Project Chanology

Occasionally collaborative tools such as internet forums have been used to organize activities on voluntary basis. One such voluntary-based movement is the Project Chanology, a protest movement by activists, labeling themselves "Anonymous", against the Church of Scientology.

The Church of Scientology is an organization promoting the belief system of Scientology. It was founded by a pulp fiction author Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, and has - despite the author's obvious fiction background, addiction to painkillers and his critics' common characterization of him as "a liar, a charlatan and a madman" - has gathered numerous members and become financially very successful over the years. [Urban]

The Project Chanology began after the Church of Scientology attempted to censor a rambling and chaotic monologue by actor Tom Cruise about his faith in Scientology, starting with a video published in YouTube named "Message to Scientology" where the Anonymous group state their opinion of Scientology's actions as a form of Internet censorship and assert the groups goal to "expel the church from the internet".

Project Chanology originally began with distributed denial-of-service attacks and various pranks on the Church of Scientology operations, but later moved to more legal methods, such as public protests and complaints to IRS about the church's tax exempt status. Besides its use of YouTube the project has been organized through internet forums, imageboards, wiki pages and internet relay chat channels.

The group behind Project Chanology, called Anonymous, is estimated to number in thousands of members. However, due to the group members generally staying - as the name implies - anonymous and interacting with it's members through collaborative tools that easily enable hiding or disguising one's identity, there is no way to know or even define the membership accurately. Anyone can view, partake and/or orchestrate the group's activities, or simply act under the name of the group on their own, thus making 'membership' definitions blurry at best.



Sources:
Urban, Hugh B. "Fair Game: Secrecy, Security, and the Church of Scientology in Cold War America." Journal of the American Academy of Religion 74.2 (2006)

Tom Cruise on Scientology

A Wikipedia overview on Project Chanology

Anonymity in Groupware