ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the activities of the Occupy Archives Working Group, which was one of more than a hundred working groups that existed within and contributed to the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement that occurred in New York’s Zuccotti Park throughout the period September 17 to November 15, 2011. The chapter argues that the working group’s agenda for archiving the movement was a strategic form of activist public relations that targeted two target groups – an external public that would engage with a resultant collection of materials representing Occupy, and internal communities of Occupy activist peers. Discussion of the strategies used to communicate with each of these target groups reveals a disjunct between the Occupy Movement’s concern with image control on the one hand, and its suspicion, on the other hand, of the process of the self-archiving process that was being undertaken by the Occupy Archives Working Group. The case study shows, in the final instance, that regardless of the ambivalent levels of support provided by the broader movement for their actions, the Occupy Archives Working Group provided a key contribution to activist practice and literature in the field because of their commitment to documenting the legacy of the movement (extending to maintain control of their image and reputation), and, even more importantly, because of their aim to establish a collection that would offer an enduring living activist resource for the reference of future generations.
