Comments on: Anonymous vs. The Guardian

By: dan

dan — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 16:16:59 +0000

I don’t understand why an academic, even in media studies, in his or her right mind would ever talk to, write articles for, or answer e-mails from, anything even remotely smelling of the popular press. It is Russian Roulette, and some day the round gets chambered.

Any media: right, left, fringe, gutter.

It will raise the standards of media if they are universally ignored, and forced to extract material out of dry professional journals, and put the brains back on they checked out when they graduated from journalism school. I’m sorry about the vast majority who deal properly with what they’ve handled, but that can’t be helped.

–dan, University of British Columbia.

By: Wearelegion

Wearelegion — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 00:25:53 +0000

I cannot say I’m surprised this sort of thing, because the truth is that we have been rather cryptic about our operation and organization, although the latter is no secret, we have no organization of any kind.

I hope this link will clarify you a bit how we function.
The operation paperstorm start tonight worldwide – follow #paperstorm on twitter-.

Thank you.

We Do Not Forgive,
We Do Not Forget,

We Are Legion …

By: Gabriella Coleman

Gabriella Coleman — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 17:51:23 +0000

Thanks for pointing out that piece JOhn, will also def check out.

With Anonymous vs the Church of Scientology, when Anon started to protest on the street, things got a bit more group-like but even then, I pause, since the interaction among Anon in different cities was quite different. Lots of autonomy not only in local nodes but in the different faces as well.

By: John Postill

John Postill — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 17:25:21 +0000

On a related note, James Gee argues that the popular notion of ‘communities of practice‘ (Wenger, see also Lloyd 2007) is of little use to understand increasingly common forms of sociality that do not entail group membership or a sense of belonging, e.g. real-time strategy computer games. Instead of communities of practice he proposes the notion of ‘affinity spaces’. These are spaces in which people from a variety of backgrounds come together to pursue a common endeavour or goal.

Gee, J. (2005) Semiotic social spaces and affinity spaces. In D. Barton and K. Tusting (eds) Beyond Communities of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

http://johnpostill.wordpress.com/2008/07/23/affinity-spaces-vs-communities-of-practice/

By: TB

TB — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 14:53:11 +0000

What troubles me is more that the media seems to be content in its ignorance or unwilling to investigate the actual meaning of Anonymous with even the most basic of journalistic rigor. The information around Anonymous is not obfuscated or buried, which begs the question, in what other areas are journalists grossly misreporting that which they do not understand?

By: anon

anon — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 05:02:51 +0000

Forgotten the previous anon attacks already?

http://anonymousdown.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/historycrimes.pdf

What’s this an anon admitting to owning a botnet and wanting to use it to make cash…..
http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/8947/38528513.jpg

Anon is a convenient word to hide behind that is all.

By: Fred

Fred — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 04:30:17 +0000

With all the vitriol surrounding Assange, I am surprised nothing of it has been blasted against Annonymous. Perhaps the political value of an identifiable figure such as Assange, a face to solidify a politician’s attack on the uncensored dispersal of classified information, finds little hold when dealing with something that seems more to the aesthetics of Mardi Gras: everyone is behind masks, and those masks seem to be changing on a moment by moment basis. Annonymous, being what its name implies, defeats the impact of the politician-on-the-stump; strikingly, after the initial flurry of outrage, it all seems to have died down.
And yet, I wonder about the value of this whole exercise–most politicians simply shrug their shoulders, and say so-it-goes; while the releases seem to quickly evaporate without much fallout. Does this imply that for the releases to have any lasting and purposeful effect there has to be a figure behind them, a solid body? If we consider the history of Daniel Ellsberg and the White House Papers, Ellsberg simply didn’t release the papers and then vanish in the background. being annonymous (or with minimal hierarchical structure) may be one of the weapons of the weak, but are we still in an environment that if power speaks to power it has to do so through hierarchical structures?

By: The Aesthetic Face(s) of Anonymous | Savage Minds

The Aesthetic Face(s) of Anonymous | Savage Minds — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 03:32:58 +0000

[…] UPDATE: See Gabriella’s follow-up piece: Anonymous vs. The Guardian. […]