The Domestication of Online Activism

1. Mathias Klang @klangable klang@umb.edu The Domestication of Online Activism

3. Rights are social constructs. They can be removed. Those who don’t need them are those who must protect them for those who do.

4. Habermas described the public sphere (Öffentlichkeit) as a discursive space where private people come together as a public to freely discuss and identify societal problems, and through that discussion influence political action.

5. Online activism from optimism to control to domestication, and what it all means.

6. “committed openly…non-violently…and conscientiously…within the framework of the rule of law…with the intention of frustrating or protesting some law, policy or decision…of the government.” (H. A. Bedau) Theory of Civil Disobedience

7. Technology is never neutral

8. Prehistory1989/1990

9. Virtual Disobedience

10. Act 1: Optimism

11. John Perry Barlow (1996) A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

12. “Whether or not the barbarian hordes—the true nomads of cyberspace—are ready to sweep through the orderly domains of electronic civilization remains to be seen... The hordes do have one advantage: They are without a domain, completely deterritorialized, and invisible. In the realm of the invisible what’s real and what’s hyperreal? Not even the police state knows for sure.” Critical Art Ensemble (1996) Electronic Civil Disobedience: And Other Unpopular Ideas

14. Electronic Disturbance Theater & FloodNet

17. Issued July 4, 2001 by Hacktivismo and the Cult of the Dead Cow

18. Ethics of DOS: Debate between Electrohippie Collective & Cult of the Dead Cow (2000) “No rationale, even in the service of the highest ideals, makes them anything other than what they are -- illegal, unethical, and uncivil”

19. Act 2: Criminalization

20. The Lufthansa Blockade by Libertad & Kein Mensch istillegal (2001) The Story of Andreas-Thomas Vogel

21. Article 8 German constitution “all Germans have the right to assemble without prior notification or permission peaceably and without arms”

24. Criminalization 2001

25. “. . . the online demonstration did not constitute a show of force but was intended to influence public opinion.” Regional Court Frankfurt Frees Vogel

26. Act 3: Domestication

27. Not everyone bends…

28. EDT 2.0 Ass Prof Ricardo Dominguez & University of California (2010)

29. Anonymous (2003 - ?)

30. Studying how activists’ use technology & circumvent limitations

31. End of the Web Control by design

32. Google 1999 Blogger 1999 2015

33. Nathan Jurgenson It is wrong to say “IRL” to mean offline: Facebook is real life.

34. User agreements Apps Moderators Regulation by proxy Sanitized disobedience

35. Norms: Guns yes, breasts no

36. Platform permitting…

37. Clay Shirky “The Internet is not a public sphere. It is a private sphere that tolerates public speech.”

38. Serious discourse packaged to compete with latest meme

39. Does it create Slacktivism?

40. Moderators policing norms

41. Regulation by proxy

42. Outrage: The disproportionate social (over)reaction to the mundane actions of a non-celebrity

44. The Outrage Machine: Your Outrage is the Product Being Sold

45. Act 4: Some conclusions

46. Social change: Outrage awareness

47. We “control” things like spam and child pornography (what about fake news?) Regulation of Technology

48. Break the barrier of apathy, shatters fear and awakens their minds to civic reengagement and self-organization? Slacktivism as cognitive liberation

49. This flawed space is our democracy and must be guarded

50. Thank you!