From BBS to Blackboard: The Pedagogy of Hacker Culture in Phrack Magazine, 1985-2016

This thesis explores Phrack Magazine as an important site of informal learning within the context of hacker culture, and it is not just a technical magazine but also a discursive space where knowledge, identity, and values are negotiated, taught, and analyzed. Based on the sociocultural theory of learning and considering theories on digital informal learning, the research investigates how hacker subjectivity is negotiated through linguistic praxis, instructional genres, and cultural narratives. The research methodology integrates Critical Discourse Analysis with computer text analysis by employing Voyant Tools to enable both qualitative and quantitative comprehension of learning undertaken across decades of Phrack publications. The outcome reveals that the magazine sustains peer-initiated and participatory forms of knowledge transfer alongside simultaneously exerting boundaries of ideology and cultivating a selective perception of openness. Despite its emphasis on decentralization and anti-authoritarianism, Phrack's rhetoric is still largely homogeneous in tone and culturally exclusive. This work adds to the research on digital education by reinterpreting hacker rhetoric as a persuasive, but bounded pedagogy practiced outside of institution-based contexts.

This thesis explores Phrack Magazine as an important historical site of informal learning within the context of hacker culture, and that it is not just a technical magazine but also a discursive space where knowledge, identity, and values are negotiated, taught, and analyzed. Based on the sociocultural theory of learning and considering theories on digital informal learning, the research investigates how hacker subjectivity is negotiated through linguistic praxis, instructional genres, and cultural narratives. The research methodology integrates Critical Discourse Analysis with computer text analysis by employing Voyant Tools to enable both qualitative and quantitative comprehension of learning undertaken across decades of Phrack publications. The outcome reveals that the magazine sustains peer-initiated and participatory forms of knowledge transfer alongside simultaneously exerting boundaries of ideology and cultivating a selective perception of openness. Despite its emphasis on decentralization and anti-authoritarianism, Phrack's rhetoric is still largely homogeneous in tone and culturally exclusive. This work adds to the research on digital education by reinterpreting hacker rhetoric as a persuasive, but bounded pedagogy practiced outside of institution-based contexts.