Internet activism, hacktivism, or hactivism, is the use of computer-based techniques such as hacking as a form of civil disobedience to promote a political agenda or social change. With roots in hacker culture and hacker ethics, its ends are often related to free speech, human rights, or freedom of information movements.
Anarchist hackers
The Guy Fawkes mask is commonly used by Anonymous.
Internet activism involves the use of electronic-communication technologies such as social media, e-mail, and podcasts for various forms of activism to enable faster and more effective communication by citizen movements, the delivery of particular information to large and specific audiences, as well as coordination. Internet technologies are used by activists for cause-related fundraising, community building, lobbying, and organizing. A digital-activism campaign is "an
organized public effort, making collective claims on a target authority, in which civic initiators or supporters use digital media." Research has started to address specifically how activist/advocacy groups in the U.S. and in Canada use social media to achieve digital-activism objectives.
Professor Burdett Loomis from the University of Kansas spoke at @america via DVC on Tuesday, September 25, in front of a crowd of university students majoring in communications and connected to five American Corners via Webchat. Professor Loomis traced the evolution of the use of media as a political tool during elections and questioned the actual influence of media on voters.
Image: Black Lives Matter, Rome
Image: Sofaaktivismi