Thursday
from Weekly writing reflection
Went to the post office and dropped off more trash/compost.
Spoke with a very famous academic related to my research on the phone. That was very cool.
Tried writing, nothing really substantial though. Just lots of messy notes. I'm going to share what I wrote so you can get a sense of what it often looks like when I free write:
an alternative history to how the internet became personal
-so theres how I want to apply this notion. -sets the limits of what is considered acceptable behavior -it gives personal information meaning and stakes. I echo sociomaterial approaches to user practices and assert that how it is how information is used that makes it remarkable.
-I am influenced by the essay, Closer to the Metal, as this essay similarly emphasizes cultural histories through materials. But this materiality is not separable from the cultures, discourses, institutions, that equally have developed doxing as a digital counterpractice and counterartifact. -a dox, like spam (compare it to how Brunton discusses spam).... -Further, the response to doxing, also makes doxing what it is. The way that doxing, like fake news, becomes a prejorative can be thrown on an investigative journalist its disagreed with. -I argue that the practice of doxing is what brought to light the opacity and ambiguity embedded in previously presumed anonymous and apolitical communication systems technologies and mediums. -pastebins/ portals -xbox live -search engines -IP addresses: an IP address is just a string of numbers, its power comes with how its applied. IP address: whois/ -how you found an IP address -where you published it -the response to it. -VPN services. the marketing of it. cybersecurity, online safety groups, services like Deleteme, promote themselves through the potential threat of being a victim to doxing, hacking, and scams. Mcafee, Deleteme, Doxing is a history of how the internet became personal. Just like how this account is one history of doxing, doxing is just one way of telling the history of how the internet became personal. However, I argue that this telling of doxing isn't to overshadow other accounts, but to inform them, help them expand their contours. Other ones being: -identity fraud -content influences, personal branding. -surveillance , targeted and mass surveillance. alternative cultures are important to internet history that still to this day inform internet governance and discourse. Doxing origins. Literature on Doxing Approaching doxing through materiality: platforms: pastebins tools: Who is/ -history of how the computer became personal -Finn Brunton
Tother thing about doxing history is a personal history of the internet is because of the importance of personal to the definition of culture wars. This is exactly why doxing is such a potent tool that upholds culture wars. Because culture wars are all about personalizing a social issue. Masking contributes to the moral panic. There is then this cyclical nature where masks used to protect themselves from surveillance become the point of interest to doxing someone.
People search engines Platforms: Pastebin -archive, dump, trash, portal IP addresses: -bulletin board > phone numbers -whois/ function -Cybersecurity VPN Video games? Masks: how a physical object comes to be important to internet history is going to be a difficult framework to develop. It involves thinking about how an analog object is important to the internet. -the masked hacker -black bloc -KKK/ Far right mask -V for Vendetta -If I take this as a chapter i will have to acknowledge the racialized element of the black hoodie/ masking. However I need to try and do this while asserting why race isn't my object of focus.
Nooney's book Apple II Age: How the Computer Became Personal, orients her history through individual ownership of computers, speciifically through 1960s-1970s electronic hobbyists. She then goes to examine the role of profit-seeking in the proliferation of computers, enveloped by entrepreneurs and preestablished electronic companies. Her book is not oriented by individual events or inventors, but instead focuses on the habits, contexts and practices of computers. “By foregrounding these broader themes and phenomena, this account emphasizes habits, contexts, and practices rather than individual events or inventors. In doing so, this chapter parses what was actually important in the history of computing as it contributed to the development of the Apple II. As we will see, what was important wasn’t always just technological concerns.” (Nooney, 2025, p. 21).
So right now i've been writing about pastebins. But i'm also curious if I should switch to writing about IP addresses.? I'm nervous that I can't make a case as to why Pastebins are important even though Pastebins exist now. I need to figure out a way to explain how looking at a history is relevant to now. IP addresses and Pastebins still exist.
-I think it'd be interesting to look at the response to doxing. Cybersecurity and online safety organizations and the imagery, language they use as well as the tools they suggest. So I guess making some connection between the relevance of cybersecurity marketing and online safety governance/moderation in regards to doxing is one way. I could look at the emphasis on using VPNS, the fear of hackers that develop the image of the doxer. The emphasis on this imagery as a marketing scheme obfuscates the divisively socially political nature of cybersecurity
How doxing has come to be defined through the image of the doxer, the panic of being doxed, and overemphasizes mainstream social media and VPNs that end up diswaying and ignoring materials and conditions that make doxxing what it is today. People come to doxing from different political and cultural positions. That is too broad.
There is acknowledging pastebins, and using doxing and pastebins to consider portals that circumvent moderation boundaries and the role of repurposing technologies that then point to a larger issue
Theres one article framework that looks at takes doxing, positions it as important to the history of the internet, and focuses on the role of cybersecurity media, marketing and online safety policy?
Options:
-doxing and the role of repurposing technologies (take one technology? or take two?). This would then have to point to a larger argument and showcase its relevancy to the now.
-analyzing the moral panic and discourse around doxing. doxing,media representations/discourse of doxing and the doxer, institutional, organizational responses to doxing,
-doxing and its role in the history of how the internet became personal. I'd have to pick a time frame, and two objects/phenomena/conditions, and then figure out how that is important to this day
-doxing and something about the impoortance of cybersecurity industry and hacker culture to contemporary digital media studies.
-I find it interesting that pastebins aren't really written about
-I find it interesting how the role of cybersecurity and security discourse isn't discussed much
-I find it interesting to think about doxing through materials
-I find it interesting to think about how doxing has made the internet personal
-I find it interesting to figure out a way to hold a critique of the marketing, rhetorics of cybersecurity regarding doxing. Something about how doxing is spoken about, addressed, and the tools used to protect from it, end up defining and reifying doxing/developing its meaning.
The discourse, responses, and panics of doxing actively shapes what doxing becomes, what technologies get used for it, and how the practice gets governed.
platform design, use, moderation.
when the same infrastructure serves both legitimate and transgressive purposes simultaneously?
Use cybersecurity marketing/discourse to examine how doxing gets defined and understood in ways that shape platform governance, user behavior, and internet culture.
How “security solutions” obscure the social/political dimensions of doxing
how industry discourse shapes cultural understanding of digital practices.
moral panic becomes a material reality.
narratives of doxing actively shapes what doxing becomes, what technologies get used for it and how it gets governed.
Platform design response
The technical “solutions” to doxing.
Panic about doxing creates specific policies and enforcement practices that materially change platform affordances.
social meanings and technical systems co-evolve
Sociomateriality + user practice + co-evolution suggests asking:
- How do users and technologies mutually shape each other over time?
- What happens when technologies get used in ways that change their social meaning?
- How do material affordances enable new social practices that then reshape the technology?
How do [specific technology] and [specific social practice] co-evolve, and what does this reveal about how digital technologies acquire social meaning?
PRactices of doxing foreshadowed what the internet was capable of being/doing.