Prioritizing Privacy: Cultural Dimensions of Activist Technology Choices

• In Event: 20861 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 5: How do Digital Technologies and New Media Influence Collective Action?

Abstract

Social movements are inextricably intertwined with the technology available to activists. Technology is mundane, reflecting the working concerns of how to complete movement tasks. Underneath this mundanity, technology decisions and platform choices are cultural objects. We explore the meaning and symbolism of choosing privacy enhancing technologies, or PETs, by asking why their use is varied and contested within movement communities. Based on forty leader interviews from thirty-three distinct movement groups, we find that, rather than a simple calculation of group needs, technology choices are the tangible outcome of group culture work, where members and leaders negotiate how a given technology fits (or not) with the ways the group sees itself, as well as how it wants to be seen by their broader communities. We find that groups sometimes adopt what we call conspicuous insecurity, using their lack of concern about surveillance as evidence to their community that they are politically and culturally safe. Other groups adopt stricter privacy protocols than they otherwise would have because of the activist cultures in which they are embedded. These findings are particularly important as the political climate grows increasingly hostile activism, especially on the political left, raising the risks and benefits of privacy.

Author

• Kelsy Kretschmer, Oregon State University