Surveillance in Tiananmen Square. Photo: Jack Hynes via Flickr / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Surveillance in Tiananmen Square. Photo: Jack Hynes via Flickr / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The NORM project ('Shaping the Digital World Order: Norms and Agency along the Digital Silk Road in Southeast Asia') was officially launched with a kick-off meeting on 4 May.

The project aims to uncover fundamental insights into the political and social consequences of The Digital Silk Road (DSR) - the component of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that aims to establish China as the global technological superpower - for recipient developing countries.

​The project is hosted by the Peace Research Institute Oslo and is led by Ilaria Carrozza. It includes research partners from the Centre for Stragic and International Studies, Jakarta; the Ateneo de Manila University, Manila; the National University of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur; the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Singapore; and the Basic Internet Foundation, Oslo.

The team got to know each other and developed a shared understanding of the aims, research questions, methods and outputs of the project.

Project members will conduct a preliminary literature review ahead of the next project workshop in August and before the first round of fieldwork later in fall 2022.