Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication Releases CARGC Paper 10

The paper explores the conflation of hacktivism with cyber-terrorism that enables states to criminalize non-violent hackers.

By Marina Krikorian, CARGC

The Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication is proud to present CARGC Paper 10, “Contextualizing Hacktivism: The Criminalization of Redhack” by Bülay Doğan (Koç University).

Through an empirical examination of the criminalization of the Turkish hacktivist group Redhack in social, legal, and cultural discourses, Doğan explores the critical conflation of hacktivism with cyber-terrorism that enables states to criminalize non-violent hacktivist groups.

Portrait of person wearing hood and mask with hammer and sickle, with title of CARGC Paper

In his introduction, CARGC Director Marwan M. Kraidy asserts “in examining how Redhack constitutes an anomaly, and in exploring how anomalies point to the necessity of grounded, context-sensitive research, Doğan contributes conceptual development beyond Turkey and beyond hacktivism. In doing so, this publication embodies CARGC’s mission to set regional expertise and theoretical advancement in a heuristic tension with each other.”

Bülay Doğan is currently a doctoral candidate at the Department of Media and Visual Arts in Koç University (Istanbul). A graduate of Galatasaray University with a B.A. in Political Science, she received her M.A. in Modern Turkish History from Boğaziçi University. In her doctoral studies, she is primarily studying the interaction of social movements and ideology with science and technology. Her research also focuses on Information Technology and criminal laws and includes the sociology of the state.

Doğan was a Fulbright Scholar and Fellow at the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication in 2017-2018. She is also a member of the Union for Democratic Communications and a founder and executive board member of the Ozgen Berkol Doğan Science Fiction Library, a unique association specializing in science fiction, fantasy, and horror literatures in Turkey.

Download CARGC Paper 10 here.

Read previous CARGC Papers at ScholarlyCommons.