Internet vigilantism

Internet vigilantism is the act of carrying out vigilante activities through the Internet. The term encompasses vigilantism against alleged scams, crimes, and non-Internet-related behavior. The expanding scope of media savvy and online interaction has enabled vigilantes to utilize methods specific to the Internet in order to distribute justice to parties they consider to be corrupt, but who have not committed a formal crime or have not been held accountable by the criminal justice system. Internet vigilantism originated in the early 2000s and has since evolved to include a variety of methods such as hacking, baiting, and public shaming. Internet vigilantism changes in cultural and political drive depending on location, and has varying relationships to state authority depending on context. There are many internet vigilante groups as well as individuals. The term internet vigilantism describes punitive public denunciations, aimed at swaying public opinion in order to “take justice into one's own hands” by engaging in forms of targeted surveillance, unwanted attention, negative publicity, repression, coercion or dissuasion. Associate professor in sociology Benjamin Loveluck identifies the four main forms of internet vigilantism as: flagging, investigation, hounding, and organized denunciation. Also referred to by Steve Man as Sousveillance, meaning "to watch from below", internet vigilantism can work as a type of peer surveillance. This is based on the premise that shame can be used as a form of social control. Augustė Dementavičienė defines the phenomena through the concept of Swarms, which are "Short term relationships between consumers formed for the purpose of achieving a goal". There are muddied overlaps between internet vigilantism and cyberbullying, as both utilize public shaming methods, and cyberbullying may sometimes be conducted under the guise of internet vigilantism. This is in the case that the vigilante "realizes they aren't achieving social justice but utilize it as a means of rationalizing their acts".