The original battle trolls: how states represent the Internet as a violent place

Abstract

Das PRIF Working Paper analysiert den Aufstieg und die Konnotationen der Metapher des Cyber War. Die Autoren gehen dabei der Frage nach, wie sich die Konstruktion und Etablierung souveräner Staatlichkeit in dem lange als gegenüber Staatlichkeit aversen Raum des Internets vollzieht. Hierfür untersuchen sie am Beispiel der Diskussionen in Deutschland, Estland und Ungarn die sprachlichen Implikationen, die mit der Behauptung von Gewalt und Kriegsgefahr im Netz einhergehen.

In this paper we argue that the rise of the ‘cyber war’ metaphor is connected to the spread of the norm of sovereign statehood on the Internet. Although early discourse about the social and political meaning of the Internet prophesied a stateless utopia, the growing importance of digital communication triggered an active proliferation of state-based metaphors. States began not only to seize legal and technical control of the Internet, but also started to shift the discourse on digital affairs, emphasizing typical attributes of statehood, like collective subjectivity, territoriality and hierarchical structuring. This happened through language, and the metaphor of cyber war and the related narrative of sovereign statehood is one of the strongest cases in point. The paper shows how metaphors and narratives work and why they are so important by, firstly, giving an introduction into the role of metaphors in discourse and cognition, then sketching the role metaphors play in the particular discourse on the Internet and finally examining how especially pacific and Internet-friendly states, like Estonia, Hungary and Germany, deploy the cyber war metaphor.