The NETmundial conference was a seminal event in the 2014 internet governance landscape. The multistakeholder meeting, convened by the Brazilian government on the back of the post-Snowden frenzy, momentarily turned São Paulo into a Mecca of decade-old internet governance debates; simultaneously, a beacon of hope for reformists and revolutionaries, and a source of anxiety for supporters of the status quo. NETmundial generated a remarkable buy-in from all the stakeholder groups, gathering together 1229 participants from 97 countries, including a large number of government representatives who, much to their discomfort, dared to venture out beyond existing multilateral decision-making frameworks. As an experiment in global governance unconstrained by conventional rules of decision-making, NETmundial and its outcomes offered a unique insight into the evolving geopolitical environment of internet governance, its underlying narratives and actors, and their motivations.
