Hactivism in Turkey: The Case of Redhack

Abstract

Ever since daily activities have been carried into digital, cyberspace have become one of the primary grounds for citizen participation activities such political discourse and activism. Wikileaks documents, the effects of social media in the Arab Spring and global and local hacker movements are great instances for digital political participation with high impact such as the creation and diffusion of new conceptions like cyber security and cyber warfare. Internet’s role in this new age activism is crucial; especially hacker movements are using Internet as a tool of resistance. Hacking activity as a political activism or hacktivism is simply an activity that making a system unworkable and acquiring and publishing information with the aim of raising public awareness. Using both mainstream and social media as a communication tool, hacker groups such as Anonymous Chaos Computer Club (CCC) and LulzSec aim to ignite activist protests from online to offline. Just like the global hacker groups, hacker groups in Turkey aim the exact same goal. Turkish hacktivists can be divided into two categories as nationalist groups who hacks websites in other countries in order to leave messages and left-wing hackers who defend the freedom of information. As the most powerful example of hactivism in Turkey, Redhack contain similar aspects. In this study, hactivism will be discussed by its ethical aspects and the center of this academic study will be the Redhack case. Following the review of literature, a quantitative research in university students is shared to observe their perspective on Redhack and hactivism.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n9p628