Francesca Musiani is a researcher at the Institute for Communication Sciences, French National Centre for Scientific Research (ISCC-CNRS) and an associate researcher at the Centre for the Sociology of Innovation of MINES ParisTech-PSL.
She is currently a member of the Commission « Rights and Liberties in the Digital Age » established by the French National Assembly in June 2014, outreach officer for the Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNet), and co-chair of the Emerging Scholars Network of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (ESN-IAMCR). She is a member of the editorial board for the (online, « green open access ») journals Tecnoscienza, RESET and Journal of Peer Production, and an author for the Internet Policy Review, online journal of the Berlin-based Humboldt Institut für Internet und Gesellschaft. Francesca was the 2012-13 Yahoo! Fellow in Residence at Georgetown University and an affiliate of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.
Francesca’s research work focuses on Internet governance, in an interdisciplinary perspective blending, first and foremost, information and communication sciences with Science and Technology Studies (STS). Since 2008, this research has explored the distributed and decentralized approach to the technical architecture of Internet-based services, so as to understand the co-shaping of these architectures and of several different dynamics: the articulation between actors and contents, the allocation of responsibilities, the capacity to exert control, the organization of markets. This work has spanned a doctoral thesis (2008-12, MINES ParisTech, Prix Informatique et Libertés 2013 awarded by the French Privacy and Data Protection Commission), a research project funded by the French National Agency for Research, ANR (ADAM-Architectures distribuées et applications multimédias, 2010-14) and the Yahoo! Fellowship (2012-13).
Francesca’s work has also explored, or is currently investigating, peer production and the sharing economy (European FP7 project P2Pvalue, 2013-), digital heritage (ANR project WEB90, 2014-), authorship and writing practices in the digital age, the processes of « industrialization » of Internet users’ contributions, net neutrality, ICT-related socio-technical controversies and online dispute resolution systems.
Francesca is part of the teaching team for the Description of controversies course at MINES ParisTech and has taught ICT and society-related courses at the Université catholique d’Angers and Georgetown University.
Francesca’s personal website is here and her email address is francesca (dot) musiani (at) cnrs (dot) fr.