2
struct, the hackers convincingly showed that basing elections on the use
of these computers would endanger the democratic process. In 2008
Club members obtained fngerprints from the German interior min-
ister at that time, Wolfgang Schäuble, and published them in a format
designed to fool passport fngerprint readers. The hack underlined the
vulnerability of biometric identity systems at a time when biometric pass-
ports were increasingly being introduced on a global scale and fnger-
prints became obligatory in German passports. The critique of the spread
of insecure biometric applications in day-to-day life was recapitulated
when in 2013 the Club hacked Apple’s Touch ID—a technology that
allows users to unlock their iPhone by fngerprint identifcation—within
a week of its release. Another prominent recent collective action was the
so-called Staatstrojaner (‘Federal Trojan Horse’) hack. In 2011, two
years before the issue of surveillance gained global currency owing to
Edward Snowden’s revelations, the CCC disclosed surveillance software
90 S. Kubitschko
used by German police forces that violated the terms set by the constitu-
tional court on this matter. Yet, as will be shown in the following section,
to understand the way the Club thematizes and problematizes the politi-
cal qualities of technology, one also needs to take into account another
dimension: besides the aforementioned internal dynamics the Club’s
activities were, of course, also interrelated to external elements.
4.4 From the Inside to the Outside
Taking the above into account, it might come as no surprise that from
day one the Club complemented its hacks with outward-oriented com-
munication aimed to make the hackers’ fndings comprehensible and
its political demands visible to the largest possible public. The Btx hack
itself, for example, would not have been overly effectual if news media
had not picked up the story. As news media reported widely on the hack
and were largely in support of the hackers’ criticism, the hack gained an
event character. Following the Btx hack, the CCC was recognized as a
collective actor that had something relevant to say about the communi-
cation and information landscape in Germany. The CCC was invited to
speak on the main television news magazine of public broadcaster ZDF,
the advice of Club members was frequently sought by national newspa-
pers, they were asked by corporations to speak on data security and were
requested by the newly established Green Party to write a report on the
Party’s potential use of networked computing. One of the important
details here is that instead of only being the subject of media coverage,
the CCC had the opportunity to communicate its point of view to differ-
ent audiences.
Related to the relationship of non-state actors and established media
outlets, Richard Ericson and his colleagues (1989) make a useful distinc-
tion between media access and media coverage. By access, they mean the
news space, time and context to reasonably represent one’s own perspec-
tive, whereas coverage entails news space and time but not necessarily
the context for favourable representations (Ericson et al. 1989: 5). This
distinction is vital because it demonstrates that media access—as with
access to all kinds of resources at institutional levels—remains a politi-
cal question (Freedman 2014). While media coverage simply denotes
the amount and prominence of attention and visibility a group receives,
media access indicates that an actor has a particular standing and is
treated as an actor with a serious voice in the media. Gaining positive
4 CHAOS COMPUTER CLUB: THE COMMUNICATIVE CONSTRUCTION … 91
coverage once may not be hard. Sustaining regular access and stand-
ing, which enhances the actor’s ability to embed its concepts and ideals
in public discourse (see Phillips et al. 2004), can be extremely diffcult.
Seen from this perspective, the Btx hack shows the ways in which the
CCC as a non-state actor had to rely on established media outlets to
mobilize public support, to increase the validity of their demands and
to circulate their messages beyond like-minded people. Established news
media were, however, not the only part of the Club’s media ensemble;
and these are a few examples that date back to the CCC’s early days.
Right from the start the Club had close affliations with the then newly
founded alternative tageszeitung (‘daily newspaper’), commonly referred
to as taz, one of the Club’s co-founders (Wau Holland) being a column-
ist during the mid-1980s. In addition, the hacker organization has pub-
lished its own Datenschleuder magazine since 1984 (still ongoing) and
was very active in enlarging bulletin boards systems (BBS) in Germany
throughout the 1980s. Consequently, the Club’s media ensemble relied
on practices related to analogue and digital media and comprised both
coverage by and access to news outlets.
At this point it is helpful to make a leap in time and focus on more
recent developments. The end of the 1990s and the early 2000s saw a
growing pervasiveness of radical and alternative media platforms and
online networks that amplifed actors’ ability to voice the political rel-
evance of their endeavours (see Rodríguez et al. 2014). Along with this
development, scholars emphasize that actors increasingly invest human,
technological and fnancial resources in ‘“being the media” instead of
hating it’ (Cammaerts 2012: 125). The CCC is no exception in this
regard. Over the past two decades, Club members have initiated a reg-
ular radio show (Chaosradio), podcasts (e.g. CRE and Alternativlos),
accounts on both popular and alternative online platforms such as
Twitter, Quitter and personal blogs, to name some of the more promi-
nent examples. Instead of abandoning outward oriented channels such
as the Chaosradio show or the Datenschleuder magazine, the Club inte-
grates its ‘trans-media’ (Costanza-Chock 2014) efforts into a ‘media
manifold’ (Couldry 2012), where one communicative practice does not
necessarily substitute for the other, but plays a part in the Club’s overall
media ensemble.
Following this depiction, one might expect that the CCC has detached
itself from interactions with mainstream outlets. This is not the case
at all. On the contrary, the CCC has in fact intensifed its interactions
92 S. Kubitschko
with well-established media. In particular its styles and modes of access
to mainstream media have diversifed and multiplied (e.g. personal con-
tacts to journalists, writing regular columns for well-established newspa-
pers, being an editorial member of online outlets, acting as informants).
Despite the ability to increase its media ensemble, the importance of gain-
ing positive coverage by and access to established media outlets and news
channels is essential for the CCC. Mainstream outlets are important sites
for the Club to exist in the public mind, make its voices heard and achieve
public recognition beyond the circle of like-minded individuals—especially
important because of the ongoing fragmentation of the media environ-
ment and the competition of different actors for public attention. Being
covered by and having access to mainstream media outlets continues to be
an effective and possibly necessary route to co-determine public discourse
for non-state actors such as the CCC.
For emerging groups such as Anonymous, it has been argued that sat-
ing the media hunger for spectacle, media attention and column inches
has become an end in itself and therefore an obstacle to political move-
ment building (Coleman 2014). In the context of the CCC, it cannot
be said that the hacker organization has been captivated by the demands
of news media and popular online platforms, which might lead to trivi-
alization and debasement of its aims. Similarly, the Club is not aiming
for visibility at any price; which can be seen in the fact that it does not
make use of Facebook or many other capital oriented and data hungry
infrastructures. In the case of the CCC, publications of particular activi-
ties such as the Staatstrojaner hack in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
are the result of elaborated coordination amongst core members of the
Club and the newspapers’ editors. While mediated visibility does not
equal empowerment and is not a political end in itself, access to estab-
lished news channels appears to be particularly important for ‘hackers’
also because the term still tends to have a negative connotation.
Based on a multi-layered media ensemble that reaches different audi-
ences and publics, the CCC is able to communicate its political mes-
sage to a wide range of actors. As a consequence of this, the hackers’
outward-oriented communication establishes and strengthens the Club’s
position in public discourse. It is important to mention here that the
hackers’ communicative practices are not limited to mediated communi-
cation but, as briefy mentioned above, also strongly rely on face-to-face
interactions; which is the case when members are invited to share their
expertise in governmental committees and public hearings, and when
4 CHAOS COMPUTER CLUB: THE COMMUNICATIVE CONSTRUCTION … 93
they advise individual legislators and politicians, as well as when they
are invited as experts to advise sections of a parliamentary party in the
Bundestag or the constitutional court in Germany. The ability to interact
with ‘outsiders’ largely relies on the fact that a core group of members
forms clear and well-recognizable frames of relevance through organiz-
ing both inward- and outward-oriented communication. Bringing the
previous section together with this line of reasoning, one can remark that
the CCC’s internal communicative fguration not only enables the Club
to execute direct digital action in the form of hacking, but also allows the
hacker organization to communicate with a diversity of relevant actors
(including the larger public) in coherent ways. In the case of the CCC,
the relations between hacking and the communicative fguration within
the Club are best understood as interlocking arrangements (Kubitschko
2015). These, as will be argued below, have wider consequences for the
Chaos Computer Club’s standing as a political actor. To substantiate this
line of argument, the fnal section will put the spotlight on the dynamics
that result from the fgurational arrangements discussed above, and show
how they put the Club into a position to infuence larger frames of rel-
evance related to media technologies and infrastructures.
4.5 Spiral of Legitimation
So far this chapter has argued that the hacker organization’s internal
fguration is closely connected to its way of executing political work.
In addition it has been shown that the CCC’s direct digital action and
its mode of publicizing its activities rely on one another. Interestingly
enough, when we look more closely at the way the Club interacts with
the media environment and with institutionalized politics, one notices
that theses interactions complement one another or are in fact even
interdependent. The Club’s media ensemble and interactions with rel-
evant actors perpetuate each other and co-determine the Club’s abil-
ity to politicize media technologies and infrastructures. The dynamic
at hand that best describes this process will be referred to as a spiral of
legitimation.
According to Mark Suchman, legitimacy is practically the basis of poli-
tics as it addresses the forces ‘that constrain, construct, and empower
organizational actors’ (Suchman 1995: 571). In the expanding literature
on legitimacy Suchman’s defnition has been generally accepted as the
most suitable: ‘Legitimacy is a generalised perception or assumption that
94 S. Kubitschko
the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some
socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and defnitions’
(Suchman 1995: 574). Overall, legitimacy, to a large degree, rests on
being socially ‘comprehensible’ and ‘taken-for-granted’ (Suchman 1995).
Echoing the notion of taken-for-grantedness, Berger and Luckmann
(1967: 94–95) consider legitimation a process whereby comprehen-
sibility deepens and crystallizes. Skill, effort and practice are regarded
necessary elements in the process by which an actor becomes taken-for-
granted (Bourdieu 2000). Accordingly, legitimacy is not simply out there
for the asking, but has to be created as well as exploited by actors who
seek to gain legitimation.
Scholars who diagnose correlations between communicative prac-
tices and the social standing of political actors have argued for a strong
link between media representation and legitimacy (Lazarsfeld and
Merton 2004 [1948]; Koopmans 2004). This chapter agrees with these
accounts, as far as the media environment serves both as an indicator of
legitimacy by society at large and as a source of legitimacy in its own
right (Deephouse and Suchman 2008). At the same time, the fgura-
tional approach presented here complements and complicates existing
lines of reasoning. It does so in two ways. First, as has been underlined
above, one needs to take into account both actors’ inward oriented and
outward oriented communicative practices. In addition, it is understood
that media representation today goes far beyond coverage by mainstream
media as it relies on actors’ multi-layered media ensemble. Second,
instead of arguing for a straightforward causal correlation between
‘media attention’ and social standing, this research reveals a more eclectic
process: a spiral of legitimation that is based on the relation between the
organization’s internal communicative fguration and the communicative
fguration related to the public discourse around the political qualities of
contemporary media technologies and infrastructures.
At least over the past two decades it has become a dominant frame of
relevance in public discourse that along with their pervasiveness (or even
omnipresence) media technologies and infrastructures are an ever more
important part of the social world. More and more people make use of
and relate their daily activities to media in one way or another. At the
same time legislators, politicians, judges and other actors with decisive
power related to policy-making and the law are in need of advice, con-
sulting and grounded recommendations. That is to say, the CCC’s abil-
ity to manoeuvre their issues into public discourse and to advance their
4 CHAOS COMPUTER CLUB: THE COMMUNICATIVE CONSTRUCTION … 95
political goals to a great extent relates to prevailing social arrangements.
The more media technologies and infrastructures fnd their way into peo-
ple’s everyday lives, the more attentive citizens, media representatives and
decision-makers are to actors who demonstrate and articulate reasonable
engagement in relation to technical transformations. Gaining and main-
taining legitimacy is something that is framed and conditioned by social
realities. While legitimation can be at least partially secured through insti-
tutions such as the media, legitimacy is never simply mediated.
In the case of the CCC, institutional politics react, amongst other
things, to public pressure that is built up through a multi-layered media
ensemble; which confrms that actors who receive preferred standing
and are able to stabilize their appearances across the media environment
over time tend to be considered trustworthy. Interestingly enough, this
relationship also operates the other way round. Media representatives
consider CCC members as legitimate voices and provide them access to
their outlets owing to their regular interaction with institutional poli-
tics. Politicians, legislators and judges learn about the organization’s
engagement in part through the hackers’ outward oriented communi-
cation. As a consequence, they invite Club members to articulate their
stance in particular contexts, such as committees, consultations and hear-
ings. Owing to the Club’s involvement in institutional politics, differ-
ent media outlets regard the CCC as worth covering as well as worth
granting access to. Media environments and institutional politics, each
in their own way, mutually signify the CCC’s engagement before a wide
public. As a consequence its virtuous role as a civil society organization
that has something valuable to say about the political relevance of tech-
nical developments continues to be acknowledged, inscribed and stabi-
lized. Throughout this process, the Club gains opportunities to illustrate
its activities, articulate its objectives and politicize particular themes. This
process is accompanied by the Club’s regular direct digital actions that
constantly demonstrate the hackers’ high level of technology-related
skills, experience and knowledge. Overall, instead of linearity one needs
to stress rotation and reciprocity as the defning processual dynamics that
create an attribution process, whereby the narration ‘CCC hackers are
the good ones’ emerges and stabilizes.
This is not to say that this spiral of legitimation cannot go into
reverse. Legitimacy is never defnitively acquired and remains open to
challenge and dependent on social perceptions (Rosanvallon 2011: 7).
Similarly, it is understood that no political actor is (il)legitimate for 100%
96 S. Kubitschko
of the time or across all locations. The Club’s de-legitimation during the
mid-1980s is a telling example in this context. Accordingly, a spiral of
legitimation refers to the growth and spread as well as decline and with-
drawal of a given actor’s legitimacy and explicitly takes into considera-
tion that organizational legitimacy changes over time. Conceptualizing
the processes at hand as a spiral of legitimation takes into account that
legitimation is never constructed in a vacuum, but relies on communica-
tive practices and is evolved in relation to concrete actors’ constellations
within an environment that has specifc dominant frames of relevance.
While it is impossible to (mathematically) measure legitimation, it is
certainly possible to observe a given actor’s standing, reputation and
taken-for-grantedness. Similarly, by taking into account the fgurational
arrangements both within and surrounding a given organization it is
possible to determine whether the spiral is in an upward or downward
dynamic.
Considering that, analytically, one can distinguish between differ-
ent levels of legitimation, it should be noted that empirically these levels
overlap the term spiral of legitimation, which conceptualizes legitimacy
as a relational process. Legitimacy is not a matter of singular events but
of the relation between different communicative fgurations over time.
Again, it is necessary to highlight that spirals of legitimation are not self-
perpetuating feedback loops. Neither do they rest on fgurations that
occur overnight. Accordingly, spirals of legitimation point to a process
of inscription over time whereby individuals coming together around
common ends, objectives or projects develop into meaningful politi-
cal actors. By doing so, it echoes understandings that see time as a criti-
cal component in actors being able to co-determine political settings, as
political claims can only be realized over the long term (see Andrews and
Edwards 2004). Looking more closely at the Club’s legitimation, one
notices that the hackers’ current ability to practise a demanding vision
of politics is strongly affliated with the organization’s history. For more
than 30 years, CCC members have been acting on the politicization of
media technologies and infrastructures. Only by transporting its activities
and voice over time and space did the Club manage to establish itself as a
reliable reference point with a lasting resonance to which different actors,
publics and audiences can relate.
Sustaining political engagement over time to challenge existing
conceptions of what is understood as political and shifting the legiti-
mate boundaries of recognized actors is a demanding task. The CCC
4 CHAOS COMPUTER CLUB: THE COMMUNICATIVE CONSTRUCTION … 97
continuously actualizes its engagement to avoid it becoming vague
through more or less spectacular hacks, and has established mechanisms
to survive the ebbs and fows of mass attention. Considering the social
standing of the Club as a trusted civil society organization, one needs to
take into account distinct temporalities that include the effective publi-
cizing of actions such as the Staatstrojaner hack as well as the hackers’
continuous contributions to the public discourse around the political
qualities of media technologies and infrastructures since the early 1980s.
4.6 Conclusion
Taking into account both the deep embeddedness of hacker cultures
in the evolution of computerized society and the concrete case of the
Chaos Computer Club, it becomes clear that acting on media technolo-
gies and infrastructures entails a wide set of activities: it manifests itself
not only in form of direct engagement with technical devices and sys-
tems, but also occurs through interaction with different actors, through
articulating viewpoints, through sharing knowledge and experiences in
different circumstances. As has been argued in this chapter, to under-
stand the way the Club has gained recognition as a trustful actor that
has something valuable to say about the role media technologies and
infrastructures play in society, it is benefcial to investigate the commu-
nicative fgurations within and surrounding the hacker organization. By
investigating the constellation of actors, the frames of relevance and com-
municative practices, the chapter shows how the CCC thematizes media
technologies and infrastructures as sites of an active political struggle
in their own right. Doing so not only allows conceptualizing the rela-
tions between hacking and the communicative fguration within the Club
as interlocking arrangements but also points towards a dynamic that
has been described as a spiral of legitimation. This denotes the process
through which the CCC’s engagement is acknowledged and stabilized
(or denied and destabilized) over time. While the Club’s current role as
a trusted civil society organization strongly relates to internal fgurations,
it is likewise related to the public discourse surrounding media technolo-
gies and infrastructures’ role as an ever more important part of the social
world. By bringing these two dimensions together and by considering
time as a critical component, it is possible to further understandings of
organizational actors’ ability to co-determine political arrangements.
98 S. Kubitschko
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