Mediation as the in-between space of hacktivist subjectivities

Hacktivism emerged with the mass diffusion of digital networks as a concept able to encapsulate and map forms of social and political opposition articulated through the internet. Despite the recurrent criminalisation of this set of phenomena as cyberterrorism or cybercrime, hacktivism seems to readvocate the internet as a place for political action, understanding and contrasting the novel forms of power rearticulated through digital networks. Within an historical phase characterised by mass commodification of the web, the growth of capitalisation of immaterial share, and of forms of mass surveillance and preemptive control, the practices of resistance through networked media have radicalised. These reaffirmed the internet not just as a simple communicative sphere, where political activities can be organised and coordinated, but also as a space in which political dissent can be materially deployed, affecting informative flows, and articulate resistant subjectivities.The concept is recovered and suggested as an in-between space of mediation, a heterogeneous and resistant ‘ecology’ into which creative approaches to digital media and networks – originated in the computing subculture – and grassroots practices of political participation and cooperation can merge, enriching and overlapping each other towards unforeseen and always emergent forms of opposition.