2018, p.1). The main right, connected to the governance of the digital, is the right to participate in the governance processes that shape the digital space, to make policy decisions on issues that have been alluded to in the previous sections. The governance of the digital is no simple matter, involving multiple state and non-state actors, from many layers. Governments perform certain governance functions such as regulating the industry and ensuring that digital technologies are used lawfully. In the private sector, risks of rights violations (in terms of freedom of expression and privacy rights) can happen across the entire value chain of the ICT industry, as mapped out by Hope (2011), who identified risk drivers across eight segments of the ICT industry14. Zooming into the governance of the Internet, an important subset of digital governance, a wide range of global players participate in the policy processes including the defining of protocols and standards and managing critical Internet resources15. The wide-ranging issues of digital governance from human rights to cyberwarfare provide a dizzying number of possibilities for policy interventions. However, the policy directions differ depending on which vision of the digital one is working towards – there are at least four visions, according to the geopolitics of digital governance (O’Hara & Hall, 2018). There is the Silicon Valley view of an open and transparent Internet with data and software portability and interoperability, the European vision of a socalled “bourgeois” Internet where bad behaviour is contained and privacy is protected, the Chinese authoritarian Internet that holds extensive surveillance and regulation of citizens’ behaviour would ensure a harmonious society, and the Washington D.C. angle of protecting online resources and intellectual property for monetisation. Other proponents (countries pointed out are Russia, Iran and North Korea) exploit the openness and vulnerability of the Internet for misinformation and hacking, creating another dimension for the evolution of the Internet’s possible futures. Southeast Asian digital rights advocates mainly work at national levels, such as mobilising to oppose draconian cyber crime laws, or providing input to local ICT policies. Beyond that, much of digital or Internet governance happen outside their sphere of influence, given that they are far removed geographically from the geopolitical centres or from tech companies that design, develop, and dictate the terms of use of online platforms and other digital technologies. Users have little say in how the companies that provide digital 14 15 The eight areas are the following: 1) telecommunication services, 2) cell phones and mobile devices, 3) Internet services, 4) enterprise software, data storage, and IT services, 5) semiconductors and chips, 6) network equipment, 7) consumer electronics, and 8) security software. More information on these processes and participation mechanisms can be found in a guide by the Internet Society, accessible at https://www.internetsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/ISOCInternet-Ecosystem.pdf