Presented in 2026 during the Board of Trustees meeting of the Nexa Center
This report was mainly curated by Valeria Bergantino and Eleonora Lazzarotto
with the contribution of the Nexa Staff, Directors and Community
June 2026
Foreword
As you know, this November we will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the birth of Nexa Center for Internet & Society. Let us reiterate that for many of us, the Nexa Center has represented not only an intellectual experience, but also – and perhaps even more importantly- a human one; and you yourselves and the conversations with you have been an essential component of this. Many of us have become friends thanks to the Center; we all feel a strong affinity with each other and with each of you, even when the respective opinions do not fully align. For the three of us, we can say that the Nexa Center has made our lives overall much better, and we hope that the same applies to you.
Anniversaries are also a natural moment to think about both the past and the future. As to the future, we expect your insights will again be of great help in shaping our joint effort.
Turning back our attention to the present, it is impossible not to remark that the international scenario as well as many national ones are increasingly horrific, and that digital technologies are all too often, and not unexpectedly, 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, on the genocidal moonscapes of what used to be Gaza City or now parts of Iran. Less ghoulishly, an increasing number of 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 been identified thanks to data mining or smartphone traces. Even domestically, surveillance-based intrusion, often violent, becomes unprecedently common, as well as the continuous expansion of the use of administrative means to restrict fundamental rights, as the EU Council sanctions against EU and Swiss citizens deemed “guilty” – without trial – of having exercised their Constitutionally-protected freedom of speech.
Also, these developments, dire as they may be, make us all too keen to look ahead: to investigate new scenarios and to explore alternatives to the bleak preset. You will find among the research projects a special attention to “other worlds” (Chinese culture and digitisation), to counterhegemonic discourse and its underminers (Genuine Change), and to the risks vulnerable persons face when engaging with emerging internet services. (Minors and Chatbots). The speed of technological change prompted us to extend our work to agentic AI. Giving up is not an option.
Focusing on the growing normalization of profiling and data extraction as defining features of contemporary digital societies, the 17th Nexa Annual Conference, Against the Glass House: Opacity, Profiling, and Power in the Digital Age, held on December 15, 2025, explored the tensions between transparency, privacy, and power through the metaphor of the “glass house.” The Conference reflected on the historical roots and present implications of surveillance, AI, and data governance, while emphasizing the political and human value of opacity in democratic life.
We would also like to underline that education remains a cornerstone of the Nexa Center. During the 2024/2025 and 2025/2026 academic years, 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 (Antonio Vetrò and 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 or, at least, to counter its becoming worse.
Juan Carlos De Martin, Marco Ricolfi and Maurizio Borghi – Faculty Directors