User:Pedro Sá Couto/Graduate Research Seminar Trim 5/Chapter 01 08012020

From the XPUB PAD
https://pad.xpub.nl/p/psc_chapter_01_03

Part 1: Bridging between Surveillance and Publishing

Point A: Alternative publishing channels became fundamental to engage locally, spread information and freely publish thoughts

Argument 1 : Parallel publishing streams

Overcoming repressive power structures with publishing

Impact of tech in fast reproduction

Zine Culture and self-published media

Point B: Analyzing strategies that enable digital access

Argument 1 : Archives and libraries provide spaces to access media that come from alternative channels

From shadow libraries to .onion libraries, how their structure influences who gets to access them.

Preserving sensitive information and its' digital memory, how do archives document and organize perishable material?

Point C: Watermarking in free digital spaces

Argument 1 : Memes as a tool to free speech

Memes as an easy way to propagate an idea

Counter censorship memes

There is a general discontect online and with memes users are demanding original content

Research focus

Linking how printed media was used to challenge repressive power structures and what communities still use alternative publishing channels. What are the efforts to preserve these kinds of media, and how are they digitally available?

Summary

In this chapter, I will start by creating a link with the introduction where I delved into governmental surveillance and Digital authoritarianism. From understanding how the internet is a valuable asset to be controlled and to control the flow of information, I will compare it to the press control in authoritarian regimes. This sets as a base ground from where I will explore how printed media played a vital role in the past to tackle oppressive regimes and its use to bypass censorship. I will also point out some strategies that were used to share different media within this context.

With the introduction of technology as the mimeograph or the photocopier, communities found a way to share printed publications faster, more accurately and cheaper. I will explore what these developments meant to them, and I will be taking the example of the zine culture to explain it within a concrete context. Later on, the introduction of the internet opened a space where the propagation of files and political ideas started to occur more quickly and within a bigger audience.

I will finish this first chapter by delving into some strategies implemented in digital archives and libraries, providing spaces to access media that come from alternative channels. It is essential to understand what efforts have already been put in place to archive illegal and extra-legal documents. While creating these archives, strategies are set to limit who accesses them and how technology plays a political role within them. What is the current impact of these? What are its roles while preserving the digital memory of sensitive information?