Problematizing mainstream depictions of hacktivists and Anonymous as ‘vigilante heroes’, ‘malicious pranksters’, and ‘global threats’ (Klein, 2014), as well as incumbent securitization responses to activism online, the present study aims to develop an articulate and in-depth understanding of (h)activist identities online by examining hacktivist’s use of ‘alternative media’ (Lievrouw, 2011). As an explorative analysis, this research focuses on one Anonymous affiliated community, utilizing six in-depth interviews and a qualitative content analysis of 96 blog posts. Ultimately, the findings indicate that two types of blog posts are generated by the community, those that denote, sustain, and mobilize hacktivist actions, and those that supplement these posts through educative elements: ‘direct action’ and ‘meta-action’, respectively. Within these categories, participant’s experiences and existing literature indicate the community’s nuanced identity draws similarities to prevailing research on hacking, hacktivism, Anonymous, and activists over-all, yet differences which reflect contextual factors and broader trends. In conclusion, the author details four succinct and indispensable qualities of the community surrounding the collective and individual’s revolutionary capacities, conscientious yet leery tendencies, and ironically, the notion of a ‘structured swarm’. These explorative conclusions ultimately demand more comprehensible studies which appreciate the geo-cultural and language differences within these communities, and the relationship of these numerous identities to other marginalized communities worldwide.

This article uses a cultural criminology approach to examine cyber campaigns waged by the hacker collective, Anonymous, against the jihadist organization, Islamic State (IS). Employing Jeff Ferrell and Mike Presdee's theory as a conceptual framework, it examines how Anonymous' anti-IS campaigns have been constructed and shaped by characteristics of the late-modern mediascape, including its affordances for carnivalesque transgression, reflexive media, and crowd-sourced politicization. Through reference to key statements and actions made by Anonymous immediately following IS-related attacks in Paris during 2015, our analysis examines high profile social and video media produced by the hacktivist collective, and relevant commentary from news media, experts, and industry representatives. With its focus on resistance and the 'politics of meaning', we argue that cultural criminology has much to offer in unpacking the emotional appeal, craft, public identity, and social representations of Anonymous as a hacktivist collective.

The main task of this paper is to analyze the online collective known as Anonymous as a case study using the theoretical framework of traditional social movement studies. I outline this framework in the literature review section of this paper as nine distinct characteristics, each pertaining to a different aspect of social movement research. My purpose in doing so is to argue that Anonymous is part of a larger new social movement, which I call the Freedom of Information movement, as well as to show how its unique characteristics which have resulted from globalization and new digital technologies are making it necessary for sociologists to update and expand upon our existing theories and concepts of social movements. Some of this work has already begun. There have been several, though not many, studies of online networks, cyberactivism, hacktivism, digital repertoires of contention, cyber diffusion, and decentralized organizational forms of online movements. Through a combination of historical and qualitative content analyses of news articles and archival materials associated with Anonymous, I am attempting to build upon and expand this new and growing paradigm concerning online social movements and digital forms of contention.

The internet has provided individuals alienated from the democratic system with a new means for political participation. Such online engagement takes the form of cyberactivism or e-activism. This thesis contributes to the wider academic understanding of cyberactivism through an analysis of the decentralised virtual community, Anonymous. Anonymous possesses a number of characteristics which serve to differentiate it from similar activist communities: a collective identity, anonymity in interaction, no registration process, no overarching hierarchy or authoritative body, horizontal communications, and a memetic cultural base. The thesis presents the first scholarly conceptualisation of Anonymous’s development, a significant element in contextualising the community’s political behaviour. Ultimately the thesis argues that Anonymous engages politically by exhibiting and facilitating multiple political forms. When analysed in combination which the relevant literature, the research points to a distinct relationship between Anonymous’s participant base and the corresponding political approach.

This article develops the concept of cyborg activism as novel configuration of democratic subjectivity in the Information Age by exploring the online collectivity Anonymous as a prototype. By fusing elements of human/machine and organic/digital, the cyborg disrupts modern logics of binary thinking. Cyborg activism emerges as the reconfiguration of equality/hierarchy, reason/emotion and nihilism/idealism. Anonymous demonstrates how through the use of contingent and ephemeral digital personae hierarchies in cyborg activism prove more volatile than in face-to-face settings. Emotions appear as an essential part of a politics of passion, which enables pursuing laughter and joy, expressing anger and experiencing empowerment as part of a reasoned, strategic politics. Anonymous' political content reconfigures nihilist sentiments, frustration and political disenchantment, on one hand, with idealist world views, on the other. This enables the cohabitation and partial integration of a great diversity of political claims rooted in various ideologies. The rapid change that society is currently experiencing is accompanied, challenged and promoted by novel forms of activism that increasingly employ online communication. In order to make sense of these new phenomena, theoretical conceptualisations like the notion of connective action by Bennett and Segerberg (2013) look at the social movement, network or swarm as a whole and thus focus on the macro-level of democratic subjectivity. This article proposes a different perspective, starting the analysis from the micro-level of democratic subjectivity. Here, we find the democratic subject, the individual in his or her role as an activist. Only if we start from the individual democratic subject can we comprehend new forms of political digital engagement, which I call cyborg activism. Defining the individual democratic subject in societies of the Information Age as cyborg draws attention to the continuous process of reconfiguration of modern binaries, which disrupts modern thought, the way we are taught to perceive reality. These reconfigurations start at the micro-level of democratic subjectivity and reassemble the individual as a fusion of human/machine, organic/digital, which sets in motion a process of reconfiguration at multiple levels of society, with political activism being one of them. The online collectivity Anonymous appears to be a prototype of such a new form of activism, as its activity comprises political engagement, both online and offline. Moreover, Anonymous makes use of the technologically mediated opportunities of visibility and invisibility, both concealing and creating digital identities. Exploring the history, organisational structures and political claims of Anonymous contributes to understanding new activist formations. As

This article offers a theoretical and empirical exploration of a form of solidarity in which one group spontaneously mobilizes in support of another, unrelated group. It is a fleeting solidarity based not on shared identity but on temporarily aligned goals, one aimed less at persistence and more at short-term impact. We call this drive-by solidarity because of its spontaneous, unilateral, and unsolicited nature. We argue that it is a “thinner” form of solidarity in comparison to “thicker” forms usually conceptualized in the social movement literature. We examine the case of Anonymous’s “Operation KKK” (#OpKKK), an online hacktivist campaign to expose Ku Klux Klan members carried out in support of Black Lives Matter (BLM) protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, in November 2014, and we use social media data to show that, while BLM and Anonymous networks temporarily coordinated during the protests, there is no subsequent evidence of long-term coordination. We conclude with a discussion about how, particularly in the era of digital activism, the concept of drive-by solidarity could help to expand our understanding of different forms of solidarity, as well as how we conceptualize social movement impact or success.

t is my contention that in analysing digital protest we need to go beyond this methodological individualism and this obsession with micro- operations in technical networks. At the same time, we need to recuperate an appreciation of col- lective processes, as those processes without which the micro-operations Bennett, Segerberg and Walker ’ s study appear in the guise of an haphazard and disjointed jumble of minuscule acts, which despite the lack of a common project and any sense of collective agency, somehow hold together miraculously. It is time to go beyond purely aggregative visions of social movements, as the sum of thousands of small acts, and to appreciate instead how the coherence in protest communications, originates from collective phenomena and in particular the presence of (a) a common protest identity and protest culture and of (b) forms of collective leadership.