Research on digital activism has gained traction in recent years. At the same time, it remains a diverse and open field that lacks a coherent mode of inquiry. For the better or worse, digital activism remains a fuzzy term. In this introduction to a special issue on digital activism, we review current attempts to periodize and historicize digital activism. Although there is growing body of research on digitial activism, many contributions remain limited through their ahistorical approach and the digital universalism that they imply. Based on the contributions to the special issue, we argue for studying digital activisms in a way that traverses a two-dimensional axis of digital technologies and activist practices, striking the balance between context and media-specificity.

As activists move from alternative media platforms to commercial social media platforms, they face increasing challenges in protecting their online security and privacy. While government surveillance of activists is well-documented in scholarly research and the media, corporate surveillance of activists remains under-researched. This article examines BP’s surveillance of activists who criticise the company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) programme as ‘greenwashing’. In this way, it goes beyond corporations’ uses of big data and instead explores how they monitor and discuss strategies for responding to the activities of individual activists in social media. It shows that while social media afford an unprecedented level of visibility for activists, it comes with the risk of being monitored by corporations. Theoretically, it draws on conceptions of visibility in social sciences and media studies as well as literature on activism and political participation in media studies. Empirically, it draws on files from BP on specific civil society individuals obtained through Subject Access Requests under the UK Data Protection Act 1998 as well as press responses from BP.

IJEG, a fully refereed journal, publishes articles that present current research and practice in all areas of electronic governance. Contents: IJEG publishes high quality original and review research papers, technical reports, conference reports, book reviews, notes, commentaries and news to keep readers at the forefront of the latest thinking and research in electronic governance, as well as case studies, management reports, practical applications, best practice reports and success stories to illustrate the design, implementation, development and management of electronic governance projects. IJEG publishes regular and special issues with themes that can alternate between different domains of electronic governance practice. Contribution to the journal may be by submission or invitation, and suggestions for special issues and publications are welcome.

The annual United Nations (UN) Framework Convention on Climate Change conferences provides a transnational mediation opportunity structure for activist networks to contest policies that favor market‐based models for solving the climate crisis. Online technologies, including commercial social media, have arguably increased possibilities for being involved in protests on a transnational level. However, this article shows how online modes of action privilege lobbying tactics over civil disobedience tactics, arguing that the former is often incommensurate with an anticapitalist climate approach to climate change activism. This impedes possibilities for using online media to protest at the radical end of the climate justice movement spectrum. This article explores this interrelationship between activist demands and (online) modes of action through a focus on the mobilization efforts of London‐based activists for the 17th UN climate conference in 2011.

This article sheds light on a challenge to the emancipatory potential of social media for social movements that has so far largely been overlooked: corporations’ monitoring of individuals. In this way, it goes beyond the ways in which corporations draw on ‘big data’ from online sources and instead explores how they (1) monitor and (2) discuss strategies for responding to the activities of individual activists, specifically in social media. Theoretically, it draws on Thompson’s concept of mediated visibility, Mouffe’s concept of the (post)political and Carpentier’s notion of the fantasy of the post-political. Empirically, it focuses on the oil industry and the climate justice movement in the United Kingdom. Here, it draws on files from British Petroleum (BP) and Shell on specific individuals obtained through Subject Access Requests under the Data Protection Act as well as press responses from the two oil companies.