Voices from the Margins

In the wake of convergence theory, scholars are increasingly aware of the extent to which everyday users of technology are producing rather than consuming media content.  From an internet studies perspective, participation in social network sites produces similar forms of content that speaks to individual as well as community norms and values. Drawing on two ethnographic studies of subcultural information practices (an extreme body modification community (see Lingel, 2012) and an underground punk music scene (see Lingel, Trammell, Sanchez & Naaman, 2012), questions of secrecy, privacy and information sharing in the context of archival documentation (defined broadly) are explored. In building repositories of history, what are our obligations to honor practices of information sharing within the groups whose lives we document and preserve? When those groups are subcultural, how do we balance objectives of analyzing phenomena with respecting community needs and norms for secrecy and privacy? How can memory institutions both preserve practices of otherness without sensationalizing practices that violate mainstream heteronormative behavior? Although these questions are drawn from the context of deviant subcultures or subcultures, considering these points of tension can render more clearly conflicts between the institutional and the individual, the mainstream and the alternative, the public and the private.