[Noisebridge-board] Study Hacktivism and Stereotypes

[Leonie Tanczer]

Dear Board-Members,

I apologise for contacting you and using this mailing-list for my own research-purpose, however, I wanted to contact you before posting anything you do not appreciate on any of the more general mailing-lists. My name is Leonie Tanczer, I am currently MSc student in Political Psychology at Queen's University Belfast. I email you as I would like to politely ask if any female list-member has an interest in participating in my study on hacktivism and stereotypes and would have an interest in talking to me via Skype or any preferred service for an approximately one-hour long interview. Thus, I'd also like to ask if this information could be forwarded to any further members through the more general mailing-lists.

(a) Research Question:
How societal stereotypes affects the picture and discourse of politically motivated hackers (hacktivists)?

(b) Aims of the research:
To demonstrate that societal stereotypes about hacktivists (e.g., media) are existent within the community (External view)
To show how hacktivist relate to these stereotypes / are aware of them (Internal view)
To pick up in the interviews what others think of hacktivists – through that I get a sense of the public perception and can demonstrating that societal stereotypes about hacktivists affect hacktivists own talk and sense making about themselves (Internal view)
To analyse how these stereotypes change what they are doing (Internal view/Comparison)

(c) Participants:
10-12 Interviews with male (5) and female (5) hacktivists (German-English speaking).
All of them have to define themselves as “hacktivists” (politically motivated hackers).
Currently I am only missing one more female participant, thus, I would very much appreciate if someone would be interested to participate in an interview next week with me.

(d) Method
Foucauldian Discourse Analysis

(e) How will confidentiality be ensured:
All personal details about the participants, as well as the interview transcripts will be stored at and evaluated on the researchers personal, password-protected laptop only. No external hardware (e.g., different laptop, PC, USB) will be used to analyse the data and data will not be moved from the researchers laptop. Additionally, to guarantee security and anonymity, all the information will be encrypted based on the advanced encryption standard (AES 256bit) using the free open-source software Truecrypt.

I would organise any time which suits the participants - though, the earlier the date -the better for me, as I am currently under immense time pressure and would like to start the analysis phase of my thesis.

Here a link to a more detailed information and my PGP publik key: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/13677106/Participant%20Information%20Sheet%20%28detailed%29.pdf

I hope I provided enough information about my research and could either interest someone in participating in this study, or help me gaining contact to potential interview partners.
Please feel free to contact me if you have more question and I would be thankful if you would come back to me.

Sincerely
Leonie Tanczer

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.noisebridge.net/pipermail/board/attachments/20130725/3727874a/attachment.html>