Case study: Anonymous
This article was written by Adriana Roldan Serrano.
Introduction
Anonymous is a hacking group that mainly carries out leaks, hacking, and online mass protest. The weapons of Anonymous vary, from homemade videos, manifestos, and images on Twitter and forums; but the goal is always the same: protest over civil liberties and cause policy and law transformations (Coleman, 2013).
The birth of this group in the early 2000s is based on a lack of trust, engagement, openness, and transparency of traditional institutions and governments. It can be included in the emerging digital environmentalism, given its ability to provide a different approach to politics (frequently using memes and social media), that has a greater impact on mass media (Jarvis, 2014).
As a result, Anonymous is not only more appealing to the masses, but also it encourages people with the same values and beliefs to ‘join’ and to participate in their ‘fight’ for freedom. They mainly defend freedom of speech, of information, and privacy (Coleman, 2011).
How is Anonymous related to democracy?
The power of Anonymous resides in its ability to, through technological innovation and social media, transform discontent into mass movement (Coleman, 2013). Its digital direct actions, with hacking or DDoS campaigns (flooding a network to prevent it from working), made Anonymous become ‘hacktivists’. Mikhaylova (2014) defines it as politically motivated hackers, whose motivations are driven by the pursuit of social change, and that constitutes a new controversial form of civic participation and the anonymizing technologies of cyberspace.
The key success of Anonymous, first, is its new way of approaching democracy and citizen activism, where the lack of identity is used as a political tool. Moreover, people are not required to have technical skills to participate, which facilitates the ‘process’ of ‘joining’. This proves the openness of the group, and, following Mikhaylova (2014), enables them with new creative avenues for personal and collective participation. For example, Anonymous even has a “How to join Anonymous” page. New individuals only have to identify with the group and its core values (Mikhaylova, 2014).
This contrasts with the high level of complexity of administrative procedures to vote by mail or to affiliate to political parties, for instance. In addition to this, despite its complex structure, Anonymous manages to have a unified purpose and flexibility, that enables it to adapt to a dynamic environment (Jarvis, 2017).
In general, the hierarchical characteristics of traditional organizations do not provide this flexibility and even cause unease among members, as well as disconnection between citizens and governmental institutions. The lack of trust and transparency in governments and other political associations lies in their pyramidal dimension and the existent bureaucracy that difficult citizens’ engagements. Corruption also disenchants, because it gives the impression that goals, values, and beliefs are not shared with citizens.
Nonetheless, Anonymous manages, according to them, to overcome this gap between citizens by, first, not constituting an organization. Mikhaylova (2014) collects different statements from ‘members’ and it can be concluded that they see themselves as much more than a group: they are an “idea” that personifies the freedom they defend. This deep connection encourages participation in their causes. Second, Anonymous rejects hierarchy, given that it leads to inequality, which is against their values and tied to corruption.
The fact that there are not members that are more important than others, the ease to become ‘member’, the common beliefs and its constitutions as an idea instead of a group, facilitates digital direct action and improves participatory openness, given that all members can contribute with a wide range of abilities, be they technical skills or non-tech (such as write reports or give media interviews (Mikhaylova, 2014)). Consequently, this opens the door to improve and strengthen democracy, given that it reinforces the democratic belief that we are all equally important and the equal access to political or social processes.
Conclusion
Similar to Anonymous is WikiLeaks, a non-profit organization that fights for the freedom of information by publishing leaks from anonymous sources. In 2010 Anonymous launched DDoS attacks on enterprises like Amazon, given their attempts to prevent donations to WikiLeaks (Mikhaylova, 2014); this proves they are in the same boat.
However, I must say I do not agree with the idea that Anonymous is not a hierarchical group. The fact that there two types of individuals, technical and non-technical, and that the main actions carried out are online (which require technological expertise), suggest that some members must be more important than others. Figure 2 shows that the first step in the Processual Model of Anonymous, which can also be understood as its driving force, is carried out by a group of members that coordinate what the rest have to do.
As a result, the success in participation and engagement cannot come from a hierarchical structure, but from the ease to join and their social presence in the context of political and economic complexity and dynamism. It is noteworthy the use of the Internet on its initiatives, which is why governments and institutions should also take advantage of this and innovate their processes to achieve more citizen participation to strengthen digital democracy.
An example of this is the Iceland Constitution Process. It aimed to achieve inclusiveness through direct popular participation, descriptive representation (if direct representation could not be achieved), and transparency (Landemore, 2014). This cyberspace-urban space hybrid model managed to increase citizen participation given the flexibility of the online infrastructure. Jarvis (2014) defines this as the “space of autonomy”, which creates “free space of communication networks”.
Finally, it should be noted that the implementation of online processes and social media presence of political processes could be, following the example of Anonymous, a solution to our democratic deficit. This is mainly because this group has the same hierarchical structure as traditional institutions like NGOs or governments, which means that it is key to incorporate the online presence of institutions and processes to boost citizen participation.
Thus, to update democracy, traditional processes must include and modernize their means to facilitate and to motivate citizens to participate. For instance, enabling citizens to supervise political initiatives, participate in processes, look for information (transparency), or engage with politicians’ values and beliefs in an easy, interactive, and intuitive interface. Although this might not be a panacea, it is a good way to start to adapt to today’s’ dynamism and constant change.
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