The final speaker in this session at the AoIR 2025 conference is Jaime Lee Kirtz, who begins by focussing on the concept of craft; this can been used as a metaphor in understanding computational media, too, where software is crafted. Craft is also often a form of resistance, as with the crafting of pussy hats in the later 2010s, for instance.
This project examines platforms such as Etsy, Ravelry, and Folksy where crafts can be shared and commercialised; they are amongst the larger such sites in the Global North. Such sites have also been used for the circulation of information – during the early days of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, for instance, Etsy users shared experiences of the war on Etsy in the form of simple craft products (e.g. digital cards), in exchange asking for donations that could support their continued subsistence under these circumstances.
This is can also be understood as a form of repurposing on and of these platforms: repurposing can mean restyling, subtractive or additive repurposing, or intentional pattern-making to repurpose; this usually happens at a later stage of an object’s life. Historical repurposing is often also an act of resistance: it reacts to and bypasses the commercialisation of mass consumption, and navigates the lack of access to or affordability of certain products.
The repurposing practices in the present case include the use of these platforms, and pre-existing craft stores on them, for disseminating crisis information from within conflict zones like Ukraine; this stretches and playfully circumvents the formal rules for craft product listings which these sites have imposed on their users. At minimum, where customers are asked to donate to craft sellers, there needs to be a product; the product here then simply becomes a digital image of the situation on the ground.
Elsewhere, sites like TripAdvisor and Google Maps were google-bombed with information about the war: users were leaving reviews for restaurants in Russia, for instance, that contained calls for resistance against the Putin regime or provided information about the current state of the war.
On some platforms, there are also donation intermediaries, where users provide information to others about how to donate, as well as donating the proceeds of their craft businesses to Ukrainians. This repurposes these craft business Websites as spaces for channelling aid; for instance, some users also booked Ukrainian airBNBs ands then cancelled them late as a way of channelling money to Ukraine.
This is not limited to support for Ukraine, however, some Chinese users are also supporting Russian craft stores in much the same way. Overall, this represents a form of tactical repurposing of these platforms to resist state-controlled narratives and misinformation disrupt and create new flows of capital, and engage in political dissidence even as they remain embedded within the structures of global capitalism.
