‘All information should be free’: Information campaigning on digital rights in the European Union

An important part of political activism has always consisted in the capacity to rapidly generate politically usable information and to use it where it will have most impact. This article focuses on the action repertoire of digital rights activists, advocating the protection of fundamental rights in digital environments and targeting European directives in the domain of patent or copyright reform and telecommunication law. The increasing use of digital tools triggers new social and political issues. Copyright, patent law, the protection of personal data or the governance of the Internet infrastructure attract increasing attention. Decision makers repeatedly attempt to regulate these issues, providing spaces of power struggle for industry groups who lobby for their rights to be (re)affirmed in digital environments and for activists and citizens who fight for the protection of emergent practices and civil rights. The focus lies on how these activists use the Internet to monitor and collect information and generate spaces of production and diffusion of specialized information on these issues. Findings from two campaign case studies highlight new practices of collection and management of political information in the digital age.