"Through a meticulous empirical examination of the criminalization of the Turkish hacktivist group Redhack, Dogan explores the critical conflation of hacktivism with cyber-terrorism—by national security organizations and academic researchers alike —that enables states to criminalize non-violent
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hacktivist groups. The paper’s empirical sources include interviews with Turkish security agents, legal and regulatory texts, and its theoretical grounding is a combination of literatures on moral panic, hacking, social movements, critical criminology, and framing analysis. In examining how Redhack constitutes an anomaly, and in exploring how anomalies point to the necessity of grounded, context-sensitive research, Dogan contributes conceptual development beyond Turkey and beyond hacktivism." (Page 1)
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"In this report, I have provided a glimpse of the ways in which innovative media outlets act as political agents in their current contexts, through their expressed positions, their content, and the forms in which they publish. Further work is needed to more fully describe the editorial sensibilities
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of these projects, as well as audience reception." (Page 13)
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"This paper examines digital mobilisation with respect to knowledge production, legitimacy and power in Sudan since new communication and surveillance technologies became widespread. Enthusiasm for digital opposition peaked with the Arab Spring and troughed through the repressive government apparatu
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s. Social media (SMS, Facebook, Twitter) and crowdsourcing technologies can threaten the government’s control over the public sphere as participatory practices. To arrive at this finding, we argue the significance of epistemological tools of those who control the representation of digital power, and approach state legitimacy as an ongoing and fragile process of constructing “reality” that requires continuous work to stabilise and uphold. At the same time, the paper describes an international counterpublic of security researchers and hackers who revealed that the Sudanese government invested greatly in controlling the digital landscape. We analyse Nafeer, a local grass-roots initiative for flood-disaster-relief that made use of digital media despite the digital suppression. Nafeer’s challenge to the state came from the way it threatened the state-monopoly over knowledge, revealing both the fragility and the power of state legitimacy." (Abtsract)
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"O jornalismo cidadão é um dos principais meios de democratização da comunicação. Entender a cultura organizacional de uma das grandes representantes desse tipo de jornalismo, a Mídia Ninja, é o objetivo do presente trabalho. Por meio da utilização da metodologia triangular com a aplicaç
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o de questionários, realização de entrevistas e a observação participante nas sedes da Mídia Ninja Brasília e Mídia Ninja Belo Horizonte foram obtidos como principais resultados que caracterizam o objeto de estudo: o colaborativismo, a utilização das tecnologias para a comunicação interna, a movimentação fluida da equipe." (Resumo)
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"This text, of exploratory stamp, debates the digital activism in contemporary Brazil. Methodologically, we will make a discussion on cyberactivism, digital media, and national pressure groups starting from two examples, Movimento Brasil Livre (The Free Brazil Movement) and Vem pra Rua (Come to The
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Street movement) – these are key movements in the organisation of the big anti-government mobilisation that took place in 2015–2016 in Brazil. The theme is important because it embraces current and future challenges of the digital activism, once that this field faced significant changes in the last decades, with the development of interactive media and the technological convergence." (Abstract)
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"This book focuses on the referendums against water privatisation in Italy and explores how activists took to social media, ultimately convincing twenty-seven million citizens to vote. Investigating the relationship between social movements and internet-related activism during complex campaigns, thi
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s book examines how a technological evolution-the increased relevance of social media platforms-affected in very different ways organisations with divergent characteristics, promoting at the same time decentralised communication practices, and new ways of coordinating dispersed communities of people. Matteo Cernison combines and adapts a wide set of methods, from social network analysis to digital ethnography, in order to explore in detail how digital activism and face-to-face initiatives interact and overlap. He argues that the geographical scale of actions, the role played by external media professionals, and the activists' perceptions of digital technologies are key elements that contribute in a significant way to shape the very different communication practices often described as online activism." (Publisher description)
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"The premise of this research is that digital activism, like many other forms of online engagement work in an ecosystem. And just like the success of a species is largely dependent on environmental factors, and its reaction to those circumstances, so does the success of a digital activist platform.
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It is a start to unify the different elements of digital activism that have been studied by various researchers and codify these into a model. The study then goes further to offer an explorative analysis on how this ecosystem works using three blogging platforms operating in Sub-Saharan Africa as examples." (Abstract)
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"Egyptian Ramadan TV series have explored the relationship between law and television in a number of iterations over the past few years. In 2017, the most watched production (115 million views on YouTube), Kalabsh, went one step further by examining the interaction between television broadcasting an
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d social media in affecting the course of justice. Even though its events revolve around the framing and wrongful incrimination of a ‘good’ police officer, the dynamics suggest a not-so-subtle reference to the January 25, 2011 uprising. It portrayed social media actors as naïve agitators, outsmarted and used by those same dark networks of business and politics that they intend to expose and ultimately to unseat. This representation strengthens the counter-revolution’s narrative of the January 25 uprising as the making of some ‘Facebook kids’ ['iyal bitu' il-face]. With Kalabsh, Egyptian TV series recalibrate the representation of the role of television broadcasting in affecting the course of justice and thus produce a new narrative that includes social media. This representation challenges as ‘optimistic’ the reading of the ‘democratic’ nature of social media by showing how its actors are even more prone to falling prey to mystifications and networks of corruption. The centrality of television broadcasting in affecting the course of justice clearly recedes in Kalabsh, but television broadcasting itself seems to regain some reputation." (Abstract)
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"How is society being reshaped by the continued diffusion and increasing centrality of the Internet in everyday life and work? Society and the Internet provides key readings for students, scholars, and anyone with a serious interest in understanding the interactions of the Internet and society. Spaw
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ned from a series of lectures at the University of Oxford, this multidisciplinary set of theoretically and empirically anchored chapters address the big questions about perhaps the most significant technological transformation of the 21st century. The authors employ a diversity of data, methods, and approaches to address these questions in creative ways. Internet research needs to keep learning from the past, ground itself in a diversity of disciplinary perspectives, and continue to look to the future. In doing so, Internet Studies can address core questions about equality, voice, knowledge, participation, and power; and provide a better understanding of what the ever-changing configurations of technology and society mean not only for everyday life, but also for major developments in the politics, economic, and cultural development of societies across the world. Understanding the role of the Internet in society is critical to addressing the major issues of policy and practice, from the nature of democracy and freedom of expression to how we learn, work and play in everyday life." (Publisher description)
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"Communication for Social Change: Context, Social Movements and the Digital is a critical introduction to communication for social change (CSC) theory. The book presents refreshingly new perspectives and specifically makes the case for CSC theory to factor in context, leanings from social movements
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and a critique of the digital technology. This book offers perspectives on the historical continuities within this field of study along with the departures that have been hastened and shaped by confluences between ideas and practice as well as by digital technology and social movements." (Publisher description)
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"This book focuses on the reporting of human rights in broadly defined times of conflict. It brings together scholarly and professional perspectives on the role of the media in constructing human rights and peacebuilding options in conflict and post-conflict environments, drawing on case studies fro
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m Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia. It also provides critical reflections on the challenges faced by journalists and explores the implications of constructing human rights and peacebuilding options in their day-to-day professional activities." (Publisher description)
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"A scholar and activist tells the story of change makers operating within the Chinese Communist system, whose ideas of social action necessarily differ from those dominant in Western, liberal societies." (Publisher description)
"The most extreme damage inflicted by social media can be seen in South Sudan. As documented in the chapter by Theo Dolan, social media in South Sudan has contributed to hatred and conflict among ethnic groups. Many investigators, including UN investigators, have warned that South Sudan's social med
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ia are triggering violence against ethnic groups. Since the beginning of the civil war in late 2013, social media has fuelled waves of hate speech that have provoked deadly violence and ethnic conflict in South Sudan, including massacres and other atrocities. In that sense, social media has become a new variation of the "hate radio" phenomenon that flourished in Rwanda before and during the 1994 genocide … Social media is also emerging as a powerful way to harass and intimidate the opponents of a regime or a political party. In this sense, it adds another weapon to the arsenal of a powerful regime that already has multiple weapons at its disposal. A regime can mobilize its supporters to use social media in a targeted way against its foes, or it can use its financial resources to create a fake army of fictional users on social media. In either case, it is tilting the playing field against its enemies. A targeted attack through social media can be more effective than the telephone threats or messages often deployed in the past. The use of social media can be more intimidating because it belittles the targeted person in front of a much bigger audience. The presence of this audience means that the attack is more damaging, more difficult to ignore and has the potential to mobilize large numbers of people against the victim … While social media is often used for anti-democratic purposes in Africa's authoritarian states, it has also been used as a force for reform, accountability and justice. It has helped to safeguard the fairness of elections. It has allowed greater scrutiny of potential threats, such as vote-rigging or violence, allowing citizens to be alerted when there is still a chance to prevent the worst abuses. It has put a spotlight on corruption and political wrongdoing, allowing activists to mobilize pressure on governments to resolve these long-neglected problems. In some cases, as it did in the Arab Spring, social media has played a role in toppling an authoritarian state. When an election was called in the small West African state of Gambia, where the dictator Yahya Jammeh had ruled for 22 years, opposition candidates had little access to state-controlled media. So the main opposition party created more than a dozen WhatsApp groups, allowing it to communicate with voters. Other forms of social media also proliferated. A leading independent group, the Gambia Youth and Women's Forum, discussed election issues on a public Facebook group with 55,000 members. The government blocked access to WhatsApp and eventually extended the shutdown to the entire internet, but Gambians used virtual private network (VPN) technology to bypass the shutdown. The opposition won the election and Jammeh was forced to flee the country." (Pages 419-423)
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"Scholars argue that contemporary movements in the age of social media are leaderless and self-organised. However, the concept of connective leadership has been put forward to highlight the need for movements to have figures who connect entities together. This study conducts a qualitative research o
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f 30 interviews of human rights groups in the 2011 Egyptian revolution to address the question of how leadership is performed in information and communication technology–enabled activism. The article reconceptualises connective leadership as decentred, emergent and collectively performed, and provides a broader and richer account of leaders’ roles, characteristics and challenges." (Abstract)
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"To conclude, current Internet-based innovations, including Web 2.0 tools and the wherewithal to use these tools, have given consumers a new form of freedom, and voice. As such, they are more apt to start campaigns, expose social injustices, and demand change from the institutions concerned. We cont
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end that activism in the online realm may contribute to creating a more empowered consumer who participates to the degree that he or she is able. While this ease of participation and the ability to start consumer campaigns from one’s home computer have added to the social conscience and social awareness of society, they have introduced new conundrums to contemplate. One wonders whether the plethora of petitions and viral videos on behalf of various causes have the desired effects or whether they confuse matters. After all, if there are 259 Facebook pages calling for stringent GMO policies, which one does the consumer join? Perhaps the most important contribution of this chapter is to be a starting point for additional empirical research on the various questions surrounding online consumer activism." (Page 364)
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"This book investigates ways in which global media coverage of conflicts affects the worldviews of the social and cultural values of nationals from the war regions. It identifies the cultural patterns in remote communities that have been 'diluted' by IT and the extent to which the changes impacted t
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he values of the indigenes. It also describes the role that IT especially social media and broadcast media play in the understanding of war among residents in highly wired and remote communities, respectively." (Publisher description)
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"WhatsApp und Facebook werden auch in Lateinamerika massiv genutzt, vor allem aufgrund ihres vermeintlich kostenlosen Charakters. Auch dort wird das Problem der rechten Meinungsmache und der Fake News diskutiert, denn die Tatsache, dass sich die Leute heute vor allem über Werbeplattformen informier
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en, die unzutreffend „soziale Medien“ genannt werden, hat handfeste politische Auswirkungen. In Brasilien und El Salvador wurden die jüngsten Wahlen nicht über Präsenz und Debatten in den traditionellen Medien gewonnen, sondern über gut vorbereitete und teure WhatsApp-Kampagnen. In Brasilien siegt so der Rechtsextremist Jair Bolsonaro, in El Salvador der politische Wende-hals und PR-Profi Nayib Bukele. Die brasilianischen WhatsApp-Nutzer*innen wurden während des Wahlkampfs mit gefälschtem, häufig explizit sexuellem Inhalt geflutet, wie etwa der Meldung, dass die Arbeiterpartei plane, Babyfläschchen mit Nuckel in Penisform zu verteilen, um die Homosexualisierung der Kleinkinder voranzutreiben.
Haarsträubendes postfaktisches Zeitalter – warum fallen Fake News auf fruchtbaren Boden? Klar ist: Klassische Medien haben ihre Funktion als „Gatekeeper“, als Instanzen, die sortieren und filtern, längst eingebüßt. Die Gesellschaften werden vielfältiger und unübersichtlicher: mehr Pluralität auf der einen Seite, andererseits immer tiefere Gräben, die sich durch die Gesellschaften ziehen. Die mediale Öffentlichkeit und die Zugangsbedingungen zu ihr wandeln sich. Die Menschen misstrauen „denen da oben“ durchaus zu Recht. Aber die kommerziellen Global Tech Player beherrschen die Räume für Kommunikation, Information und Meinungsbildung mit Algorithmen. Das hat Folgen. Das Geschäftsmodell basiert auf Datenschürfen, kombiniert mit persönlich zugeschnittener Werbung. Du bekommst das, was du sehen und hören willst, nicht was wahr ist und den Tatsachen entspricht. Und davon profitieren vor allem rechtspopulistische Akteure.
Gibt es dazu einen funktionierenden linken Gegenentwurf? Wir, die Macher*innen der ila und ähnlich Gesinnte, wollten eigentlich schon immer zur Bildung einer Gegenöffentlichkeit beitragen, positionierten uns gegen den „bürgerlichen Journalismus als Stellvertreterjournalismus“, wollten „Betroffenenberichterstattung“. Heute haben Rechte und Rechtsextreme den Begriff „Gegenöffentlichkeit“ für sich gekapert. Und jetzt haben wir den Salat.
Aktuell existiert eine Öffentlichkeit jenseits der Dichotomie „staatlich geregelt oder privat“. Wir haben kein Problem mehr damit, unsere eigenen Inhalte zu verbreiten und eigene Medien zu schaffen. Das stellt allerdings noch längst nicht sicher, dass wir auch gehört werden. Der springende Punkt ist nicht mehr der Zugang, sondern die Reichweite. Wir konkurrieren mit allen anderen Anbietern von welcher Information auch immer um Aufmerksamkeit. Und dabei verfügen wir, kaum anders als früher, immer noch über die schwächeren Möglichkeiten.
Wie sieht also das Überleben im „Plattformkapitalismus“ aus, wie sich darin bewegen, schützen, informieren, seine Meinung bilden und als politisch Aktive oder alternative Medienschaffende die eigenen Inhalte verbreiten? Dazu ein paar Ideen, die sich aus der Auseinandersetzung mit dem Thema und lateinamerikanischen Gesprächspartner*innen herauskristallisieren: Versteht, die Technik zu verstehen (in Lateinamerika ist die Rede von hackear la tecnología, also die Technologie für die eigenen Zwecke zu nutzen wissen), wahrt eine kritische Distanz, haltet eure Informationsquellen vielfältig (was vor allem auch Kindern und Jugendlichen vermittelt werden sollte), schafft und nutzt alternative Plattformen. Manchmal kann auch digitales Fasten das Gebot der Stunde sein. Handy aus und raus auf die Straße – oder in den Wald." (Editorial)
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"This title centres around digital gender activism focusing on the implications that the phenomenon of online gender activism has for politics, society, culture and gender relations/dynamics. On December 16th, 2012, Jyoti Singh, a female psychotherapy student from New Delhi was raped by six men in a
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moving bus while making her way home with a male friend. After 13 days spent fighting for her life, Jyoti Singh passed away. Abiding by Indian laws, Joytis actual name was never mentioned by the media and pseudonyms like Nirbhaya (Hindi for fearless) were most commonly used. The brutal attack instantly triggered domestic and global criticism and widespread protests across India over the high levels of violence against Indian women and children, making it one of the biggest gender movements that the country has witnessed. The Nirbhaya case thus became a turning point in the politics of gender justice in India. The nationwide protests that followed the case also witnessed one of the first and most extensive uses of digital technologies for activism in India having far reaching changes in how gender activism is conducted. Keeping the Nibhaya case at its core, this book explores and attempts to understand experiences and social constructs and investigate the use of digital technologies and social media by civil society actors, activists and organisations specifically for gender activism in India." (Publisher description)
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"This chapter focuses on the role of Myanmar's fastest growing form of media—social media—in formulating notions of citizenship and nation amid Myanmar's transition. It begins with an overview of the history of mobile and internet access in Myanmar. The chapter explores the new social and politi
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cal opportunities, tensions and dynamics that are emerging as a result of Myanmar's liberalisation, particularly of the telecommunications sector. It explains how the technologies interact with and alter pre-existing social networks, relationships and communication practices, opening up new spheres for activism and advocacy of various kinds including the reforging of civil-military relations and notions of citizenship. The chapter discusses a call for future research to recognise the interaction between online-offline action, and how this may influence the emergence of a 'national' culture in Myanmar. In addition to enabling civilian humanitarian action, cyber-space has also become one of the primary domains through which civil-military relations are being reforged after decades of authoritarian rule." (Abstract)
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