Many aspects of contemporary global data flows, including users’ ability to enjoy civil liberties online, are shaped by Internet governance processes (DeNardis 2014). Influencing these processes is thus of paramount inter- est to governments, the industry, and civil society. Engineers and entre- preneurs, lawyers and bureaucrats, and scientists and advocates engage in the development and negotiation of Internet policies and standards in a plethora of fora, each characterized by its own specific configurations of decision-making processes (Hofmann, Katzenbach, and Gollatz 2016). Such a multifaceted scenario results in a wealth of issues, actors, venues, and policy processes that are often intertwined in complex ways (Raboy and Pado- vani 2010). But it is not just a matter of mere technical details. Because the “arrangements of technical architecture are arrangements of power” (DeNardis 2014, 7), the design of the Internet (Braman 2011) and the asso- ciated policy making (Mueller 2002) can be understood as “politics by other means” (Abbate 1999, 179). This makes the study of technical aspects of the Internet and their making, which might otherwise seem solely a matter for engineers, of great interest for social scientists. Whereas the design, functioning, and decisions of various Internet governance and standard-setting bodies and the participation of differ- ent groups have been the topic of several publications (see, among others, DeNardis 2009; Mueller 2010; and Musiani 2013), methodological aspects for the study of Internet governance have received limited attention (e.g., Musiani 2015; Raboy and Padovani 2010). To date, research has relied on discursive methods such as qualitative interviewing and document analysis (e.g., Hintz and Milan 2009; Musiani et al. 2016; Raboy, Landry, and Shtern 2010) or participant observation in policy processes and network analysis (e.g., Hintz 2010; Mueller 2010; Pavan 2012). More recently, however, new 10 Studying Discourse in Internet Governance through Mailing-List Analysis Niels ten Oever, Stefania Milan, and Davide Beraldo Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/books/book/chapter-pdf/677930/9780262360869_c000900.pdf by guest on 29 September 2020