Democracy Discourses through the Internet Communication: Understanding the Hacktivism for the Global Changing

The global communication via internet has been fostering the political participation of the public civil into the world orders through several different ways; include the participation of computer virtuosos, called hackers, who have been sponsored the emergent of a new social movement „hacktivism‟ as a new interest phenomena for the media communication and technology field. This article aims to describe the hacktivism movement as one of the ways of civil people to participate into the global politics through the public sphere, communicate their ideas and promote the principles of democracy using the technology of hacking computer. Within this article I focus on several hacktivism activities emergent since 1990s. My findings have revealed that the hacking politics actions and the social-humanity messages were conveyed by the hactivists encouraged the global circumstances for being more aware and concern on the democracy discourses. Hence I shall conclude that in the modern era of communication and technology the hacktivism has been emerging to promote the freedom of people through the internet and distributes the democracy principles into the global world for the global changing.

stated "the governance of online media influences how new technologies become embedded in society" (Mansell, 2007:8). Followed the statement, he mentioned that hacktivism and cyberterorism were two of the most visible debates appearing in the media as the implication of the technological innovation in the recent days.
For his purposes, Mansell used the definition from Taylor and Jordan (1999) which hacktivism defined as "the conjuction of hacking techniques with the values communicative strategies of political activism in line with the agendas of new globalized social movement." Doroty E. Danning (2001) who concern on the issue of the hacktivism, activis, and cyberterrorism and their relation with the global changing by focused on the foreign policy analysis stated that: "In the area of hacktivism, which involves the use of hacking tools and techniques of a disruptive nature, the internet will serve mainly to draw attention to a cause, as such incident are regularly reported by news media. Whether that attention has the desired effect of changing policy decisions related to the issue at hand is much less certain." According to some scholars, hacktivism would be a single politically motivated virtual action of non-state actors in order to gather public attention for a political topic and to express disapproval. For example, as Taylor stated (2005: 4) "it engages with this metasystem directly and, with its close ties to the politics of globalization, marks the beginning of a significant new chapter in radical technological politics." Use an explanation of Taylor, furthermore because of the radicalism claim, for the global society the hacktivism is not that quietly accepted, while some scholars even marked this new social movement as a part of criminal actions. Therefore the hacktivism have been attracted more repulsion than acceptance whereas the motivations behind are not to sabotage, destroy or permanently cripple government operations as what several media ever been published, but more to bring attention to freedom, violations of human rights and to protect the responsible flow of information on the internet.
Thus the hacktivism movements stick together with the issue of democracy in the modern era.
I firstly describing the democracy discourses through the cyberspace, which internet is an effective media for the global communication. I then describe a very brief history about the emergent of hacktivism movements and their ideologies before accommodate those actions with the conception of electronic democracy, democracy deliberation and the role of public sphere. I may focus on the Habermas" theory about the public sphere and democracy deliberation then use a theory of political communication to bring this issue into the main purpose of this article that is describing the hacktivism as one of the important tools to promote the democracy values through the internet.

Democracy Discourses through Global Communication
Today we are living in the modern era wherein democracy becomes a controversial public debates, especially regarding on the relation between citizens and government. Could citizens control the government as what the democracy ideal is? Or on the contrary the government serves the citizens by several policies and regulations which control the freedom of citizens.
Democracy discourses would never stop to debating the relation between government and citizens since among them emerging the conception of the participation of social order. For this purposes, people would never fed up to communicate each others, talk about democracy and attract many people to participate into this debate.
The global communication has been quietly useful for the debate on democracy discourse, especially to highlight the implementation of democracy while the democracy itself still in the controversial debate circumstances. For taking over this controversial, there is a popular quotation can reflects the meaning of democracy as many scholars often cited, from John Dewey (1999) "democracy is not an end in itself, but a means by which people discover and extend and manifest their fundamental human nature and human rights. Democracy is rooted in freedom, solidarity, a choice of work and the ability to participate in the social order." speech in the mode of information? What kind of "subject" speaks or writes or communicates in these conditions?" While Cohen (1998) pointed out that freedom of speech is even more crucial to deliberative democracy. He summarizes the arguments that have been made for the importance of freedom of political expression in a democracy: 1.
Democracy is based on the principle of popular sovereignty, which demands "free and open discussion among citizens";

2.
Restricting speech creates political inequality between those whose speech is allowed, and those whose speech is restricted;

3.
Restricting speech impedes the free flow of information, "perhaps reducing the quality of democratic discussion and decision", and 4. Restricting speech limits the range of ideas or opinions in a political discussion. (Cohen 1998) (Danning, 1999: 26). Hence the Internet is not only a welcoming of global communication forum for the free exchange of views, but it has its own class of warriors dedicated to protecting free speech online.
In the case of Vegh"s dissertation, the focus on media coverage of hacktivism is consistent with a theoretical agenda: to demonstrate the internet"s challenge to elite control of mass communications. As a communications scholar, Vegh argues that "control of the media is crucial to the hegemony of political and economic elites: media control allows elites to repress alternative narratives of resistance or protest. The agenda of elite control leads mass media to skew their presentation of "counterhegemonic" online activities "toward a perspective that is favorable to the ruling powers, no matter how democratic or socially empowering these activities potentially are" (Vegh 2003).
Therefore the internet as an effective public sphere has provided either activist or common users new opportunities to build networks and to exchange alternative information or distribute counter hegemonic discourses in a more efficient way. And it also provided activists and civil society organizations more control over the content of their message and the tools to independently inform citizens and sympathizers world-wide. They might involve themselves into the political communication process in advance use the internet media for express the consciousness of politics of civil people.

From Hacker to Hacktivists and Ideology
"It is never the technical stuff that gets you in trouble. It is the personalities and the politics." (Rick Cook, Wizardry Compiled) Considering the media"s publications of the hacker"s conceptions, firstly I do need to quote a short clear statement "a hack is a net programming trick and a hacker is a computer virtuoso, and it was a hacker that created the technology and computer programs that make up the internet we all take for granted today." (Paul Miller, 2001:4). We might have been found how did the media defined a hacker with a wrong perception, while there are many articles still ongoing published to make a clarification for it. For instance, some scholars even indentified hacker as a semi-criminal individual while on the contrary there was no computer innovations either internet revolution without the roles of hacker.
Hacker defines as "someone who enjoys tinkering with computers to find concrete solutions to technical problems" (Taylor, 1999). Hackers believe that they should promote the free flow of information, and causing anything to disrupt, prevent, or retard that flow is improper.

Steven Levy (1984) through his famous book "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer
Revolution" articulated the hacker tenets: 1. Access to computers should be unlimited and total.
2. All information should be free.
4. Hackers should be judged by their hacking not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position.
5. You create art and beauty on a computer.  (2000) as "the marriage of political activist and computer hacking" then described the hactivism as detail:

Computers can change your life for the better
"An engaged politics which seeks solutions in software in the search for a specific technological fix to a social problem. So it refers to any use of computer technology for political ends, including diverse on-line practices: cross-border: information sharing, action planning and coordination via personal emails: chat rooms and electronic distribution list." The way of hacktivism expansion from just a hacking politics into the new social movement in the modern era may reflected from the statement of analyst Ted Julian from Yankee Group which he said "when we look back years from now we'll see this as a tipping point in 'hactivism' going from largely a theoretical threat to something that's more a day-to-day issue." (Guardian, 2010).
Meanwhile Conway (2007)  should be open and free for everyone. Governments shouldn't try to censor because they don't agree with it. Anonymous is supporting WikiLeaks not because we agree or disagree with the data that is being sent out, but we disagree with any from of censorship on the internet. If we let WikiLeaks fall without a fight then governments will think they can just take down any sites they wish or disagree with. (Guardian,   (Samuel, Site defacements consist of hacking into a web server and replacing a web page with a new page bearing some sort of message.

Electronic Civil Disobedience, Hacking Techniques and Political Messages
Site redirects involve hacking into a web server and changing its addressing so that would-be visitors to the site are instead redirected to an alternative site, usually one that is critical of the hacked site.
Denial of service (DoS) attacks are a common and powerful way to wreak online havoc, but have been only rarely used by hacktivists. A DoS attack is an attack on a computer system or network that causes a loss of service to users, typically the loss of network connectivity and services.

Information theft consists of hacking into a private network and stealing information.
Virtual sit-ins get hundreds, thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of protesters to rapidly reload web pages on targeted servers, overloading them with traffic until they slow down or crash. Site parodies spoof a target organization, often by imitating the appearance of its web site, and by locating the spoof at a URL (web address) that is likely to be confused with the address of the original (spoofed) site.
Software development can constitute hacktivism if the software tools serve specific political purposes. These tools are usually created and distributed as open source software, which means that they are free, and that anyone can modify the codeallowing for collaboration and continuous improvement.
The point here is not merely the actions of the hacktivists have been taken, therefore we often consider with the dilemma among legal or illegal of hacking activities, but this article tries to emphasizing the messages they have been threw out to the global world. Their political consciousness appeared from the messages displayed through the victim websites. Yet website defacement is one of the main techniques hacktivist often to use for their purposes.
Through this way, the group of hacktivist whether being organized as a settle of hacktivist group or independently established at the level of grassroot conveyed their political messages that fully contented of the human rights and anti-war, the democracy values.
The team sp10it hacked the government web and displayed a message "tell your governments to stop the war"; the Anti-Nuclear Hackers made a worm viruses againts the nuclear program and displayed a message "you talk oftimes of peace for all and then prepare for war." (Wired, 1998). The Milworm who attacked the Bhaba Atomic Research Centre displayed "a nuclear war does start, you will be the first to scream; the Asthray Lumberjacks hacked the British Internet Service with the message "use your power and keep the world in a state of peace and put a stop to this nuclear bullshit." (Ibid). The Wannabe Hacker Team, one of the Indonesian young hacker groups defaced more than 300 websites and displayed a message "Boykot Israel, Solidarity for Palestine." (eZİNE, 2011). One group of hacktivists stated "we do not believe that only nation-states have the legitimate authority to engage in war and aggression.
And we see cyberspace as a means for non-state political actors to enter present and future arenas of conflict, and to do so across international borders." (the Hacktivist, 1999).
In 1996

Hacktivism, Democracy Discourses and Global Changing
"An international protest movement surfaced in resistance to neo-liberal institutions and their related globalization policies, while democracy, social justice, and a better world were championed. Since then, broad-based, populist political spectacles have become the norm, thanks to an evolving sense of the way in which the internet may be deployed in a democratic and emancipatory manner by a growing planetary citizenry that is using the new media to become informed, to inform others and to construct new social and political relations." (Richard Kahn and Douglas Kellner ) "Can the internet as a new public sphere serve as a home for democratic discourse?" but let me provide some arguments and research by scholars who concern on this issue. From Samuel (Ibid,151), she stated "the promise of the transnational politics literature is clear from the moment we look at the possibility of applying its insights to the burgeoning phenomenon of hacktivism." Then she revealed a research finding from Keck and Sicking within the Activists Beyond Borders, which mentioned about the typical of transnational advocay Networks , "the centrality of values or principled ideas, the belief that individuals can make a difference, the creative use of information, and the employment by nongovernmental actors of sophisticated political strategies in targeting their campaigns." (Keck and Sikkink 1998). Therefore from that point of view "advocacy networks are helping to transform the practice of national sovereignty and an important part of an explanation for changes in world politics. These networks try not only to influence policy outcomes, but to transform the terms and nature of the debate." On the contrary, Danning (2001) argued that "hacktivists may feel a sense of empowerment, because they can control government computers and get media attention, but that does not mean they will succeed in changing policy. So far, anecdotal evidence suggests that for the majority of cases, they will not." collectives, and networks converge around a few common hallmarks, while maintaining their autonomy and specificity." (Taylor, 2005).
Regarding on the way of hacktivists foster the democracy values through the internet need to be mentioned here that besides of several hacking politics actions, the EDT and The quotation from Churchill above gives a message that between the government and the citizens should be appeared the balance role of state control. While government does their role, citizens monitor the processes and this method could be implemented by the political communication among. A political communication which involved public civil and the useful of technology could be described in several ways, and the internet works for the implementation of it.
Through the internet, the amounts of cyber activists who concern with the democracy discourses have been arising with the new social movement "hacktivism". The hacktivism is the combination of hacking techniques with political activism, struggling for the principle of freedom and promote the values of democracy through the internet. The hacktivits involve the technology hacking computer to convey their beliefs on politics and global world which the issues include human rights, global justice, freedom on internet, free flow of information, and free speech.
For this closing statement I like to reveal Taylor"s conclusion regarding on the hacktivism movement "whatever the philosophical and practical differences may be between hacking and hacktivism, the key significance of hacktivism is the way in which it has produced a political strategy that is faithful to the combination of hacking"s previously identified love of abstract systems as well as its commitment to the reappropriation and subversion of the original purposes of specific technological artefacts. (Taylor,Ibid: 9) We Finally I conclude that, as typically, hacktivism is a political participation in one hand, which civil people express their ideas about world politics and involve themselves into the political changing. In another hand, hacktivism is the way of political communication that benefited the internet media for share ideas, beliefs and conviction on politics, human rights among politics. This the way of communication, media, technology and politics will always synergy to explain the world phenomenon and shall be very interesting for the study of global changing, especially the way of democracy could be implemented.