Holding the handle: Governance probing as method

Abandoned accounts are becoming increasingly common within the world of corporate social media platforms, yet their afterlives pose a range of challenges for sociotechnical researchers. This article proposes a method for studying the aftermath of institutional disconnection that I call the “governance probe,” which in this instance, involves taking control of an abandoned handle and waiting to see how institutions respond. This technique makes visible the power struggles that unfold between platform firms, state actors, and others across time. In this case, I took hold of @JTFGTMO, the Twitter account previously managed by the U.S. Joint Task Force at Guantánamo Bay, the governing body of the U.S. detention facilities created in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. When the U.S. military attempted to reclaim the handle, I show that Twitter left the handle in the hands of an academic researcher (me). While Twitter reinstated Donald Trump’s account, the probe makes visible how platform power is selectively exercised; some accounts are restored, whileothers are simply abandoned altogether. The method involves three stages: (1) conducting an archival analysis of the account’s institutional history, (2) claiming the handle, and (3) examining whether and how non-use elicits institutional response. As governments migrate between platforms, experimenting with the promise and perils of different corporate infrastructures, governance probing offers evidence of the contestation and uncertainties that institutional disconnection produces.