Authors:
(1) Filipo Sharevski, DePaul University;
(2) Benjamin Kessell, DePaul University.
Table of Links
2 Internet Activism and Social Media
3 Internet Activism and Misinformation
3.1 Grassroots Misinformation Operations
3.2 Mainstream Misinformation Operations
4 Hacktivism and Misinformation
4.1 Research Questions and 4.2 Sample
4.3 Methods and Instrumentation
5 Misinformation Conceptualization and 5.1 Antecedents to Misinformation
5.2 Mental Models of Misinformation
6 Active Countering of Misinformation and 6.1 Leaking, Doxing, and Deplatforming
7 Misinformation Evolution and 7.1 Counter-Misinformation Tactics
8 Discussion
8.3 Limitations and 8.4 Future Work
2.1 Hashtag Activism
Online social media activism – or slacktivism, clicktivism – emerged on popular platforms as a repertoire of low-risk, lowcost expressive activities for advocacy groups’ agenda setting and political participation [99]. Social media users participated in petitions, changed personal avatars, added picture filters in support of a cause, and simply “liked” posts as an act of participation [41]. Slacktivists quickly realized they could use virality as a distinctive social media affordance to their advantage and move to use hashtags as the main drivers of mobilization, raising awareness, and demanding sociopolitical change. The practice of hashtag activism was instrumental for the success of social movements like #metoo, #takeaknee, and #BlackLivesMatter, allowing for mainstream visibility, expression of solidarity, and statement of victimhood [115]. This success, in turn, inspired a plethora of other movements advocating for health, human rights, social justice, and environmental issues to spur across all social media platforms and remain active within the public discourse [52].
The materialization of the hashtag activism, however noble, had to deal with the obvious threat of hashtag hijacking or the encroachment on viral hashtags to inject contrary perspectives into a discourse stream [126]. This “hack” against the internet activism is not just adding noise or attempting to result in a DoS, but also to disseminate hateful narratives and dilute the campaign itself (e.g. the hijacking of the #metoo hashtag [69]). Another similar threat is the hashtag co-opting or the contentious co-opting of the rhetoric of popular social movements (e.g. #HeterosecualPrideDay campaign co-opting the language of the mainstream LGBT movement [7]). Equally threatening is the counter hashtagging that concocts similar hashtags to garner opposition to well-established movements (e.g. #BlueLivesMatter countermovement to police reform in reaction to #BlackLivesMatter [61]). These antagonistic appropriations of the social media virality, consequently, enabled political extremism to creep in the public discourse and embroil users in an emotionally-charged participation [95].
In a state of emerging social media polarization, it was a question of time when fake news, offensive memes, and conspiracy theories would be weaponized against the hashtag activism (e.g. the proliferation of fake news in the #Gunreformnow vs #NRA Twitter battle [18]). What was initially expected to remain on the fringes of the mainstream hashtag activism [33], quickly turned into an information disorder on a mass scale. Now the hashtag hijacking and co-opting developed in parallel with the main theme of activism, and for that, a steady and substantive feed of false and unverified information was needed. The emotionally-charged participation loomed into a global health panic (e.g. #FlattenTheCurve hashtag hijacking for spreading COVID-19 misinformation [27]) and moral panic (e.g. the QAnon’s co-opting of #SaveTheChildren hashtag [83]) in addition to the already growing political panic [85].
2.2 Hacktivism
Hacktivism was a term that “Omega,” a member of the Texasbased computer-hacking group Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc) coined in 1996 in an email to the cDc listserv [75]. Characterized with the increasingly political ethos of hacking-for-cause, hacktivists primarily leveraged technology to advance human rights and protect the free flow of information in campaigns against the UK, US, and Chinese governments, as well as the UN [88]. In as much as hackers individually roamed the Internet, socialization was at the proper time as many of them needed establishing a strong hacktivist network. Hacktivists’ penchant for humorous memes (LOLCats) and gag hyperlinks (Rickrolls) [91] attracted an army of hackers to Christopher Poole’s 4chan.org social media website, bringing to life the notorious collective Anonymous [75].
While hacktivists never displayed a predictable trajectory of their cyberoperations and political program [21], they narrowly utilized social media for self-promotion – announcing operations with an #Op prefixed hashtags [11] – and furthering a complex relationship with other Internet activists. Anonymous cried foul on Twitter when WikiLeaks puts millions of its documents behind a pay wall [40], but also launched Operation #Ferguson of doxing the St. Louis County police chief daughter’s information in response to the shooting of the black teenager Michael Brown [9]. Hacktivists, in solidarity to the Arab spring uprisings, sent a care package composed of security tools and tactical advice though downplayed the touted “Twitter Revolution” [21].
True to their credo for utilizing Internet technologies against oppression, including social media, hacktivists launched the #OpKKK to “unhood approximately 1000 Ku Klux Klan members” hacked by gaining access to a KKK Twitter account in support of #BlackLivesMatter protesters in Ferguson, Missouri [128]. After a several years hiatus, perhaps due to arrests of some of the leading Anonymous hacktivists, the group resurfaced during the 2020 #BlackLivesMatter protests in response to the killing of George Floyd [54]. This time, in addition to the leaking of a trove of 269 gigabytes of confidential police data (dubbed BlueLeaks [64]), the hacktivists launched social bot operations to amplify a support towards #BLM and criticize police actions.
Hacktivists also utilized Internet technologies in the context of cyberwarfare. For example, the #OpIsis operation, in which lists of tens of thousands of Twitter accounts that purportedly belonged to members of ISIS or its sympathizers were leaked, was launched in response to the terrorist attacks in France in 2015 [77]. Here, in addition to the leaks, hacktivists also waged a meme war and called for a “Troll ISIS Day” to provoke and disrupt ISIS-supported social media [76]. The Anonymous group in early 2022 took on Twitter to declare a “cyber war” to Russia in response to the Ukrainian invasion, launching DoS attacks against Russian’s Federal Security Service’s website and hacking Russian streaming services to broadcast war videos from Ukraine [104].
This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY 4.0 DEED license.
