imagining 5g networks: infrastructure and public accountability

Mansell, Robin and Plantin, Jean-Christophe ORCID: 0000-0001-8041-6679 (2022) imagining 5g networks: infrastructure and public accountability. International Journal of Communication. pp. 1-18. ISSN 1932-8036 (In Press)

Text (PROOF-3.Mansell-4.ID18004.IJoC-Article.9-23-22.mla.FINAL) - Accepted Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives. Download (224kB)

• Author
• Author
• Publisher

Abstract

This study explores the social imaginaries influencing choices about the architectural design and standards for the 5G mobile network to identify how the network level of the communication infrastructure is implicated in the commercial datafication process. We focus on ambitions to establish global market leadership in the provision of the 5G infrastructure. Based on a multimethod analysis of documentation, press coverage, and a case study of 5G’s radio access network standardization, the analysis provides insight into contradictions within a dominant digital innovation social imaginary that privileges national or regional economic 5G strategies and externalizes risks and threats around 5G networks to foreign actors (mainly China). It also shows how public values, including privacy and freedom from surveillance, as well as transparent public accountability, characteristics of an alternative social imaginary of digital innovation, are suppressed in the process of materializing a new communication infrastructure.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© The authors
Divisions:	Media and Communications
Subjects:	Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science H Social Sciences > HE Transportation and Communications
Date Deposited:	28 Sep 2022 11:03
Last Modified:	15 Sep 2023 17:20
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/116685

Actions (login required)

View Item