Digital infrastructure sovereignty: Towards a public value-based media policy for the datafied Swedish welfare state

In its Digital Strategy (Regeringskansliet, 2017a), the Swedish government outlines how it plans to harness the opportunities of digital transformation to build a sustainable Swedish society.

However, the datafication of social, economic, and political processes is largely dependent on the resources of private operators subject to a commercial logic and grammar, a dependence that endangers the anchoring of universal values in the digital society.

The project asks how the digital media infrastructure impacts the distribution of communicative power in Swedish society.

It aims to analyse the infrastructure and platform landscape and how this ecology affects the media system that is supposed to promote democratic public discourse and values.

To this end, based on a multidisciplinary theoretical approach that combines political economy, institutional theory, science and technology studies, and media industries perspectives, the multi-method project employs document analysis, network analysis, interviews, case studies, and ethnography.

Among the deliveries are a digital infrastructure map, including the actors, networks, and value streams shaping this infrastructure (Work Package [WP] 1); guidelines for inclusion and a ‘Rights and Risks’ poster to promote the digital literacy of citizens (WP2); diversity measures of the multi-sided media platform ecology (WP3); and, finally, recommendations for a value-based media policy that ensures the communicative rights of citizens (WP4).