An Introduction to Cyber Activism

national | miscellaneous | news report Thursday April 25, 2002 20:13 by Steve McFarlane SteveMcF at Hotmail dot com

A look at this relatively new activist channel.

All over the Internet millions of emails and electronic faxes are winging their way to oppressive regimes, corporate headquarters and Government departments. And rightly so! A new spate of activism is taking place and it’s being fought on an electronic frontier.

Cyber activism is huge term. Take all the current methodologies used for activism in the non-electronic sphere and recreate them over the Internet. We are looking at activists websites, their methods of communicating with each other, their antagonists, the technology they use. I guess it’s easy to see why cyber activism has taken off with this generation. Its hip. In fact, even the bloody Irish government think the Internet is hip; getting itself 10th in the world rankings for eGovernment initiatives!

All organizations have a website and an email address. Almost all governments and their respective deputies are accessible at a click of a mouse. It’s simple. So from a purely functional point of view, because ‘everyone’s connected’, we have created this new activist channel. Motivating people to respond to ‘cyber alerts’ is easy because its like, I’m there, it’s happening on my little monitor in my cubicle or my bedroom. I’m changing the world on one window and splatting aliens on the other!

I favour direct correspondence (email & fax) with the respective peoples I am trying to voice my opinion too. I prefer it because it’s got my name and my address in the email and it looks real. Sending messages without a name and an address will send your message winging its way to the Trashcan before eyes fall on its contents. Let’s cover these methods briefly:

Email
We can easily go to the respective website of the department / group we want to contact, find their email address, one click, type our words of distain, distaste or delight and send it off in seconds. As mentioned earlier, from what Greenpeace say on their own activist website, correspondence with a full address and contact details will more likely elicit a reply. Also, you have got to be formal. Nobody wants to read a badly laid out email that’s been forwarded around the globe and ends up looking textually tattered.

Fax
Not so commonly used are electronic faxes. Technically, you don’t need a fax machine to send a fax, you can do it online if the activist website providing the service has the service setup properly. You won’t get a reply in general but you can be sure that at least it gets there and ends up in hard copy (as opposed to an email). Fax machines in various regimes have been known to fall prey to overloading from activists, effectively rendering the machine unusable. Again, name and address will more likely elicit a reply.

Petitions – Chain Emails
My least favourite activist channel. You know the emails, ‘Add your name and send on to ten mates’. I sometimes feel that this is just wasting Internet bandwidth and I classify it as junk email. When you get it, delete it.
Recently a Close Sellafield chain email was doing the rounds. You add your name to the bottom of the list and forward it on to everyone in your address book. I find this ineffective and a waste of time. I cannot envisage a 5,000 name strong email landing in some Inbox of ‘corporate headquarters’ and end up being taken seriously. That’s my feeling on the matter.

Petitions – Websites
I have the same bad feeling here. It’s just the same as an email chain only it online and can be accessed anytime, you can watch it grow. It’s big business for PetitionOnline.com. This service has been setup solely for Internet activists to facilitate the gathering of names for the respective cause.
Now all the above is legal and democratic as such. Things aren’t always so politically correct.

Cyber Crime – Graffiti
We’ve crossed the line into the criminal activity now as we delve into the ‘War Games’ and ‘Sneakers’ hackers, hacking away into corporate websites and leaving nasty little messages for all future visitors; most of the time to promote their hacker alias as opposed to some cause. McDonalds, NASA, FBI, CIA; they’ve all been under the hackers knife at one stage or the other. A rather balloon-bursting fact is that most of the time this is just bad systems management on behalf of the network administration and not the pure genius of some hacker guru.
Some hacks are dead set on completely ‘taking down’ the companies Internet offering. This carries severe penalties in U.S. law and so far two major hackers have taken a hard fall.

At the forefront?
With Greenpeace you can now sign up as a ‘cyber-activist’. This entails entering your personal information so as to give your electronic message a little more weight; verification is important as highlighted. When a matter for concern comes up, you get an email supplying you with a one-click way to sending direct correspondence to the relevant organization, the badies. Greenpeace seem to be making great use of the technology that’s out there. Amnesty too is very active in the cyber activist arena.

On a broader matter, some online publishing services have free speech or ‘open publishing’. IndyMedia.ie makes good use of online journalism. It is unbiased (i.e. it’s not RTE controlled and people really say EXACTLY what’s on their minds; proceed with caution). It provides an outlet for the sometimes uncovered other side to the news and media that RTE keep from our eyes and ears.

So as for cyber activism, we need to look at it as another channel with its own advantages and faults. It’s popular with the largest NGO’s (non government organisations) in the globe. So next time your online check out Greenpeace.Org of even FreeSpeech.Org to find out more on how this new channel for activism is being used. Anything that enhances the power of us all in communicating with each other is surely a good and beneficial thing? I think so anyhow.

Copyright © Steve McFarlane