Molly Sauter

Where Is the Digital Street?

Abstract: The internet is a vital arena of communication, self expression, and interpersonal organizing. When there is a message to convey, words to get out, or people to unify, many will turn to the internet as a theater for that activity. As familiar and widely accepted activist tools—petitions, fundraisers, mass letter-writing, call-in campaigns and others—find equivalent practices in the online space, is there also room for the tactics of disruption and civil disobedience that are equally familiar from the realm of street marches, occupations, and sit-ins? This talk explores the potential of the internet as a zone for disruptive activism and the laws and social forces chilling the development of innovative political activism online.

Bio: Molly Sauter is a doctoral student at McGill University in Montreal in the department of Art History and Communication Studies. She holds a masters degree in Comparative Media Studies from MIT, and is an affiliate researcher at the Center for Civic Media at the MIT Media Lab and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. She resides in Montreal, Quebec, and lives on the internet, blogging at oddletters.com and tweeting @oddletters.