Over the past several decades, hacking and journalism have increasingly intersected, changing how both fields work. This talk uses that relationship as a way into hacking itself: its different cultures, histories, and politics. Hacking has never been one thing—phreaks, free software developers, the underground, security researchers, artist- activists—each with their own ethics and histories. The media, however, has usually focused on just one group at a time, and which group got attention often depended on the political milieu. At first, journalists mostly treated hackers as threats or oddities. Later, as technology became more widespread and complex, journalists began to seek out hackers for their expertise. Sometimes reporters approached these experts, but hackers also made themselves visible and available to journalists. They had shared their knowledge for years in zines like 2600 and Phrack, and groups like the L0pht and the Chaos Computer Club staged public interventions to force media coverage. I will end by discussing what changed after 2010, when hackers began doing journalism themselves through leaking and hacking. Newsrooms had to re-work out the ethics of publishing stolen material and of depending on sources they were still uneasy about.

About the speaker

Gabriella (Biella) Coleman is a full professor in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University and is a faculty associate at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Trained as an anthropologist, her scholarship covers the politics, cultures, and ethics of hacking. She is the author of two books on computer hackers and the founder and editor of Hack_Curio, a video portal into the cultures of hacking). 

Host

Computer Science Colloquium Series

Co-host

Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, part of the Einaudi Center for International Studies