#WhoseLawIsItAnyway. How the Internet Augments Civil Society Participation in International Law Making

Social movements are an important part of a functioning society – also on a global scale. I argue that the internet and social media enable the formation of informal civil society movements and provide the means for such movements to participate in the shaping of international law to an unprecedented extent. In addition to being key to collective action and thus the formation of informal civil society movements in the first place, communication technology enables such movements to (a) bypass nation state politics, (b) develop normative claims, and (c) change the setting in which international law is made. I outline these mechanisms of engagement theoretically and show them in a case study of the current anti-climate change movement, spearheaded by Fridays for Future. The paper closes with suggestions for the empirical study of the mechanisms of engagement.