Resilience, Emergencies and the Internet

This book traces how resilience is conceptually grounded in an understanding of the world as interconnected, complex and emergent.

In an interconnected world, we are exposed to radical uncertainties, which require new modes of handling them. Security no longer means the promise of protection, but it is redefined as resilience - as security in-formation. Information and the Internet not only play a key role for our understanding of security in highly connected societies, but also for resilience as a new program of tackling emergencies. Social media, cyber-exercises, the collection of digital data and new developments in Internet policy shape resilience as a new form of security governance. Through case studies in these four areas this book documents and critically discusses the relationship between resilience, the Internet and security governance. It takes the reader on a journey from the rise of complexity narratives in the context of security policy to a discussion of the Internet’s influence on resilience practices, and ends with a theory of resilience and the relational. The book shows how the Internet nourishes narratives of connectivity, complexity and emergency in political discourses, and how it brings about new resilience practices.

This book will be of much interest to students of resilience studies, Critical Security Studies, Internet-politics, and International Relations in general.