Much has been written about the history of neighborhood surveillance, where iterations of watching persist as practices of violence and exploitation. Contemporary doorbell cameras, designed to record in perpetuity, are often interpreted through these same frames of carcerality. But are there other ways of looking? Especially in the context of the home and neighborhood, where visibility is so entangled with gender and gendered work, might how we see trouble, how we are seen within this trouble, and who is witness to it, be core to the durability of neighborhood surveillance? A feminist labor history of neighborhood surveillance offers answers to these questions. The work of creating and nourishing life, feminist labor entails not only the reproduction of human bodies but the immaterial production of their social fabric, teaching and promoting certain norms, relationships, and institutions; upholding certain systems and their inequities. In making people, then, feminist labor simultaneously makes order. Using feminist historical analysis, this article identifies three precedents – the urban planning strategy of “eyes on the street,” busybody mirrors, and the Southern Black feminist tradition of sitting on the front porch – to reveal their utility in the making of today’s doorbell camera. Formulated through different ideologies and agendas, they demonstrate the wide latitude from which iterations of neighborhood surveillance can co-opt and extrapolate. They articulate the many meanings and experiences of what it is to look out for trouble and, more urgently, prompt us to imagine what futures these permutations make possible.

On April 9th, 2021, just before noon, multiple major news outlets reported the death of Prince Philip, husband to the British monarch Queen Elizabeth II, aged 99. What followed was a subversion of imperial hierarchy – for a time – as Black Briton's took to Twitter to celebrate the death of a living symbol of oppression. Within 24 hours much of the evidence of this ritual of disrespect was gone: temporarily changed profile pictures had reverted to normal, tweets had been deleted, and the event firmly ensconced in Black British Twitter history.

In this paper I frame the ritual archive as Black insurgent practice and an infrastructure of communal memory. Through remixing cultural touchpoints and significant events (Massanari, 2015; Sobande, 2019), Black Britons demarcate ourselves as a public that is adaptively appositional: at once Black, in the ontological sense of belonging to a global community of shared diasporic experience, and British, i.e. physically, temporally, and culturally located within a specific imperial history. Black archival rituals like this run counter to institutional archives (Florini, 2014), rupturing established precedents and prevailing national discourses of identity.

In this moment, where control of digital archives is so contingent on institutional power, this kind of counter-institutional archival practice is even more critical, a reminder that collective memory is not contingent on insecure platforms that we contribute to but do not own (Walcott, 2024), but is in fact held in the memory, rituals, and embodied practices of the community’s constituents.

Doxing—the unauthorized disclosure of private or personally identifying information online—has become one of the most contentious practices in contemporary digital culture. While often framed as a form of online harassment, doxing is also used as a tactic of accountability by antifascist groups and other online communities seeking to expose oppressive actors. This paper traces the early history of doxing from 1987 to 1999, exploring how the practice emerged across different online communities, including hacker forums, antifascist networks, and online vigilante groups. Drawing on archival materials, this study argues that doxing’s origins lie both in practices of deviance and subversion and in grassroots efforts to develop community safety. By situating doxing within alternative histories of the internet, this paper demonstrates how the weaponization of personal information has been shaped by both technological infrastructures and the social norms and politics of online subcultures. This intervention challenges dominant narratives that portray doxing solely as an act of malice, instead positioning it as one that is far more contested, revealing the internet’s dual capacity to enable both harm and community. Further, excavating the history of doxing offers an opportunity to analyze how the design, governance, and politics of the internet have shaped —and been shaped by— contentious and stigmatized practices.Together, this research highlights the ruptures between anonymity and accountability, spectacle and surveillance, information access and closure, and privacy and publicity that continue to shape the politics of online safety today.

The Philippines continues to grapple with a rising number of HIV cases, particularly among Filipino men (Department of Health- Epidemiology Bureau, 2022; UNAIDS, 2022). People living with HIV (PLWH) face not only physical symptoms, but also stigmas related to HIV, gender identity, and sexual preferences (Herek, 1999; Laguna & Villegas, 2019; Pamoso et al., 2024). While previous research has shed light on internet use patterns among PLWH (Reeves, 2000, 2001; Smith, 2008), little is known about how they integrate social media into their everyday lives. Filipino men living with HIV (FMLWH) are prominently active on X, making it a compelling avenue for researchers seeking to gain insights into this under-studied and marginalized population. Guided by the theory of networked publics (boyd, 2011) and a functional-pragmatic genre perspective (Lomborg, 2014), this study explored the pragmatic functions of X among select FMLWH. Adopting technobiography as a method (Kennedy, 2003), interviews were conducted with 24 FMLWH who use X.

Findings showed that FMLWH created multiple accounts to manage online identities. Specifically, their ‘alter poz’ account, characterized by pseudonyms and censored self-portraits, allowed them to connect with other PLWH while maintaining privacy from other publics. X also emerged as a ‘socio-sexual networking site’ (Wignall, 2017), providing these users a space to negotiate their sexual identities.

Overall practices highlighted the role of X in enabling self-expression, fostering community, and reclaiming sexuality. Technobiographies challenged traditional narratives about HIV, particularly social isolation and limitations in sexual fulfillment. Quoting one participant: “We created this account to be free.”