Pete Sherman
7/20/16
Maj. Garriott
Project 3
ERH 101-03
Anonymous
Anonymous is a hacktavist organization that addresses issues of the world and has become famous with cyber attacks on ISIS and its involvement with world events. Recently they have been talking about Hillary and have been addressing the world and America to tell them about the distress of the world. This group mainly focuses on electronic, specifically computer coding and hacking into databases and organizations. This group takes on a perspective that fuses both politics and computer science to address issues that are brought up around the world, while lately focusing on what has been happening in America. Anonymous successfully created a blog that allows people of all levels to read about politics and hacking while also being able to understand what they are reading. Anonymous is asserted as a part of the animal rights discourse through focusing on the issue of Harambe and his shooting and is supported by relating to how Anonymous fits into Swales six theories of a discourse community.
The specific articles and documentaries that will be analyzed, talks about Operation Harambe and the Movement of Anonymous. Operation Harambe was a movement to bring retribution to Michelle Greg and the Cincinnati Zoo after Michelle Greg fail to parent her child and allow her son to climb into a gorilla enclosure and ending with the zoo shooting and killing the gorilla, after it had taken the child to a corner to protect it from any other harm. Anonymous’ purpose of Operation Harambe was to bring attention to the world about the unawareness of the public on true issues that affect the world as a whole. One specific issue arises as the Cincinnati Zoo took no extra measures to try and secure the child’s safety and decided to go to the last resort by killing the gorilla, which was an endangered silver back gorilla. In addition, they ask for support on having Michelle Greg being investigated by child protective services in a rare case where it truly should be used in a good and reasoned way. In Anonymous’ movement video, the narrator talks about the movement of technology and the incursion of privacy around the world and how a group have appointed themselves as guardians for the people to protect them from an “oppressive” government, while maintaining anonymity.
The first characteristic of Swales conceptualization of a Discourse Community is that “a discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals” (Swales). From the two articles that were looked at by Anonymous, a reader can see specifically that one of the main public goals or rules of the community encompassed around Anonymous is that they only talk about issues that make a true impact on the world or society. This viewed rule is such that it restricts what Anonymous can talk about in their blogs. In such cases, with Operation Harambe, the fact that the zoo had gone and taken final resorts as their first choice tactic for handling the situation with something that was endangered shows that they disregarded the fact that the animal had a life too, even if it was in an enclosed space (Anonymous). Anonymous took this specific case especially hard, as it was a situation/event that was not handled properly by the media and was being falsified by the news and the zoo (Anonymous). This is important because it fully shows how this issue follows how Anonymous is trying to bring attention to large-scale things that are brushed off as accidents or a falsified event. In addition to this “viewed” rule or a rule that can be seen by reading through a site or an organizations page, a few other standard public goals of Anonymous are listed out in their the Movement video explaining what Anonymous is all about and what their purpose for creating themselves was (Anonymous). Some of these include the common goal to create a better international community and society and to bring awareness to the world of the issues that relate to Animal Rights (Anonymous).
The second characteristic of a Discourse Community is that “a discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members” (Swales). Just by looking and clicking a few of the blogs/vlogs that Anonymous gets information around to its discourse community through documentaries about issues that have risen in the world and also by creating reports about these issues (Anonymous). In the post about Operation Harambe, Anonymous also uses sharing the information learned from the post through social media to communicate between the people of the community and also to connect people outside of Anonymous’ community (Anonymous). Since Anonymous is a hacktavist group, it is also apparent that a mean of intercommunication among the members is through code, the universal language of hackers.
The third and fourth characteristics of a Discourse Community states that “a discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback and a discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims” (Swales). Anonymous’ form of participation is by stating in their videos that people who are watching need to take action and join in with the rest of the world in putting an end to oppression by the government or towards a smaller goal such as with Operation Harambe and having the Zoo and mother of the child investigated (Anonymous). With this come the issue of politics and the suppression of the truth by an oppressive government. This ties in with the fourth characteristic of a discourse community as it talks about how a discourse community uses multiple genres, in order to move forward with its goals. By bringing in politics to the field, Anonymous is able to bring in people from other backgrounds to tie together the issues and help allow the organization to gain support in moving forward with issues and problems that have arisen.
The fifth characteristic of a discourse community according to Swales states, “a discourse community has acquired some specific lexis” (Swales). There are small examples with Anonymous on how they have acquired specific lexis or word sets. The few include their slogan which is “we are legion, we do not forgive, we do not forget, expect us” (Anonymous). In addition, most of Anonymous’ posts begin with “greetings citizens of the world or greetings world, we are Anonymous” (Anonymous) and end with their slogan. This can be seen in every article that has a preface or short summary written of what will be talked about in their documentaries or during the start or end of the documentary.
The sixth and final characteristic of a discourse community relative to Swales “conceptualization of a discourse community” (Swales), states, “a discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise” (Swales). Anonymous is an ever growing organization, gaining followers each day who are “inducted in” or considered part of the organization, while the community of the actual hackers grows at a slow varying rate. This does balance out the level of novices to experts as the “novices” or “inducted members” are the ones to spread information and what Anonymous posts about while the hackers job is to create these posts and bring up these issues that arise all the time.
In conclusion, it can be said that Anonymous is itself a discourse community even though it’s goal is not to be one, but to bring attention to issues to the people around the world. Anonymous fits the profile of being a discourse community as it had passed and “contains” the six characteristics that make up a discourse community according to Swales.

Work Cited
Swales, John. “The Concept of Discourse Community.” Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Boston: Cambridge UP, 1990. 21-32. Print
Anonymous. “Anonymous – Operatoin Harambe #OpHarambe.” 4 June 2016. Anonymous. 21 July 2016 .

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