The editors observe that in key texts written to teach international relations less mention is made of personal data collection risks in countries around the globe.

In the early twenty-first century, the international relations literature still posits realism as a dominant paradigm in the Western School. This volume introduces alternative frames of reference that address the deficiencies of liberalism with its lack of sufficient attention to ethnic diversity. By drawing on constructivism with its focus on framing, particularly the influence in instrumentalist terms of narratives shaped by the media, this volume explores that influence by analysing case studies in historical context. In 2020, the world's present, yet unequal, experiences of the triptych, personal data, global pandemic and social protests, lead us to introduce personal data (Image I), the mesh region (Image II) and the distributed ecosystem (Image III) to capture the dynamic, transformative nature of the changing relationship between structure and agency.