When examining the notions of hacktivism and whistlebowers, the foundation of these concepts is found in the architecture of the medium that they utilise. This means that the network architecture formats the flow of information. In other words, distributed networks equals distributed control.
As individual nodes can broadcast to the entire network, these nodes now have limitless power and therefore the architecture is empowering.
And, voila. The electronic frontier!
The hacking subculture follows on very much from the concepts of the architecture such as free flowing information and individual empowerment. It’s aesthetic choice of anarchism follows on very much from the concept of a distributed network with it’s anti hierarchical attitudes.
This puts an interesting light on the way that society views both hackers and whistleblowers as from this lecture it seems they are just behaving the way that internet users are supposed to.
The Diary of a BCM Student 
You’ve taken a very technical approach with this weeks topic highlighting the architecture of the sub-culture. It would have been nice to see your understanding of the topic with the use of a medium such as a meme, prezi, YouTube video or podcast, some to think about in your next blog post. It would have been also nice to see you use an example to explain the hacker sub-culture or talk more about the different hacktivists out there such as Edward Snowden and Anonymous. These sources about the hacker sub-culture may be of use to you and expand on what you have already covered (https://sincdav.wordpress.com/2012/02/10/hacker-as-subculture/) and (http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/introduction.html).
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I really enjoyed your post and approach for this week! Touching on the effects of subculture really helped create a compelling argument. I do believe that the hacktivism puts an aesthetic choice of anarchism follows on very much from the concept of a distributed network with it’s anti hierarchical attitudes. It would of been great if you touched more on the prevalence of cyber attacks as well as group examples such as ‘Anonymous’ who’s full-blown cyberwar turned into a wave of attacks on pro-copyright and anti-piracy organisations, law firms and individuals. Take a look one of these events if you want more information: http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/669346/Anonymous-hackers-take-down-nine-banks-in-30-day-cyber-attack
Can’t wait to read more!
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Did you know results received by a survey (2016) commissioned by the Centre for International Governance Innovation revealed a majority 66% of global citizens believe hacktivist groups are breaking the law and should be stopped, while a sizeable portion (52%) also believe that hacktivist groups should step in when no one else will hold someone accountable (William, 2016). Just some facts to support some of the points you have raised earlier. Also I found this website really informative on the ins and outs of hacktivism http://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Hacktivism-Good-or-Evil
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I liked how you introduced societal views towards havtivists and whistleblowers. Why do we have so many negative attitudes towards them? Below is a link discussing who the ‘bad guy’ really is in this dynamic. Hope you have a read. http://ethics.csc.ncsu.edu/old/12_00/basics/whistle/rst/bad_guy.html
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