| 1. |
- Röhle, Theo, 1976-
(författare)
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“A sedate, hesitant, circumspect, little behavioral revolution” : The case of New Political History 1957–1970
- 2019
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The presentation seeks to historicise current approaches to Digital History by focusing on New Political History, a branch of US political history that emerged in the late 1950s. While its proponents were especially enthusiastic about the merits of computation and quantification, it also sparked a heated debate in the field, culminating in the president of the American Historical Association's insistence "Nor will the historian worship at the shrine of that Bitch-goddess, QUANTIFICATION [sic]." The presentation looks at New Political History from three different angles: First, the role of actors and institutions for its development is described, then the impact of media technologies during this phase is assessed and finally 'external' factors such as changing funding policies and industry concerns are examined. The findings will finally be used in a comparison to today's situation in order to discuss the broader issue of continuity vs. discontinuity and to connect to the conferences question whether Digital History can be seen as a Field, a Method or just a Phase.
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| 2. |
- Röhle, Theo, 1976-
(författare)
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Disrupting Distribution : Online publishing after Mirai
- 2019
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- During recent years, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks have developed from singular disturbances to a persistent problem within online publishing. They have grown in strength to an extent that even large web hosting companies are struggling to protect their clients from them. At the same time, the level of technical knowledge and financial resources required to administer these attacks is continually decreasing. Often based on variants of the Mirai virus that recruits vulnerable Internet of Things devices into botnets, the so-called booter and stresser community offers powerful attack capabilities as a web service, complete with user-friendly interfaces and flexible payment options.A range of larger media organisations have already been exposed to DDoS attacks, e.g. the BBC in 2015 and Newsweek in 2016. In Sweden, several Swedish publishing companies were put offline during a weekend in 2016. In countries where investigative journalists and independent media organisations work under harsher conditions, DDoS attacks are seen as one among many threats faced both online and offline on a daily basis. Thus, media organisations’ websites are in increasing danger of being blocked by minor actors. In order to stay accessible in spite of attacks, websites have to be protected by sophisticated technical solutions based on algorithmic filtering of server requests. However, when faced with severe attacks, these kinds of solutions often become prohibitively expensive for individuals and small organisations, leaving freelance journalists and smaller media organisations particularly exposed – a situation that IT journalist Brian Krebs (2016) has described as the ”democratization of censorship”.This paper presents preliminary results from an interview study investigating media organisations’ responses to DDoS attacks. The study involves both journalists and IT professionals working in media organisations and focuses on their strategies for handling attacks as well as their conceptualisations of threats. This involves the question who the threats’ targets are presumed to be – an organisation, the profession, society? Another key question concerns attribution, since DDoS attacks by their nature rarely can be traced back to a single source. How is responsibility allocated and what motivations are ascribed to the assumed perpetrators? Based on these findings, the presentation attempts to disentangle the antagonistic relationships between the involved actors – DDoS providers, DDoS mitigation services and media organisations – and to discern how their respective discursive constructions of threats are interwoven with the different economies they embody.
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| 3. |
- Röhle, Theo, 1976-
(författare)
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Mapping Home : Modalities of the cartographic negotiation of place
- 2019
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The presentation focuses on the role of digital cartography in negotiating the meaning of home. It is widely recognised that maps play an important role for the representation of place. It has also been argued that the advent of digital media has redistributed power relations involved in cartography, e.g. by making digital mapping tools easily accessible. As many examples have shown, the maps created with these tools can potentially challenge prevailing representations of place.I take Jeremy Crampton's concept of "new spatial media" as my point of departure, but expand on its distinctive feature that "the public is gaining (some) access to the means of production of maps". The main question will be what "means of production" and "(some) access" actually means under digital conditions. By engaging with a seminal historical example – the "Guide psychogéographique de Paris“, created by Situationists Guy Debord und Asger Jorn in the 1950s, as well as the corresponding methodological concept of the "derivé" – I develop an analytical distinction between two modalities of mapping. Accumulative modes of mapping, it is argued with reference to Bruno Latour, reproduce categories established by "centres of calculation". In aggregative modes of mapping, on the other hand, the malleability and expandability of data collection takes centre stage, allowing for established categories to be challenged. Drawing on this terminology, several current examples of popular digital mapping services will be discussed in terms of their potential for negotiating the meaning of home.
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| 4. |
- Röhle, Theo, 1976
(författare)
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The Politics of Protection. DDoS Mitigation and the Care for Infrastructure
- 2021
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Ingår i: 4S 2021 Toronto - Good Relations. Practices and Methods in Unequal and Uncertain Worlds.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This paper focuses on Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks that render online content inaccessible by flooding servers with illegitimate requests. There is an increasing number of reports of such attacks being aimed at NGOs and media organisations, a development that is accelerated by the proliferation of vulnerable Internet of Things devices that can be recruited into botnets. Many organisations therefore rely on sophisticated forms of protection, provided either by commercial providers such as Cloudflare, Akamai and Google or by NGO-affiliated providers such as Qurium and Deflect. Following calls for infrastructural perspectives on communication technology in media studies, governance studies and STS, I argue that DDoS mitigation represents a sociotechnical site where new kinds of dependencies between media organisations and IT security providers are being forged. Despite their increasing influence on the distribution of content, these sites have hitherto largely escaped scholarly scrutiny. Based on an interview study with IT professionals involved in DDoS mitigation, the paper focuses on the respondents’ perceptions of their role and responsibilities when it comes to protecting content. As a first exploration into the motivations of experts involved in DDoS mitigation, the paper contributes to a better understanding of the normative positions that drive technology development in this field. Furthering this understanding is crucial at a moment when distribution involves an increasing number of intermediaries with powerful traffic management capabilities. It also raises the question what bearing established imaginaries and visions of society can and should have on the transport layers of distributional infrastructures.
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