Indymedia

Digital Rebellion examines the impact of new media and communication technologies on the spatial, strategic, and organizational fabric of social movements.


Todd Wolfson reveals how aspects of the mid-1990s Zapatistas movement--network organizational structure, participatory democratic governance, and the use of communication tools as a binding agent--became essential parts of Indymedia and other Cyber Left organizations. From there he uses oral interviews and other rich ethnographic data to chart the media-based think tanks and experiments that continued the Cyber Left's evolution through the Independent Media Center's birth around the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle.


Melding virtual and traditional ethnographic practice to explore the Cyber Left's cultural logic, Wolfson maps the social, spatial and communicative structure of the Indymedia network and details its operations on the local, national and global level. He looks at the participatory democracy that governs global social movements and the ways democracy and decentralization have come into tension, and how "the switchboard of struggle" conducts stories from the hyper-local and disperses them worldwide. As he shows, understanding the intersection of Indymedia and the Global Social Justice Movement illuminates their foundational role in the Occupy struggle and other emergent movements that have re-energized radical politics.


"Combining the passion of an activist and the reasoned arguments of a scholar, Wolfson wonderfully details the emergence of the Cyber Left. In Digital Rebellion he not only celebrates its political potential but also, and more importantly, provides a lucid critique of the forms it has taken thus far."--Michael Hardt, co-author of Declaration and Empire


"Makes an original contribution through the depth of the empirical case studies of Cyber Left organization. . . . I cannot think of another book that puts so much of the story of the U.S. left's experiments with the creation of an 'electronic fabric of struggle' within a single volume. . . . The author's knowledge, thoughtfulness, and political passion is evident." --Nick Dyer-Witheford, author of Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games

This chapter considers some of the legal issues facing citizen journalists, especially those engaged in “radical” or activist reporting, in an online context. It suggests that the conceptualization of the citizen journalist must consider the status of this type of journalism in relation to law, the application of which is especially challenging in an online environment that is said to transcend jurisdictions. The extent of legal provisions recognizing citizen journalists as being privy to special
protection are in dispute, though there appears to be a growing recognition of their claim to substantive rights as citizens and as journalists. In this chapter, I shall argue that state authority and law is adapting—if rather slowly—to take account of changes in international relations (or globalization) with important implications for citizen journalism’s forms and practices deserving of close attention.

Emerging global social movement and media activist practices are integrating intersectional politics into technologically facilitated activism. Based on a multiyear empirical study, this article proposes a preliminary theoretical framework that maps 5 key dimensions of an emergent intersectional technopolitics: (1) intersectional anticapitalist politics enacted in meta-issue movements; (2) distributed online–offline media
architectures and motility; (3) multiplicities of genres, forms, technologies, and spaces; (4) translocal solidarity economies and technologies; and (5) liberatory intersectional mechanisms of collective autonomy. The author argues that intersectional technopolitics is an innovative and complex set of coherent global social movement and media activist practices rooted in meta-issue movements integrated with transmedia digital technologies. The article concludes with a critical analysis of contradictions encountered by intersectional technopolitics activists as they interact with the structures of broader social movements, social media technologies, and societal hierarchies.

This thesis examines the potential of and limits to the use of the Internet as a public sphere. To this end it considers the claim that the Internet is or can be a public sphere. To do this there are two related spheres of enquiry: the ‘public sphere’ and ‘the Internet’.

The enquiry into the concept of the public sphere is based on an
engagement with the work of Jürgen Habermas. The concern of this thesis is to draw on the wider corpus of Habermas’s work to develop a model of the public sphere that takes account of his thesis of ‘colonisation’. Because the process of colonisation results in systemically distorted communication the liberal model of the public sphere is replaced with a model of a ‘radical’ public sphere. These two concepts, the radical public sphere and colonisation then form the basis for the investigation into the potential of the Internet.

The Internet, like other technologies, cannot, however, be considered in abstraction of its use. Therefore, a theory of ‘forms of use’ is
developed, through which the potential of and limits to media can be
analysed. Different case studies are presented in order to show how these different forms of use of the Internet can be supported. However, we can understand that certain ‘systemic’ colonising forms of use of the Internet threaten the functioning of other, radical forms of use.

The limits to the use of the Internet as a public sphere are not,
however, inherent features of the technology itself, but pertain to its use
under a system in which certain social practices and institutions have
priority over others. Under these conditions, the use of the Internet as a
radical public sphere takes place as a continual struggle against dominant forms of use.

This chapter outlines the promise of the Internet for activists, reflecting on its use by radical media projects and social movements, focussing in the first instance on the fate of Indymedia. It then moves to consider through the lens of political economy how the economics of media, state repression and the rise of social media helped marginalize Indymedia. At the same time it shows how social media, whilst enormously useful for protest movements have become dragnets through which activists can be monitored and pursued, drawing on a range of examples from both the " Arab Spring " as well as protests in liberal states, focussing on the UK..

No período entre meados de 1999 e junho de 2011, Florianópolis foi palco de diversas manifestações juvenis pelo passe livre estudantil e protestos populares contra os aumentos de tarifas do transporte coletivo, principalmente no que ficou publicamente conhecido como as Revoltas das Catracas, nos anos de 2004 e 2005. Tendo em vista a participação de uma  juventude  contestadora  organizada  nas  ações  coletivas  e  no aprofundamento  e  disseminação  do  debate  sobre  mobilidade  urbana, através  da  formulação  de  propostas  de  transformações  sociais,  este trabalho tem como objetivo compreender as relações e vínculos que essa juventude  estabelece  com  a  cidade.  Com  base  no  material  coletado,
procuramos  caracterizar  quem  são  esses  jovens  protagonistas, analisando  como  eles  definem  e  dão  sentido  à  participação  política coletiva na cidade; às concepções de cidade e cidade ideal; identificando e analisando a concepção deles de direito à cidade; e identificando as questões  sócio-históricas  na  cidade  de  Florianópolis  que  acabaram resultando nas contínuas manifestações de contestação.

This new edited collection brings together leading scholars and activists to explore how varieties of activism are mediated through communication technologies, how activists deploy strategies for changing the structures of media systems, and how governments and corporations seek to police media activism. From memes to zines, hacktivism to artivism, Media Activism in the Digital Age considers activist practices involving both older kinds of media and newer digital, social, and network-based forms.

This seminar provides an introduction to the politics, aesthetics, and tactics underlying various types of media activism. The class will examine interventions aimed at media representations, labor relations in media production, media policy reform, activists’ strategic communications, and “alternative” media making. The course will draw from an overview of the existing scholarship on media activism, as well as close analyses of actual activist practices within both old and new media at local, national, and global levels. We will study how various political groups, past and present, use media to advance their interests and effect social change. Each member of the class will choose one case study of an activist group or campaign to explore throughout the semester.

Using the Halloween Critical Mass bike ride as an example, Marion Hamm analyses how cyberspace overlaps the physical space of a protest demonstration on the street and how a construction of what she calls ‘geographies of protest’ is developing. Marion Hamm is affiliated with Indymedia, a worldwide network of independent media centres.

Considerada a voz do movimento por uma globalização alternativa, a rede informativa Indymedia (Centro de Media Independente – CMI) surgiu em Novembro de 1999 durante os protestos contra a reunião da Organização Mundial do Comércio em Seattle. Desde então, esta rede cresceu exponencialmente, possuindo actualmente cerca de 150 centros autónomos espalhados pelos cinco continentes e abarcando mais de 20 idiomas, incluindo o português.

Este artigo baseia-se num estudo de caso do CMI-Portugal desenvolvido com base numa análise da lista de correio electrónico e do site deste colectivo. Com este estudo, tentámos averiguar se o CMI-Portugal pode ser considerado um medium táctico a partir dos traços identificados por David Garcia, Geert Lovink, Critical Art Ensemble e Graham Meikle: efemeralidade, valorização das práticas amadoras, rejeição dos dogmas ideológicos, afirmação das identidades, utilização de qualquer tipo de tecnologia que esteja disponível, descentralização e estrutura horizontal. Outros objectivos consistiram em evidenciar a forma como a política editorial do colectivo é posta em prática, como decorre o processo de tomada de decisões e qual a reacção dos leitores/autores.

Dieser Vortrag ist ein Versuch, die Mediatisierung sozialer Bewegungen zu kontextualisieren, wobei ich die Mediennutzung und organisatorischen Strategien von zwei verschiedenen Protestaktionen vergleiche: die Anti-World Trade Organization Proteste in Seattle im Jahre 1999 (bei denen das junge Web und die Mobilkommunikation Schlüsselfaktoren waren) und die Occupy-Bewegung (bei denen soziale Medien eine Hauptrolle spielten). Cammaerts, Mattoni und McCurdy, dass Medien wichtig für soziale Bewegungen seien, weil „without (self-) mediation, insurrectionary performances and acts of resistance become meaningless.”  Sie nennen diese Idee eine „neue Medienlogik“ und schlagen vor, dass das Hauptziel einer sozialen Bewegung die Organisierung von veranstalteten Ereignissen sein sollte, die zu Sichtbarkeit in einer massenmedialen Öffentlichkeit führen.

Dieser Ansatz wurde während der Proteste in Seattle im Jahr 1999 gegen die WTO, des sogenannten „Kampfes von Seattle“, benutzt. Protestleiter benutzten eine Vielzahl von Webseiten und andere Onlineressourcen, um Protestaktionen zu organisieren, die etwa zwischen 40 000 und 50 000 Aktivisten in Seattle anzogen. Ob diese Sichtbarkeit Erfolg versprach oder nicht ist jedoch eine ganz andere Frage, besonders als Zeitungen und Fernsehnachrichten die Berichterstattung übernahmen. Shanto Iyengar vertritt den Standpunkt, dass die Massenmedien oft einen „episodic frame“  einsetzen, damit sie sich auf konkrete Handlungen und Ereignisse konzentrieren können—d.h. brutale oder destruktive Elemente eines Protests—statt die Gründe dafür zu nennen.  Demonstranten werden deshalb als Abweichler dargestellt und der Status quo wird verstärkt. So war es mit den Anti-WTO Protesten. Viele der Anti-WTO-Aktivisten, die den Massenmedien nach den Ereignissen in Seattle misstrauten, haben eine Bürgerjournalismus-Website gegründet, die „Independent Media Center“ oder einfach „Indymedia“ genannt wurde, um unfaire Darstellungen in Massenmedien zu entgegnen. Die Webseite ermutigte Aktivisten dazu, selbst zu Medien zu werden, in dem sie ihre eigenen Beiträge wie Kommentare, Fotos, Videos, oder andere Schriften veröffentlichen. Obwohl es viele Anhaltspunkte dafür gibt, dass Indymedia als ein gutes organisatorisches Werkzeuge für Bürgerinitiativen und soziale Bewegungen funktioniert, ist die Auswirkung dieser Webseite außerhalb dieser Grüppen schwer einzuschätzen.

Die Occupy-Bewegung, die in einer Web 2.0-Lebenswelt von Interaktivität und Personalisierung entstand, zeigt viele Unterschiede zur Struktur der Anti-WTO Proteste aus der sogenannten „Web 1.0“-Ära. In vielfältiger Weise ist Occupy eine Reaktion auf die Entwicklung kleiner „persönlicher Öffentlichkeiten“ und sogenannter „echo chambers“, wie dies bei Indymedia der Fall war. Stattdessen organisierten Occupy-Aktivisten langlaufender Protestaktionen, die von sozialen Medien unterstutzt werden. Manual Castells sagte, zum Beispiel, dass Occupy digital geboren sei. Das Internet ermögliche eine führerlose Bewegung, um zu debattieren, zu planen, zu weiterleben und zu expandieren. Mit dieser Bemerkung scheint es, als ob Castells Occupy als ein Produkt einer Medienlogik sieht. Im Gegensatz dazu vertrete ich den Standpunkt, dass Occupy die Mediatisierung der sozialen Bewegung darstellt. Obwohl die Besetzung von öffentlichem Raum der Grundstein der Occupy-Bewegung ist, manifestiert sich diese Zentralität der Medien in den Offlineprozessen von Anerkennung, Einbeziehung und Kollektivität im Rahmen der Occupy-Bewegung. Das Bestehen auf eine führerlose, horizontale Struktur spiegelt, z.B, die wahrgenommene offene und egalitäre Beschaffenheit des Internets wider. Diese Vorstellung stammt aus einem falsch erkannten Zusammenhang zwischen dem Internet und der Gegenkultur der 60er Jahre in den USA. Diese Beschreibungen zeigen an, dass die Occupy-Bewegung eine Art Integration durch Diversifikation versucht. Schlagworte wie „We are the 99%“, die die Meinungsvielfalt und gleichzeitig die Inklusivität der Bewegung betonen, veranschaulichen diese Philosophie.

Dieser Vortrag untersucht, wie das heutige Verständnis von Medien nicht nur die Mediennutzung jüngster sozialer Bewegungen beeinflusst, sondern auch die Struktur, Entwicklung, Erwartungen, und sogar Offlinetätigkeiten dieser Bewegungen. Das heißt: wird die Vorstellung von sozialen Bewegungen durch die Medienerfahrungen der Aktivisten, entweder bewusst oder unbewusst, geprägt? Wenn ja, welche Gelegenheiten wurden ermöglicht und welche wurden verhindert? Wie haben Medienentwicklungen sich auf die Diversifikation oder Integration dieser Bewegungen ausgewirkt? Der Begriff von Mediatisierung bietet eine grundlegende Struktur, um diese aufeinander wirkenden Entwicklungen zu untersuchen, weil man Medien „de-zentrieren“ muss.  Mit solch einer Perspektive wird man Medienwandel und Kulturwandel nicht zusammenfassen, sondern verstehen, wie Medien „in heutigen Medienkulturen als zentral konstruiert werden.“ Wenn Castells sagt, dass Occupy „digitale geboren“ wurde, trennt er die Bewegung von der Geschichte und deutet an, dass es etwas Neues und Einzigartiges ist. Occupy wird einfach als „wie das Internet“ verstanden. Solch ein Verständnis könnte nicht nur soziale Bewegungen völlig außer Acht lassen, sondern auch die Verhältnisse, die diese Bewegungen verursachen.

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The purpose of this exploratory paper is to conceptualise the mediatisation of protest movements through an historical approach that compares protest actions from two different events—the anti-World Trade Organization (WTO) protests in Seattle in 1999 (in which the early Web and mobile media played a key role) and the Occupy movement (engaged with social media).  Cammaerts et al. assert that media are important to social movements because “without (self-) mediation, insurrectionary performances and acts of resistance become meaningless.” They assert that social movements should organise staged events that lead to visibility in a mass mediated public sphere and ask how “media logic” can “shape, inform or constrain the way activist conceptualize and enact protests.”

This approach was applied during the protests against the WTO during their annual meeting in Seattle in 1999, sometimes referred to as “The Battle in Seattle.” The protests garnered a significant amount of media attention from news organizations in multiple countries. However, as Shanto Iyengar argues, mass media tend to use an “event framing” to focus on “compelling” (i.e., violent or destructive) elements of protest actions rather than the reasons behind the protests, leading to a presentation of protestors as deviant and a greater likelihood that the general public will support the “status quo.”. This was certainly the case with the anti-WTO protests. Some activists involved in these protests, upset or mistrustful of mass media coverage, attempted to combat what they felt was unfair representation by establishing Indymedia as a hub for user-generated media on the protests. Activists and independent journalists posted a number of articles, videos, and photos on the site in an effort to provide personal, “unbiased” coverage of the event or to correct what they felt were falsehoods being disseminated in mass media coverage. However, while there is ample evidence to suggest the various Independent Media Centres or IMCs operate quite well as organizing tools for grassroots social and political movements, there is little evidence that Indymedia has regular and significant impact outside the activist groups.

The Occupy movement, emerging in a Web 2.0 environment, exhibits several significant differences from the organisation of the “Web 1.0 era” anti-WTO protests. Indeed, Occupy is in many ways a response to the diversification or splintering of society into small, issue-based groups and “echo chambers” as seen in the Indymedia example. Instead, the movement places a greater emphasis upon collective, open, long-term actions supported by social media. Manuel Castells, for example, says Occupy was “born digital” and that the Internet “allows a leaderless movement to survive, deliberate, coordinate and expand.” Comments such as this demonstrate that it is still valid to consider how a “media logic” influences the development of protest movements. Although the occupation of public space is the cornerstone of the Occupy movement, the Internet had a marked effect even on offline incarnations of the movement. Claims that position the Internet—particularly social media—as a new, digital public sphere are reflected in the Occupy movement’s offline processes of recognition, inclusion, and consensus formation. Its insistence on a leaderless structure likewise mirrors the perception of the Internet as an egalitarian and democratising space, an idea rooted in the (mistaken) association of the Web with 1960s counterculture. In short, the Occupy movement is attempting integration through diversification. This philosophy is exemplified by popular slogans such “We are the 99%” which emphasise the diversity of opinion within the movement while simultaneously asserting its inclusiveness.

This comparative, historical analysis aims to examine the ways in which the contemporary media logic influenced not only the media activities of these movements, but also their structure, development, expectations, and activities (both offline and online). Did interactions with media inform, consciously or unconsciously, these movements? What possibilities were enabled through this mediatisation, and which were foreclosed? How have media developments affected the diversification or integration of activist movements, both internally and within society? It is hoped this discussion can be used as a framework for understanding the development of other social movements in a way that resists generalising assumptions about media and instead takes sociohistorical context into account.

This chapter examines an often unexplored assumption amonst those commenting on the proliferation of digital recording and transmission equipment, that the 'comprehensive recording' of instances of civil unrest makes a reliable, truthful account of events available to the general public by providing a forum for uncensored communication. Using two instances of rioting the UK city of Bristol which took place on April 21st/22nd and April 28th/29th this chapter will suggest an alternative perspective. That the availability of vast quantities of data on such an incident creates a multiplicity of conflicting narratives to describe and explain events. Furthermore people's perspectives on these narratives are highly dependent on their own preconceptions about the parties involved, especially where the facts of the situation are contested.

The author argues that the concept commons is a productive way of thinking about and practicing democratic and participatory media. He begins by defining media commons in such a way as to emphasize the relational and regulated nature of commons. Such a definition critiques the idea that commons are resources avail- able to a public without limits as well as the tendency to define commons in terms of the essential characteristics of the resources in question. Next, the author’s experience in the Indymedia movement is summarized to suggest that the failure of Vancouver Indymedia was due, in part, to the general inability to establish effective commons within the collective and over the website. He concludes the article by offering a survey and critique of tendencies in the formulation of the commons within wider academic and activist literatures, as well as its use in work more specifically focused on media and communication.

New Media technologies, especially mobile technologies, have come to the fore in the public eye on the recent wave of global protests. However, it is not the technologies themselves that have enabled the uprisings from the Arab Spring to the Occupy Wall Street Movement to #YoSoy132; it is the new algorithms, organizational structures, and unique gatherings that have given rise to technological innovation and the repurposing of existing tools.

This chapter outlines the promise of the Internet for activists, reflecting on its use by radical media projects and social movements, focussing in the first instance on the fate of Indymedia. It then moves to consider through the lens of political economy how the economics of media, state repression and the rise of social media helped marginalize Indymedia. At the same time it shows how social media, whilst enormously useful for protest movements have become dragnets through which activists can be monitored and pursued, drawing on a range of examples from both the " Arab Spring " as well as protests in liberal states, focussing on the UK..

New Media technologies, especially mobile technologies, have come to the fore in the public eye on the recent wave of global protests. However, it is not the technologies themselves that have enabled the uprisings from the Arab Spring to the Occupy Wall Street Movement to #YoSoy132; it is the new algorithms, organizational structures, and unique gatherings that have given rise to technological innovation and the repurposing of existing tools.

The article probes into different perspectives of alternative media and fieldwork
reflections on Indymedia project (drawing on secondary research of various. Independent Media Centres [IMCs] and primary research on a ‘marginalized’ case
in Indymedia network, the IMC Thessaloniki), evaluating Indymedia as a multiparadigmatic case of alternative media developed in-between media, commons and
movements

Heutzutage gibt es ein Überangebot an Medien verschiedenster Machart und Konzeptionen. Musste sich der Rezipient früher nur zwischen einigen Tageszeitungen respektive einigen wenigen Magazinen entscheiden, steht er heut einer diversifizierten Palette an Fachzeitschriften, Regional- und bundesweiten Tageszeitungen, Magazinen, Illustrierten, Werbezeitschriften, aber auch Internetredaktionen der großen Zeitungen, Internetdiensten wie GMX oder web.de, bei denen auf dem ersten Blick nicht ersichtlich ist, von wem sie abhängig sind oder ob sie wirklich eine selbstständige Redaktion stellen, oder auch unabhängigen Internetplattformen wie privaten Blogs oder politisch motivierten Seiten wie „Indymedia“1 oder „Altermedia“2 gegenüber.
Diese Medien unterscheiden sich nicht nur in ihrer Machart sondern auch in ihrer Zugänglichkeit für die Allgemeinheit. Während die Printmedien Geld kosten, der Rezipient für all jene Erzeugnisse exklusive der Werbezeitschriften wie der „Einkauf Aktuell“ der deutschen Post, Geld zahlen muss, um sie lesen zu können, sind die Internetmedien meist frei zugänglich und für den Rezipienten kostenneutral. Daher ergeben sich Unterschiede in der öffentlichen Bewertung der verschiedenen Medien, sind doch die Gratis-Webmedien entweder von Sponsoren abhängig und damit auf dem ersten Blick nicht mehr neutral und journalistisch objektiv oder unkommerziell angelegt und damit meist auf eine gewisse Art und Weise ideologisch gefärbt3.
Deshalb kann die These aufgestellt werden, dass die kostenpflichtigen Medien die besseren und journalistisch wertvolleren sind. Diese These möchte ich gleich zu Beginn als falsch bewerten und in den weiteren Ausführungen darlegen, weshalb ich zu diesem Schluss komme.