Taking the media by storm is news of an online group named Anonymous and its efforts to debilitate the Church of Scientology. For those who haven’t been following the back-and-forth between Anonymous and the CoS, the former is a mysterious “hacker” group which – three weeks ago – posted this YouTube video threatening the destruction of the CoS. While the CoS trumpets Scientology as a legitimate religion, many consider it a “cult” and have accused it of brainwashing, crushing dissent, and infiltrating governments. The ongoing brouhaha is cause enough for excitement—but it’s even more fascinating to view Anonymous and the CoS as warring sets battling for control over communication, information, and social networks.

This article details some of the ways in which tech-savvy Anonymous has attacked the CoS. By executing denial-of-service attacks on the church’s website, clogging its phones with prank calls, and looping black faxes through its machines, Anonymous managed to temporarily hinder the CoS’s communication network. What’s more, Anonymous and sympathizers have taken advantage of online, information networks. They’ve done their share of Google bombing (linking the word “Scientology” to ridiculous or negative terms in search engine results), and they’ve voted anti-Scientology articles to prominence on sites like Digg.

Nevertheless, the CoS isn’t completely clueless when it comes to manipulating information networks. As the graph below from http://www.operatingthetan.com/google/ shows, the CoS has long taken advantage of Google’s PageRank system to link among its own domains and boost pro-Scientology sites in search results.

Not to be discounted are both groups’ efforts to influence people through social networks. The CoS counts Tom Cruise among its faithful and maintains a celebrity center for its more glamorous adherents. By wielding celebrity influence, the CoS probably hopes to benefit from affiliation closure and the power of Gladwell’s Connectors; however, as ninjaspleen pointed out in this post, the influence of such Connectors may be grossly overestimated. People may even resent blatant manipulation by popular nodes (as evidenced by backlash against Tom Cruise’s behavior in recent interviews).

For its part, Anonymous takes the completely opposite approach. During its worldwide protests of the CoS on February 10^th, most protestors wore masks, scarves, and sunglasses. Their message is clear enough: countless indiscriminate nodes united in a cause are powerful too. Anonymous’s YouTube video even states, “We are legion.”

So far, Anonymous appears to be ahead in the media fight. As both groups continue to manipulate networks to spread their own ideas in their own way, it will be interesting to see which tactics win out.