SOCIAL
MOVEMENTS
Social
Movements through the Net
1)
Internetworking: The Internet has enabled the wide spread expansion of
established movements. We would like to distinguish three types of
internetworking: organization and network coordination, grass roots global
internetworking, and direct action coordination.
2)
Capital and information flows: We would distinguish three main types of net
based economic activity, the sue of: mainstream
networked channels of capital distribution, solicitation, and management by
social movements; computer mediated barter banks and local capital pools and
credit unions and collective goods coordinated via the net, and decentralized media
distribution networks.
3.
A) Alternative media and theory:
Alternative
media: We note three types of alternative media on the net: alternative
media, grass roots global media and information networks and counter-surveillance
measures. On alternative media including variously, online alternatives to
mainstream media, social movement media, and local media online.
B)
Alternative theory networks: Theory and strategizing is another level of
the culture of resistance conducting online. While theory is mostly engaged
offline, as in the big AGM mobilizations at counter-summits, strategizing which
creates new practices/theory in larger networks is often/usually conducted via
the Internet.
4)
Direct cyber activism: Another type of cyber activism is the use of the
Internet as a primary ground for political action.
(a) Virtual
sit-ins: Movements are utilizing e-technologies as a disruptive tool
to industry and civil practices or temporarily dismantle the various
stages of capital's circuit e.g., the production and circulation of commodities. Cyber
activists disrupt net activity through electronic civil disobedience, for
instance, in “virtual sit-ins” by mounting extensive traffic to shut down
websites.
(b) Hacking: In
new forms of resistance, which have been called "hacking", hackers
appropriate or disrupt technologies for personal and political ends. One
example is a British hacker who cracked into hundreds of web sites worldwide
and circulated anti-nuclear messages.
(c) Cyber
terrorism: More forceful than such cyber-disruptions are the prospects of cyber
terrorism. While computer viruses spread via the net have caused billions in
economic losses and the escalation of such antics, often by youths using
straight forward software, is of concern, hacker’s attacks for overt political
purposes have been sporadic and small scale to date. Yet, government
investments in cyber defense measures are increasing.
5)
Contesting and constructing the Internet: Types of contestation of the
nature of Internet and its relation to inequality and democracy include: movements
to democratically inform the structure, ownership, and technical aspects of Internet
media and technology, activism to create wider access to the internet, crossing
the digital divide, and planning and development of the social use of the net.
Structuring the Net, The nature of the net has been and is continually being
worked out by think tanks, government agencies and legislation, civil
institutions, industry, venture capitalists, net administrators, policy wonks,
programmers, and in social movements. To understand the social fabric
underlying the potential of cyber activism, it is important to explore how
Internet technology itself may be designed to facilitate or inhibit democratic
interaction.
6)
Online alternative community formation:
With the
Internet, early online forums demonstrated the promise of a great diversity of
“virtual communities” organized around common interests (Rhiengold 1993). A
fundamental problematic is if Internet-based communities exist solely as
“virtual” moments in cyberspace or do constellations of digital information
have an enduring material basis for “reality.”
BY MKULA DENNIS
