Week 6: Digital citizenship 2 - Activism and protest.
What is Digital Citizenship? Digital citizenship is used to refer the potential benefit for society as a whole that comes from new digital and social media tools and their ability to ‘facilitate the membership and participation of individuals within society’ (Mossberger, 2008, p. 1). It helps technology leaders, teachers and parents to understand what children/students/technology users should know how to use technology in the appropriate way. It is more than just a teaching tool, it was a way to prepare users for a society full of technology (Mike Ribble, 2015).
The cyber activists who want to shut down ISIS:
In August 2014, a Twitter account that was affiliated with the hacker group Anonymous, declared a full scale cyber war against ISIS. Anonymous will do its part in combating ISIS’s influence in social media and shut them down (Simon Cottee, 2015).
Anonymous is believed to be setting up protest in a number of major cities across the globe for masked members to show unity against the Islamic State.
When the terrorist attacks happened in Paris, a group that were associated with the hackers’ known as Anonymous had announced #OpParis, a social media campaign against ISIS (Brian Mastroianni, 2015).
“This is only the beginning, ISIS. We will hunt you, take down your sites, accounts, emails and expose you … You will be treated like a virus and we are the cure,” stated a masked activist in a video posted on YouTube. “We are Anonymous. We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. ISIS, it is too late to expect us” (Brian Mastroianni, 2015).
While French, Russia and the United States bombers are targeting Islamic Sate areas from the sky, Anonymous are making their own devastating campaign against the terrorist origination. They are using computer codes rather than a high-powered weapons and say that the hacktivist group has built tools that might be a better approach than the world governments tool to combat ISIS (The Daily Sheeple, 2015).
In a YouTube video by Anonymous, the group had said: “More than 20,000 Twitter account belonging to ISIS were taken down by Anonymous.” They have provided a whole list of accounts that have been taken down (The Daily Sheeple, 2015). But answer this, how effective has the web-based operation really been counteracting the terrorist group effective reach?
References:
Mike Ribble, 2015, Digital citizenship, using technology appropriately, Retrieved 8 December, 2015, from http://www.digitalcitizenship.net/
Mossberger, K., Tolbert, C., & McNeal, R 2008, Digital Citizenship: The Internet, Society, and Participation, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Simon Cottee, October 8th 2015, Can Cyber Activists Chase ISIS off Twitter? [Weblog], Retrieved 8 December 2015, from http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/10/anonymous-activists-isis-twitter/409312/
Brian Mastroianni, November 24th 2015, Anonymous vs ISIS: Who has the upper hand in social media war? [Weblog], Retrieved 8 December 2015, from http://www.cbsnews.com/news/anonymous-vs-isis-social-media-war/
The Daily Sheeple, 2015, YOU’RE A VIRUS, WE’RE THE CURE’: ANONYMOUS TAKES DOWN 20,000 ISIS TWITTER ACCOUNTS. [Weblog]. Retrieved 8 December 2015, from http://www.thedailysheeple.com/youre-a-virus-were-the-cure-anonymous-takes-down-20000-isis-twitter-accounts_112015
Anonymous protest: http://blogs.ft.com/photo-diary/files/2013/11/anonymous.jpg
Keep calm: http://data.whicdn.com/images/64595778/large.png
@aleksnajd you’ve provided some great insight into this weeks topic, great use of images and Youtube video. I remember when I first watched the ‘Anonymous - Operation Paris’ video when it appeared in my Facebook feed, it gave me chills. I hope to think their fight against ISIS is effective, but to what extent I’m not sure or if society will ever know.













