How is WhatsApp\, the most popular instant messaging platform\, mediating the spread of extreme speech in different c ontexts of the world? What does a global view of the actual practices aroun d this popular medium say about the promise of “encryption” as a technologi cal feature?
BKC is pleased to welcome Fellow and LMU professor
The talk will present the key concept of the book — “lived encryptions” — to argue that encryption as a technological feature cannot be taken at i ts face value or as a central piece of the affordance as it is experien ced\; rather\, it embeds different\, often contradictory social and po litical formations. This is evidenced in the way the promised confidentiali ty of encryption is upturned completely when phones are seized to inspect t he data\, and how seemingly closed group communication thick with social tr ust and familial bonding is channelized to “broadcast” top-down political m essages. Exploring such contradictions in multiple settings\, this talk wil l venture into theorizing extreme speech from the vantage of encrypted mess aging.
CATEGORIES:Speaker/Panel LOCATION:Berkman Klein Multipurpose Room (Room 515) GEO:0.000000;0.000000 ORGANIZER;CN="Jessica Weaver":MAILTO:jweaver@law.harvard.edu URL;VALUE=URI:https://hls.harvard.edu/events/whatsapp-in-the-world-disinfor mation-encryption-and-extreme-speech/ ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://hls.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Screenshot-2025-04-14-at-10.36.49 AM.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/New_York BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 DTSTART:20250309T070000 TZNAME:EDT END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR