Cyberactivism and Virtual Communities: A Study on the Movement Anti-Globe

Abstract

Protests are arising within cyberspace and among them is resistance to brands and consumption. The Internet has increasingly become a forum where individual claims are no longer private and become public which mobilizes other consumers about practices and injustices caused by the organizations. This study is a qualitative study that analyzed the behavior and the reasons for resistance to Globo in virtual communities. Virtual communities dedicated to resistance to this organization are in the hundreds networking site Orkut. An investigation was conducted on five selected communities with the largest number of members. To accomplish this goal nethnography was chosen as a way of investigating the behavior of participants in these communities. The researchers immersed themselves in the communities to make observations in these communities and copy data from virtual forums. From the observations of interactions in communities and content analysis five reasons were identified for the resistance to the organization and cyber-activism.