¹ This article employs the term “digital ecosystem” in the meaning ascribed to it by Matthias Koch, Daniel Krohmer, Matthias Naab, Dominik Rost, and Marcus Trapp. They note: “A digital ecosystem is a socio-technical system connecting multiple, typically independent providers and consumers of assets for their mutual benefit. A digital ecosystem is based on the provision of digital ecosystem services via digital platforms that enable scaling and the exploitation of positive network effects” (see Matthias KOCH, Daniel KROHMER, Matthias NAAB, Dominik ROST, and Marcus TRAPP, “A Matter of Definition: Criteria for Digital Ecosystems” (2022) 2 Digital Business 1 at 9). The contribution is therefore not limited to digital “platforms” as such and considers the broader architecture and configuration of international law-related digital media of expression. This also permits insights ranging beyond the organizational particularities of given social media platforms, seeing as “[e]cosystems are not fully hierarchical and therefore distinct from the organisational model of an integrated ‘firm’” (Ioannis LIANOS, Klaas Hendrik ELLER, and Tobias KLEINSCHMITT, “Towards a Legal Theory of Digital Ecosystems” (27 May 2024) Amsterdam Law School Research Paper No 2024-22, online: http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4849340 at 11 ).

² See, ex multis, Barrie SANDER, “Democratic Disruption in the Age of Social Media: Between Marketized and Structural Conceptions of Human Rights Law” (2021) 32 European Journal of International Law 159; Neema HAKIM, “How Social Media Companies Could Be Complicit in Incitement to Genocide” (2020) 21 Chicago Journal of International Law 83; Chiraz BELHADJ ALI, “International Crimes in the Digital Age: Challenges and Opportunities Shaped by Social Media” (2021) 9 Groningen Journal of International Law 43.

³ See, ex multis, Shin-yi PENG, Artificial Intelligence and International Economic Law: Disruption, Regulation, and Reconfiguration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021); Dimitri VAN DEN MEERSSCHE, “Virtual Borders: International Law and the Elusive Inequalities of Algorithmic Association” (2022) 33 European Journal of International Law 171; ABHIVARDHAN, “Algorithmic Policing and International Law: Critical Realities in Data-Driven Corporates and Governments over AI Realms” (2019) 8 Nirma University Law Journal 71.

⁴ See, e.g., Tommaso SOAVE, The Everyday Makers or International Law: From Great Halls to Back Rooms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022); Karen N. SCOTT, Kathleen CLAUSSEN, Charles-Emmanuel CÔTÉ, and Atsuko KANEHARA, eds., Changing Actors in International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020); Michael WAIBEL, “Interpretive Communities in International Law” in Andrea BIANCHI, Daniel PEAT, and Matthew WINDSOR, eds., Interpretation in International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 27; Nehal BHUTA, “The Role International Actors Other Than States Can Play in the New World Order” in Antonio CASSESE, ed., Realizing Utopia: The Future of International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 31.

⁵ Oscar SCHACHTER, “The Invisible College of International Lawyers” (1977) 72 New York University Law Review 219. To be sure, with the networked relationships of international lawyers having become particularly apparent since Schachter’s articulation of the notion of the “invisible college” (see, e.g., Luiza L. S. Pereira and Niccolò Ridi’s demonstration of these relationships through network analysis in Luiza L. S. PEREIRA and Niccolò RIDI, “Mapping the ‘Invisible College of International Lawyers’ Through Obituaries” (2021) 34 Leiden Journal of International Law 67), what Schachter once viewed as a sum of individuals dedicated to a common intellectual enterprise has now become an interconnected and “highly visible public college before a body politic that has acquired a taste for the rule of law in the conduct of international relations” (Gillian TRIGGS, “The Public International Lawyer and the Practice of International Law” (2005) 24 Australian Year Book of International Law 201, at 201).

⁶ John SWALES, Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), section 2.1.

⁷ Etienne WENGER-TRAYNER and Beverly WENGER-TRAYNER, “Introduction to Communities of Practice: A Brief Overview of the Concept and Its Uses” (June 2015) online: www.wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice/ at 2.

⁸ Andrea BIANCHI, “The Game of Interpretation in International Law: The Players, the Cards, and Why the Game is Worth the Candle” in Andrea BIANCHI, Daniel PEAT, and Matthew WINDSOR, eds., Interpretation in International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 34 at 35.

⁹ Understood here as “forms of oral and written language and communication – genre, registers, graphics, linguistic structures, interactional patterns – that are privileged, expected, cultivated, conventionalized, or ritualized”, per Patricia A. Duff’s definition (Patricia A. DUFF, “Language Socialization into Academic Discourse Communities” (2010) 30 Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 169 at 175).

¹⁰ Gleider HERNÁNDEZ, “The Responsibility of the International Legal Academic: Situating the Grammarian Within the ‘Invisible College’” in Jean D’ASPREMONT, Tarcisio GAZZINI, André NOLLKAEPER, and Wouter WERNER, eds., International Law as a Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017) at 188.

¹¹ Anne PETERS, “Realizing Utopia as a Scholarly Endeavour” (2013) 25 European Journal of International Law 533 at 538.

¹² Hernández, supra note 10 at 161.

¹³ Ibid., at 170.

¹⁴ Pierre-Marie DUPUY, “L’unité de l’ordre juridique international: Cours général de droit international public” (2002) 297 Recueil des cours / Académie de droit international 9 at 205.

¹⁵ Hernández, supra note 10 at 184.

¹⁶ Nicolas M. RAJKOVIC, “Rules, Lawyering, and the Politics of Legality: Critical Sociology and International Law’s Rule” (2014) 27 Leiden Journal of International Law 331 at 340.

¹⁷ Ibid.

¹⁸ Fabian CARDENAS and Jean D’ASPREMONT, “Epistemic Communities in International Adjudication” Max Planck Encyclopedia of International Law (April 2020), online: Max Planck Institute https://opil.ouplaw.com/display/10.1093/law-mpeipro/e2425.013.2425/law-mpeipro-e2425#law-mpeipro-e2425-bibItem-48 at para 20.

¹⁹ Hernández, supra note 10 at 168.

²⁰ Ralph JANIK, “Interpretive Community 2.0: How Blogs and Twitter Change International Law Scholarship” (2021) 81 Heidelberg Journal of International Law 841 at 842, 843.

²¹ Santiago VILLAPLANDO, “The ‘Invisible College of International Lawyers’ Forty Years Later” (2013) 3 ESIL Conference Paper Series at 6.

²² See e.g. Peter HAAS, “International Environmental Law: Epistemic Communities” in Daniel BODANSKY, Jutta BRUNÉE, and Ellen HEY, eds., The Oxford Handbook of International Environmental Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, 791–806).

²³ See e.g. Jutta BRUNNÉE and Stephen J. TOOPE, Legitimacy and Legality in International Law: An Interactional Account (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

²⁴ See e.g. Michael WAIBEL, “Interpretive Communities in International Law” in Andrea BIANCHI, Daniel PEAT, and Matthew WINDSOR, eds., Interpretation in International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

²⁵ Deoksoon KIM and Oksana VOROBEL, “Discourse Communities: From Origins to Social Media” in Stanton WORTHAM, Deoksoon KIM, and Stephen MAY, eds., Discourse and Education (Springer, 2015) at 5.

²⁶ Ibid.

²⁷ Which, for full disclosure, partially explains why the present contribution is published in an academic journal rather than being presented as a social media thread or a series of blog posts (the other part of the explanation being the spatial restrictions posed by such media).

²⁸ Antoine DUVAL, “Publish (Tweets and Blogs) or Perish? Legal Academia in Times of Social Media” (2018) 23 Tilburg Law Review 91 at 96.

²⁹ Ibid., at 95.

³⁰ For a comprehensive critique the h-index and bibliometrics at large see Yves GINGRAS, Bibliometrics and Research Evaluation: Uses and Abuses (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016).

³¹ Danny KINGSLEY, “The Journal is Dead, Long Live the Journal” (2017) 15 On the Horizon 1 at 7.

³² Hang ZOU and Ken HYLAND, “Reworking Research: Interactions in Academic Articles and Blogs” (2019) 21 Discourse Studies 1 at 23.

³³ Ibid.

³⁴ Otto SPIJKERS and Dimitri VAN DEN MEERSSCHE, “‘There Was an Idealism that This Information is Useful’ – The Origins and Evolution of the Netherlands Yearbook of International Law” in Otto SPIJKERS, Wouter G. WERNER, and Ramses A. WESSEL, eds., Netherlands Yearbook of International Law (Springer, 2019) at 247.

³⁵ Mark Featherstone suggests, for instance, that “[t]he conference is a space of debate and democratic engagement, but it is also a professional event for those who present their work in order to update their CV, disseminate findings from projects, and network with a view to career advancement. In other words, the conference is simultaneously a space for friends to enter into true debate and actually engage in open communication, and strangers to exchange cognitive commodities, but never really open themselves up to each other, because self-transformation is never the object of commodity exchange that instead projects the possibility of change into the thing – in this instance, change takes place through the improved CV, for example”. Mark FEATHERSTONE, “The Politics of the Academic Agora” (2016) 52 Sociologicky Casopis-czech Sociological Review 423.

³⁶ Mikkel J. Christensen has articulated this trend in the field of international criminal law, see Mikkel J. CHRISTENSEN, “Academics for International Criminal Justice: The Role of Legal Scholars in Creating and Sustaining a New Legal Field”, iCourts Working Paper Series, 2014. Mikkel J. Christensen provides the notable example of James B. Scott, “whose career, after having graduated from Harvard, built on a constant reinvestment in academia and state service where he served in different capacities including work in the Hague Peace Conferences on which he also published. Serving as president of the American Society of International Law and Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of International Law, his legal as well as diplomatic credentials were well established before the Great War. Constantly moving between state service and academia cumulatively strengthened his position in both domains, an influential double role that Dr. Scott supplemented with his position as Director of the Division for International Law that was part of the sizable Carnegie Endowment for International Peace crated in 1910. As director Scott helped fund numerous conferences and publications in the field as well as a range of fellowships that became a central stepping stone for many scholars who would go on to occupy chairs in international law. The endowment also actively supported the creation of the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ). After having served on the commission to establish an international criminal tribunal to deal with the crimes of the Kaiser, an initiative the US supported while remaining opposed to the idea of a permanent court, Scott published significant works precisely on international criminal law” (at 11).

³⁷ As remarked by the ILC in its Draft Conclusions on the Identification of Customary International Law, states have traditionally manifested opinio juris through “public statements …; official publications; government legal opinions; diplomatic correspondence; decisions of national courts; treaty provisions; and conduct in connection with resolutions adopted by an international organization or at an intergovernmental conference”, inter alia. Their statements can be made in “debates in multilateral settings”, “published opinions” by governmental advisers or even through “[a]n express public statement … that a given practice is permitted, prohibited or mandated under international law”. See “Draft Conclusions on Identification of Customary International Law, with Commentaries”, Yearbook of the International Law Commission, Vol. II, Part 2 (2018) (A/CN.4/SER.A/2018/Add.1 (Part 2)), conclusion 10.2 and p. 103, para. 4. For a recent example of a public briefing expressing positions on international law see US Department of State – Briefing of 20 May 2024, online: www.state.gov/briefings/department-press-briefing-may-20-2024/, interpreting the ICC Statute.

³⁸ José Alvarez in The Impact of International Organizations on International Law (2017): “The law-making activities of these organizations cast doubt on propositions that international law is established only on the basis of the consent of states, emerges only from the three sources of obligation contained in Article 38 of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) Statute, can be easily distinguished on the basis of its clearly binding authority, and can be understood without the need to draw on non-legal disciplines such as sociology, political science, or economics. International law, or at least the part of it produced, interpreted, or enforced by global institutions such as those of the UN system, it turns out, is not a self-enclosed legal regime” (at 345).

³⁹ See Kristina DAUGIRDAS, “International Organizations and the Creation of Customary International Law” (2020) 31 EJIL at 224, discussing the UN and international humanitarian law.

⁴⁰ Sigrid QUACK, “Legal Professionals and Transnational Law-Making: A Case of Distributed Agency” (2007) 14 Organization at 654: “Dissemination occurs due to interorganizational mobility of lawyers … and interaction between lawyers in the course of their work … International law conferences organized by prestigious law schools and publications in professional journals also contribute to … standardization in transnational law-making. With the support of business law firms, model contracts and master agreements for transnational business transactions are often developed by international business associations … and international bar associations”. Critically, this process is “driven by the commercial interest of international law firms to find solutions for their customers”.

⁴¹ Ibid., at 655. Sigrid Quack refers in this regard to deliberate strategic efforts of “‘institutional entrepreneurs’ … to design new laws or change existing ones”, adding that “[l]egal professionals, law firms and international bar associations act as initiators or supporters of such institutional strategies. Law firms engage in such institutional projects in their own commercial or jurisdictional interest and in their clients’ interest”. Further, these actors engage in “diagnosing problems, framing issues, negotiating solutions, and mobilizing policy networks”.

⁴² Ibid., at 659.

⁴³ As noted by Anne Sanders and Nina Holvast, “[t]he content of [secretary] assistance to judges can reach from acting as a ‘sounding board’ for the judge’s ideas, to conducting research and performing administrative duties to the drafting of decisions and participating in deliberations”. Anne SANDERS and Nina HOLVAST, “Empirical Studies on the Role and Influence of Judicial Assistants and Tribunal Secretaries” (2020) 11 International Journal for Court Administration 1 at 1.

⁴⁴ Duval, supra note 29 at 92.

⁴⁵ Carsten STAHN and Eric DE BRABANDERE, “The Future of International Legal Scholarship: Some Thoughts on ‘Practice’, ‘Growth’, and ‘Dissemination’” (2014) 27 Leiden Journal of International Law 1 at 5 and 7.

⁴⁶ See e.g. EJIL: Talk! (www.ejiltalk.org/); Opinio Juris (https://opiniojuris.org/); Völkerrechtsblog (https://voelkerrechtsblog.org/).

⁴⁷ See e.g. AfronomicsLaw (www.afronomicslaw.org/); Kluwer Arbitration Blog (https://arbitrationblog.kluwerarbitration.com/); International Economic Law and Policy Blog (https://worldtradelaw.typepad.com/).

⁴⁸ Natalie J. DE VRIES and Jamie CARLSON, “Examining the Drivers and Brand Performance Implications of Customer Engagement with Brands in the Social Media Environment” (2014) 21 Journal of Brand Management 495.

⁴⁹ Studies show that newsletters by law firms are also consumed by other lawyers, as sources of “current awareness” about the law (see Stephanie ELLIS, Stephann MAKRÍ, and Simon ATTFIELD, “Keeping Up With the Law: Investigating Lawyers’ Monitoring Behaviour” (2014) 115 New Library World at 7.

⁵⁰ An often-discussed example is that of King & Spalding’s client alert in the wake of the Arab Spring, suggesting options for recovery under investment treaties in Libya: King & Spalding, “Client Alert – Crisis in Libya: What Legal Options are Available to Oil and Gas Companies?” (17 May 2011), online: Lexology www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=82da0933-cbd2-44a8-964a-28579a95ed35.

⁵¹ Available at www.tiktok.com/@icrc.

⁵² See e.g. Human Rights Watch, “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution” (27 April 2021), online: Human Rights Watch www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution.

⁵³ See e.g. the IISD’s Investment Treaty News (available at www.iisd.org/itn/en/resources/).

⁵⁴ Lorenzo GRADONI, “They Tweet Too: Sketches of International Courts’ Digital Lives” (2022) 92 Questions of International Law 5 at chart 5.

⁵⁵ James A. GREEN, “The Rise of Twiplomacy and the Making of Customary International Law on Social Media” (2022) 21 Chinese Journal of International Law 1; Maja SIMUNJAK and Alessandro CALIANDRO, “Twiplomacy in the Age of Donald Trump: Is the Diplomatic Code Changing?” (2019) 35 The Information Society 13. The term “twiplomacy” was coined in a 2011 study by Treebranding.com mapping networks of Twitter diplomacy, online: www.slideshare.net/treebranding/twitter-diplomacy-tree-branding.

⁵⁶ “Twiplomacy Study” BCW (20 July 2020), online: BCW www.twiplomacy.com/twiplomacy-study-2020.

⁵⁷ As reported by James A. Green based on a similar study carried out by BCW in 2012, see Green, supra note 55 at 7.

⁵⁸ Green, supra note 55 at 48.

⁵⁹ Panel Report, Saudi Arabia—Measures concerning the Protection of Intellectual Property Rights, para. 7.161.

⁶⁰ This enthusiasm is partially shared, e.g., by Duval (supra note 29, at 97 and 98).

⁶¹ The author can think of at least two blog posts the very title of which might have raised the eyebrows of peer-reviewers in some journals: Jean D’ASPREMONT, “Favourite Readings 2021 – Canonization, Toleration, Incarnation, and Masturbation” (2021), online: EJIL: Talk! www.ejiltalk.org/favourite-readings-2021-canonization-toleration-incarnation-and-masturbation/; Fuad ZARBIYEV, “Of Bullshit, Lies and ‘Demonstrably Rubbish’ Justifications in International Law” (2022), online: Völkerrechtsblog https://voelkerrechtsblog.org/of-bullshit-lies-and-demonstrably-rubbish-justifications-in-international-law/. Generally, there is more tolerance in blogs toward language capable of eliciting feelings of provocation or shock. These feelings, which international legal academia generally lacks, can contribute to the vividness, desterilization and genuineness of the readers’ engagement with an author’s proposition.

⁶² Ben BRITTON, Chris JACKSON, and Jessica WADE, “The Reward and Risk of Social Media for Academics” (2019) 3 Nature Reviews Chemistry 459 at 459.

⁶³ Ibid.

⁶⁴ Ibid., at 461.

⁶⁵ Duncan KENNEDY, “Legal Education and the Reproduction of Hierarchy” (1981) 32 Journal of Legal Education 591 at 607.

⁶⁶ Duval, supra note 28 at 92.

⁶⁷ Dino KRITSIOTIS, “The Power of International Law as Language” (1998) 34 California Western Law Review 397 at 404.

⁶⁸ Ibid., at 407.

⁶⁹ Lys KULAMADAYIL, “Ableism in the College of International Lawyers: On Disabling Differences in the Professional Field” (2023) 36 Leiden Journal of International Law 549 at 556.

⁷⁰ Pierre SCHLAG, “The Aesthetics of American Law” (2002) 115 Harvard Law Review 1047 at 1117.

⁷¹ Kulamadayil, supra note 69 at 556.

⁷² Ibid., at 553.

⁷³ Ibid., at 556.

⁷⁴ Britton, Jackson and Wade, supra note 62 at 461.

⁷⁵ Janik, supra note 20 at 850.

⁷⁶ Arlene STEIN, “Social Media has Changes Academic Culture – For the Worse” Public Seminar (14 July 2021), online: https://publicseminar.org/essays/social-media-has-changed-academic-culture-for-the-worse/.

⁷⁷ Deborah LUPTON, “‘Feeling Better Connected’: Academics’ Use of Social Media” (2014) Canberra: News & Media Research Centre, University of Canberra online: University of Canberra www.canberra.edu.au/about-uc/faculties/arts-design/attachments2/pdf/n-and-mrc/Feeling-Better-Connected-report-final.pdf at 31.

⁷⁸ Jean D’ASPREMONT, “In Defense of the Hazardous Tool of Legal Blogging” EJIL: Talk! (2011), online: EJIL: Talk! https://www.ejiltalk.org/in-defense-of-the-hazardous-tool-of-legal-blogging/.

⁷⁹ Stahn and De Brabandere, supra note 45 at 8.

⁸⁰ Lupton, supra note 77 at 31.

⁸¹ Janik, supra note 20 at 850.

⁸² Elizabeth DUBOIS and Grant BLANK, “The Myth of the Echo Chamber” Oxford Internet Institute (9 March 2018), online: Oxford Internet Institute www.oii.ox.ac.uk/news-events/the-myth-of-the-echo-chamber/.

⁸³ According to an extreme version of this concern, in the foreseeable future, it may become possible for academics in international law to “self-publish”, see Roger ALFORD, “Self-Publishing Legal Scholarship” Opinio Juris (2011), online: Opinio Juris https://opiniojuris.org/2011/04/12/self-publishing-legal-scholarship/. In more moderate terms, Larissa van den Herik expresses the view that “the odds of the cyber age seem not to be favourable to traditional law journals”, see Larissa VAN DEN HERIK, “Introduction: LJIL in the Age of Cyberspace” (2012) 25 Leiden Journal of International Law 1 at 5.

⁸⁴ Janik, supra note 20 at 866.

⁸⁵ D’Aspremont, supra note 78.

⁸⁶ Ibid.

⁸⁷ Janik, supra note 20 at 858.

⁸⁸ Cally GUERIN, Susan CARTER, and Claire AITCHISON, “Blogging as Community of Practice: Lessons for Academic Development?” (2015) 20 International Journal for Academic Development 212 at 220.

⁸⁹ Duval, supra note 28 at 98.

⁹⁰ In the sense of the comparativism championed by Anthea Roberts (e.g. in Anthea ROBERTS, Is International Law International? (2018)) and espoused by the undersigned author.

⁹¹ Constance DUNCOMBE, “Twitter and Transformative Diplomacy: Social Media and Iran–US Relations” (2017) 93 International Affairs 545 at 562.

⁹² Green, supra note 55 at 8.

⁹³ Ibid., at 48.

⁹⁴ See a detailed analysis of this possibility in Francis GRIMAL, “Twitter and the Jus Ad Bellum: Threats of Force and Other Implications” (2019) 6 Journal on the Use of Force and International Law 183.

⁹⁵ Chu WANG, “Twitter Diplomacy: Preventing Twitter Wars from Escalating into Real Wars” (Harvard Kennedy School – Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs 2019), online: www.belfercenter.org/publication/twitter-diplomacy-preventing-twitter-wars-escalating-real-wars.

⁹⁶ Green, supra note 55 at 48.

⁹⁷ The fact that law firms seek to shape international law through “epistemized” interventions in the public discourse is confirmed by law firms themselves. For instance, as noted in a study by Law.com International: ‘Fieldfisher states on its website: “We closely follow and influence the developments of European law”. Herbert Smith Freehills, in the brochure for its Brussels office, states that its lawyers “are active in wider discussions, consultations, international committees and debates about the future development of competition and EU law”. White & Case’s Brussels base, meanwhile, promises on its website: “We do not just apply the law, we help to shape it”. See Linda A. THOMPSON, “Crossing the Line? How Law Firms ‘Lobby’ EU Institutions in the Shadows” (6 March 2023), online: Law.com International www.law.com/international-edition/2023/03/06/crossing-the-line-how-brussels-law-firms-lobby-eu-institutions-in-the-shadows/?slreturn=20230803131039.

⁹⁸ Stahn and De Brabandere, supra note 45 at 10.

⁹⁹ Ibid., at 8.

¹⁰⁰ D’Aspremont, supra note 81.

¹⁰¹ Ibid. This, indeed, is the root of all evil with respect to the externalities of the shift toward digital ecosystems: that blog posts intended as purely informative or investigative contributions are not identified as such by authors, and may be treated as well-researched, scholarly work by their consumers. Blogs require “a very different orchestration of rhetorical resources”, and it thus is not atypical to see writers “adjusting the strength of assertions with appropriate boosting and hedging”. HANG Zou and Ken HYLAND, “Reworking Research: Interactions in Academic Articles and Blogs” (2019) 21 Discourse Studies at 26, 27.

¹⁰² Van den Herik, supra note 83 at 7.

¹⁰³ Studies on the impact of social media on macro-economic decision-making, for instance, abound. See, ex multis, Abu Muna A. AUSAT, “The Role of Social Media in Shaping Public Opinion and Its Influence on Economic Decisions” (2023) 1 TACIT, 35–44, for a recent example.

¹⁰⁴ Tamar Megiddo suggests bridging the North-South divide in custom identification through big data and data analytic tools, such as web crawlers (Tamar MEGIDDO, “Knowledge Production, Big Data, and Data-driven Customary International Law” in Andrea BIANCHI and Moshe HIRSCH, eds., International Law’s Invisible Frames (Oxford: Oxford university press, 2021) at 762, 763.

¹⁰⁵ Wang, supra note 95.