Gauging Public Interest in the Digital Sovereignty Domain: A Social Sensor Analysis

Societal dependence on the digital domain has resulted in governments increasingly concerned with digital sovereignty. The major digital sovereignty issues revolve around how to ensure the security, privacy and availability of government and citizens digital information in any form, from sensing/creation of information to communication through networks to processing on computing platforms to storage in the cloud. While there is clearly interest in the digital sovereignty topic by governments, academics, network operators, equipment vendors and policy organizations, it is unclear if there is corresponding citizen engagement. This paper seeks to gauge public interest in the digital sovereignty using social sensor data from platforms such as X and Google. The findings suggest that while governments and industry stakeholders may prioritize digital sovereignty, the general public exhibits limited interest and online engagements in the topic.