UK Climate

Title

On the Virtues of Information Security in the UK Climate Movement

Co-Authors

Dr. Rikke Bjerg Jensen, Professor Martin Albrecht

Abstract

We report on an ethnographic study with members of the UK climate movement. We conducted participant observation at protests and in various activist settings, which also enabled us to interview members of different groups. Reporting on the findings as they relate to information security, we show that members of the UK climate movement wrestled with (i) a necessary tension between openness and secrecy considerations; (ii) tensions between autonomy and collective interdependence in (information security) decision-making; (iii) conflicting activist ideals that shape security discourses; and (iv) pressures from different social gazes – from each other, from people outside the movement and from their adversaries. Overall, our findings shed light on the social complexities of information-security research in activist settings and provoke methodological questions about programmes that aim to design for activists.

Motivations for project in blog post here