This thesis examines hackathons and their outcomes for participants and organizers. These events exemplify issues in collective identity and the recursive relationships between individual and collective concerns. Hackathons in the public interest are best understood as collaborative venues which engender both technological output and personal benefit to organizers and participants. Negotiating the tensions between the agendas of participants and organizers leads to a reevaluation of collective identity in these groups. Conceptualizing these events as “weak collectives” reflects the individual autonomy of participants and how personal agency determines participation versus representation within the group.

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