The Social Media Political Subject Is an Infant

Any random sampling of a Facebook timeline or Twitter feed, to take the obvious examples, provides a prepackaged view of global politics. It is restrictive because we choose it to reflect our own pet subjects, groups, likes, and world interests. The lens is prejudiced to reflect our race, class, gender, sexuality, ideology, and affective positionality. We enter a social media world as many as 10 or 50 times a day that has ourselves as the center of the universe. This communication world is similar to an infant’s world: Someone else decides what we can see, what we can consume, what is that extra treat we can earn, if we are good: in social media terms, if we pay for it by reputational capital, or simply, if we spend enough money

A cyberconflict analysis of the 2011 Arab spring

This chapter employs the cyberconflict perspective (Karatzogianni 2004, 2006, 2009, 2012a, 2012b) to offer a critical analysis of the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011, situating their digital elements within a historical, geosociopolitical and communications context. The cyberconflict framework was originally formulated to examine conflicts transferring online during the pre-social media era of digital development – information and communication technologies (ICTs) used as resources or weapons in online and offline mobilization and propaganda wars, such as the anti-globalization and anti-Iraq war movements or the ethnoreligious con- flicts in Israel-Palestine, India-Pakistan and others. But it has proved subsequently useful to examine conflicts and resistances in rapidly accelerating hybrid media environments. For example, cyberconflict analysis in combination with world systems and network perspectives was used in developing theory on resistance networks against state and capital and the differentiation between active and reactive network formations (Karatzogianni and Robinson 2010). Also, it was applied to theory on the impact of transformations of technosocial agency on orders of dissent in protest movements during 2011 (Karatzogianni and Schandorf 2012) and intercultural conflict and dialogue in transnational migrant networks and digital diasporas (MIG@NET 2012)

From innovative democracy to warfare state: Ancient Athens as a model of hegemonic decline

This chapter focuses on less popularised aspects of Athenian hegemony and decline, starting from the capture of hegemony after the Persian wars, exploring specific strengths and weaknesses of the Athenian system, and debating the causes and the effects of that violent architect of hegemonic decline, the Peloponnesian war. The chapter sheds light on the disastrous effects of the hunt for regional hegemony and power for Ancient Greek city states, the role of political innovation through the establishment of knowledge networks in Ancient Athens, both as an enabling force to capture hegemony, but also as a factor for inciting fear and suspicion in Athens’ own allies, in their fluctuating relationship with Sparta and elsewhere, especially with the halt of that innovation by war, resulting in Athenian hegemonic decline

Adorno in the Kingdom of Unfreedom: History and Freedom’s Lecture The Principle of Nationality

[First paragraph] By 1964, Adorno could see the first clouds of disagreement with his students on the horizon, who were mobilizing against proposed legislation on the Emergency Laws and the American War in Vietnam: ‘Admittedly, from 1967 on this opposition in part adopted forms of protest that Adorno was to condemn emphatically as “pseudo-activity”. Not content with merely interpreting the world, the students called for social change, and Adorno’s lectures represented something of an attempt to provide theoretical analysis of this situation by refocusing attention on the relations between theory and practice’… ‘when the students demanded guidance for political practice. It was for this reason that he wanted to discuss the question of theory and practice again, quite explicitly, in the summer of 1969, at the height of the student movement’… ‘but he never gave more than a few lectures because it was repeatedly disrupted and he was forced to cancel it.’ (Editor’s forward in Adorno, 2006: xviii). His lectures were disrupted in protest of Adorno and his colleagues calling the police to clear 70 students in January 1969 from the institute, who they thought they were going to occupy the premises. It is at that fateful period at the end of that semester that Adorno takes his annual leave and dies on a mountain vacation

Introduction: New media and the reconfiguration of power in global politics

Neo-liberal governments and institutions face a counter-hegemonic account of globalization, to which they have responded in a confused and often contradictory manner. One of the interesting sides to the argument is that the information revolution is altering the nature of conflict by strengthening network forms of organization over hierarchical forms. In contrast to the closure of space, the violence and identity divide found in ethnoreligious discourses, sociopolitical movements seem to rely more on networking and rhizomatic structures. US power is increasingly faced with resistance movements operating on a network model and utilizing new information technologies

Cyberconflict and the future of warfare

Writing a brief history of cyberconflict of the last decade and speculating on the future of warfare is by no means an easy task. The reasons are plenty and it is worth mentioning a few here, as they do tend to get lost in colleagues’ specialised debates in the fields of international relations and global politics, global and national security, internet security, new media political communication, international governance, internet governance, information warfare, critical security and the geopolitics of new technologies. Information communication technologies (ICTs) have unsettled in an unprecedented way the majority of academic fields, all of which are currently required to negotiate multi-level conflicts transferring from the real world to cyberspace or being created originally through cyberspace and spilling over to real life. Equally, as correctly pointed out by one of the reviewers of this chapter, this is a very fast-moving field. It is also a field, which is not solely dominated by states and traditional wars, but by movements, civil society organizations, protest events, insurgencies, network resistances, and ad hoc assemblages. These groups and their use of ICTs are the subject of this work, as these players are using social media technologies to punch above their weight, to challenge the supremacy of the state, as having the monopoly of violence and propaganda, through using ICTs as a weapon or as a tool for mobilization, organization and recruitment, and providing instant access to the global public sphere to influence the strategy, tactics and justification of wars, and resist the violent oppression of citizens by totalitarian and authoritarian regimes. The relevance of these actors and their use of technological innovation is currently more than critical with social media networking utilised to accelerate the regime changes in the Middle East region and elsewhere, and the military interventions the international community had to respond with due to the undeniable publicization of their plight in the virtual public sphere to protect the citizens of these states, point to the need to examine the history of the use of ICTs by these actors

The politics of cyberconflict

The Politics of Cyberconflict focuses on the implications that the phenomenon of cyberconflict (conflict in computer mediated enivironments and the internet) has on politics, society and culture. Athina Karatzogianni proposes a new framework for analyzing this new phenomenon, which distinguishes between two types of cyberconflict, ethnoreligious and sociopolitical, and uses theories of conflict, social movement and the media. A comprehensive survey of content, opinion and theory in several connected fields, relating not only to information warfare and cyberconflict, but also social movements and ethnoreligious movements is included. Hacking between ethnoreligious groups, and the use of the internet in events in China, the Israel-Palestine conflict, India-Pakistan conflict, as well as the antiglobalization and antiwar movements and the 2003 Iraq War are covered in detail. This is essential reading for all students of new technology, politics, sociology and conflict studies

Firebrand Waves of Digital Activism 1994-2014: The Rise and Spread of Hacktivism and Cyberconflict

This book introduces four waves of upsurge in digital activism and cyberconflict. The rise of digital activism started in 1994, was transformed by the events of 9/11, culminated in 2011 with the Arab Spring uprisings, and entered a transformative phase of control, mainstreaming and cooptation since 2013 with the Snowden revelations. Digital activism is defined here as political participation, activities and protests organized in digital networks beyond representational politics. It refers to political conduct aiming for reform or revolution by non-state actors and new sociopolitical formations such as social movements, protest organizations, and individuals and groups from the civil society. The latter is defined as social actors outside government and corporate influence. Cyberconflict is defined as conflict in computer mediated environments and it involves an analysis of the interactions between actors engaged in digital activism to raise awareness for a specific cause, struggles against government and corporate actors, as well as conflict between governments, states and corporations. The rationale for these phases is solely based on political effects, rather than technological or developmental determinants

How small are small numbers in cyberspace?: Small, virtual, wannabe 'states', minorities and their cyberconflicts

This chapters argues, first, that established mainstream media and their online equivalents usually support what different theorists call state-like, hierarchical, or vertebrate political forms of organization crucial to state/status quo survival. Second, that independent, alternative or peer-to-peer, networked media, usually support transnational, rhizomatic, cellular networks, such as ethnoreligious and sociopolitical movements or diasporic minorities and dissident networks within. Third, that small states and minorities are especially vulnerable to both these modalities, as they are frequently too small, too new or too insignificant to have been adequately mass-mediated in the past, so any representations by the mass media are registered automatically as negotiated in the global public sphere

Blame it on the Russians: Tracking the Portrayal of Russians During Cyber Conflict Incidents

This article analyses various cyber conflicts and cyber crime incidents attributed to Russian hackers, such as the Estonian and Georgian cyber conflicts and the ‘Climategate hack’. The article argues that Russian hackers were blamed by dozens of outlets for the Climategate hack, because that was consistent with global media coverage of cyber crime incidents which portrayed Russians as highly powerful hackers responsible for many hacking incidents. This narrative also was congruent with the new Cold War rhetoric that consistently takes issue with Russia acting on its geopolitical interests. These interests are seen to manifest themselves in Russia’s objection to countries, formerly under its influence, participating in the NATO alliance and its seemingly obstructive stance at the Copenhagen summit on climate change