Presented in 2025 during the Board of Trustees meeting of the Nexa Center
This report was mainly curated by Valeria Bergantino, Riccardo Raso and Selina Fenoglietto
with the contributions of the Nexa Staff, Directors and Community
June 2025
Foreword
In November 2026, in little more than one year from now, we will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Nexa Center for Internet & Society. For all types of communities anniversaries are important, and we are certainly no exception. For many of us, in fact, the Nexa center has represented not only an intellectual experience, but also – and perhaps even more importantly- a human one. Many of us have become friends thanks to the center and in any case we all feel a strong affinity with each other, even when the respective world views do not necessarily align. For the three of us, we can say that the Nexa center has made our lives overall considerably better and we hope that the same applies to you. Next year we will make sure to celebrate these wonderful achievements.
Anniversaries are also a natural moment to think about both the past and the future. In this regard, we invite all of you to work with us during the next twelve months to prepare this side of the 20th anniversary celebrations.
Turning back our attention to the present, it is impossible not to remark that the international scenario as well as many national ones are horrific, and that digital technologies are often contributing to the horror. We find, in fact, “artificial intelligence” and more generally computers widely used to kill, maim, wound, entrap, detain human beings, be that on the frontlines of Ukraine or on the genocidal moonscapes of what used to be Gaza City. Less ghoulishly, more and more people cannot enter countries, because of opinions posted on social media in the past, or for the contents of their smartphones, not to mention the people that are forcibly removed from where they live after having being identified thanks to data mining or smartphone traces. Presently it is the USA at the forefront of these worrying developments, but in the current climate European countries could easily slide in that direction, too.
The 16th Nexa Annual Conference, held on December 13, 2024, and titled “Guerra, pace e algoritmi” (“War, Peace and Algorithms”), addressed the complex relationship between digital technologies, warfare, and peace, highlighting how tools once seen as progressive are now used in conflict, and emphasizing the need to rethink peace in the age of AI, beyond regulation alone.
Among the many initiatives of the last twelve months, described in this report, in this foreword we wish to note that the 2025 edition of “Biennale Democrazia” represented another opportunity to think about war and peace, with the contribution of many different disciplines. Nexa contributed to Biennale Democrazia organizing two meetings, and with the participation of various members of the Center to several meetings of the Biennale.
We would also like to underline that education remains a cornerstone of the Nexa Center. During the 2024/2025 academic year, the Center’s commitment to critical, interdisciplinary learning was reflected in a range of teaching activities: Politics and Technology (Juan Carlos De Martin), offered within the Global Challenges programme at Politecnico di Torino; Web & E-commerce Law (Maurizio Borghi), part of the BA in Global Law and Transnational Legal Studies at the University of Turin; Semiotics of Digital Cultures (Antonio Santangelo), taught within the Master’s in Communication and Media Cultures; Data Ethics and Data Protection (Juan Carlos De Martin), graduate-level courses for Computer Engineering students.
Finally, we would like to thank our partners, colleagues, and all members of the Nexa community. Together we strive to advance our understanding with the objective to do what we can to make the world a better place.
Juan Carlos De Martin, Marco Ricolfi and Maurizio Borghi – Faculty Directors