The previous chapter explored the development of a Radical Recordkeeping Continuum Model (RRCM) and its application to the direct action group Direct Action Everywhere (DxE). This chapter further builds on DxE’s strategic witnessing and risk hermeneutic approaches in radical recordkeeping (and assessment of online platforms for creating and maintaining records). It answers the research question of how critical continuum approach, here termed Critical Functional Appraisal (CFA) can address the risks of remembering and forgetting in radical recordkeeping and how it informs records continuum modelling and praxis. As a tool for use by the animal liberation community, the RRCM is used to create an appraisal model called the Radical Appraisal Continuum Model (RACM), which provides a framework for understanding the risks and power dynamics involved in DxE’s decision-making. This tool is based on the values and challenges of DxE to support its social change goals within the ambience of its social movement. 

Features of Radical Appraisal

In terms of appraising activist recordkeeping, it is a personal decision to have anonymous online social media profiles to protect an individual’s identity. Both anonymity and storage in fractals of online platforms are appraisal decisions at the point of records and identity curation. In open rescue, for example, there is an appraisal decision not to be anonymous and risk acceptance of being identified.

Values guide strategic witnessing of activists and are in action right across the Evidence/Witnessing and (Trans)acationality axes of the RACM. Appraisal incorporates community values to be created, managed and reused through time and space. Counter-values guide the shadow axis, with opposing worldviews contesting activist narratives. The purpose of achieving animal liberation remains constant. Values inform the creation, appraisal, sharing and decision-making around the radical recordkeeping by activists. Decision-making processes are investigated in chapter 10 to resolve these intertwining spirals of influence. Functions performed are also principles guided by the values that sustain activism within the community.

Emotion Integral to Identity, Values and Counternarratives

Emotions play a provocative part in activism and the collective drive towards animal liberation.^[1] Strategic witnessing systems are needed to support a multi-layered strategy for success. Emotion is an underlying element of these systems that inform values, identity and action. In performing direct action, records can capture the activist emotions (such as passion and determination) and the trauma experienced by the animals. Emotion and risk underlies sense-making around the format and content of activist records.

Emotion, including controlled anger, is an enabler for change. Even if viewers disagree with the approaches of animal activists at first glance, it forces carnivores to reflect on their actions. Viewing fear and sadness in eyewitness video can call a sympathetic viewer to action and fight for animal justice. Direct action enacts group core values – with the goal of sharing a narrative of saving the voiceless. Also, exposing misinformation (such as the ‘humane meat’ myth) and causing disruption to create change is part of direct action – where activists force people into the discussion and pay attention to it.^[2] Records produced and shared by activists as radical autonomous agents evoke strong emotion. By increasing member numbers and recording their witnessing and achievements over time animal activists can expose truth to gain citizen and political support in the form of anarchontic power for the broader social movement.

 Assessing Power and Risk

Appraisal means addressing risk and proactive decision-making about what records persist or rot on the Internet. These decisions are happening already, but the risk of records removal or deletion highlights a power imbalance. Analysing where this imbalance resides and adjusting recordkeeping approaches helps understanding of socio-political influences to the longevity of evidence and memory. CFA is a disrupted view of traditional appraisal. It uses analysis processes to identify functions and activities not abandoned for a community context but reimagined in a continuum to incorporate ambient functions and evolving dynamic networked relationships. While rejecting the boundaries of ‘organisational’ analysis, a narrative focus and specific case studies ‘zoom in’ on the micro of collective action and the macro of societal provenance and movement development. By analysing threats, weaponization against DxE and the shift from marshalling into institutional archives (or lack of) can be planned and consciously designed into mobilising recordkeeping systems across the community and broader social movement. This power can influence platform design and Internet interconnectivity for long-term and community reference as collective archives. Reinforcement of mainstream narratives through undermining by archons, their selective remembering or forgetting, disregarding or demeaning activist stories and their efficacy for change are all narratives that can be mapped as a threat to the social movement messaging. With shared understandings there can be a planned counterbalance of activist narratives amplified through appraisal actions.

CFA also incorporates the values of the individual – so, rather than just broadening out the requirements for groups – so too can the individual principles and actions of DxE members be taken into account as part of the broader social movement. Never before has the activity of ‘trolling’ for example, been incorporated into appraisal tools and schedules at the point of creation. How does DxE deal with, prevent or promote trolling on its records and those of others (such as inciting debate on politicians’ social media)? Where organisations may have guidelines regarding web trolls and deletion, the function of ‘doing’ the act as part of an intertwined value with activism is foundational to a CFA. An appraisal tool encompassing the differing worldviews and needs of activists beyond their immediate group context is the ultimate goal of Critical Functional Appraisal. Power relations, like relationships, are not static and are developing and need continual rethinking. The long-term needs and threat of records removal or deletion is an ongoing risk for animal activists to mitigate.

Power and Risk in Platforms

Radical recordkeeping faces shifting responsibilities for personal, corporate and activist data currently hosted by corporate interests. These companies often have self-interested ownership and decision points for appraisal of community records. So the best decision-making for activists is to understand the risks and power of each platform they are using and where they may wish to create a perduring trace for evidence in their strategic witnessing. These decisions need an understanding of platforms’ built-in automated or manual transactions (appraisal decisions) imposed on activist records.

There are developments in creating secure messaging apps like Signal. Signal ensures activists have each others’ profiles to contact. However, if law enforcement confiscated their phone – a bot intermediary prevents the detection of private phone numbers.^[3] Similarly, secure open-source archival spaces are being created for activists, too, like open-archive.org, created mainly for vulnerable groups like human rights defenders. The sustainability of these spaces and the trust placed in one repository is a risk to assess more actively for the long-term in activist appraisal. Taking a calculated risk can be an accepted norm to reach a broad audience on social media platforms like Facebook or YouTube. The threat of anticipatory witnessing is continually present.

On signing up to a platform activists can reproduce and decentralise records as part of a planned archiving solution. Radical recordkeeping provides this sharing, duplication and inherent preservation for the short to medium term online. Supporting this though, a Critical Functional Analysis (see chapter 10) can help guide this decision making. The archivization of records online risks its perdurance over time, due to the significant percentage of link rot. Some activist groups have relationships with aligned news media (such as DxE and The Intercept), but how long will it be until these resources are plagued by link rot, private acquisition and institutional paywalls, with hyperlink changes making discovery in the Wayback machine inaccessible? While news media can be perceived as a long-term way to voice the activist message, there are pitfalls to relying on this alone. In addition to media being an intermediary between activists and the public, activist groups can have a rich and insightful archive of their own on their platforms and website. The management of these over time is an assessment of risk and planned migration approach.

The ability to take power over the gradual degradation of websites and links that matter to animal activsts can be part of the appraisal task. Appraisal can be at the time of creation, during routine maintenance, at the end of a webpage’s life, or accepting the multiple places this has been copied (e.g. the Wayback machine or elsewhere). This has also been framed as ‘decision points’, visualised in chapter 10. If active deletion is required for risk mitigation, this can be difficult to revert once pluralised on the Intranet. The decentralisation of platforms to places like open-archive.org with the right security controls is one defence. The threat is degradation and the centralised control of the corporatised data havestors like Facebook and Google. While Google Drive is used for convenience by some activist groups, there may be an unacceptable risk for interference, hacking or anticipatory witnessing for its sensitive records, particularly where whistleblowers are involved in investigations. The security of sensitive records intertwines with risk assessments and the need to protect the integrity of the records activists create or secure.

Researchers and theorists on socio-technical security have explored where distributed networks of people share their knowledge about system vulnerabilities and act accordingly on trusted community advice.^[4] Rather than a technical focus, there can be a person-centred approach to risk assessment and security for an activist community. Putting activists at the centre of design means developing archival infrastructure that respects community needs. The risk hermeneutic at play in the appraisal decision-making by activists means that the community can choose the records they create and what platforms are used.

It is likely that decentralisation will be foundational to designing radical recordkeeping infrastructures into the future. For activists to have a tool that can help them plan for the future long-term archival evidence and memorialisation needs means unearthing the existing and ideal continuum practices into an overt appraisal tool. This includes respecting and predicting risks versus collaboration benefits. While not all records are required for long term retention, there may not be a community deletion program if the perception is that the risk in opening records to the public is deemed low. In the Information Systems field, there is an assumption that risk is a mitigation exercise and a matter of protection and security.^[5] In an activist community context, however, risk assessment can be about embracing risk, arrest or persecution when needed and making the records that can both exonerate and indict them.

Modelling Radical Appraisal on the Continuum

As shown in chapter five, strategic witnessing is an essential tool for evidencing and encompasses DxE’s activities for change in society. In chapter six, the Radical Recordkeeping Continuum Model was developed to incorporate these activist activities across the continuum. Radical appraisal is undertaken by DxE through storytelling for transformative change in society. In identifying these impactful stories and traces, DxE appraises their most important records for the progression of their cause and social movement. Remembering and forgetting is guided by appraisal values and goals described in this chapter. Platforms can be used as a place of purposeful remembering (e.g. in a Facebook timeline for later retrieval by search as needed), but there is a reliance on the availability of critical records on platforms that requires backup to avoid the risk of improper deletion (inadvertently by administrators or by the platform moderators). Using the models, actions can be articulated as an appraisal decision or event to make both risks and values transparent; therefore, an analytical tool for assessing recordkeeping requirements.

Appraisal on the (Trans)actionality Axis

A ‘cone’ of iterative and non-linear actions (as appraisal across the (Trans)actionality axis) are represented in Figure 9.1 below. This modelling reflects the continuum view of appraisal (outlined in chapter one) and elucidates the ‘shadow’ of powers impacting DxE’s risk hermeneutic in radical recordkeeping. This cone is the key feature of a Radical Appraisal Continuum Model.

Fig. 9.1 Appraisal on the (Trans)actionality Axis – A green radical recordkeeping axis and blue ‘shadow axis’. 

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While the cone lies atop the rings of the four dimensions, these lines are set backwards intentionally, so they are not dividing each part of the axis. This foregrounding shows fluidity rather than demarcation between each dimension. This visualisation is important because continuum labels were never intended to be fixed. The new terms added here (like sense-making or weaponization) can blur between different parts of the dimensions depending on the transaction. This blurring is similar to the description of the activist identity axis cone in the previous chapter. Grounding this flurry of activity is the cone’s tip, the (Trans)actions that are a mainstay for Frank Upward’s “dance” of the continuum.^[6]

Describing the new appraisal axis is necessary here, as it is an addition to the (Trans)actionality axis of the RCM. It is less a change but more of an emphasis on appraisal as a transaction in activist activities – highlighting how appraisal transactions work in radical recordkeeping. The dotted line represents appraisal as a specific example of transactions along this axis, called a ‘mirror’ reflection in radical recordkeeping (in green text). These green labels reflect appraisal activity by animal activists. In blue is a ‘shadow axis’ similar to the one seen in the evidencing / witnessing axis described in the previous chapter. An activist group assesses risk and longevity needs for its records, with consideration to power structures that may pose a threat to their narrative reach. Hence, the same axis’ blue and green sides are necessary.

Accounting for the selection and deselection, creation and deletion, migration and non-migration decisions made throughout the dimensions were difficult to reflect in labels alone. Together, (trans)actions and sense-making can be applied to decisions – to archivize or not, to reverse a previous archivization or mobilisation decision. To mobilise or not to mobilise, to let a transaction remain so, or use sense-making for archivization or deletion means that the labels are active towards appraisal steps that lean toward longevity of records but can also include (Trans)actions that reinforce community mobilisation – whether keeping or destroying – for the benefit of sense-making by that activist community.

The Activist Mirror Axis of Appraisal (Trans)actionality

Rather than describe the appraisal axis as a shadow, it is instead running parallel to the RCM axis as a specific transaction essential to radical recordkeeping. Appraisal decisions and processes are like layers to the record over time and space, adding context, values and power in the survival, obfuscation or decay of that record.

While the record is a product of process, it is not a simple reflection of process, or  reflection of reality. It comes within the purview of the archival appraiser bearing many layers of intervention and interpretation. … any record, is a complex construction of  process. And in appraisal we add another very substantial layer of construction.^[7]

Those appraisal processes are described here as (trans)actions, sense-making, archivization and mobilisation. The newly added terms on the appraisal axis are described below.

Sense-making

Appraisal is an expression of a human sense-making process.^[8] In discussions around computational automation there is currently an inability to code sense-making into systems without human direction and analysis.^[9] The delayed inroads into automation of appraisal rests on the complex assemblages of data^[10] and human-ness of classification processes.^[11] Records may be unintentional datasets, but the intentionality of evidentiality (coded or otherwise acknowledged by a participant) means “the archive is forming itself”.^[12] The sense-making is part of appraising the capture (to code it into recording, or to make a decision of what transactions are or may be needed as evidence).  In a continuum understanding of appraisal, there will be

… a continuing place for work we might call appraisal in determining what records need to be moved from operational systems to inactive storage or in identifying records that require additional security.^[13]

In the context of the animal rights movement, this work is happening in their member communities. Moreover, if groups choose, they can work with others outside their activist group for guidance on what appraisal steps can increase the longevity or security of their archives on the Internet.

The term sense-making, also referenced in the Strategic Witnessing chapter, encompasses the sense-giving to others in the group and its potential to tell that disruptive narrative beyond the individual or sub-group. In an analysis of the People of Ethical Treatment of Animals’ YouTube content, sense-making has been applied to activism, describing the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)’s disruptive action as

… an attempt to convey highly disruptive issues to a wide audience through numerous micro-episodes (e.g., through media and social media platforms) … These attempts trigger sensemaking …^[14]

Sense-making can arguably also be added to the policing worldview^[15] or ‘shadow axis’. However, to focus on the disruptive power of radical recordkeeping, the activism activity is posited as the oppositional narrative to those that reinforce existing legislative norms and societal status quo. The sense-making that happens in activism is recognising that witnessing and stories can challenge these dominant mainstream narratives and power.

Archivization

Archivization sews important narratives into community memory with appraisal decisions. A story or inscription archivized by DxE are made easily available for use in the group or shared beyond the group. The term ‘archivization’ is used here to validate the inscriptions through organising a trace into a record and recordkeeping system for potential use and re-use. This extends Jacques Derrida and Eric Ketelaar’s original use of the term, where what and how records get archivized on platforms is influenced by technology and its capabilities.^[16] As an appraisal action, archivization as an appraisal (Trans)action also includes deletion and re-creation, modification and migration of those same records within a recordkeeping system. Archivization goes beyond the recognition and identification and drawing of ideas together – it expands to organising a record into an archivized context, signifying it with metadata, applying security protocols or identifying platforms that make this decision concrete for a period of time or the long-term.

Mobilisation

Mobilisation happens at local and ambient levels across the continuum. Individuals and groups can mobilise themselves to action, but so too can social movements mobilise against engrained societal power and oppression (as shown by Bill Moyer’s view of activism, discussed in chapter four). The way that activist stories are ratified into the social movement memory and interconnected across the Internet is currently unstructured and distributed. However, activist-led solutions for archiving actions using their own platforms and interconnective and interoperable systems can be the future for community enablement, success and progression. This anarchontic political power is now in the hands of the activist. While awareness of the plight of animals and social change toward animal welfare has slowly improved over time^[17] the commercialisation of animal processing and its silence in covering up abuses means that progress for change is slow. The power that prevents the recordkeeping and use in court of strategic witnessing finds its way into platforms and surveillance online.

While long-term solutions for animal liberation activists, free from third-party control, are not yet available, decision-making, power dynamics and platforms play crucial roles in short-term archiving efforts, with potential for long-term strategies. Appraisal acts as a mobilizing and anarchontic force, ensuring critical records are preserved to support, mobilise and commemorate the broader movement.

      Inclusion of a Shadow Axis in the (Trans)actionality Appraisal Axis

The blue ‘shadow axis’ reflects appraisal decisions by what Jacques Derrida would call archontic powers. Based on the Greek Origins of the word archive (or arkhe = commandment/commencement), the institutional power holders and rule makers are the “archons” that prevail over the record and determine what is remembered or forgotten. Archons “effect state law: they recall the law and can call on or impose the law”.^[18] By pointing to the politicisation of the archive there are political and ethical consequences that lead to legitimation of history and tradition through reinforcement by archons. The activist (green) community-based power in appraisal is on the opposite side of this archontic power. Still, it is influenced by it – as discussed in introducing the risk hermeneutic (chapter six).

In figure 9.1, appraisal is in action throughout the cone. Though their principle is for nonviolent direct action, there is a broken line to ensure there are visualised nuances in modelling rather than dualisms. Weaponization, for example, is used here by archontic power, but it is the shadow of non-violence goals, principles and values. While its opponents may argue that DxE’s records are weapons against agriculture, this cannot be the case, as the term is used here as archcontic dominance from the seat of power. Sense-making and archivization have an anarchontic power, the power to subvert the archon. While archivization is a “call of justice … outside any archival theory”^[19] modelling radical recordkeeping and activist appraisal in the continuum leads to understanding the risk hermeneutics of implementing this justice. There is opposition and blurring between the mirror and shadow, archontic and anarchontic.

Weaponization

While archival theory has spoken to the weaponization of malicious misinformation online^[20] the term weaponization here is specific to the archontic power working against radical recordkeeping. Such weaponization includes misuse, misrepresentation and policing of open rescue and aggressions against activism. Weaponization of web archives in particular through surveillance and reuse of records online^[21] benefit the archons. In the animal rights context, the archons include state actors and government-supported agricultural bodies and these groups, institutions and individuals create, manage and pluralise weaponised records. By identifying and reinforcing records for the archive from the position of authority, weaponization can knowingly or unknowingly take place along the appraisal ‘shadow axis’ of the RRCM. 

One example of records being weaponized in police surveillance and facial recognition against activists. Debates around these issues rightly play out in the rights and recordkeeping literature^[22] against a spectrum of tolerance for state-based surveillance. Activists and archivists must remain vigilant in addressing these challenges to ensure that the documentation of social movements does not inadvertently expose individuals to increased surveillance and repression.

Reinforcement

Records are organised in ways that enforce existing power structures and evidence the values of the status quo, weaponization and tradition of the archon. Archivists and archives power can reinforce existing power structures^[23] Archival laws, standards and processes reinforce archontic powers that can transform by disruption or counter-power of the populace. Reinforcement is the hermeneutic of power in action within structural systems.

Marshalling

The term ‘marshalling’ here has been used as a descriptor for ambient appraisal in the shadow axis because it provides the sense of control and military use to police others with strategy and authority. It also has a double meaning in a technical sense. While marshalling is described as a serialisation for storage in the technical sense, the use here is also for non-storage – so rather than say ‘de-marshalling’, the term itself means moving, deleting, changing or transforming information by choice, through re-creation, misuse, or storing for strategic purposes against activists and the broader movement.

Combining the technical definition and view of authoritative oversight in the appraisal process, the label in the RRCM highlights transformation or deletion of transmissions within software applications that becomes a method of exerting control over activist information. This control is exercised by manipulating the data to align with the objectives and narratives of those in power. Serializing information – structuring it in a way that supports the marshalling body’s agenda – effectively weaponizes data. This tactic is deployed across the Internet to shape public perception, influence discourse and suppress dissenting voices. Through these actions, the integrity and authenticity of activist records can be compromised or censored, leading to a distorted historical record and undermining the efforts of social movements.

Radical Appraisal Continuum Model

The Radical Recordkeeping Continuum Model (RRCM) introduced in the previous chapter provides an ambient model for analysis. This allows a group or community to perform Critical Functional Appraisal (CFA). CFA is an emergent term used here to describe the decision-making and risk hermeneutic in radical recordkeeping – both subversive and political. Radical appraisal is bringing these together to articulate the breadth of appraisal happening in an activist group that is both nanosecond archiving and memorialising across a social movement. Critical Functional Appraisal is already a ubiquitous part of activism in DxE. The ambient decisions and witnessing impact decision-making. Collectively, other records from the broader social movement can also benefit DxE (and vice versa) to help progress the community’s shared purpose.

The modified (Trans)actionality/ Appraisal axis cone is transposed upon the RRCM image below to create an appraisal-focused model – the Radical Appraisal Continuum Model (RACM).

Fig. 9.2 Radical Appraisal Continuum Model (RACM).

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By looking at the interconnection between axes, there are opportunities for analysis between the powerholders, the technologies they use and how recordkeeping can be weaponized, used and countered by activists. These intersections inform transformed appraisal and CFA tools of assessment. Tools for current decisions of DxE are not represented in any formalised way. To allow for autonomy and consistency for a future appraisal approach the risk hermeneutic can be best understood and shared by activists using the RACM for consistency and shared understanding between members.

This model allows for the explanation of power and activist struggle to witness – especially since activists have described that “the harms of surveillance can be very hard to explain”.^[24] Human rights activists acknowledge that in many countries, there is “… everyday violence that policing inflicts …” such as the over-policing of minorities in Greece, class-based policing in India and the use of surveillance as a weapon by authorities in Mexico.^[25] These archons can be regarded by activists as techno-tyrants. There is resonance here with the tyranny of animal activists being labelled and charged as terrorists^[26] – with the state using power, law and aggression against them.

The RACM is designed both as a model of radical recordkeeping and a tool for performing Critical Functional Appraisal. Activists are empowered as agents for radical recordkeeping. To reflect the actions performed by activists, the CFA respects values-laden and ambient activities with complex interrelationships, multiple provenances and conflicting voices.

The mirror and shadow axes of the RACM emphasise the types of decisions and transactions in appraisal that consider or counter activist personal and collective values. Principles and goals are connected to the values of activism. Values, emotion and power imbalance are part of appraisal assessment and can be modelled, mapped and used as a tool for analysis. Individual values are connected with identity and includes collective membership complements personal and communal purpose. These expressions are formed in social media and personal and collective recordkeeping that can morph within platforms and on the Internet more broadly. Binaries between the personal and the collective do not exist; they are enmeshed and intertwined in activist actions. Motivations for recordkeeping in personal life was explored by McKemmish’s ‘Evidence of Me’ and has extended to later publications in the archival field like “It feels like life’s work” – where love and emotion are motivations for recordkeeping.^[27]

Conclusion

The Radical Appraisal Continuum Model (RACM) is designed to be a valuable tool for understanding the complex decision-making processes that support radical recordkeeping in animal activism. This model allows for a more nuanced and critical approach to appraisal in the context of activism, where traditional models do not fit the needs of a grassroots activist group. The RACM can be used to address the risks of remembering and forgetting associated with radical recordkeeping and inform future records continuum modelling and practice. It provides a tool for Critical Functional Appraisal steps described in chapter 10.

The modelling in this chapter can also inform future developments of archival infrastructure and theory. The concept of a networked online archive, supported by sustainable, trusted and values-based access models, has the potential to shift power away from commercial platforms and towards distributed and activist-focused ones. As the world becomes increasingly digital and interconnected, it is crucial that social movements have the tools and resources they need to protect and preserve their records. The RACM is a step towards a more critical, community-focussed and values-based approach to appraisal. It provides a theoretical framework for recording future activism and social movement records and it has the potential to challenge the systemic marginalisation of activist voices in the archive by disrupting narrow and bureaucratic appraisal approaches.