Paper short abstract:

I will share insights from building a lively archive on the Taiwanese petrochemical company Formosa Plastics. Hosted on an instance of the Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography (PECE), I focus on the legal challenges of doing activist "archive ethnography" on an open infrastructure.

Paper long abstract:

Civic data work has been a key tactic in responding to disasters (fast and slow) caused by the Taiwanese petrochemical company Formosa Plastics. In my presentation, I will share insights from building a lively archive that connects activists in communities affected by Formosa in Texas, Louisiana and Taiwan. The Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography (PECE) that infrastructures my research, providing research archive capacity, spaces for analytic collaboration, and allowing new forms of scholarly expression and communication. As a member of the PECE Design Team, will talk particularly about the challenge of tuning this kind of open source, open access research infrastructure further to the particularities of the Formosa case. Examples include legal protection against the companies rogue tactics and other attempts of "data divergence".