May 10, 2006

I'm making my complete dissertation, Hacktivism and the Future of Political Participation, available for download as of today. Depending on your interests, you might want to download the complete manuscript (284 pages) or to look at selected chapters:

• Front matter covers the abstract, acknowledgements and tables of contents, figures and tables
  
• Chapter 1: Introduction provides an overview of the dissertation & methodology; it's useful for folks who want a quick overview
  
• Chapter 2: A taxonomy of hacktivism is a beast (65 pages) but provides a very comprehensive picture of the three main types of hacktivism: political cracking (like site defacements), performative hacktivism (like the Yes Men's work), and political coding (like folks trying to circumvent Chinese firewalls)
  
• Chapter 3: Collective action among virtual selves looks at hacktivism in the context of political science research on political participation; this is the research that most directly shaped my thinking about how to encourage citizen participation in online communities
  
• Chapter 4: Hacktivism and state autonomy looks at how hacktivists get around policy and legal decisions with the real effects of code; it's useful for organizations trying to understand how the Internet changes the bounds of their effective authority
  
• Chapter 5: Hacktivism and the future of democratic discourse looks at how hacktivism illuminates hopes for an online "public sphere"; it's useful for folks thinking about issues like free speech and anonymity online
  
• Chapter 6: Conclusion pulls it all back together and reflects on how hacktivism has been wrongly conflated with cyberterrorism as part of of the post 9/11 age of anxiety; it may interest folks who want to understand the impact of security anxieties on the space for online expression
  
• Bibliography contains all my sources (though you may find it more useful to use the online version accessible from the top-right drop-down menu, since the online version contains hyperlinks to online sources)

You can still access chapter summaries and references (with hyperlinks to sources, where available) by using the drop-down menu at top left.