Description
Spearheaded by the United Nation’s UN 2.0 brief, international organizations and governance actors are revising their structures and approaches to suit a new fluid status quo that is heavily determined by the development of digital technologies. While this turn begins to address long-standing criticisms as to the flexibility as well as digitalization of international organizations, it leaves a question as to what the future of actors like the United Nations will look like following the growing integration of science and technology actors.
Drawing on discussions from a 2025 United Nations conference focused on science policy as well as public statements that include the UN 2.0 brief, this paper applies discourse analysis to the rhetoric used when discussing the modernization (and digitalization) of the United Nations. It explores how actors from the fields of science and technology view their role in the digitalization of the United Nations as well as how the United Nations approaches the integration of emerging technologies in an environment of general funding cuts. The provisional findings identify an undercurrent of technological determinism that emphasizes techno-centric solutions where science is viewed as neutral while also leaving gaps, notably relating to those solutions translate into field contexts like humanitarian missions.
