PhD Thesis

Working Title

Security, Privacy and Grassroots Environmentalism in the Philippines.

Summary

This thesis examines how environmental organisers in the Philippines understand and practice information security within a geographically dispersed social movement. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, it shows that security is intertwined with mobility, as community organisers carry information, navigate risks of surveillance and device seizure, and connect local communities to wider activist networks. The research also explores how activists interpret threats through locally meaningful concepts such as red-tagging, and how security knowledge is produced through technical, lived, emotional and institutional forms of expertise. By highlighting the role of resource inequalities, infrastructure constraints and movement values in shaping security practices, the thesis demonstrates that information security is fundamentally a socio-cultural phenomenon.

Status

Drafting