About Us
Our Mission
OpenArchive is dedicated to protecting media freedom by helping eyewitnesses preserve truth to power. We've created a distributed media archiving ecosystem that enables human rights defenders to share, archive, verify, and encrypt their evidentiary media.
In collaboration with human rights activists and organizations, OpenArchive develops responsive, secure, and ethical archiving technologies and tools to advance justice and accountability around the world.
Created by and for eyewitnesses and human rights defenders in 2015, OpenArchive dismantles silos and fosters a more equitable, representative, and sustainable media landscape where people's history is the primary history.
Our vision
To create a more just, equitable, and sustainable media ecosystem where people's history is the primary history.
What we do
Why this work matters
People armed with smartphones are history's first responders, amassing rich, contextualized records of injustice and fostering unprecedented demand for change. However, most of these recordings presently reside on social media platforms that can chill free speech and are subject to censorship, privacy breaches, and data loss. While social media is an acceptable distribution platform, it does not provide sufficient privacy protections or archival preservation of this vital media.
Our phones are replaceable but the moments we capture on them are not. Many activists, journalists, and eyewitnesses are storing precious pieces of history on the most fragile devices they own. The media itself is also ephemeral, as new threats to digital media arise.
Who we are
OpenArchive is a team of archival activists dedicated to protecting media freedom: preserving, amplifying, and securely routing mobile media to community-maintained collections in accessible public and private archives, beyond the corporate walled gardens currently dominating the online media ecosystem. OpenArchive is fiscally sponsored by the nonprofit Media Alliance.
Get Involved
Together, we can preserve truth to power!
