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Internet Activism and Vigilante Justice
Vigilante behavior is that which matches the behavior of vigilantes. According to (Earl, Jennifer and Katrina 34)), vigilante justice discusses the actions of a group of people or of an individual who claim to be enforcing the law, but they lack the legal capacity of enforcing the law. Vigilante justice also discusses a general state of anarchy whereby a competing crowd claims to be enforcing the law in a particular area (Khosla 107). A vigilante is an organization or a civilian that acts in a capacity of enforcing the law without the legal approval or perhaps in the pursuit of self-proclaimed justice (LaRocca 67).Other words for vigilante justice are extrajudicial punishment and frontier justice that typically exists in societies that lack law and order. Internet activism, on the other hand, is the use of e-communication devices and technologies that include social media platforms such Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, Whatsapp, podcasts and YouTube (Hill 15). The use of these e-communication technologies enhances fast communication whereby the intended information reaches a wider audience in just a matter of time. The primary purposes of e-technologies are lobbying, community building and organizing support groups or activists. An analysis of the New York Times reveals that it published an article on internet activism and vigilante justice on January 20, 2014.
The article released in New York Times on 2014 is entitled “Emily Bazelon on Anonymous’s Brand of Vigilante Justice” (The New York Times). According to the article, Emily Bazelon is the writer of this article. Emily contributes to the New York Times magazine. Her contribution appeared on the cover of the New York Times magazine on January 20, 2014. Her story delves on the efforts by an anonymous and the online collective force which aims at lobbying supporters to enable the reopening or the reinstitution of rape case whose verdict was not acceptable. The unknown group believes that there was a mishandling of these rape cases. Emily Bazelon explains that she has an interest in monitoring social media for kids as there is a lot of brutality and cruelty that is caused by online activism and vigilantism. Emily opines that social media companies also struggle when they act to mitigate online activism and vigilante justice. Social Media Companies lack the power to remove components of activism and vigilantism from their social sites. The cause for this inability could be the fact that social media Companies are profit making customers, and they are more considerate of the profits they make online than the behavior of users who have subscribed to their respective online sites. Emily Bazelon also explains in her article that even schools and the police find it difficult to control online activism and vigilante justice. Emily also notes that the games that kids play online have an impact on their lives as well. Online products contain overwhelming content, and the role of such a large content is not clear.

There is so much opportunity for vigilantism online, and one wonders if the police are not aware of these happenings or it is the concept of online vigilantism that is new for even the police not to understand. The confusion arises as one tries to figure out if it is the law that is lagging behind or if it is the police who have not established how to enforce the law. Emily Bazelon explains that she is not sure that the law contains significant gaps that the online vigilante and activist groups are working to fill. Emily Bazelon, the author of this article, is also not sure if online activists and vigilante groups are doing the right thing or they are acting contrary to the law. According to Bazelon, it seems as these groups are fulfilling or addressing a vacuum. Emily Bazelon has also written about posting revenge porn and cyber stalking, but she believes that there is a need to introduce tight laws that work after people who behaved illegally online and who perform cyber stalking and similar activities like cyber stalking (Khosla 123). The existence of these laws could have helped in the rape case that Emily Bazelon discusses in this article. According to Emily Bazelon, there is a big gray area that requires resolutions. Such resolutions will only be enabled when there is the formulation of anti-online vigilantism and activism. According to (Engdahl 79), the cruelty that is currently present on social media can lead to cruelty and traumatic experiences. But because of the gap existing in the law, one is unable to differentiate if such an act is criminal or unlawful or it is legal. Activities like the circulation of nude photos on the social media could violate the law. Performers of such acts should face the full wrath of the law. Currently, a lot of people post nude photos and other nasty things online, but they go Scott free. Again, teenagers take an individual who is against such posting to be primitive and outdated. But in the real sense, the person who is the online posting of nude photos is the one who is right. Enactment of new and tight laws could help in addressing some of these issues. However, most of these problems are social problems that are prevalent because of the changing norms and societal values.
Emily Bazelon confirms in her article that the anonymous operatives are famously secretive. She goes ahead and explains her strategy that made her approach them and what made the anonymous activists agree interviewing. Emily Bazelon undertook her research online through Twitter as some users of Twitter were willing to trust her. However, the interviewing process was long and tiresome as the most operations took long to establish. For example, it took Emily Bazelon months to introduce formal relationships with the anonymous operatives before she could interview them to collect the data that she needed to prove her article. (Hill 23), suggests that most online activists always like to be recognized and to be singled out that they are reaching a much wider audience with their online activities. It could be dangerous to online anonymous operatives when they speak to the public on the limelight with a belief that talking on the spotlight makes them famous as they can reach much more audiences. Online activists who furnished Emily Bazelon with information confessed that get raked over the coals when they report publicly about their online activities. Publicity of online activism is inevitable as activists want to increase their advertising and activism. Nevertheless, online vigilantes and activists must be prosecuted as their actions could torture and torment the victims psychologically (Earl et al. 89). This fact explains why posting nude or porn photos online for revenge is illegal, and it violates severe provisions of the law.

The law enforcement agents also make similar mistakes to online activists when they fail to arrest and to prosecute these bad guys. Emily Bazelon believes that there exists a mutual opposition relationship between the police and online activists and vigilantes. For example, in the case of a Canadian teenager Rehtaeh Parsons, mutual hostility can be seen. Rehtaeh Parsons, a teenage girl, had been raped (New York Times). Rehtaeh Hanged herself when she learned that her that photos of her rape incidence were circulating online and in her town as well. When the police received the information for this case, the police downplayed the case, and lastly, they said that the evidence they had gathered lacked the threshold of initiating charges against the offenders. However, following the force of the anonymous operatives and online activists, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police confirmed that they would reopen the case. Later, it is when two teenage boys were prosecuted and charged with circulating child pornography. The anonymous operatives are critical in this instance as they helped in the law enforcement of this particular case. Were it not for the anonymous activists force the circulators of Rehtaeh Parsons rape photos could have walked Scott free.

The prosecuting of online vigilantism is not effective. The prosecution is only of a handful vigilantes while other are set free with no legal issues put on them for their unlawful online actions. I believe that online anonymous operatives are significant on one hand and are harmful on the contrary. For instance, in the case of Rehtaeh Parsons, the unknown activists led to the charging of the circulators of Parsons Rape photos online (New York Times). Nevertheless, I support Emily Bazelon in her quest for justice for victims of adverse actions of anonymous operatives. There should be some strong law that limits the posting of nude photos online and that provides the procedure of prosecuting the online activists who act contrary to such law (LaRocca 225). The anonymous operatives also lead to the issue of false accusations for crime to some individuals who never committed a crime . People tend to be brainwashed away by the cases in news headlines, but they fail to understand that there could be false accusation for the offenders. Online activism and vigilantism have got some benefits and some drawbacks in equal measure. This action notwithstanding, I believe that the negatives of online vigilantism and activism bypass the positives by far.

The collective judgement of the team determines the involvement of the anonymous operatives in some instances. Their participation is random, but they always get their hands into matters of public interest and issues of national interest (Rodgers 110).There is no strict justice for limiting the activities of these online operatives. I believe that there is some institutional lapse, and some people are sleeping on the job. We need to look at the behavior of adults, teenagers, and institutions in fighting against online anonymous operatives. Online anonymous activists are happy when they learn that the authorities are completely unable to trace them and to stop their online activism and vigilantism. To this end, unknown operatives play the role of hero or the role of obstacles to justice. Sometimes, the unknown agents could hide the truth so that the prosecution of cases involving online activism and vigilantism does not go far. These activists act to impede the process of undertaking thorough investigations by the law enforcement agent. Leave alone the behavior of posting nude or porn photos online, and I also believe that online anonymous operatives increase mobilization of the masses, lead to hate speech and misconception of information especially in environments where politics are the order of the day (Earl et al. 147). Anonymous operatives could drive one political camp against another, and this could cause political instability and inter-tribal wars especially in countries where the ethical composition contains a myriad of ethnic groups. The war against online vigilantism and activism is not one that will be won by one agency alone. It is a war that requires coordination of forces so that unacceptable activities like the circulation of pornographic literature especially by teenagers and incentive are handled and eliminated by the law enforcement agencies (Rodgers 96). This war is a war that the law enforcers will not win alone. They must be supported by all including the community and by the institutions that use social media platforms. The law enforcement agents must also act in good faith to make sure that they conduct thorough investigations in cases that concentrate on online activism and vigilantism.

In conclusion, an analysis of the New York Times reveals that it published an article on internet activism and vigilante justice on January 20, 2014.The author of this article is Emily Bazelon. I strongly condemn this form of online activism where there is the circulation of rape photos online and where the police conduct shoddy investigations on cases involving anonymous operatives. I also feel that there is a need to enact strong laws that will only concentrate on the negatives of anonymous activists, online activism, and online vigilantism. Like in the case of
Rehtaeh Parsons, I believe that the police acted without seriousness. They only prosecuted the circulators of those photos, and they never charged the offenders. They could have used the information they had to arrest the people who raped Parsons. Rehtaeh Parsons could have saved her life if there was some strict law on circulation of Rape and other photos of such type. Vigilante justice thrives in societies where legal frameworks for punishing this crime are either inefficient, insufficient or are even non-existent. The introduction of a strict legal framework to punish those who perform the negatives of online activism and vigilantism is the only approach to help solve these issues (Hill 76). The police also need to conduct thorough assessments to prevent the idea of mistaken identities and false accusations.

Works Cited
"Behind the Cover Story: Emily Bazelon on Anonymous's Brand of Vigilante Justice - The New York Times." The 6th Floor Blog. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 May 2016.
Earl, Jennifer, and Katrina Kimport. Digitally Enabled Social Change: Activism in the Internet Age. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011. Print.
Earl, Jennifer, and Katrina Kimport. "Movement Societies and Digital Protest: Fan Activism and Other Nonpolitical Protest Online." Sociological Theory 27.3 (2009): 220-243. Print.
Engdahl, Sylvia. Internet Activism. N.p., 2013. Print.
Hill, Symon. Digital Revolutions: Activism in the Internet Age. Oxford: New Internationalist, 2013. Print.
Khosla, Anju. Mob Justice. New Delhi: SBS Publishers & Distributors, 2009. Print.
LaRocca, Michael. Vigilante Justice. Amherst Jct.: Hard Shell Word Factory, 2002. Print.
Rodgers, Jayne. Spatializing International Politics: Analysing Activism on the Internet. London: Routledge, 2003. Print.