From November 2017, the mystical anonymous poster ”Q” filled its followers with messages regarding American politics. Q posted on different image boards and as the number of followers grew different web pages were created where canonical Q-posts (usually called ”drops” or Q-drops”) were preserved, numbered, tagged, and interlinked. The QAnons – the movement formed around the messages from Q – were fierce online discussants occupying almost every possible social media platform. The questions are – Will this corpus exist for future researchers? How do we preserve the content of a deplatformed movement? What are the limits of digital preservation of interlinked content created by a community?

Joseph Fletcher claims in his Christian situation ethic developed in the nineteen sixties that there is nothing wrong with the use of euthanasia on children born with Down’s syndrome. But is it possible to use his claim of non-persons as non-moral subjects in an ethic that claims not to be legalistic? This paper affirms that Fletcher’s claims are wrong, and that questions motivated by a lack of resources should be answered with a critical discussion regarding those resources. Not with an ethic that supports euthanasia.

The mysticism of the 19th and 20th centuries has often been perceived as a reaction towards the new fast, dense, and modern world. But is it not so that it thrives on the same material foundations, globalism, networks, and mass production of text, that built our contemporary global information society? In this article, thoughts found in the writings of the Swedish mystic and translator Baron Eric Hermelin are analyzed. Hermelin was born into a Swedish noble aristocratic family in 1860. After traveling through the British Empire as a soldier in his youth, he returned to Sweden with books and knowledge. Unfortunately, he spent most of his remaining life incarcerated in the mental hospital St. Lars in the university town of Lund in the south of Sweden. But from the hospital, he released translations of Rumi, Khayyam, and other Persian mystics as well as reflections on Böhme and Swedenborg. The analysis will use Eric Hermelin’s work and focus on the process of creating and delivering the texts of the Persian Sufis to a Swedish audience.

The idea of “Birth Certificate Enslavement” is a conspiracy theory situated in North America and spread through the internet. It is connected to, among others the Sovereign Citizen-movement (SPLC 2019). There are examples of the conspiracy theory spreading, with active activists in Europe among other parts of the world. According to the believers, the creating of a birth certificate starts the life of an evil administrative doppelgänger to the newly born. A “corporate shell”. This corporate shell is then sold by the State to foreign investors as a form of financial security. One of the administrative proof of this, according to the believers of the conspiracy theory, is that the birth certificate is written in capital letters and that bond papers and watermarks are used. This part of the conspiracy, the “proof in the design of the administrative document” is connected to an interpretation of Maritime law that the sympathisers believe are valid regarding birth certificates (SPLC 2010). To analyse the conspiracy three research questions have been used. R1) References done in the video clip to public administration and archives - How are public administration and archives viewed in the message of the video clips? How are the employees of the agencies responsible for creating, storing and administrating birth certificates viewed. Are they in any way seen as recipients of the message in the video clips? Are there any appeals to confront the agencies or their employees. R2) References to other conspiracy theories - Are there any references to other conspiracy theories? Do they differ from video to video depending on the creator? One of the differences between various conspiracy theorists are that they put different “masterminds” behind the execution of the conspiracy. Aliens, Freemasons, Jews, Reptiles, the Catholic church, the Red shoe men and the Bilderberg group et cetera. According to previous research, people that believe in a conspiracy theory often believe in more than one (Silva et al 2017, p. 427) I here use the definition of conspiracy theory as “an explanation of historical ongoing, or future events that cites as a main casual factor a small group of powerful persons, the conspirators, acting in secret for their own benefits against the common good.” (Uscinski & Parent 2014, p. 32). R3) References to other political and administrative contexts than those connected to the United States of America - Are there any references to other political and administrative contexts than those of the United States of America? Do the proponents of the conspiracy theory believe that the theory interoperate with other political and administrative contexts or are they unique to the context of the United States of America?

Swedish administrative law includes great possibilities to transparency for the general public. According to The Principle of Public Access to Information all completed documents at a government agency can by default be accessed by the public if not the agency can motivate legal secrecy. Their motives for secrecy must have a foundation in the Public Access and Secrecy Act. This legal tradition is very old and was introduced as early as 1766. During the COVID­19 pandemic (2020 and forwards) the work at governmental agencies have not been easy. Offices have been closed temporarily and contact with thepublic have been limited because of restrictions. The workplace has been moved from the traditional office space to digital environments as employees have been forced to work from home. The Public Health Agency, who have the main responsible to communicate with the public regarding matters of the pandemic, have had many requests for information during this time. In this paper reactions from media and the public regarding The Public Health Agency’s information management is investigated.

In his article, ‘Discussions in social media regarding the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation’, Rikard Friberg von Sydow, Senior Lecturer in Archival Science, shares his findings regarding the dis-course on the new data protection legislation carried out on social media by groups of professionals before the GDPR entered into force. Analysing the discussions which took place in three Facebook groups of professionals particularly impacted by this new legislation (archivists, IT-professionals and communicators in the public sector), the author concludes that the discussions witness confusion and very varying levels of insight in the new legislation. The difficulties encountered by the groups of professionals studied in understanding the content and the impact of the new legal framework raise even the crucial question of the practicability and efficiency of the European data protection legislation, and furthermore, the question of the respect for the Rule of Law.

Introduction

The social media platform Reddit is a contemporary context where we have an opportunity to identify problems experienced by people regarding different aspects of life. The platform is virtually anonymous which might make users discuss their problems more freely. Reddit is divided in subreddits where different subjects are discussed and the discussions are controlled by creators and moderators. I have identified a quite active subreddit targeted towards recovering addicts of benzodiazepines; r/benzorecovery.

Objectives

• To analyze strategies of recovery in user narrative
• To identify techniques commonly used and the how they are described
• To construct metadata in order to assess how frequent the discussion of a different techniques are.

Methods

Technically, what is done in this study, is adding mark-up metadata to different discussion. A rudimentary form of analysis suitable with a larger digital corpus where content metadata is added (Gilliland Swetland 2000). The metadata is constructed through a hermeneutical method in which the researcher analyses the subreddit.

Results

Answering question like:(Example)

DIY-tapering; different ways to limit drug use by using less.

1) how common are discussion of taperings in relation to other subjects?

2) Is tapering commonly discussed together with other subjects and techniques?

Conclusions

Using a method of categorization and metadata mark-up we could gain a good understanding of the problems among recovering benzodiazepine addicts. We will also have the possibility to identify concepts that addicts themselves discuss and relate these to professional concepts thus creating better possibilities of communication between professionals and clients.

Rikard Friberg von Sydow analyserar den offentliga utredning som är förarbetet till Patientjournalslag (1985:562) och hur den hanterar patientintegriteten i en tid av begynnande användning av ADB. Författaren avslutar med reflektioner om hur 30 års utveckling påverkat integritetsfrågan och vilken integritetsproblematik som nu bör få uppmärksamhet.

Many public sector organizations today use social media to communicate with the citizens. In Sweden, where government information is strictly regulated there have been several discussions regarding these organizations use of social media as the content is considered governmental information. In this paper I will analyze two city archives (Stockholm City Archive and The Regional Archives for Gothenburg and Region Västra Götaland) instructions regarding their use of social media in general and the application Instagram particulary. These instructions will be analyzed through a theoretical framework containing provenance, preservation and reusability. Instagram is particularly interesting because the main communication is done through pictures which can be hard to preserve, hard to record the provenance regarding, but that people often are eager to reuse. In the end two models for a practical preservation of Instagram content will be presented. Two models of preservation that take provenance and reusability in account.

In Sweden all public organizations such as municipalities and government agencies have to treat their information flow carefully. Every document that is created or received by a public organization is perceived as an official document (“Allmän handling”). Such document must be released to the public on demand if the information in it is not subject to any secrecy regulations. In the legislation the definition of a document is very broad – it could be any type of information that a public organization holds. Automatically generated logfiles, maps, pictures, virtually anything that is perceived as information can be an official document. These types information is also supposed to be preserved in an archive, if there not is a regulation from the National archives or other qualified agency that states otherwise. This makes the discussion regarding preserving social media relevant.

Instagram provides a possibility to download all posted content from your user account. This has been a feature in the Instagram Application since April 2018. The result is a zip-file with a series of files in JSON-format. These files contains all likes, messages, captions et cetera that has been generated through the account. The zipped content also contains all pictures and videos the account has posted, and all direct messages (pictures or videos) that the account has had sent to it. There are also independent scraping tools that let you download content from accounts that you don’t are the owner off.These types of scraping tools are off less interest in this study, but could be useful for public organizations if they collect content from other users or in cases were a public organization has lost control over an account. There is no research yet that mentions Instagram, but scraping through API, application programming interface, the programming interface that social media suppliers offers for professional users, have been recommended as an archiving tool for Twitter.

The theoretical foundation of this study is the concept of provenance as it is used within the discipline of Archival Science. The goal is to discuss preservation solutions that will enable us to preserve reusable content with its provenance intact. The reason to search for such solutions is to cater both to contemporary and future users of the preserved content. Provenance, or respect des fonds, is a key concept in archival theory. There are multiple aspects of provenance but one is that what we call an archive is the natural accumulation of an organization. It is not – as in the case with a library – a collection of information, collected by the organization. It is the administrative accumulation of an organization, the mail sent to it and the protocol on which its representatives have written their decisions. To keep the provenance is to let the accumulated administrative material in an order close to its original order. Material from different organizations should not be mixed when they reach an archival institution, they should be kept sorted in relation to their original accumulator. Reusability and preservation are two other criteria that are used beside provenance.

The two largest cities in Sweden, Stockholm and Gothenburg are the only ones that seem to have any instruction for archiving Instagram content. These instructions, which differs in some ways have been analyzed with the concepts of provenance, reusability and preservation. In relation to this analysis, two different methods for archiving Instagram content has been produced. Planned content management – a method in which reusability and the preservation of easily reusable archives are in focus. Content download – a method in which the preservation of the content is done in way which preserves the social media provenance.

The study concludes that when we choose a method we must know it’s limitations. We must also know what kind of end result we want. Then we must let these two aspects intermingle when until we find a solution that is both possible for the organization and gives us a preferable end result. In the end, if we strive for provenance we might lose some of the contents reusability. And if we strive for reusability we might lose some of the contents provenance. If we want both the archive will be considerably larger and there will be more work accumulated in the end product.

Scientific contribution

The main scientific contribution of this study is the discussion regarding different methods of preservation of Instagram content. A discussion that is possible to apply to other social media application. To this a discussion regarding social media and provenance is added. Both these contributions could be a stepping stone for further discussion regarding how to treat social media from an archival science perspective.

From November 2017 and forwards the mystical anonymous poster ”Q” filled their followers with messages regarding American politics acting like the person behind the Q was someone who had insight into both the intelligence community and the important political surroundings. Q posted on different image boards but as the amount of followers grew different web pages were created where canonical Q-posts (usually called ”drops” or Q-drops”) was preserved, numbered, tagged and interlinked. The QAnons – the movement formed around the messages from Q – were fierce discussants on the Internet occupying almost every possible social media platform. The movement reached it’s peak when the QAnons spearheaded the attack against the Capitol on the 6th of January 2021. During the autumn of 2020 almost all big social media platforms had started to purge QAnons, kickbanning them and thus removing their accounts and created content.

In January 2021 I started to preserve all Q-posts downloading them in raw text format and saving them as individual files and also saving them in picture format. It is a very interesting material, full of dog whistling, echo-chamber-like links to supporters social media and memes whose messages are very internal. Downloading the posts as text has given me a possibility to use different text processing tools to investigate the corpus. It has also given me an insight into what happens with preserved internet content when links suddenly are broken and the movement surrounding the content is banned. How do we preserve the content of a deplatformed movement? What are the limits of digital preservation of interlinked content created by a community?

In Sweden where my research is performed, most if not all schools on all levels use a digital platform to communicate with children and their parents. It could be any type of communication, from personal communication regarding a child to information regarding homework for a class, what you need to bring to the field trip, and so on. In Sweden, having a law regarding compulsory school attendance between the age of 6 and 15, and also having a rather strict law regarding who could access the information regarding, the information transferred through these platforms are both important and under restricted access.

The problem I investigate is when this system meets a child with special needs. Especially if that child and its parents are supported through different services. Having a support family that the child lives with during periods of time or an institution that the child stays at temporarily. Because of the restricted access to the digital platforms they are unavailable within such arrangements, forcing schools to choose other forms of communication – mostly in the form of analog “contact books”. There are also information security issues when communicating information regarding the child's medical needs through digital platforms.

These problems with the use of digital platforms have led to some ad hoc solutions in Uppsala municipality, which is the focus of my investigation. In this poster, I will explain the process of communication and the consequences regarding information security and preservation of archives when a system forces users to use analog communication where digital communication is the norm.

Hur vi än vänder och vrider på oss sitter vi fast i geografin. Inte bara för att den definierar den fysiska verklighet vi har omkring oss, utan även genom vanans makt. Hur ofta byter du resväg till arbetet eller affären? Hur ofta dyker du plötsligt upp på en plats där du aldrig varit förut? Vana och infrastruktur – det raster vi människor placerar över de av naturen givna topografiska förutsättningarna – styr i mångt och mycket var vi kommer befinna oss under livet. Av samhället färdigdragna vägnät, busslinjer och flygtrafiknav har en stark makt att bestämma vad vi kommer se när vi förflyttar oss. Det gäller alla, även Stig Bergling. En plats han fastnade på var Cypern och det var där hans spiongärning inleddes, genom en introduktion till underrättelsetjänstens praktik, och den avslutades även där med ett samtal till SÄPO och en begäran om att få komma hem till Sverige igen. Berglings spionage var komplext och skedde under flera perioder, mot flera stater och med fler än en uppdragsgivare. Det han är mest känd för är dock försäljningen av Fortifikationskoden, ofta benämnd Fo-koden eller Fo-pärmen. Berling kopierade detta register över Sveriges befästningar på sin arbetsplats vid Försvarsstabens Säkerhetsavdelning och sålde den till Sovjetunionen under en period när han var placerad som militärobservatör för FN i Mellanöstern. Priset var 8000 Libanesiska pund vilket då motsvarade 16 000 Svenska kronor. I dagens penningvärde runt 110 000 kronor.

This poster is providing further explanations to the poster bearing the same name. The goal is to analyze the quality of links within the Q-drop canon, in this investigation with focus on the links to the microblog Twitter.com. Links to Twitter were harvested from the Q-drops and assessed individually regarding whether they were still existing or dead. The status of the Twitter-links were connected to a variety of categories. The conclusion being that a large part of the QAnon Ecosystem is damaged and no longer interlinked. Damage that will make it hard to understand the movement in the future. 

Flashback Forums is a Swedish discussion forum that have existed on the internet in different versions since 1996. Since after the millenium it has got a reputation being very active discussing contemporary criminal cases. The discussions are often harsh and vibrant, not minding any of Swedens laws regarding slandering or regulation of press, the servers being located to North America. Lawless or not – the forums have been involved in several criminal cases, supplying information that had not been found by the Police. Because of these cases Flashback Forums has gained a reputation among journalists, police and the public. It is now heavily used as a source of information by different agents in society. This makes it a powerful actor and information provider in Swedish society.

I am interested in how consensus regarding what is considered as a fact are treaten in the Flashback Contemporary Crimes-subforum (Underforumet ”Aktuella brott”). In order to have a flow of discussion, the participants need to have a common ground, some traits of an evidence being used to decide what is a proven fact and what is not. These traits should be possible to identify when analyzing the discussions. To get an understanding of this I will follow and analyze two different forum threads regarding two contemporary murders. What is considered a trusted source and what signifies that a source is seen as controversial? How is consensus built by those forum members participating in the discussion? I will use a process-based method in analyzing the threads, considering them as a process with a natural beginning (the criminal event) and a natural end (the solving of the crime). In this process a number of consensus-building moments will appear in the discussion. These will be in focus of my investigation and analyzed with methods related to hermeneutical and argument analyzing research. The result will be a number of rules related to consensus-building regarding facts in these particular forums.

The International Council on Archives Code of Ethics was presented in 1996. A great deal has happened in the world and in the discipline of Archival Science since. This article examines and analyses the Code of Ethics with the help of Codes of ethics from other disciplines, the debate surrounding profession ethics and the changes in the world of archives. Three areas are found where improvement in the Code would be preferable. The archivist should be trying to gain a higher autonomy in relation to other professions like economist and lawyers. Inspired by how autonomy is formulated in the pharmacists Code of Ethics. Education should be put in focus when today, at least in the western world, most people that work as archivists generally have a relatively high education. Also, the statements in the Code regarding confidentiality might have to be revisited and discussed again, because of the great changes in the possibility to spread and communicate information after the great increase in digitalization since 1996. Today, the internet as an extra layer of information makes it possible to search and connect personal information with information in archives. We also have the possibility to spread information very fast using smart phones etcetera. This has to be regarded as a change in the possibility to remain confidential.     

In June 2017 the Nordic National Socialist organization ”Nordic Resistance Movement” discovered that their web-shop, “Nordfront”, had been hacked and the customer data leaked on the Internet.

Later they admitted publicly to being hacked and soon there after the actual data base was released by the perpetrators. Online discussions and media reports followed. Politicians who had ordered merchandise from the web-shop had to resign and musicians who had done the same had their concerts canceled. Data hacking led to a political and cultural scandal in Sweden with consequences for those involved. The purpose of this study is to investigate the reactions in online forums from persons in the political sphere that was affected by the leak. How do commentators react when information that connects a person to a controversial, and in this case anti-democratic and racist, political organization, is spread on the Internet? How is the quality of the information valued from an information security perspective? How can the database-leak be analyzed with help from models of information security? The study will be done using a case study method, with the main focus towards the supporters of the Nordic Resistance Movement.

In many countries in Europe entrepreneurs take over the responsibility of the integration process. This paper criticizes a certain type of entrepreneurial role model as promoting a single input agent, only counting profit as its input. The possibility of a non-outsourced, conscience-based model for regulating the integration process is discussed as a possibility and as a stepping stone for critique of the entrepreneurial model’s social claims as a whole.

The QAnon-movement, a conspiracy theory and political movement gaining fame in the recent storming of theCapitol in Washington D.C in the beginning of 2021, see the messages from the source “Q” as their most importantsource of information. “Q” has posted short messages on different message boards (4Chan, 8Chan et cetera) sinceNovember 2017. The messages comment on contemporary political events and claim to foresee politicaldevelopment (Operation Q) Who the source, “Q” is, is not known, although speculations exist on the internet. Atleast we know that the person or persons making the posts seems to want us to believe that they have insight into thebackstage of the political scene (LaFrance 2020). Conspiracy theories, and the QAnon-movement, have beeninvestigated in the discourse of Information Literacy before. But then mostly from the perspective of the followerand his/her motives to be a part of the movement (Beene & Greer 2021). In this presentation the foundation of theQAnon-movement will be investigated: The posts or “dumps” from the source “Q”. This will give us a deeperunderstanding what the followers of QAnon really believe in. Knowing the structure and actual content of the “Q”-posts will help us understand the QAnons. A practical result of this might be a greater possibility to understand andcommunicate with people invested in the movement.Around 5000 posts that “Q” has made since fall 2017 are presented on different websites connected to the QAnon-movement. By performing a content-analysis it would be possible to answer questions such as who is mentionedmore – Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump? Or – how many times are networks of child-traffickers mentioned in theQ-posts? In this poster-presentation I will focus on references to other conspiracy theories; the Adrenochrome-conspiracy, “Truthers”, “Birthers” and False flag school-shootings. QAnon has been labeled a “big-tent-conspiracytheory” because it constantly evolves and adds new conspiracies to its belief-system (Roose 2020). Using a content-analysis we could gain knowledge whether these conspiracy theories are already present in the posts from “Q” or ifthey show up later in the process. Message spread by QAnon-followers follow a certain process in which Q-posts arediscussed by followers in blogs, Youtube-channels and podcasts mixed with a general conspiracist narrative.The content-analysis will be performed by converting all Q-posts to individual text-files. This gives us the possibilityto use a analysis-tool such as GREP to perform searches in all posts without the distortion of the QAnon-websitesown search systems (Grep Manual). A few relevant keywords per conspiracy theory will be used to find anyreferences to it among the vast amount of posts by the source “Q”.

The digital era is accelerating and intensifying interventions in living bodies (Markley 1996, p. 4). Pictures and video clips can intervene with our privacy in a way that could chane our world. I will investigate four Swedish Revenge Porn-cases that were brought to court between 2017 and 2018. Revenge Porn is commonly known as non-consensual pornography – pictures or video material of a sexual nature spread without the portrayed persons consent (Dodge 2021). The verdicts will be analyzed from the perspectives of provenance (where do the pictures origin from?) and process (how did they travel before they became a legal matter?).

Bibliography:

Dodge, Alexa (2021) “Trading Nudes Like Hockey Cards: Exploring the Diversity of ‘Revenge Porn’ Cases Responded to in Law’, Social & Legal Studies, Vol 30(3). 

Markley,Robert (1996) “Introduction: History, Theory, and Virtual Reality”, in Markley, Robert Virtual Realities and its Discontents, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.