| Topic: | The new online politics | |
| Posted by: | Malcolm Peltu | |
| Date/Time: | 15/12/10 11:00:00 |
| New social and political movements which break left/right categorisations are now happening largely online. The Internet can give networked individuals what sociologists call 'enhanced communicative power' - using communication tools to organise and act as a group. Wikileaks and its Anonymous hacktivists are graphic examples of this. But this doesn't necessarily translate into real economic and political power, which are still based in real-world spaces like parliament, the media, financial world, police. Without that connection into real-world levers of power, I think any emergent new groups are likely to remain outsiders, more able to disrupt and harry than wield real power, as the trades union movement did when forming the Labour Party. On this, there was an interesting article in yesterday's Guardian by its technology correspondent Charles Arthur who went into an Anonymous chat room with a guide. Part of his report was: 'My guide pointed out that the Anonymous group is conflicted from its core... many aren't that interested in morality. They're in it for the lulz [something done online just for the thrill of doing it] - or they're into whatever Anonymous and its associated scenes are doing for the money. Which means that the idea of attacking Amazon, or PayPal, or Twitter, over a moral or ethical issue is something of a new experience for the group. Usually they're into tormenting people...In fact it's difficult - perhaps wrong - to call Anonymous a group. It is, but only in the loosest sense; it's more like a stampeding herd, not sure quite what it wants but certain that it's not going to put up with any obstacles, until it reaches an obstacle it can't hurdle, in which case it moves on to something else. Full report at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/dec/13/hacking-wikileaks |