Disruption Network Lab presents:
Conference Beyond Control – Resisting Digital Oppression & Authoritarianism. 

With this conference, Disruption Network Lab seek sto understand what motivates, shapes and influences digital authoritarianism and online systematic oppression around the world, no matter the style of government or political configuration. Our approach is to show how we can counter digital repression through grassroots empowerment, and how we can use distributed information to make people aware of injustices and abuses of power.

We frame an understanding of what is popularly known as digital authoritarianism, and meet the people exploring how to challenge its hypothetical futures, through media investigations, activism, art and resistance. We seek to understand, uncover, and counter the use of information technologies in authoritarian contexts as well as in the context of strategic targeting of dissidents, journalists, migrants, and minorities. We investigate how digital platforms are increasingly being used to oppress people in non-democratic contexts, but also in Western democracies. Understanding the growth of authoritarian and discriminatory uses of technology is the key for discussing a framework for ethical and just use of information..

On the one hand, the event challenges systematic strategies of repression to advance political goals, discussing misinformation and information warfare in the context of right-wing propaganda. On the other hand, it exposes the monopoly of communication channels that can shape and distort reality, conceal abuses and maintain power, and presents strategies to circumvent restricted access to technology and information during wars and conflicts.

The internet constituted a space of relative freedom for a generation, but that space has greatly narrowed as governments master increasingly effective and censorship protocols, shaping not just messaging and news, but conversation spaces and the conduct of social media platforms. Ironically, this emergent control is often built with the complicity of technology companies, both from authoritarian and democratic states. While open, anonymous and free spaces still exist online, they are increasingly hard to protect, and often require significant technical skill to access. Furthermore, the idea of “freedom of expression” has been co-opted by right-wing and extremist rhetoric, utilizing digital tools and online platform to spread hate, inciting violence, racism, and negationism.

The internet is dominated by advertising technology that tracks and segments users for commercial gain. Governments, states, and political groups and parties, often in collaboration with corporations, harness this surveillance power, and this practice is only growing as technology leaps forward with machine learning, facial recognition, and the use of artificial intelligence for “predictive” analysis.

This conference and workshops aim to expose information architectures of control and misinformation, and how strategies of surveillance and censorship are used to silence and systematically target specific individuals or entire populations. But it also wants to show how to resist such systems of oppression by demonstrating how digital culture and technology can be used to empower people, going beyond digital control into real life to make concrete change.