A Study of Performative Hactivist Subcultures and Threats to Businesses

Abstract Performative hactivism is the use of the Internet for expressing extreme political dissent online. It differs from cyber harassment in that performative hactivism is politically motivated. We found that there are contagion and other social effects among hactivists and that hactivism exhibits feature patterns that define them as subcultures. To conduct our research, we created a provocative Website and blog and then promoted it on the Internet. Using sentiment analyses and logistic regression, we identified features associated with performative hactivism. We then studied the blog remarks and used Website analytics to gain a better understanding of the implications for business security. The results from this work should help business and information security researchers (especially in social engineering), as well as business practice managers, strategists, and security analysts, to predict the lifecycles and impacts of hactivism on their operations and assist them in the creation of interventions.