Exploring the Anonymous Collective & Digital Activism

Running Head: Who are they? Good or Evil Anonymous: Who are they? Good or Evil? John Jay College of Criminal Justice Seminar in Forensic Psychology Charles M. Perez 11/03/2022 Running Head: Who are they? Good or Evil The group that calls themselves “Anonymous” Before we can definitively answer the question of, what/or who exactly is Anonymous? We have to first understand what is a group and the many types. According to the website (Business Jargons), a group is really a collection of individuals who come together and communicate with one another; whether that’ll be in a public setting or a private one. The gathering of these individuals in that said group form together in hopes of reaching a certain objective. That objective will depend on the type of group they consider themselves to be. In this paper, I will discuss more in detail of the types of groups that exists, such as Terrorist groups, extremist groups, etc and what kind of group does “Anonymous” consider themselves to be Anonymous, is a group of individuals who’s identities are unknown to the public, they are known for their clever hacking schemes against huge corporation that try to silence the general public from expressing their right to freedom of speech. They have been in existence between 2003 and 2004, which began to form through an online image board, known as “4chan” (Landers, 2008). 4chan is a website that was founded by Christopher Poole, during the same year that Anonymous formed; it started off as a website that contained content surrounding Japanese culture. However as 4chan started to gain more users, it became a hackers paradise in a sense that many individuals would share and or leak photos of celebrities, pornography was also a big thing in the website (Refinery29.com, 2017). Anonymous members are represented by a logo of a headless suited man, and if that’s not odd, that man without a head has a question mark to replace. When they want to speak to the public, they post video’s on the internet (mainly on YouTube ) while wearing a mask, for obvious reasons of remaining “Anonymous”. The mask that these members wear serve as a symbolic Running Head: Who are they? Good or Evil meaning, which is vengeance, as I reiterated earlier that this also serves the purpose for this group; to expose other websites that appear to be violating the privacy of others and silencing the public from speaking the truth. So how does one join this group? It is shockingly simple. All you have to do is be present and participate in the chatrooms; where other prospective members get to talk with current members. This group does not force anyone to get involved in every cyber attack; therefore you can come into the group and are free to leave whenever you choose. You do not need to have any experience in hacking or coding because on the Anonymous website, you can learn how to do it all. This group has a record of followers who have been arrested, and that come from many different backgrounds in regards to economic status, ethnicity, etc. Since they call themselves “Anonymous”, no one knows how many follows they have recruited Since we now know that “Anonymous” is a hacking group, they have had a history of engaging in many cyber attacks. As I said in the beginning, victims that have fallen to their vicious attacks have been everyday people and big corporations who aim to censor the rights of others from freedom of speech. One can argue that although this group might be scandalous as it initiates cyber-attacks that can potentially cripple the economy or the lives of millions of people, however their reason for it can be seen like a robin hood situation where they all are doing good by providing the public with the truth. One of “Anonymous” known attacks was called Project Chanology, which was a direct attack on the Church of Scientology. According to the (scientology.org), Scientology is a religion that offers a precise path leading to a complete and certain understanding of one’s true self. The attack began in 2008, when a video that was leaked of well known celebrity, Tom Cruise, who is Running Head: Who are they? Good or Evil a member of the church, in which he talks about how Scientologists were the only saviors on the planet. A few minutes after the leak, the Church removed the video of him saying that because the church claimed it was a concern of privacy. Many members of Anonymous agreed that the Church’s action was a violation of freedom speech and also said that the Church itself is very dangerous as it has the potential to damage the minds of followers (O’Connell, 2008) Another one of the attacks brought by the Anonymous “hacktivist” group, as they call it is the attack of former president, Donald Trump’s website. Throughout his presidency, he has caused many scandalous controversy’s such as accusing Mexican’s from bringing in Drug Lord’s, Rapist’s, etc; to banning Muslim’s from entering the United State’s because they are all Terrorist. Therefore, to hold him accountable for his rhetoric; Anonymous hacked into Trump Tower’s website for about an hour. Following this hack, a video that was posted by them on Youtube, telling Trump that he should thinks before he speaks (techworm.net, 2016) The Anonymous group still causes a stir amongst many government officials and agencies because they aren’t sure in whether to officially classify them as a terrorist group/cult, social movement, or just individuals wanting attention. However, this group is a terrorist organization in my opinion because they use methods such as cognitive dissonance and deindividualization to rationalize their attacks. Let's discuss the first method, which is cognitive dissonance. What is cognitive dissonance? A term that was coined by Leon Festtinger in 1957, he defines it as two individuals who hold similar beliefs, however they have different though processes (Festinger, 1957). From this definition, we can say that this is relevant to the group “Anonymous”, because although they want to be seen as a social movement kind of group in which advocates for justice through cyber warfare, they still tend to accomplish their goals by Running Head: Who are they? Good or Evil ways that are contrary to their purpose. For example, we all know that child porn and the distribution of it is illegal and just outright wrong, and the anonymous group has shown us from the message board site that they are all against it ass well. However, they have spread many of those images and more to another message board in order to try to take the website down. In conclusion, this is clear cut cognitive dissonance because Anonymous members know that child porn is wrong, but they all will go to extreme measures in distributing these images just to get everyone aware that these sites are harboring this kind of content and that it should be taken down immediately. Individuals who are in a radicalized group of other’s, often experience deindividualization, in which foster’s like a family dynamic in which all of the identity of it’s members lies within the group (Borum, 2011). Anonymous falls under this process of deindividualization because after an attack, they are all blamed, not as individuals but a collective unit. “Anonymous” is anonymous, which means that this group intentionally keep their identities unknown, and this ties with de-individualization. The term “Anonymous” derives from the process of anonymity, which is that you lack self-awareness due to the fact that you are behind a mask