EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Cyber Security

 cassie.lowery@bristol.ac.uk

Year 3 Student – 2021 Intake – Cohort 3

I have a social psychology background (MA Psychology, MSc Applied Social Psychology). Before coming to this CDT, I was primarily focused on inter and intra group processes within collective action contexts, such as protests and riots. I subsequently became interested in exploring this topic through studying online interactions and online behaviours. After working at the University of Bath in the CREST research group on projects related to online extremism, I'm keen to continue exploring the cyber security aspects of online group interactions and other topics within the intersection of cybersecurity and social psychology.

The relationship between crowdsourcing digital activism and cybersecurity

Technological advances have changed how groups organise and engage with collective action, and activists have often adapted new technologies to assist their changing needs (Sauter, 2013). Whilst new tools and tactics can provide activists with greater opportunities to advance their causes, they also potentially pose new security threats.

Already, activists have taken advantage of a wide range of existing technologies, from posting photos on Google reviews to evade censorship restrictions, to launching distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. The latter has been made increasingly easy to deploy, even by those with less technical acumen, with the invention of software such as Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC), and easily accessible online tools such as stressors and booters (Brooks et al., 2022; Karami & McCoy; Sauter, 2013). Often these technologically enhanced or enabled actions are enacted via large scale organisation on platforms such as Telegram or Twitter, where groups post open calls to take action, effectively crowdsourcing activism. Such threats impact not only the organisations and governments they target, and the online platforms in which they operate, but also the activists themselves.

This type of crowdsourced digital activism has been understudied by both technical cyber-security research and collective action research in psychology. To address these gaps within the research, an interdisciplinary approach will be adopted, combining the psychological and technological perspectives, to better understand the interplay between the technology, users, and the wider societal context.

This project will establish a thorough understanding of crowdsourced digital activism, the existing vulnerabilities these actions exploit, as well as considering trends and security threats we may face in future. Such work will enable avenues to understand, predict and, when necessary, counter the cybersecurity threats posed.

Supervisors: Dr Laura G.E. Smith (Bath), Dr Matthew Edwards (Bristol)

View poster here

EASP 19th General Meeting of the European Association of Social Psychology 2023 - Krakow, Blitz presentation, "Establishing a dimensional typology for digital collective actions" (https://easp2023krakow.com/program/)

Brown, O., Lowery, C., & Smith, L. G. E. (2022). How opposing ideological groups use online interactions to justify and mobilise collective action. European Journal of Social Psychology, 52, 1082–1110. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2886