User:Pedro Sá Couto/Graduate Research Seminar Trim 5/Chapter 01 10022020

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Part 1: Bridging between Surveillance and Publishing

Point A: Bypassing surveillance

Argument 1 : Alternative publishing channels became fundamental to engage locally, spread information and freely publish thoughts (PAST)

Parallel publishing streams

Overcoming repressive power structures with publishing

Impact of analogue technology shaping these parallel streams

Zine Culture and self-published media

Argument 2 : Contrasting fast paced spaces (NOW)

Spreading is now viral.

Political statements are online.

Memes as a tool to free speech

Memes as a virus, upfront and hidden messages

Point B: Analyzing strategies that enable digital access (STRATEGIES)

Argument 1 : Archives and libraries provide spaces to access sensitive media

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?

Infrastructures and counter-strategies demanded to publish and to cease control over knowledge

Bridge : Why researching on watermarks?

Research focus

Linking how printed media was used to challenge repressive power structures and which 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 these communities and how they are compared with the use of VPNs and browser extensions to bypass surveillance nowadays. The introduction of the internet shaped this discourse differently, making it easier, faster and viral while opening 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 positions while preserving the digital memory of sensitive information?

BRIDGING BETWEEN SURVEILLANCE AND PUBLISHING

Bypassing Surveillance