[artinfo] Cyber Partisans

[Gabriella Coleman, Dr.]

Cyber Partisans: An Insider's Interview on Truth, Terror, and 
Technology in the Lukashenko Regime

Date: November 18 from 3-5 p.m. EST, registration link below.

Organized by Gabriella Coleman (Harvard University), Marijeta Bozovic 
(Yale University), and Benjamin Peters (University of Tulsa)

Hacktivism is on the rise, and there's a new, notable crew on the 
block: the Cyber Partisans. Hailing from Belarus, this collective was 
chartered in 2020 to fight and expose the Lukashenko regime. First 
hacking a TV station to stream videos of police brutality, their 
tactics and interventions have become more diverse, sophisticated, 
and wide-ranging in 2021. Collaborating with former police officers 
and hacking into government databases, they've landed and analyzed 
troves of leaked data that showcase everything from alleged police 
informants' names to proof that the regime doctored Covid-19 death 
statistics to downplay the severity of the pandemic.

To learn more about the group's operations and organization, along 
with their history, goals, and successes, please join us on Thursday, 
November 18, from 3-5 p.m. EST for an online event featuring the 
Cyber Partisans' spokesperson, Yuliana Shemetovets. She will join us 
live on video and communicate with several other members of the 
collective to answer questions from the event organizers and the 
audience.

Yuliana Shemetovets will kick things off by introducing us to the 
group. Gabriella Coleman, Professor of Anthropology at Harvard 
University, will follow by briefly discussing the history of 
hacktivism in light of the Cyber Partisans' accomplishments. We will 
then move to the formal question and answer period with Ben Peters, 
Associate Professor of Media Studies at the University of Tulsa, and 
Marijeta Bozovic, Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages & 
Literature at Yale University. We will dedicate the last 40- 50 
minutes to a live question and answer period with the audience.

Registration link: 
<https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ONWNdHEpSxC0zk68riaoPA> 
https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ONWNdHEpSxC0zk68riaoPA

To ensure audience members have the time to ask questions, the event 
is by invitation only, so please don't share details on social media. 
If you'd like to invite someone, please reach out to Julia Bugiel 
<mailto:julia.bugiel at mcgill.ca><julia.bugiel at mcgill.ca>, and we will 
send over an invite.

We look forward to seeing you!

Gabriella, Marijeta, and Ben 


Speaker Bios

Yuliana Shemetovets is a Belarusian activist and spokeswoman on 
behalf of the Cyber Partisans. A director of the "Belarus Liberty" 
nonprofit organization, she is focused on using technology to empower 
civil societies and to advocate for human rights.

Gabriella (Biella) Coleman is a full professor in the Department of 
Anthropology at Harvard University & is a faculty associate at the 
Berkman Center for Internet and Society. She is the author of two 
books on computer hackers and the founder and editor of Hack_Curio, a 
video portal into the cultures of hacking.

Marijeta Bozovic is the author of Nabokov's Canon: From Onegin to Ada 
(Northwestern University Press, 2016) and an assistant professor of 
Slavic languages and literatures, affiliated with Film and media 
studies and Women's, gender, and sexuality studies at Yale 
University. 

Benjamin Peters is the author of How Not to Network a Nation: The 
Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet (the MIT Press 2016, Vucinich 
Prize 2017) and an associate professor of Media studies at the 
University of Tulsa.