{"id":23678,"date":"2015-06-19T11:01:21","date_gmt":"2015-06-19T09:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hiig.de\/en\/?p=23678"},"modified":"2023-06-02T12:34:44","modified_gmt":"2023-06-02T10:34:44","slug":"three-ways-to-understanding-civil-disobedience-in-a-digitized-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hiig.de\/en\/three-ways-to-understanding-civil-disobedience-in-a-digitized-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Ways to Understanding Civil Disobedience in a Digitized World"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article is a shortened version of the introduction Theresa Z\u00fcger gave at the international and interdisciplinary workshop Civil Disobedience Beyond the State II: The Digitalization of Disobedience from Whistleblowing to Anonymous<\/a> that took place 8\u20139 May in Berlin. The workshop was the second of a series of three workshops on the transformation of civil disobedience. A third one will be held in November 2015 in Oxford.<\/em><\/p>\n

The idea of the digitalization of civil disobedience<\/i>, which was the main theme of the workshop Civil Disobedience Beyond the State II: The Digitalization of Disobedience from Whistleblowing to Anonymous<\/a> appears to be a straightforward concept. But in fact, behind the semantic facade, it\u2019s rather messy. It combines very different types of action<\/a>, that range from DDos actions to actual hacking, from parodistic websites or web defacements to whistleblowing or counter surveillance measures and various others.<\/p>\n

Digital disobedience – like civil disobedience in general – turns out to be a quite contested concept. Not only is there a wide range of practices to talk about, there are also different understandings of civil disobedience that make it even more challenging to come to a common discourse. Through the lenses of different disciplines,<\/b> there are quite different angles to approach this topic. This articles aims to sketch out three dominant approaches to understanding the digitalization of civil disobedience: first, by understanding it as a social practice, second by deploying a narrow definition of civil disobedience to digital actions and third by applying a (comparably) wide definition of civil disobedience.<\/p>\n

The first approach is to look at digital tactics of disobedience as a social practice.<\/h3>\n

This approach is so far the most prominent and is mostly applied among disciplines such as sociology, anthropology or social movements studies, which were also the first to pay attention to the emergence of new forms of digital disobedience. Their empirical approach describes new types of digital actions researching their internal logic but at the same time framing them according to the established concepts of protest and dissidence in this research field. The key term to describe digital disobedience as a social practice is the concept of hacktivism<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Remarkably, from this empirical perspective, digital disobedience or electronic civil disobedience (as it was called by the Critical Art Ensemble, who were often viewed as the progenitors) is not treated as an independent concept. Many definitions and implicit assumptions often frame it as a sub\u2013category of hacktivism or even use both concepts interchangeably. In Dorothy Denning\u2019s (2001: 263<\/a>) view “Hacktivism is the convergence of hacking with activism […] Hacktivism includes electronic civil disobedience”. Hacking is thereby seen as the pursuit of technological mastery as an end in itself, whereas hacktivism introduces a new kind of political objective. In his article Mapping Hacktivism<\/i>, Tim Jordan (2001: 8<\/a>) views electronic civil disobedience as a certain type of hacktivism, which he calls Mass Virtual Direct Action<\/i>, describing it as the “simultaneous use, by many people, of the Internet to create electronic civil disobedience”.<\/p>\n

Researching digital disobedience as a social practice reveals a wide range of insights about the new performative paradigms, different motivations and cultures behind these actions (as we learned in the public lecture by Gabriella Coleman<\/a>), and new modes of collectivity (as Joss Hands<\/a> presented in this workshop). For some digital activists, the use of technologies for protest turns out to be more than a toolbox; it constitutes part of their lives and identities. The actual practices of digital disobedience are one key to coming to terms with what civil disobedience might be in a digitized world.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the idea of electronic civil disobedience is inspired by established practices<\/i> associated with civil disobedience – such as sit\u2013ins \u2013 rather than by a philosophical understanding<\/i> of civil disobedience. The question of whether and how new practices of digital disobedience can be understood in the tradition of philosophical thought about civil disobedience is a different question that comes into play.<\/p>\n

The second approach is to look at digital practices of disobedience with a set of criteria as a narrow definition of civil disobedience.<\/h3>\n

This fixed set of criteria, which defines civil disobedience quite narrowly, is mainly inspired by what is known as a liberal<\/i> understanding of civil disobedience. This understanding was most prominently introduced by John Rawls  in A Theory of Justice<\/i> – where Rawls discusses justice in the framework of an ideal theory of a democratic state.He understands civil disobedience as an exception occurring in a well ordered or nearly just society <\/i>that is otherwise built on the duty of citizens to obey the law.<\/p>\n

Rawls (1971: 320ff) defines civil disobedience as “a public, nonviolent, conscientious yet political act contrary to law usually done with the aim of bringing about a change in the law or policies of the government”. In his understanding civil disobedience is a symbolic appeal to the “sense of  justice  of  the  majority,” carried out in \u201cthe limits of fidelity to law” which for instance means that the dissident should willingly accept a possible penalty.<\/p>\n

An example that applies this definition to digital action was given by Evgeni Morosov in a series of articles, one of which was called In Defense of DDoS<\/a>. In general he argues that “DDoS attacks can be seen as a legitimate expression of dissent, very much similar to civil disobedience”. Also, regarding the case of the Paypal 14, he claims that the DDoS actions by Anonymous fit Rawls defining criteria – except for one<\/i>: Anonymous didn\u2019t intentionally reveal the identities of individual actors and thereby didn\u2019t accept the legal consequences of the action. Through the lenses of liberal theory, this action does not promote a fidelity to law \u2013 and therefore Morozov concludes that these actions cannot be seen as civil disobedience.<\/p>\n

Whether one agrees with Morozov or not, the liberal perspective on new forms of digital disobedience leads us to many open and interesting questions: Given all technical restrictions to actual anonymity, can legitimate civil disobedience take place anonymously at all, and if yes, under what conditions? What kind of communicative efforts should be taken to address the public for an action to be a permissible digital act of civil disobedience? And what do we mean exactly by \u201cpublic\u201d in a digital context for civil disobedience?<\/p>\n

Another arising issue is what cases of digital disobedience can teach us about the relationship between civil disobedience and the law. If civil disobedience is presumed to express fidelity to the rule of law (as also proposed by Bill Scheuerman<\/a> in our workshop) what do we think about cases in which the civilly disobedient agents are under different or overlapping jurisdictions, so that it is unclear which<\/i> law the agent is supposedly expressing fidelity to? Addressing this question from her experience with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Jillian C. York<\/a> gave us many interesting insights into the very different consequences that digital disobedience might have in different national contexts.
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