Isadora Borges Monroy |
The research seeks to understand why individuals within piracy communities take up political participation, and under which technological conditions. Part of the grant is used to set up a secure environment to study online communities, as well as for participatory-observation purposes (in order to replicate what individuals probably go through) which has meant setting up a work computer with access to anonymizing software. A research paper on one aspect of these communities has been produced and will be presented to a research group in the Fall, in preparation for publication. Data from a piracy news website was gathered and analyzed in order to explore the role of virtual private networks in politicizing piracy communities.