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Michael Yip & Craig Webber
17 June 2011
HacktivismA Theoretical and Empirical
Exploration of Chinas Cyber Warriors
ACM Web Science 2011
3rd
International Conference on Web Science,Koblenz, Germany, 14-17
June 2011
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Hacktivism
Hacktivism: hacking + political activism(Denning 2001)
Wikileaks and Anonymous
Lack of academic research on the why
Reasoning the emergence of freelanceChinese hacktivism
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Forums are used to: organise attacks attract public support
attract volunteersoffer free technicaltraining to gain loyalty
Honkers Red Hackers
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Theoretical Framework
RelativeDeprivation
SocialIdentityTheory
ressentiment
ChineseNationalism
andHumiliation
Chinese nationalismis not just aboutcelebrating the glories
ofChinese civilization; italso commemoratesChinas weakness.
(Callahan 2004)
Following Nietzscheand Max Scheler, thisis an emotional
statedistinguishable fromresentment due to itslong-term and the
inability to findsatisfaction.
Proposed by Tajfel andWilkes (1963) thatingroup members needto
positivelydistinguish themselvesfrom an outgroup andthis is enough
to causeconflict.
R.D. is a sense ofdeprivation and notnecessarily anobjectively
measurableentity (Runciman1966).
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Empirical Study
Set out to examine the forum membership growth patternsof
Honkers Union of China (H. U. C.)
Data: archived pages from the Internet Archive
Study covers the period 2001 2010
Membership growth patterns are correlated with
politicalevents
Hypothesis: membership surges at the times of
politicalconflicts, hence a relative increase in the no. of
freelancehacktivists
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2001: Tension with U.S. and Taiwan
0
5000
10000
15000
20000
25000
30000
35000
No.ofregisteredusers
Date
April 2001: a U.S. spy planecollided with a Chinese jet fighter
andkilled the Chinese pilot.
June 2001: tension with Taiwan
became intense with strongspeculation of invasion.
Membership growth pattern of the Honker Union of China
hacktivist group in 2001
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2003-2004: Stable Foreign Relations
0
20000
40000
60000
80000
100000
120000
No.ofregisteredusers
Date
Membership growth pattern of the Honker Union of China
hacktivist group in 2003-2004
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2005: Japanese Textbook Incident
0
5000
10000
15000
20000
25000
30000
35000
40000
45000
50000
No.ofregist
eredusers
Date
April 2005: the Japanese Education
Ministry was accused of deliberatelywhitewashing the
atrocitiescommitted by the Japanese ImperialArmy during WW2 by
changingcontent of textbooks
Membership growth pattern of the Honker Union of China
hacktivist group in 2005
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2010: Diaoyu Island Incident with JapanPercentage of global
Daily Reachwhich arrived at honker.net andcnhonkerarmy.com over the
part12 months
honker.net experienced muchhigher surge in reach due to
appearance on news (see paper)
Average time spent on site onhonker.net and cnhonkerarmy.com
over the part 12 months
This shows that people do morethan just merely becoming a
member
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Conclusion
A theoretical framework combining Relative Deprivation,Social
Identity Theory, Nationalism and ressentimentfits
The lack of physical ways to express ressentimentand
availability of the Web drives people to hacktivism
Membership growth patterns of hacktivist forum supportsthe
proposed framework
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THANK YOU
Michael [email protected]
http://ecs.soton.ac.uk/people/my2e09
Twitter: @michael_yip
