Athina Karatzogianni

Cyber-Conflict and Global Politics

In May 2005, a small group of online activists called the Electronic Disturbance Theater staged a virtual sit-in. Their target was the website of the Minutemen Project, a vigilante organization which opposes immigration to the US, particularly from Mexico and Latin America. From 27 to 29 May, a claimed 78,500 people joined an online swarm that aimed to disrupt access to the Minutemen’s website as a symbolic gesture of opposition, analogous to a physical sit-in at the organization’s premises (Dominguez 2005, Kartenberg 2005, Jordan 2007). Such actions illustrate the practice of ‘electronic civil disobedience’ (ECD). The practice of ECD has been established since the mid1990s and certain key characteristics have emerged — actions are publicised in advance in order to draw as many participants as possible; actions do not cause damage to the targeted site, but merely simulate a sit-in; actors are open about their goals and identities.

WikiLeaks Affects: Ideology, Conflict and the Revolutionary Virtual

This chapter focuses on the public feelings over WikiLeaks,1 and demonstrates how affect and emotion, in conjunction with digital culture and social media, enabled shifts in the political. I am using the WikiLeaks controversy, and the storm of public feelings it generated, in order to demonstrate how affective flows can snowball into a revolutionary shift in reality. The order of theoretical sampling and analysis begins with a philosophical discussion of the role of affective structures in mediating the actual and the digital virtual. It then moves on to the interface between ideology and organization in WikiLeaks, as an example of ideological tensions producing affect in relation to that organization. Further, I discuss the interface between hierarchy and networks, such as activist networks against states and global institutions, in order to examine the interfaces between emotion and affect, as the expressive2 (Shaviro, 2010: 2) catalysts for revolts and uprisings.

Introduction: New media and the reconfiguration of power in global politics

In May 2005, a small group of online activists called the Electronic Disturbance Theater staged a virtual sit-in. Their target was the website of the Minutemen Project, a vigilante organization which opposes immigration to the US, particularly from Mexico and Latin America. From 27 to 29 May, a claimed 78,500 people joined an online swarm that aimed to disrupt access to the Minutemen’s website as a symbolic gesture of opposition, analogous to a physical sit-in at the organization’s premises (Dominguez 2005, Kartenberg 2005, Jordan 2007). Such actions illustrate the practice of ‘electronic civil disobedience’ (ECD). The practice of ECD has been established since the mid1990s and certain key characteristics have emerged — actions are publicised in advance in order to draw as many participants as possible; actions do not cause damage to the targeted site, but merely simulate a sit-in; actors are open about their goals and identities.

Schizorevolutions versus microfascisms: The fear of anarchy in state securitisation

This article investigates the role of ‘anarchy’ in state securitisation. First, we discuss state hierarchies’ struggle with active and reactive anarchic networks, theorising a state in existential crisis, which exploits anti-anarchist discourses to respond to network threats. In the second part, we illustrate with examples the use of fear of anarchy in hierarchical productive structures of securitisation. As an ‘antiproduction assemblage’, the state treats logics stemming from the ‘social principle’ as a repressed Real, the exclusion of which underpins its own functioning. The scarcity and fear resulting from state terror ensure responses to this structural violence by reactive networks, while paradoxically also exacerbating reactive tendencies within social movements. In the concluding part, we discuss visions of desecuritising society, breaking away from majoritarian logics of control and the coming of other worlds counterposed to the hierarchies producing and reproducing an eternal loop of state and network terror.

Did life find its way? A reply to Kingsmith and von Bargen

ABSTRACTThis is a short reflection and response to the article ‘Life Finds a Way’: Mapping a Post-positivist Marxian Science by A.T. Kingsmith and Julian von Bargen (2018). It sets out the main argumentation for the dadascience approach proposed by the authors and focuses primarily on their critique and alternative theoretical development in relation to the concept of class and the dialectic, as well as their attempt to account for indeterminacy and change through the use of affective cartographies. The response reflects on whether the authors deliver an innovative understanding of the Marxian heritage in that respect, and whether their approach has the potential to rethink, augment or stretch Marxist approaches to doing science and changing the world.This is a reply to:Kingsmith, A. T., and von Bargen, J. 2018. ‘“Life finds a way’: mapping a post-positivist Marxian dadascience.” Global Discourse. https://doi.org/10.1080/23269995.2018.1464352.

The Social Media Political Subject Is an Infant

Any random sampling of a Facebook timeline or Twitter feed, to take the obvious examples, provides a prepackaged view of global politics. It is restrictive because we choose it to reflect our own pet subjects, groups, likes, and world interests. The lens is prejudiced to reflect our race, class, gender, sexuality, ideology, and affective positionality. We enter a social media world as many as 10 or 50 times a day that has ourselves as the center of the universe. This communication world is similar to an infant’s world: Someone else decides what we can see, what we can consume, what is that extra treat we can earn, if we are good: in social media terms, if we pay for it by reputational capital, or simply, if we spend enough money.

Epilogue: The Politics of the Affective Digital

This epilogue serves the purpose of extracting some of the political aspects of digital affect discussed by the contributors and highlight their importance for this new, emerging field of study. In plain words, this is a cross-disciplinary area between cultural studies and digital media; nevertheless, it is still the politics of emotion and affect, which digital media generate, that are the main preoccupation of the book (see Kuntsman’s Introduction, this volume). In my own work, I argue that affective structures mediate between the actual and the digital virtual. This spectrum of affect relates to the interface between the actual and the digital, which contains the possibilities of what may or may not happen, to use the Deleuzo-Guattarian notion of the virtual as potentiality (see Karatzogianni, this volume). In certain cases, where structures are overflown with affect, the virtual is materialized, leading to what I called the ‘Revolutionary Virtual’. With this specific concept in mind, I would like to revisit the contributions made hitherto, to make sense of the consequences of such a notion for the political in digital affect, while taking on board the significant theoretical and empirical contributions made available by the authors in this volume.

A Comparative Cyberconflict Analysis of Digital Activism Across Post-Soviet Countries

This article analyses digital activism comparatively in relation to three Post-Soviet regions: Russian/anti-Russian in Crimea and online political deliberation in Belarus, in juxtaposition to Estonia’s digital governance approach. The authors show that in civil societies in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, cultural forms of digital activism, such as internet memes, thrive and produce and reproduce effective forms of political deliberation. In contrast to Estonia, in authoritarian regimes actual massive mobilization and protest is forbidden, or is severely punished with activists imprisoned, persecuted or murdered by the state. This is consistent with use of cultural forms of digital activism in countries where protest is illegal and political deliberation is restricted in government-controlled or oligarchic media. Humorous political commentary might be tolerated online to avoid mobilization and decompress dissent and resistance, yet remaining strictly within censorship and surveillance apparatuses. The authors’ research affirms the potential of internet memes in addressing apolitical crowds, infiltrating casual conversations and providing symbolic manifestation to resistant debates. Yet, the virtuality of the protest undermines its consistency and impact on offline political deliberation. Without knowing each other beyond social media, the participants are unlikely to form robust organisational structures and mobilise for activism offline.

Introduction: The Digital Transformation of the Public Sphere

The three editors introduce the key themes of this edited volume: migration, crisis and culture in digital networks. The chapter summarises the four parts under investigation, namely theories, case studies from Mexico, China, India and Nigeria, European crisis, and digital culture and communication shifts. In addition to explaining the rationale for the volume, this chapter puts forward the notion that the digital public sphere shapes and is shaped by debates surrounding crisis, conflict, migration and culture, forming and reforming multiple fragmented and interconnected spheres and publics.

Intercultural Conflict and Dialogue in the Transnational Digital Public Sphere: Findings from the Mig@Net Research Project (2010–2013)

The MIG@NET European FP7 research teams spanned eight countries examining gender, migration and digital networks (http://www.mignetproject.eu/). Here the researchers outline the key findings covering migrant hybrid (online and offline) activities in three European countries: Greece, Cyprus and the UK. This European multicase study provides insights into the general sociocultural dynamics behind the formation of transnational digital networks because they reveal the most urgent societal problems European countries must face in the early twenty-first century: racism, migration, ethnonationalist ideologies and European citizenship.