Media Updates

The Internet and Social Movements

By Leslie Regan Shade
October 21 2005

Use of the Internet for social activism and mobilization has been well documented. Civil society movements have used the Internet to link geographically-dispersed groups for a common cause, to distribute policy documents, to announce actions for protest marches and demonstrations, and to educate citizens on various issues related to the “anti-globalization” movement. Exemplary instances of how the Internet has been used for the social justice movement include the use of email to link international activists involved in the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines, and the use of the Internet to oppose the Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI) (see Deibert, 2002).

Mobilization for protests at the Free Trade of the Americas (FTAA) meetings in Quebec City in April 2001 also involved a vigorous on-line strategy. A diverse range of NGOs (nongovernmental organizations), citizen groups, and spontaneously created affinity groups used Web sites, listservs, and e-mail to coordinate, strategize (in light of the security perimeter erected to detract protesters), and then report on both the official government-sponsored meeting (the NGO People’s Summit) and the actual street protest. Sylvia Ostry refers to such use of the Internet to bring together disparate groups that share a common theme (in this case, antiglobalization) as “dissent.com”—“a new service industry: the business of dissent… that is very effectively operated by a core group of NGOs headed by a new breed of policy entrepreneurs” (2001, 7). Not only is dissent.com’s function to coordinate and organize on-the-ground demonstrations, it is also, as Ostry explains, to create “the libretto for the street operas and the TV sound bites that inevitably accompany the counter-meetings… examples of sound bite versions at Seattle were ‘Fix it or nix it’…these slogans circulate on the Internet and one can hear echoes in newspaper and television interviews, at student meetings, and so on. As soon as a book or pamphlet is published summaries are circulated and the message is spread. The Internet clearly is having an unprecedented impact on the diffusion of information and the process has just begun.” (2001, 7).

The Internet has been widely used as an organizing tool in the burgeoning international peace movement, precipitated by U.S. threats (consequently realized) to engage in war with Iraq. Unlike other anti-war protests (for instance, the Vietnam anti-war movement), the anti-war movement against Iraq grew rapidly, even before the war had begun, and was facilitated through Internet listservs, grassroots e-mail campaigns that emerged spontaneously by concerned citizens, and Web sites. Huge protest rallies in major international cities (New York, Sa Francisco, Montreal, London, Berlin) have been aided by Internet publicity. Said Sarah Sloan, an organizer with International ANSWER, the Internet “made a major difference in getting our message out there, especially because the mainstream media isn't covering the anti-war movement" (Kahney, 2003).

Some of the more active anti-war Web sites include:
International Action Center

United for Peace and Justice

CODE PINK: Women for Peace

Stop the War Coalition

Not in Our Name Project

MoveOn.org

Poets Against War

References
Deibert, Ronald J. Civil Society Activism on the World Wide Web: The Case of the Anti-MAI Lobby, pp. 88–108 in Street Protests and Fantasy Parks: Globalization, Culture, and the State, ed. David R. Cameron and Janice Gross Stein. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2002.

Kahney, Leander. Internet Stokes Anti-War Movement. Wired News (January 21, 2003). URL: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0121-07.htm

Ostry, Sylvia. Dissent.Com: How NGO’s are Re-making the WTO. Policy Options/Options Politiques (June 2001): 6–15.

Packer, George. Smart-mobbing the War. The New York Times Magazine (March 9, 2003): 46– 49.

Smeltzer, Sandra and Leslie Regan Shade. Resisting the Market Model of the Information
Highway, pp. 320–331 in Public Broadcasting and the Public Interest, ed. Michael McCauley, Lee Artz, and DeeDee Halleck. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2003.

Other Resources on Internet Activism:

James Bohman. (2004). Expanding Dialogue: The Internet, the Public Sphere, and Prospects for Transnational Democracy. Sociological Review: 131-155.

Richard Kahn and Douglas Kellner. (2004). New Media and Internet Activism: From the ‘Battle of Seattle’ to Blogging. New Media & Society 6(1): 87-95.

W. Lance Bennett. (2003). New Media Power: The Internet and Global Activism, in Contesting Media Power: Alternative Media in a Networked World, ed. Nick Couldrey and James Curran. Rowman & Littlefield: 17-37.

W. Lance Bennett. (2003). Communicating Global Activism: Strengths and Vulnerabilities of Networked Politics. Information, Communication & Society 6(2): 143-168.

Ted Coopman, (2003). Alternative Alternatives: Free Media, Dissent, and Emergent Activist Networks, pp. 192-208 in Representing Resistance: Media, Civil Disobedience, and the Global Justice Movement, ed. Andy Opel and Donnalyn Pompper. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Sasha Costanza-Chock. (2003). Mapping the Repertoire of Electronic Contention, pp. 173-191 in Representing Resistance: Media, Civil Disobedience, and the Global Justice Movement, ed. Andy Opel and Donnalyn Pompper. Westport, CT: Praeger.

John Downing. (2003). The IMC Movement Beyond ‘The West’, pp. 241-258 in Representing Resistance: Media, Civil Disobedience, and the Global Justice Movement, ed. Andy Opel and Donnalyn Pompper. Westport, CT: Praeger.

John Downey and Natalie Fenton. (2003). New Media, Counter Publicity, and the Public Sphere. New Media & Society 5(2): 185-202.

Anne Holohan. (2003). Cooperation and Coordination in an International Intervention: The Use of Information and Communication Technologies in Kosovo. Information Technologies and International Development 1(1): 19-39.

Dorothy Kidd. (2003). Become the Media: The Global IMC Network, pp. 224-250 in Representing Resistance: Media, Civil Disobedience, and the Global Justice Movement, ed. Andy Opel and Donnalyn Pompper. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Martha McCaughey and Michael D. Ayers. (2003). Cyberactivism: Online Activism in Theory and Practice. Routledge.

Mark Surman and Katherine Reilly. (2003). Appropriating the Internet for Social Change: Towards the Strategic Use of Networked Technologies by Transnational Civil Society Organizations. URL: http://www.ssrc.org/programs/itic/civ_soc_report/

Peter Van Aelst and Stefaan Walgrave. (2002). New Media New Movements? The Role of the Internet in Shaping the ‘Anti-Globalization’ Movement. Information, Communication & Society 5(4): 465-493.

Kevin Michael DeLuca and Jennifer Peeples. (June 2002). From Public Sphere to Public Screen: Democracy, Activism, and the ‘Violence’ of Seattle. Critical Studies in Media Communication 19(2): 125-151.

Pippa Norris. (2002). New Social Movements, Protest Politics, and the Internet. Democractic Phoenix: Political Activism Worldwide. New York: Cambridge University Press: 188-212.

Sally Burch. (2002). Latin American Social Movements Take on the Net. Development 45(4): 35-40.