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Becky Kazansky Tactical Technology Collective Introduction Tactical Technology Collective (Tactical Tech) is an international Non-Governmental Organisation focused on supporting the effective use of information in advocacy. Tactical Tech has spent a decade listening to, documenting, and responding to activists’ privacy and digital security needs and challenges across the world, often in contexts where the free flow of information is constrained. This vantage point has allowed Tactical Tech to observe the transnational spread of digital surveillance technologies, and their use against human rights activists (Hankey and O’Clunaigh, 2013; Notley and Hankey, 2013). Stories of monitoring and intrusion facilitated through digital surveillance technologies have been relayed to Tactical Tech in training events, through research and documentation field trips, at conferences and workshops, and via networks and activist media. These stories confirm the kinds of harms described and theorised in surveillance studies literature and in reports by civil society organisations documenting the psychological […]
Sky Croeser Curtin University Tim Highfield Queensland University of Technology Introduction Activists’ uses of digital technologies are complex, and technologies are not only shaping the available possibilities for social change but are also being changed themselves through activists’ work. In this article we look at Greek activists’ use of a range of communication technologies, including social media like Twitter and Facebook, blogs, citizen journalism sites, Web radio, anonymous networks, and email. We use Anna Tsing’s (2005) model of friction to understand how frictions might productively influence or slow the use of particular digital technologies, examining the intersections between human and non-human actors, ideologies and experiences, in influencing the choices made by activists. Our analysis focuses on the Greek antifascist movement, primarily in Athens, noting that ‘the antifascist movement’ is largely a constructed object. We see Greek anarchist and anti-authoritarian organising as a key element of this movement, and note that […]
Katie Ellis Curtin University Gerard Goggin University of Sydney Mike Kent Curtin University Introduction Increasingly, disability is acknowledged as a key part of society, public and private spheres, and everyday life. Moreover, disability has achieved notable recognition and endorsement as an area of inequality, oppression, and discrimination that requires concerted global and local action. We see various markers of this transformation in the social relations of disability. In the legal realm there is the enactment of the United Nations Conventions on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (Arnardóttir and Quinn, 2009; Flynn, 2011), and the cumulative effect of many important laws and regulations enacted by governments around the world (Francis and Silver, 2000; Waddington, Quinn and Flynn, 2015). Related positive developments include greater visibility and potency of people with disabilities in public spheres and counter public spheres. There is increasing acknowledgement of the specific gender, class, race, and sexuality dimensions […]