Online Direct Action: Hacktivism and Radical Democracy
Tim Jordan · Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks · 2007
Radical democracy is manifest in both political actions and political infrastructures. This chapter will take up such actions and infrastructures related to the Internet by focusing on hacktivism, a movement devoted to online direct action. Examining hacktivism will allow political practices specific to the Internet to be the basis of analysis. Forms of communication facilitated by the Internet that support direct actions are, though important in their own right, not the focus of this chapter (Pickerill, 2001). The centre of discussion when analysing hacktivism is the meaning online direct action has for both popular politics in virtual spaces and for the nature of the Internet’s infrastructure, both of which affect radical democracy. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.