The CIS

The Center for Internet and Society (CIS) is a CNRS research center, gathering the research unit “Internet and Society” (UPR 2000), created in 2019, and the research group “Internet, AI and Society” (GDR 2091), created in 2020.

At the intersection of disciplines such as sociology, law, history, economics, political science, information and communication sciences, informatics and engineering sciences, the CIS intends to build independent and interdisciplinary research and expertise. The CIS’s research endeavors contribute to enlighten the major technical controversies and the definition of contemporary policies related to digital, to the internet, and more broadly to informatics.

With an identity based on the interdisciplinarity of its theoretical roots and its methods, the center aims to foster expertise and critical reflection on the emerging issues of digital technology, such as artificial intelligence (AI), place of the major platforms in the economy, proliferation of robotics, etc.

As part of its activities, CIS is also a laboratory for the elaboration and promotion of good practices in digital technology for science (collaborative tools, digital methods of survey, analysis and visualization of data, communication strategy, participatory research).

UPR 2000

Created on 1 January 2019, the Center for Internet and Society is composed of a CNRS research unit (UPR 2000), attached to the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences (INSHS) and headed by Mélanie Dulong de Rosnay (Director) and Francesca Musiani (Deputy Director).

GDR 2091

Digital environments and networks are objects of research for the social sciences as well as for the mathematical, computer and engineering sciences. A national research network project (GDR) was created in January 2020, in order to bring together researchers and academics from these different disciplines.

International network

CIS is part of several research networks including the NoC (Global Network of the Internet and Society Research Centers), GigaNet (Global Internet Governance Academic Network), RESAW (Research Infrastructure for the Study of Archived Web Materials) and the Public Data Lab.