Political Communication In CMC

(Internet Activism & Hacktivism)

Alexander Katzmaier

Internet activism

Internet activism is the use of communication technologies such as e-mail, web sites, and podcasts for various forms of activism to enable faster communications by citizen movements and deliver a message to a large audience

Cyberactivists

Internet activists are also called Cyberactivists

They use CMC to promote human rights, animal rights, environmental issues and the rights of marginalized communities

Goals: organize people around these issues try to create social change

Key resource

The Internet is a key resource for independent activists or e-activists

Especially when a serious violation of human rights occurs, the Internet is essential in reporting this to the outside world

Listservs like BurmaNet and China News Digest help distribute news that would otherwise be inaccessible in these countries

Usage of Internet Activism 1/3

Fundraising Groups like MoveOn and Care2 have successfully

used the Internet to raise funds and push their causes

E-petitions Internet activists also pass on e-petitions to be

emailed to the government and organizations to protest against many issues from the arms trade to animal testing

Usage of Internet Activism 2/3

Lobbying Lobbying is also made easier via the internet,

thanks to mass e-mail and the ability to broadcast a message widely at little cost

Volunteering Activists themselves may not realize that they are

“volunteering,” even though they are contacting voters for a candidate, or acting with encouragement from a campaign

Usage of Internet Activism 3/3

Community building Community building is the creation of a group of

individuals within a regional area (such as a neighbourhood) or with a common interest

Organizing To organize activities which take place solely

online, solely offline but organized online or a combination of online and offline

Example of early activism

Lotus MarketPlace: Households (April 10, 1990) Software which contains name, address, and

spending habit information on 120 million individual US citizens

Mass e-mail compaign was started Over 30 thousand people contacted Lotus Lotus issued a press release stating that it had

cancelled MarketPlace

Hacktivism

Hacktivism is the combination of the words hack and activism

Definition: Hacktivism is "the nonviolent use of illegal or

legally ambiguous digital tools in pursuit of political ends.”

Techniques 1/2

Defacements An attack on a website that changes the visual

appearance of the site Redirects

To send in a new direction or course Denial-of-service attacks

An attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users.

Information theft

Techniques 2/2

Web site parodies A work created to mock, comment on or poke fun

at an original work Virtual sit-ins

Consists of continuous access to one specific website by many different users at the same time

Virtual sabotage Software development

Hacker vs. Hacktivist

Similarities A hacktivist uses the same tools and techniques

as a hacker

Differences A hacktivist disrupts services and bring attention

to a political or social cause but he or she doesn’t want to destroy something

Examples of Hacktivism

General One might leave a highly visible message on the

home page of a Web site that gets a lot of traffic or which contains a point-of-view that is being opposed

2008 A computer hacker leaks the personal data of 6

million Chileans (including ID card numbers, addresses, telephone numbers and academic records) from government and military servers to the internet, to protest Chile's poor data protection

Criticism

Internet activism Activism faces the same challenges as other

aspects of the digital divide Especially relevant in developing countries, where

many people still lack even the basic literacy needed to access written materials on the Internet

„Cyberbalkanization“: The same medium that lets people access a large

number of news sources also lets them pinpoint the ones they agree with and ignore the rest

Criticism

Hacktivism Hacktivists are defacing government websites as

well as web sites of groups who oppose their ideology

DoS: attack on free speech Depending on who is using the term, hacktivism

can be a politically constructive form of anarchist civil disobedience or an undefined anti-systemical gesture

Bibliography Emerson, J. (2005). An Introduction to Activism on the Internet.

http://www.backspace.com/action/ (accessed 09/02/2009)

Arquilla, J. (2002). Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy. RAND Corporation. Chapter Eight

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_activism (accessed 11/03/2009)

Jordan, T. (2002). Activism!: direct action, hacktivism and the future of society. Reaktion Books

Bibliography McCaughey, M., Ayers, M. (2003). Cyberactivism: Online Activism

in Theory and Practice. Routledge; 1 edition

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacktivism (accessed 11/03/2009)

Delio, M. (2004) Hacktivism and How It Got Here. http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/news/2004/07/64193?currentPage=1 (accessed 09/02/2009)

Samuel, A. (2004). Hacktivism and the Future of Political Participation. Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts