این متن را با ذکر تمام تیترهایش (تاکید میکنم تمام تیترهایش) به انگلیسی ساده و روان خلاصه کن     PART  TWO 

Internet Activism for Media Reform

CHAPTER THREE 

Activating the Fifth Estate
Bill C-30 and the Digitally Mediated Public Watchdog
j ONATHAN A . OBAR, York University, Canada
LESLIE R EGAN SHADE , University of Toronto, Canada



MEDIA REFORM STRATEGY 
Operating outside the framework of traditional systems of governance and civic engagement, the digitally mediated, networked society referred to as the Fifth Estate presents the general public with a unique opportunity to reinvigorate the public watchdog function. While previous discussions of the Fifth Estate have emphasized that the communicative power it enables can help to hold government accountable, speciﬁc strategies have yet to be clearly identiﬁed. This chapter pres- ents three strategies for activating a digitally mediated Fifth Estate: (1) building an online community of networked individuals, (2) shaping preexisting digital platforms to enable members of the public to contribute focused and pointed user- generated content, and (3) developing targeted content to be shared and distributed. Examples of these three strategies, respectively, include (1) the Stop Online Spying coalition (building community); (2) online petitions, digital form letters, and the
TellVicEverything Twitter attack (shaping platforms); and (3) OpenMedia’s Stop Online Spying web materials, various online videos, and the Vikileaks Twitter attack (targeted content). This discussion is presented in the context of the success- ful media reform battle to defeat Canada’s Bill C-30, an attempt by the Canadian government to expand upon its cyber-surveillance capabilities.

In February 2013, when the Canadian government canceled its plans to pass Bill C-30, it appeared to be a victory for the digitally mediated, networked society referred to as the Fifth Estate. Commonly referred to as the Lawful

 
Access Bill, C-30 was an attempt to expand upon the cyber-surveillance capa- bilities of the Canadian government. After introducing the bill a year earlier, there were no public hearings, no formal calls for public comment, and no reports of Members of Parliament being ﬂooded with phone calls;  yet on Feb- ruary 11, 2013 when Justice Minister Rob Nicholson announced the govern- ment’s decision to cancel the bill, he explained, “we’ve listened to the concerns of Canadians who have been very clear on this” (Payton 2013). This raises the question, if no traditional methods of public consultation were pursued, how was such a clear and convincing message of public dissent advanced?
This chapter discusses the public outcry generated in opposition to Bill C-30, led by the media reform group OpenMedia, and suggests that the upris- ing provides an example of a digitally mediated Fifth Estate inﬂuencing gov- ernment policy. It is also suggested that this inﬂuence may have been advanced by a watchdog function exercised by the Fifth Estate in which members of the general public, independent of a watchdog press, contributed to holding the government to public account. While previous discussions of the Fifth Estate have emphasized that the communicative power it enables has the ability to hold government to account (e.g., Dutton 2008, 2009), speciﬁc strategies for activating the Fifth Estate have yet to be clearly identiﬁed. As a result, while media reformers may draw a sense of excitement from success stories like the battle over the Stop Online Piracy Act/Protect IP Act (SOPA/PIPA), the meth- ods and strategies for replication need further clariﬁcation. In what follows, we present a brief discussion of the Fifth Estate, followed by the context of the Bill C-30 debate. Next, we present three strategies for activating a digitally mediated Fifth Estate, drawn from the C-30 case study. These three strategies include: (1) building an online community of networked individuals, (2) shap- ing preexisting digital platforms to enable members of the public to contribute focused and pointed user-generated content, and (3) developing targeted con- tent to be shared and distributed.

THE FIFTH ESTAT E
The historical conceptualization of the three “estates of the realm” described the hierarchically conceived power structure of feudal society. At the top of the hier- archy was the First Estate, referring to the clergy, the Second Estate referred to the nobility, and the Third Estate referred to the commoners. The extent to which this hierarchy has evolved into more contemporary forms of societal governance has been a point of contention (e.g., Pollard 1920). For instance, it has been suggested that in the United Kingdom, the three estates evolved into the leaders of the Church of England (clergy), the House of Lords (nobility), and the House of Commons (commons); whereas in the United States, the estate model contributed to the separation of powers in the executive, legislative, and
 
judicial branches of government. Whether or not the concept of the estates of the realm is still relevant, their depiction of a hierarchical societal power structure has contributed to relevant conceptualizations of a Fourth and now Fifth Estate that highlight newer collaborative opportunities for challenging the established soci- etal order, as highlighted by the case study presented here.

THE FOURTH ESTATE : THE pRESS AS wATCHDOG 
Drawing from the “estates of the realm” conceptualization more than two hundred years ago, Edmund Burke used the term Fourth Estate to describe an independent press operating outside of the established societal order (Carlyle 1905). In years following, autonomy, independence, and the ability to directly and antagonistically challenge dominant groups operationalized a watchdog function central to the Fourth Estate (Donohue, Tichenor, and Olien 1995). This watchdog function describes an intermediary role played by the press that helps to facilitate representative democracy. In this role, the press surveils and reports on entities that comprise the societal power structure to hold them to public account. As described by Donohue et al. (1995, 112), “Such an idea of press surveillance has been basic to the ideology of popular and representative government, because it springs from the idea of the populace as sovereign and entering into a social contract with a governing establishment that will serve popular interests.”

THE FIFTH ESTATE : THE NETwORKED p UBLIC AS wATCHDOG 
Whether it is a response to the inability of the Fourth Estate to maintain the watchdog function in light of commercial or political conﬂicts of interest, or an extension of a longstanding democratic ideal requiring public involvement in societal governance, the Fifth Estate refers to the notion that members of the public can exercise a similar watchdog function independent of the Fourth Estate. While some scholars attribute the Fifth Estate designation to a variety of inﬂuential groups including scientiﬁc experts (Little 1924), nongovernmen- tal organizations (Eizenstat 2004), news media critics (Hayes 2008), and even satirical news show like Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show (Reilly 2010) others see the Internet as central to contemporary conceptualizations, suggesting that networked individuals operating in the digital space represent the latest itera- tion of the Fifth Estate (Cooper 2006; Dutton 2008; Dutton 2009). These networked individuals build relationships, share information, and create, col- laborate, and mobilize online, and in the process, reconﬁgure access to alterna- tive sources of information, individuals, and resources. As Dubois and Dutton (2014, 239) note, “in doing so (this digitally-mediated Fifth Estate) can fulﬁll
 	
many of the same functions of holding up the activities of government, busi- ness, and other institutions to the light of a networked public” (ibid., 239). Indeed, it appears that among the political beneﬁts of the Internet is the notion that this remarkable increase in our ability to create, collaborate, share, and mobilize, grows increasingly possible outside the limited framework of tradi- tional institutions and organizations (Shirky 2008).
This leads us to ask, how can media reformers activate the Fifth Estate? How can they engender a focused and pointed public watchdog? The Bill C-30 case study presents an example of how media reformers might attempt to activate the power of such a networked public.

THE CONTEXT: CANADA’ S BILL C   
On Valentines Day (February 14) in 2012, an eﬀort led by Public Safety Minis- ter Vic Toews saw the Canadian Federal Government introduce Bill C-30 into the House of Commons of Canada (HCC 2012). Commonly referred to as the Lawful Access Bill, C-30 was an attempt to expand upon the search and seizure, interception, surveillance, collection, and decryption capabilities of Canadian law enforcement, with the primary goal of removing the legal and technical barriers inhibiting seamless access to information held in private Internet and mobile accounts. The latest incarnation of a string of attempts to pass lawful access legislation dating back to 1999, the bill proposed the enactment of the Investigating and Preventing Criminal Electronic Communications Act as well as amendments to the Criminal Code of Canada and two other complemen- tary acts. Speciﬁc provisions included:

The Canadian government would be authorized to force telecommunication companies to install surveillance equipment (hardware and software) to enable a constant ﬂow of data between the providers and law enforce- ment agencies. The companies would be required to cover the cost of these installations (which would likely be passed to the consumer).
The mandating of warrantless disclosures of subscriber information and data.
An enhanced ability to obtain transmission data warrants granting real- time access to all information generated during the creation, transmission, or reception of a communication, and preservation orders requiring providers to preserve that information.
The granting of these capabilities to law enforcement agencies, the Cana- dian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Competition Bureau of Canada as well as any public oﬃcer “appointed or designated to administer or enforce a federal or provincial law.”
 
A gag order that would have limited privacy protections provided in PIPEDA (Canadian privacy legislation) prohibiting telecommunication providers from informing users that they are the subject of a lawful access investigation. (HCC, 2012)

In case the Canadian government found themselves limited by the changes made by this bill at some point in the future, a catch-all was also included in Section 64, providing additional regulatory power “generally, for carrying out the purposes and provisions of this Act” (Geist 2012).
During the C-30 debate, the Canadian government cited the need to ratify the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime and increase cooperation on international investigations as one impetus for the bill. The other was to protect children, even though the actual content of the bill contained no men- tion of children or predators except in its eventual title. The latter point became central to the debate for two reasons. The ﬁrst was that the title was apparently changed after the bill was sent to the printer, and coupled with the lack of language in the bill about protecting children, suggested that the Conservative government was acting disingenuously. The second reason resulted from a related comment made by Public Safety Minister Vic Toews. While introduc- ing the bill in the House of Commons, Toews shot back at a Liberal opponent who critiqued it, quipping that “he can either stand with us or with the child pornographers” (CBC 2012). It is possible that Toews’s comment, and the dis- ingenuous nature of the name change contributed to the considerable backlash (against Toews in particular) that eventually led to the bill’s demise.
One year later, without having formally consulted with the Canadian pub- lic, Canada’s Conservative government canceled its plans to pass C-30. On February 11, 2013, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said: “We will not be pro- ceeding with Bill C-30, and any attempts . . . to modernize the Criminal Code will not contain the measures contained in C-30, including the warrantless mandatory disclosure of basic subscriber information or the requirement for telecommunications service providers to build intercept capability within their systems” (Payton 2013). The minister oﬀered a clear justiﬁcation for this decision, “We’ve listened to the concerns of Canadians who have been very clear on this” (ibid.).
What contributed to this about-face? The remainder of this chapter suggests that the clear and convincing message of public dissent may have been advanced by a digitally mediated Fifth Estate. Three strategies media reformers should consider when trying to activate the Fifth Estate, drawn from the C-30 case study will be discussed: (1) building an online community of networked indi- viduals, (2) shaping preexisting digital platforms to enable members of the public to contribute focused and pointed user-generated content, and (3) developing targeted content to be shared and distributed.
 
STRATEGY  : B UILDING AN ONLINE COMMUNIT Y OF NET W ORKED INDIVIDU ALS 

Activist groups are using the Internet to advance organizational goals, and have been doing so for more than ﬁfteen years. Since the earliest instances of online activism, one of the central strategies deployed has been the building of online communities. For example, in 1997, the Preamble Collaborative organized a network of groups via its website, in opposition to the OECD’s Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), an agreement that dealt with trade between the twenty-nine OECD countries (Kobrin 1998). When an early draft of the MAI was leaked, the preexisting network allowed the draft to be shared quickly and widely, contributing to an outpouring of opposition to the OECD’s plans. These eﬀorts contributed to the halting of the MAI negotiations, and then the closing of the negotiations (Neumayer 1999).
Since the MAI, a wide variety of similar eﬀorts have demonstrated how the development of online communities allows networks of individuals and groups to quickly and eﬀectively mobilize around a particular issue. Another early example was the “Battle of Seattle” where a community of advocacy organiza- tions combined online and oﬄine activism eﬀorts to successfully halt a WTO event (Carty 2010). One other early example of online community building took place when some of the groups involved created the Independent Media Center website (now referred to as Indymedia). An early version of an interac- tive social media site, the Indymedia website was designed to allow anyone to post information, whether it was text or audiovisual material in real-time, “and set the model for a many-to-many use of the media whereby activists can sub- vert the traditional one-to-many approach under mainstream and corporate media” (ibid., 2).
The Stop Online Spying campaign (see Table 1) that developed in opposition to Canada’s Bill C-30 serves as a more recent example of how building an online community of networked individuals can be an eﬀective strategy for activating the Fifth Estate.

THE STO p ONLINE S p YING CAmpAIGN 
For months leading up to the anticipated introduction of Bill C-30 into Parlia- ment (February 2012), a protracted campaign involving a range of civil libertar- ian and public interest groups, alongside an array of citizens and academics spoke out against the bill. The eﬀort coalesced under the Stop Online Spying campaign organized by Canadian media reform group OpenMedia—a small, Vancouver-based civil society organization that has been in operation since 2008. They joined legal experts who raised serious concerns about the bill’s violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and privacy com-
 
missioners from across the country, concerned about the signiﬁcant impact on privacy rights. OpenMedia, which developed and now maintains an online community of more than six hundred thousand members, has quickly estab- lished itself as one of the major players in the battle to reform the Canadian media and telecommunications systems. In June 2011, months before the intro- duction of Bill C-30, OpenMedia launched the Stop Online Spying campaign by bringing together a coalition of forty-two organizations to serve as oﬃcial members of the campaign (see Table 1). To join the coalition, members had to agree to a position statement articulating that the government should recon- sider their lawful access legislation.

TABLE 1. STO p ONLINE S p YING COALITION , OFFICIAL mEmBERS 
Charter Members
Association for Progressive Communications British Columbia Civil Liberties Association
BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association Canadian Civil Liberties Association
Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations Canadian Federation of Students
Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic Electronic Frontier Foundation
Greenpeace
International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group Ligue Des Droits Et Libertés
OpenMedia.ca
Rocky Mountain Civil Liberties Association The Tyee
Union Des Consommateurs

 

Agentic
 
Associate Members
 
BC Association for Media Education
Canadian Association of Campus and Community Television User Groups and Stations Canadian Association of University Teachers
Canadian Dimension
Canadian Union of Public Employees
Civil Liberties Association, National Capital Region Council of Canadians
Canadian Media Guild
Community Media Education Society Democracy Watch
 
The Edmonton Small Press Association Hospital Employees’ Union
The Infoscape Research Lab Koumbit
Media Action Megaphone Magazine
National Campus-Community Radio Association National Union of Public and General Employees NewsWatch Canada
Obercor Technologies Sorrell Financial
The Vancouver Observer W2 Community Media Arts White Rose Coﬀeehouse Wilderness Committee
World Association of Christian Communication North America

The Stop Online Spying campaign was much larger than these forty-two groups however. Academics, activists, journalists, lawyers, media makers, media reformers and a wide variety of individuals and organizations connected to the campaign through the various digital platforms that were shaped and widely shared to enable participation in the debate. As discussed in the next section, by providing platforms and outlets for individuals to express them- selves and organize, a wide variety of individuals and organizations (oﬃcially and unoﬃcially) joined the online community of networked individuals that added their voices to the Bill C-30 opposition.

STRATEGY  : SHAP ING PREEXISTING DIGITAL PL ATFORMS 

Two recent surveys of advocacy organizations operating in Canada and the United States assessed the extent to which social media aﬀord opportunities for advancing activism objectives (Obar, Zube, and Lampe 2012; Obar 2014). Of the various beneﬁcial aﬀordances identiﬁed, the most common aﬀordance expressed by the 116 groups surveyed suggests that social media can amplify an organiza- tion’s message by strengthening outreach eﬀorts and facilitating communication with a large number of individuals. OpenMedia was one of the groups surveyed and noted: “As an organization that facilitates social change through participa- tory decision-making, it is hugely important to have these low-cost, low-barrier tools to allow us to reach thousands, to receive feedback, and to build communi- ties online” (Obar 2014, 222).
 
At the same time, among the concerns expressed was the notion that while social media can make it easy to participate and provide opportunities for cre- ating all types of user-generated content, from a multitude of sources, this ease of use and access can make it diﬃcult for organizations to speak with a uniﬁed, coherent voice. One large advocacy organization operating in the United States said, “in large organizations use of social media can be diﬀuse, with not all users being qualiﬁed ‘spokespeople,’ meaning that there may be a well-meaning person who says the wrong thing” (Obar, Zube, and Lampe 2012, 17).
While the Fifth Estate introduces the exciting possibility of an expanded marketplace of ideas operating outside the purview of the traditional outlets for news and information, message focus is introduced as a relative drawback to this expanded access and ease of use. When Justice Minister Rob Nicholson stated, “We’ve listened to the concerns of Canadians who have been very clear on this,” he suggested that the dissent in opposition to Bill C-30 had been rela- tively clear. The shaping of preexisting digital platforms to enable focused and pointed user-generated content presents one strategy that may have contrib- uted to this outcome. The following sections summarize a number of examples of this strategy that appeared during the C-30 debate.

ONLINE pETITIONS 
One of the more straightforward methods was to create online petitions to be shared and signed by the online community. Petitions allow for the shaping of a clear position statement as well as a limited and focused way for supporters to connect their voice. The beneﬁts of focus resulting from these limitations could also be considered drawbacks, as limited participation can be perceived as “slacktivism” or an inaccurate reﬂection of the public’s opinion (Obar 2014; Obar and Argast 2014). This emphasizes one reason why petitions serve an important purpose, but are strengthened by complementary strategies.
Both the Stop Online Spying coalition and the Liberal government released online petitions that were shared by their online networks, with the coalition’s petition being signed by more than 150,000 individuals, and the Liberal gov- ernment’s by more than 35,000. It is worth noting that this considerable dif- ference in the number of signatures hints again at the role of the Fifth Estate in the C-30 debate, with more members of the general public seeming to engage with the coalition of activists, rather than with government representatives.

TwITTER ATTACKS—TELLvICEvERYTHING 
A few days after C-30 was introduced, Robert Jensen, a member of the Cana- dian public living on the eastern coast of Canada (Prince Edward Island), initi- ated a focused and pointed Twitter attack against Vic Toews, the public face of
 
C-30. Jensen encouraged his Twitter followers to ﬂood Toews’ account with tweets, organized around the TellVicEverything hashtag. Jensen described his strategy in an interview, “The logic was: Vic, if you want our personal informa- tion we will give it to you, here are the mundane details of our lives” (Dubois and Dutton 2014, 88). Jensen went on to say that the goal was to “laugh Vic out” (ibid., 89). TellVicEverything quickly went viral and became a top-trending topic in Canada, with celebrities and politicians also getting involved. Thou- sands of messages were posted providing inane and mundane commentary on everyday experiences:

LAURA: I’m so sleepy today but I have to wake up and get on with my schoolwork so I can save the world in future.
LUCY: . . . drinking some coﬀee. Might go hiking if it’s not too slippery out. I have a blister on my heel :(
jASON: Morning . . . I’ve showered, shaved, and made toast. The peanut butter was chunky . . .
mICHAEL: You’re so vain You probably think my email’s about you . . .
Some of the tweets more directly combined the use of irony with a pointed critique of the lawful access legislation:
KEvIN: ‘Hey @ToewsVic, I lost an email from my work account yester- day. Can I get your copy?’
STEvE: ‘Hey @ToewsVic I have 2 confess, I was a over speed-limit a bit on 404 today. U won’t tell the @OPP_GTATraﬃc will you?’
While Jensen’s strategy appeared to involve humorously giving Toews a taste of his own medicine, the broader results of the attacks included a focused and pointed expression of public opposition, as well as evidence of a groundswell of dissent.  Similar  to  the  petition  strategy,  by  creating  the  TellVicEverything hashtag and the humorous and ironic theme of revealing personal information about yourself, Jensen shaped the overall message, while providing a platform for members of the general public to convey the strength behind that message.

SEND v IC TOEw S A vALENTINE 

Anticipating the introduction of the bill into Parliament in early February, OpenMedia set up a website that oﬀered individuals the ability to print out a Valentines Day card to be sent to Vic Toews. OpenMedia’s site noted: “This month, send Hon. Vic Toews a Valentine informing him that you oppose the Online Spying legislation. Follow the link, print out the valentine, and send oﬀ your most intimate feelings regarding the legislation. No postage required!” The card itself included the following statement: “Dear Minister Toews: I oppose mandatory internet surveillance. This scheme is poorly thought out,
 
costly, and will leave my personal information less secure. Unchecked mass surveillance is a breach of my fundamental right to privacy.”
OpenMedia’s Valentines Day card was another example of people using the Internet to provide a platform for members of the Fifth Estate to express a focused and pointed opinion about C-30. Both the form text and the irony of the card’s theme focused the pointed message.

E - m AIL YOUR m E m BER OF pARLIAmENT 
OpenMedia added an online tool to their website that allowed members of the public to write their Member of Parliament (MP). The site stated:
The government has just tabled an online spying plan that will allow au- thorities to access the private information of any Canadian at any time, without a warrant. If they are successful your personal information could be caught up in a digital dragnet and entered into a giant unsecure registry of private data. . . . If we care about privacy, the open Internet, our economy and our basic democratic rights, it’s time to tell Ottawa to stop this irresponsible plan NOW.
The site then included a form letter (that could not be modiﬁed) to be sent to an MP. Users were asked to input their names, addresses, and postal codes, and after clicking “Send it now,” it is assumed that the message was sent by OpenMedia to various MPs associated with the postal code.

w RITE A LETTER TO THE EDITOR 
OpenMedia created an online tool similar to the e-mail your MP tool after the Bill C-30 battle that remains on their website as a part of the ongoing campaign to combat lawful access initiatives.  This online tool enables members of the public to easily write letters to newspaper editors. Once on the site, users type in their postal code and are then provided with a list of newspapers in the user’s area. Checkboxes are included next to each newspaper which, when selected, direct the tool to automatically send the letter to the corresponding editors via e-mail. Once the checkboxes are selected, users are prompted to include an e-mail subject line with the suggestion “Letter to the Editor: Protect Our Pri- vacy.” Below the subject box is a statement which reads: “Please personalize your letter by editing the talking points below so they are in your own words. This will give your letter more impact and make it much more likely to get published.” As you scroll down the page there is a large text box allowing for three hundred words to be typed. Below the box is a list of key talking points and tips that users are encouraged to consider while writing their letters. When ﬁnished, users then ﬁll in some personal information (name, e-mail, and phone number) and submit the letter. It is unclear how many individuals have used
 
this online tool to speak out against government surveillance; however, the tool serves as an interesting example of a platform for encouraging focused and pointed user-generated content.

STRATEGY  : DE VEL OP ING TA R GETED CONTENT TO BE SHARED AND DISTRIB UTED 
A related strategy for activating the Fifth Estate and also for ensuring a focused and pointed message is to create targeted content to be shared and distributed. This strategy predates Web 2.0, and is very similar to many oﬄine strategies that have involved the sharing of predetermined text, images, audio, video, and so on. The digitally mediated examples drawn from the C-30 debate do empha- size an expanded set of opportunities for creating digital content as well as sharing that content via social networks.

ONLINE vIDEOS 
University of Toronto researchers Andrew Clement and Kate Milberry pro- duced an early video as part of the New Transparency: Surveillance and Social Sorting research project. Titled (Un)Lawful Access: Experts Line Up Against Online Spying, the video was meant for viral and educational distribution and was also part of screenings held across the country.  OpenMedia also produced professional online videos that were designed to go viral. In OpenMedia’s vid- eos, citizens were seen doing ordinary things, when members of Canadian law enforcement surprised them with a form of surveillance. One video showed a woman walking alone down the street when her cell phone rings. She picks it up and starts talking. As she holds the phone to her ear an oﬃcer’s hand comes in from the left side and pulls the phone over to his ear (see Figure 3-1). A caption on the screen then reads: “You wouldn’t let a police oﬃcer do this without a warrant . . . So why should your online communication be any dif-


FIGURE 3-1. Still from an OpenMedia video (YouTube).
 
ferent.     Find out more at stopspying.ca.” OpenMedia’s videos have been
viewed more than one hundred thousand times.
Hacker group Anonymous also released a related video under the project name “Operation White North.” Their videos were clustered on the YouTube channel, Operation VicTory. Their ﬁrst video release featured a narration rendered in their distinctive (male) robotic voice:
Hello <PRESIDIO_ANONYMIZED_PERSON>: We are Anonymous. Recently you have tried to reintro- duce the Internet spy bill known as Bill C-30. You claim this bill is to protect children from Internet predators. All this legislation does is give your cor- rupted government more power to control its citizens. Anonymous will not stand for this.
Now after a severe Internet backlash you have decided to backtrack and bring this before a committee. This is not good enough. We demand that you scrap the bill in its entirely and step down as safety minister. We know all about you Mr. Toews, and during Operation White North we will release what we have, unless you scrap this bill.
We told you to expect us. We are Legion.
We do not forgive.
We are here.

wEBSITES AND mEmES 

Websites, graphics and other imagery peppered the Internet. One website, isvictoewswatchingme.com, displayed the line: “yes. but he didn’t know” (link- ing to a CBC news article where Toews denied knowing the content of the bill), and “you can still stop him” (linking to the stop online spying petition). Another site featured the popular “ceiling cat” meme, with Toews image in place of the cat’s (see Figure 3-2).


FIGURE 3-2. The Vic Toews “ceiling cat” meme.
 
Vikileaks
A few days after the announcement of C-30 in early February 2012, an anony- mous individual created the Twitter account @vikileaks30 (see Figure 3-3). The account name was a direct reference to Wikileaks, a highly publicized eﬀort to bring information kept secret by various powerful institutions to public light. The purpose of the account was made clear on the Twitter page: “Vic wants to know about you. Let’s get to know Vic.” Vikileaks tweeted over ninety personal and professional details about Minister Toews, airing his dirty domestic laun- dry: his divorce from his former wife after an extramarital aﬀair with a younger woman who was perhaps his child’s babysitter, resulting in the birth of a child, his restaurant expenditures, and so on. The Vikileaks content quickly became a nationwide story, receiving a considerable amount of popular press coverage. Parliamentary investigation into the origins of the Twitter account was to be initiated by the Speaker of Parliament, but it was soon revealed that a Liberal Party staﬀ member in the party’s research bureau was the perpetrator—and he quickly resigned his position (Fitzpatrick 2012).


FIGURE 3-3. Vikileaks Twitter account.

OTHER FOR m S OF CONTENT 
OpenMedia’s Stop Online Spying website hosted a variety of diﬀerent types of content that could be shared. This included targeted social media notes (pre- written Facebook posts and tweets), code for embedding a petition on a web- site, code for displaying badges and ads of the Stop Online Spying images (see Figure 4), audio PSAs about lawful access, digital posters and handbills, FAQs,
 
 

FIGURE 3-4. Stop Online Spying campaign.


and talking points. OpenMedia also shared a report by the BC Civil Liberties Association called “Moving Toward a Surveillance Society,”   and included a variety of other links to articles and websites of interest.

CONCL USION 
Public involvement in government decision-making has been lauded histori- cally for its ability to act as a government watchdog, contributing to protec- tions against economic, social, and moral stratiﬁcations, narrow-mindedness, bias, impropriety, and even tyranny (Obar 2010; OECD 2001; Walker 1966). Articulated in many forms over many years going back at least to ancient Ath- ens, the watchdog function of the public has been seen as central to the demo- cratic concept, and necessary for a free and just society. As Thomas Jeﬀerson wrote in the US Declaration of Independence:
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to eﬀect their Safety and Happiness.
A digitally mediated Fifth Estate presents a unique opportunity for members of the public to exercise this watchdog function. This renewed opportunity for public involvement in societal governance is especially welcome in the twenty- ﬁrst century, at a time when there continue to be many barriers to public par- ticipation that limit democratic possibilities (Schejter and Obar 2009; Obar and Schejter 2010). The SOPA/PIPA victory in the United States generated a sense of excitement over the democratic possibilities of the Fifth Estate. What remains however, is the need for a set of strategies that can enable replication. This chapter suggested three strategies that media reformers can consider when attempting to activate the Fifth Estate. The ﬁrst strategy, building an online community of networked individuals, has, since the earliest days of online
 
activism, been a mainstay for successful digital mobilizations, and thus, is an appropriate place to begin. The second strategy, shaping preexisting digital platforms to enable members of the public to contribute focused and pointed user-generated content, emphasizes the need to direct the lifeblood of the social media organism. User-generated content can send a powerful message to those in power, but only if that message is clear. The third strategy, developing targeted content to be shared and distributed, helps to further the previous two strategies by both providing individuals with materials to share for the purpose of community-building, while also contributing to the strength of a focused and pointed message.
Indeed, by circumventing the Fourth Estate, and operating outside the framework of traditional systems of governance and engagement, the digitally mediated Fifth Estate presents the general public with a unique opportunity to reinvigorate the public watchdog function. The uprising that resulted in the response to Bill C-30 provides an important case study, and suggests that online activism, if strategically activated and coordinated, can, independent of tradi- tional methods of public consultation, help to hold institutional power struc- tures to account.