Digitisation Guild 25-26

The Digitisation Guild is engaged in a line of research focused on creating sustained spaces for debate and dialogue around social media and the content creation applications that we use in our daily lives.

We critically analyse neoliberal technocapitalism embedded in proprietary platforms, technofeudalism and the viralisation of far-right discourses, as well as the mechanisms of manipulation, control and censorship that operate through algorithms, terms and conditions of use and digital policies. These reflections aim to provide tools for analysis and critical positioning to question hegemonic models and explore alternatives that focus on sovereignty, rights and communities, which can be useful for anyone, regardless of their technical knowledge. 

This research is structured through three lines of work:

1. Meetings to imagine community technologies

These meetings with various groups and individuals address issues related to technologies, images, accessibility, archives and communities, among others. They aim to collectively think about how we can get involved and how to imagine other possible futures based on more fair, supportive and autonomous technologies.
These spaces allow us to build a shared theoretical and political base from which to contribute critical perspectives, learn about active projects and groups, as well as recognise existing community practices and actions. This base is also the starting point for imagining and activating the development of proposals, experiments and prototypes linked to research.

2. Digital kiosk: a social network on the street

It consists of a collective communication device that occupies the street to put it at the service of the neighbourhood. It is an interface that moves social media into the public space and materialises it in the place where things happen.
In an urban environment saturated with advertising and consumption, we propose to reappropriate these spaces to turn them into a source of information for and by residents, with content that comes from social movements, collectives and community initiatives. It is an open space where content often made invisible by hegemonic communication channels is made visible. This is the content we want to see.
The kiosk is a political and cultural action: a commitment to democratising communication, reclaiming public space and building a collective narrative from the ground up, from neighbourhood movements and for neighbourhoods.

3. Publication: collection of research and activations

The publication is a collection that organises and gives shape to the entire research process developed throughout this line of work. It is made up of the activations that have been carried out, the texts of the guest individuals and groups with whom we have shared spaces for joint thinking, and the documentation of this year's prototype.

Rodrigo Yrigoyen Gonzales and Xeito Fole