C21 Editions project: Interview Transcript (Ref: C21_MK_FF)

Transcriptions of 46 interviews with theorists and practitioners in the field of digital scholarly editing on topics relating to the future of digital scholarly editions

Political Expression in Web Defacements

The idea of influencing public opinion through digital media is ubiquitous, yet little is known about its origins. This thesis investigates the use of political communication through hacked websites. It is at the same time an exploratory description of the research tools and methods needed to find and retrieve such material. The dissertation frames political expression through hacking as interference with the strata of digital communication and positions it within a larger history of on- and offline activist practices. The methodological section describes the difficulties of finding and accessing defaced pages, which are almost exclusively held by community-based archives. Based on already available and added metadata, the dataset of defacements is surveyed and topics, periods of high activity and prominent defacer groups are identified. Modes of expression are tracked to give insight to possible defacer motivation. This survey then serves as the basis for the following analysis of two emblematic clusters of activity: The Kashmir conflict and the 9/11 attacks. In a close reading of selected defacements, communication strategies and general types of defacements are described, thereby showcasing the diversity of defacer standpoints and strategies which runs counter to the common uniform depiction of hackers. The notion of defacements as forced injection of material into a public sphere is discussed throughout these close readings and leads to the final analytical section discussing the relation between defacements and WikiLeaks. After reflecting on the themes that unite this dissertation, the conclusion reflects on the preservation and availability of source material on defaced pages. The author expresses the hope that both the research methodology as well as the applied analyses will promote the understanding of web defacements as a resource for inquests into online political expression

A quantitative analysis of digital scholarly editions

This research is part of C21 Editions: Scholarly Editing and Publishing in the Digital Age, a three-year international collaboration jointly funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AH/W001489/1) and Irish Research Council (IRC/W001489/1

Visualizing digital scholarly editions

This document has been produced by the C21 Editions project Funded by UKRI-AHRC and the Irish Research Council under the ‘UK-Ireland Collaboration in the Digital Humanities Research Grants’, grant numbers AH/W001489/1 and IRC/W001489/1.For a curated list of digital editions past and present, two main data sources are available: Patrick Sahle lists around 700 editions in a curated catalog (Sahle, n.d.), while the Catalogue of Digital Editions features about 320 digital editions in a database (Franzini 2012). Both sources have different criteria for inclusion, overlap in content and differ in granularity, yet these are the sources from which a history of digital scholarly editions will mostly draw. The visualizations presented here are primarily concerned with change over time in the field of digital editions and aim to identify characteristics and trends in the field

Political Expression in Web Defacements

The idea of influencing public opinion through digital media is ubiquitous, yet little is known about its origins. This thesis investigates the use of political communication through hacked websites. It is at the same time an exploratory description of the research tools and methods needed to find and retrieve such material. The dissertation frames political expression through hacking as interference with the strata of digital communication and positions it within a larger history of on- and offline activist practices. The methodological section describes the difficulties of finding and accessing defaced pages, which are almost exclusively held by community-based archives. Based on already available and added metadata, the dataset of defacements is surveyed and topics, periods of high activity and prominent defacer groups are identified. Modes of expression are tracked to give insight to possible defacer motivation. This survey then serves as the basis for the following analysis of two emblematic clusters of activity: The Kashmir conflict and the 9/11 attacks. In a close reading of selected defacements, communication strategies and general types of defacements are described, thereby showcasing the diversity of defacer standpoints and strategies which runs counter to the common uniform depiction of hackers. The notion of defacements as forced injection of material into a public sphere is discussed throughout these close readings and leads to the final analytical section discussing the relation between defacements and WikiLeaks. After reflecting on the themes that unite this dissertation, the conclusion reflects on the preservation and availability of source material on defaced pages. The author expresses the hope that both the research methodology as well as the applied analyses will promote the understanding of web defacements as a resource for inquests into online political expression

Political Expression in Web Defacements

The idea of influencing public opinion through digital media is ubiquitous, yet little is known about its origins. This thesis investigates the use of political communication through hacked websites. It is at the same time an exploratory description of the research tools and methods needed to find and retrieve such material. The dissertation frames political expression through hacking as interference with the strata of digital communication and positions it within a larger history of on- and offline activist practices. The methodological section describes the difficulties of finding and accessing defaced pages, which are almost exclusively held by community-based archives. Based on already available and added metadata, the dataset of defacements is surveyed and topics, periods of high activity and prominent defacer groups are identified. Modes of expression are tracked to give insight to possible defacer motivation. This survey then serves as the basis for the following analysis of two emblematic clusters of activity: The Kashmir conflict and the 9/11 attacks. In a close reading of selected defacements, communication strategies and general types of defacements are described, thereby showcasing the diversity of defacer standpoints and strategies which runs counter to the common uniform depiction of hackers. The notion of defacements as forced injection of material into a public sphere is discussed throughout these close readings and leads to the final analytical section discussing the relation between defacements and WikiLeaks. After reflecting on the themes that unite this dissertation, the conclusion reflects on the preservation and availability of source material on defaced pages. The author expresses the hope that both the research methodology as well as the applied analyses will promote the understanding of web defacements as a resource for inquests into online political expression

Towards a concept for archiving hacked websites

Web defacements as a form of hacktivism are rarely archived and thus mostly lost for systematic study. When they find their way into web archives, it is often more as a by-product of a larger web archiving effort than as the result of a targeted effort. Aside from large collections there also exists a small scene of community-maintained cybercrime archives that archive hacked web sites, some of which are hacked in a hacktivist context. It is the purpose of this article to give an overview of the state and possibilities of using both archives for research. Such research may include qualitative and quantitative data analysis from a media and social studies perspective

Towards a concept for archiving hacked websites

Web defacements as a form of hacktivism are rarely archived and thus mostly lost for systematic study. When they find their way into web archives, it is often more as a by-product of a larger web archiving effort than as the result of a targeted effort. Aside from large collections there also exists a small scene of community-maintained cybercrime archives that archive hacked web sites, some of which are hacked in a hacktivist context. It is the purpose of this article to give an overview of the state and possibilities of using both archives for research. Such research may include qualitative and quantitative data analysis from a media and social studies perspective