Tagging for activist ends and strategic ephemerality: creating the Sex Work Database as an activist digital archive. Issue 2 (3rd March 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Ferris, Shawna; Allard, Danielle
• Is Part Of: Feminist media studies. Volume 16:Issue 2(2016)
• Page Start: 189
• Page End: 204
• Publication Date: 2016-03-03
• Subjects: Feminist research -- sex work -- activist digital archives -- new media; Feminism -- Periodicals; Women in mass media -- Periodicals; Mass media and women -- Periodicals; Feminist criticism -- Periodicals; Mass media and sex -- Periodicals; 302.23082
• DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2015.1118396
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1468-0777

Abstract

Abstract: The Sex Work Database project is an interdisciplinary collaboration, currently based in Canada, to research and design digital activist archives of "born digital" and digitized academic research, print and visual media, grassroots activism, and commemorative responses related to missing and murdered women and sex work. This paper discusses the project's development over its first few years, and discusses the complexities of organizing and representing digital/digitized information using a feminist anti-violence framework. In doing so, we introduce and examine two challenges we have encountered to date: designing a tagging system that expresses the activist frame of the Sex Work Database, and the ethics and efficacy of strategic ephemerality for materials produced by sex worker activists.