Building an archive of historical web defacements
Michael Kurzmeier · 2024
This article explores the process of creating an archive of political web defacements and the potential research opportunities presented by analysing them. It describes the source data, the workflow used to process and index the data, and the analysis models used to study the data. The chapter also discusses the use of existing web archiving playback software and custom solutions in the context of creating a web archive from defaced pages. Additionally, it discusses the challenges posed by web defacements, such as their interconnectedness with the original page at the time of defacement, and how cross-referencing with other web archives can help contextualise web defacements. The chapter concludes by providing a publicly available data source for the research of web histories, social movements online and the history of political hacking in the pre-2002 era.