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environmental issues and corporate social responsibility, offering them free web
services. Greenpeace, the world's largest environmental activist group and one of
the first to initiate e-campaigns (Wasley 2007 ), has encouraged civil disobedience
using the web, circulated ''subvertisements'' that undermine Coca Cola's allegedly
ecofriendly public image ( www.cokespotlight.org ) , and empowered victims of the
Bhopal chemical disaster in India. Ecological Internet, run by forest activist Glenn
Barry, runs continuous cyber-campaigns on issues such as global warming, rain-
forest protection, and sustainable development.
Within the growing domain of animal rights activism, the internet plays a key
role (Herzog et al. 1997 ; Swan and McCarthy 2003 ). This issue takes several
forms. At some universities, for example, activists protesting the mistreatment of
laboratory animals used the internet to publicize their cause. People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals (PETA) has deployed the internet to expose cases of animal
cruelty and lobby for more human treatment, including the use of Facebook pages,
streaming videos, and blogs. Others have mounted successful cybercampaigns to
publicize the mistreatment of greyhounds and horses used for racing; decry the
sale of fur from baby seals, reindeer, and chinchillas; illuminate the plight of stray
pets; raise funds for humane societies; expose animal mistreatment in zoos and
circuses; mobilize against the use of whale sharks in commercial aquaria; circulate
petitions to ban whaling; bring sadists who abuse animals to justice; organize
boycotts of cosmetic companies that use animal products gained under unsavory
conditions; promote spay and neuter programs; advocate vegetarianism; unveil the
inhumanity of factory farms; reduce the human consumption of dogs and cats in
China; and raise funds for wildlife habitat protection. Militant animal rights
activists can use anonymizing contacts to coordinate disparate cells and evading
filters to ensure that their message gets through to target email accounts. Stop
Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC), for example, is an international campaign to
shut down Huntingdon Life Sciences, Europe's largest animal-testing laboratory;
SHAC describes itself as ''leaderless resistance'' coordinated entirely over
cyberspace. Similarly, the Animal Liberation Front has launched repeated internet
stalking campaigns against firms engaged in animal testing and cruelty. Of course,
the internet may also enable phenomena such as illegal trade in wildlife, allowing
buyers and sellers to be anonymous.
The blogosphere has become an increasingly important terrain over which con-
temporary politics is constituted. Of course, conservative bloggers also deploy the
medium aggressively (e.g., the Drudge Report), and in the early days of blogging
were far more successful than leftists. However, whereas conservative blogs tend to
reinforce the views of their offline constituencies, progressive ones have focused
more on reaching out to new participants and building online communities of
activists (Bowers and Stoller 2005 ). Thus, in 2005, the largest 150 U.S. conservative
blogs attracted 10 million page views per week, while the largest 98 liberal blogs
attracted 15 million. Progressive blogging including ''warblogs'' that challenged the
rationale for the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, exposing racist remarks by Republican
Speaker of the House Trent Lott, attacking George W. Bush's scheme to privatize
Social Security, and providing real time, alternative media coverage of major events
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