Identity formation
Who uses “Unprogrammable,” what meanings do they attach to it, how did they encounter it, and what adjacent communities do they distinguish themselves from?
LS Living Movement Study
Study the formation instead of assuming the movement.
This protocol defines what the project wants to learn, what it will not infer, how participation must be consented to, and what evidence would change the project’s understanding.
Protocolv1public draft
Research agenda published
Read the ethics boundaryRecruitment is not yet formally open.
The site can accept an offer to be contacted about an interview. That offer is not research participation, does not authorize recording, and does not grant publication permission.
Primary questions
Participation and inequality
How do work, resources, geography, access needs, available time, technical skill, and social position shape who can participate and whose work becomes visible?
Everyday organization
How do communication, meetings, decision-making, cultural production, volunteering, collaboration, care, conflict, moderation, and withdrawal actually operate?
Distributed agency vs. durable organization
When do informal leadership, resource concentration, infrastructure ownership, or institutional partnerships produce durable capacity—and when do they produce exclusion or unaccountable power?
Units of analysis
Different evidence answers different questions.
UnitAppropriate evidenceBoundary
Individual participantConsented interview, oral history, authored statementDo not infer sensitive traits from profiles or browsing.
Group / projectPublic charter, meeting artifact, consented observation, organizer statementDo not label an affiliate without evidence or consent.
Public discoursePublished documents, media, public statementsPublic availability does not erase contextual ethics or privacy concerns.
Site stewardshipRepository, governance records, editorial decisionsSite leadership is not automatically movement leadership.
Comparative casePrimary records and high-quality scholarshipAnalytical relevance does not make historical actors members of this movement.
Methods
Method follows the question.
Interviews and oral histories are appropriate for lived experience and identity formation. Document analysis is appropriate for public statements and artifacts. Consented observation may be appropriate for community practices. Comparative case analysis tests whether the framework explains more than alternatives.
Surveys or network analysis should only be introduced when a defensible sampling purpose and privacy design exist. An opt-in web poll will not be described as representative of an uncertain population.
Evidence labels
Participant account, corroborated event, researcher interpretation, editorial position, and advocacy claim remain distinct.
Demographics
Collected only when justified, optional, and safe. Sensitive characteristics are not inferred from public profiles or technical data.
Negative findings
Fragmentation, low adoption, contradictory identities, or a community that never becomes a durable movement are valid outcomes.
Consent architecture
Recurring outputs
The study should expose its own evolution.
- 01Research questions
What the project is asking now and why the question matters.
- 02Methods & recruitment information
Who was invited, when, through what route, with what consent and limitations.
- 03Dated findings
Claim-level evidence, sample scope, missing perspectives, uncertainty, and revision history.
- 04Participant and critic responses
Substantive disagreement preserved rather than edited into artificial consensus.
Ethics inputs