ABSTRACT
Recent literature refers to two main waves of digital activism, corresponding initially to two phases of technological development of the internet (the so-called Web 1.0 and Web 2.0), but also to two different protest waves, the anti-globalisation movement and the movement of the squares that began in 2011, each with its own dominant ideology. The irredeemable shift in perceptions and attitudes produced by the 2008 crash, and the connected shifts in social movement ideology have created a strong outlier in the form of digital activism. In time, this outlier has moved from the margins to the centre, from a countercultural posture to a counter-hegemonic ambition. In Turkey, “Freedom for Internet” actions on 15 May 2011 joined by a critical mass of netizens for the first time in history and the “Gezi” movement as a counter-hegemonic, secular, ecological outbreak against an Islamist neoliberal government at the heart of metropolitan Istanbul were significant peaks, emblematic of these two waves. These two waves have introduced cyber-autonomism and cyber-populism, two concepts to be distinguished in this chapter. While cyber-autonomism saw the internet as an autonomous space to construct a countercultural politics outside the mainstream, cyber-populism, informed by the populist turn taken by 2011 and post-2011 movements, sees the internet as a “popular space for mobilization against the neoliberal elites”. In that regard, post-Gezi information activism that displayed as citizen journalism, video activism and anti-surveillance protest actions (140Journos, Medyascope, Seyr-i Sokak etc.), as well as several urban mapping projects (Mülksüzleştirme, DirenÇevre, Kuzey Ormanlari), digital literacy mobilizations, crypto-parties (İstanbul Hackerspace), and their possible integration into the political mainstream (Oy ve Ötesi and other election volunteers, meme-culture networks) will be reflected in this chapter. Discourse analysis and critical digital media analysis will be applied to substantiate this reflection.
