A CASE STUDY OF HACKATHONS

Transcription

1 Recursive Identities in Sociopolitical Movements: A CASE STUDY OF HACKATHONS Nathanael Bassett & Danny Kim

2 Motivations Collective Identity - how individuals and groups inform one another Does digital media foster new articulations of collective identity? Relationship of tech & personal/collective agency Is identity and ideology now determined by the collective? Network types by Paul Baran, early 1960's Earl, Jennifer, and Katrina Kimport. Digitally Enabled Social Change. Cambridge: The MIT Press (2011)

3 What s a Hackathon? Hackathons as temporary virtual/physical spaces...social events, where participants gather under a theme to intensively work on problems (usually related to computer programing) for a fixed amount of time. un-conferences activist/civic/corporate or api/contest/social Ideal for two types of hacktivism - internet infrastructure and information politics and communicative practices and organisation (Jordan) Jordan T. The politics of technology: Three types of hacktivism. Net Working/Networking: Citizen Initiated Internet Politics. Ed. Hayhtio T and Rinne J Tampere: Tampere University Press, Print.

4 Network Culture People working in collaboration Importance Implications of data-driven activism Text Facts, visualizations and tech fixes Connecting Occupy: 1.5 showing the transition from physical occupation to Occupy groups partnering with local communities and community organizations.

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6 Study Design Using the Hackathon as a case study Ethnography Participant Observation & Interviews - Roles played in a hackathon - Role a hackathon plays for participant PAR elements Action Product: How to make a hackathon s results harder, better, faster, stronger, etc. Word cloud from field notes

7 Recursive Publics Recursion...vitally concerned with the material and practical maintenance and modification of the technical, legal, practical, and conceptual means of its own existence as a public; it is a collective independent of other forms of constituted power and is capable of speaking to existing forms of power through the production of actually existing alternatives. (Kelty) Effectively using technology to achieve goals while overcoming determinist tensions (Hands). Technology does not change the world - people who use technology do. The fragmentation of culture... leads to the individualization of cultural meaning in the communication of networks (Castells) Recursive tree written in Logo programming language Kelty, Christopher M. Two Bits. Duke University Press Books, Castells, Manuel. "Materials for an Exploratory Theory of the Network Society." British Journal of Sociology 51.1 (2000): Hands, Is for Activism. New York, NY: Pluto Press (2011)

8 Findings Hackathons are (usually) about solving technology problems (and sometimes there might be a social application to those solutions) Possibly an example of solutionism (Morozov) Collaborative, casual, and participant-driven Organizer balances Participation vs Representation Hackathons & hacktivism: not always congruous Morozov, Evgeny. To Save Everything, Click Here. New York: PublicAffairs, 2013.

9 Additional Reflection Collaboration vs collectivization Sustainability Fostering collaboration between different skill sets Defining the stakes of an event & those involved

10 Thank you Nathanael Bassett