Laura Forlano

ACTIVIST INFRASTRUCTURES: The Role of Community Wireless Organizations in Authenticating the City

Abstract

This paper seeks to understand the ways in which social structures – in particular, artists, activists and community groups – and technological infrastructures – streets, architecture and telecommunications – authenticate the public spaces of cities at three levels: first, the use of traditional and new media for the annotation of public space; second, the use of new media for political action during the Republican National Convention in New York in 2004 and to build a back-up emergency communications system following Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005; third, the role of community wireless networks in building the social and technological infrastructures of activism and contributing to the sustainability of cities. Rather than an empirical study of the above examples, the goal of this paper is merely to connect disparate issues and raise questions, which may lead to the formulation of a more cohesive research agenda in this area.


Laura Forlano (New York, NY) is a Ph.D. candidate in communications at Columbia University


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