Chaos Computer Club: The Communicative Construction of Media Technologies and Infrastructures as a Political Category

Abstract

This chapter displays how hackers’ political engagement today relies on a wide range of practices related to media technologies and infrastructures and, at the same time, continues to be oriented towards larger publics as well as ‘traditional’ centres of political power. By employing the concept of communicative figuration, the chapter elaborates how one of the world’s oldest and largest hacker organizations—the Chaos Computer Club (CCC)—communicatively constructs media technologies and infrastructures as a political category in its own right. To implement this approach, the chapter will proceed in three aligned steps. First, the hacker organization itself is conceptualized as a communicative figuration, which also includes direct political action in the form of hacking. Second, the chapter explains how the CCC positions itself in the public discourse surrounding media technologies. Third, the chapter demonstrates how the Club’s internal figuration and its linkages with relevant actors, such as journalists, politicians and judges as well as the general public, creates a spiral of legitimation that enables the hacker organization to constitute media technologies and infrastructures as publicly recognized political phenomena.