Wikileaks is the greatest example of hacktivists and whistle-blowers and it will be hard to ever beat. Those being exposed hated it and were condemning it to be illegal (even though the things that they did that were being exposed were illegal) and the mainstream audience loved it because all that was being hidden was coming to the surface.
Some agree that it was for the best that the whistle-blowers shared this private content and information but others believe that it was probably best kept secret for many reasons including not wanting to accept the illegal activity of people they like. It made a lot of people accept that they had been deceived and that everything isn’t as it seems. The amount of memes created about Hilary Clinton who was massively effected by Wikileaks is massive and the more memes = the bigger the effect. Memes speak the truth!
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Your blog makes me think about the impact of Hacktivism. The notion that it COULD theoretically reveal truths, crumble power structures and forge real societal change. What is the overarching impact of this? Will the possibility of such leaks lead to greater information freedom? Or will it mean increased censorship as paranoia continues to grow. This article offers one perspective on this: https://www.ifla.org/publications/what-is-the-effect-of-wikileaks-for-freedom-of-information
Although, it also makes me wonder further, what allows these type of actions? They are, after all, relatively new. Is it the architecture of the internet and the anonymity it allows that has facilitated the rise of hacktivism? This article offers a view on the role of privacy in hacktivism: https://policyreview.info/articles/analysis/hacktivism-1-2-3-how-privacy-enhancing-technologies-change-face-anonymous
On the other hand, are there any qualities of anonymity or the internet that might limit the future of hacktivism / whistleblowers? What are your thoughts? Is the concept of such a chaotic freedom exciting or terrifying??
See you online 🙂
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I like your video, memes really do have the power, they were able to reach such a large audeince, spreading information about the topic to mass audiences with people not even realising they were learning about world events through ‘irrelevant’ ‘just funny’ memes. I’ts interesting that hackers were shot down for doing something that revealed the truth because people weren’t able to accept that someone in politics could be doing the wrong thing, and its exactly this that makes hacking so important. This is a good read if your interested https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiLeaks/comments/71b2fr/hillary_clintons_what_happened_a_conspiracy/
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Nice video, short & sweet and tells the audience what you are talking about. The evolution of memes has really changed over the past few years, and are now more culturally aware than ever before. Like Serena said, they are spreading information to mass audiences through a format that these audiences can understand. Although many have a negative attitude towards hackers, some are just trying to do good things in the world. Over the past few years hackers have been getting some recognition for the good they do, have a read of this article by Huffington post (https://goo.gl/uuTXQV) where they discuss the civic hacking movement.
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The video is a great illustration of the meme development and especially within this weeks topic. The greater the audience the better the awareness and spread of word, and especially in this topic as the information the hackers/whistleblowers reveal are loved by the general public. A great blog post on an interesting topic!
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Loved the video hahaha memes are very informing!
The controversy surrounding Wikileaks is crazy. Julian Assange said himself “we realized that our mission was not just to put information out there; our goal was to put information out there that would have an impact. And we realized that the way we had to do that was to make information scarce rather than everywhere, that that would paradoxically get us more attention.” The audience has made more news about Wikileaks than Wikileaks itself. So many forum discussions! https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiLeaks/
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Hey!
I love that you have used a video! Its interesting how I was able to know about what you have written in your blog just by watching the Meme video. Although they may seem like a bit of fun its an easy was to inform masses of people. Next time I’d like to know your opinion. Like do you believe that what was done to Hillary was ok? I look forward to reading next week!
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