Page 2 Cyberprotest Since the Seattle anti-globalization protests in 1999 the adoption of new ...

293 Pages·2005·1.54 MB·English

Cyberprotest
Since the Seattle anti-globalization protests in 1999 the adoption of new
information and communications technologies (ICTs) by social movement
activists has offered the prospect of a serious challenge to traditional forms of
political participation. With its transnationalmany-to-many communication
facility, the internet offers revolutionary potential for social movements to speak
directly to the citizens of the world, circumventing the ‘official’ messages of
political organizations and traditional media. Furthermore, electronic mail,
mailing lists, websites, electronic forums and other online applications provide
powerful tools for coordinating activity among geographically dispersed
individuals, and for shaping collective identity.
This book critically assesses how ICTs are finding their way into the world of
social movements, considering overarching issues and providing examples of
cyberprotest movements from across the globe. It will be valuable reading for
students and academics in politics, media and communication, public
administration, sociology and ICT. It will also be of great interest to policy makers
and social activists.
Wim van de Donk is Professor of Public Administration at Tilburg
University, The Netherlands and member of the Scientific Council for
Government Policy in The Hague. Brian D.Loader is Director of the
Community Informatics Research and Applications Unit based at the University
of Teesside, UK. He is also Editor of the international journal Information,
Communication & Society. Paul G.Nixon is a Senior Lecturer in Political
Science at the Haagse Hogeschool, The Hague, The Netherlands. Dieter Rucht
is Professor of Sociology at the Social Science Research Center, Berlin,
Germany.
Cyberprotest
New media, citizens and social
movements
Edited by Wim van de Donk,
Brian D.Loader, Paul G.Nixon,
Dieter Rucht
Foreword by Peter Dahlgren
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 2004
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of
thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
© 2004 selection and editorial matter, Wim van de Donk,
Brian D.Loader, Paul G.Nixon, Dieter Rucht; individual
chapters, the contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-64422-0 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-67501-0 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0–415–29784–2 (hbk)
ISBN 0–415–29785–0 (pbk)
Contents
List of contributors vi
Foreword by Peter Dahlgren ix
Preface xiv
1 Introduction: social movements and ICTs 1
WIM VAN DE DONKBRIAN D.LOADERPAUL
G.NIXONDIETER RUCHT
PART I Changing the levels and domains of political action 23
2 The quadruple ‘A’: media strategies of protest movements 25
since the 1960s
DIETER RUCHT
3 Politicizing Homo economicus: analysis of anti-corporate 49
websites
JACOB ROSENKRANDS
4 Informing, communicating and ICTs in contemporary anti- 69
capitalist movements
STEVE WRIGHT
PART II Changing strategies and stratagems: action and activism in the 85
information age
5 New media, new movements? The role of the internet in 87
shaping the ‘anti-globalization’ movement
PETER VAN AELSTSTEFAAN WALGRAVE
6 Communicating global activism: strengths and 109
vulnerabilities of networked politics
W.LANCE BENNETT
7 Mass media driven mobilization and online protest: ICTs 129
and the pro-East Timor movement in Portugal
GUSTAVO CARDOSOPEDRO PEREIRA NETO
v
8 ATTAC(k)ing expertise: does the internet really 145
democratize knowledge?
BRIGITTE LE GRIGNOUCHARLES PATOU
PART III Citizenship, identity and virtual movements 159
9 The Dutch women’s movement online: internet and the 161
organizational infrastructure of a social movement
ARTHUR EDWARDS
10 Dis@bled people, ICTs and a new age of activism: a 181
Portuguese accessibility special interest group study
RITA CHETA
11 The Queer Sisters and its electronic bulletin board: a study 203
of the internet for social movement mobilization
JOYCE Y.M.NIP
12 Politics and identity in cyberspace: a case study of 225
Australian Women in Agriculture online
BARBARA PINIKERRY BROWNJOSEPHINE
PREVITE
Bibliography 239
Index 265
Contributors
W.Lance Bennett is Professor of Political Science and Ruddick C. Lawrence
Professor of Communication at the University of Washington, USA. He directs
the Center for Communication and Civic Engagement (www.engagedcitizen.org)
and has begun a project on global citizenship and communication technology
(www. globalcitizenproject.org). [email protected]
Kerry Brown is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Management at
Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia.
[email protected]
Gustavo Cardoso is an Assistant Professor of Information and
Communication Sciences at the Department of Information Sciences and
Technologies at ISCTE Lisbon, Portugal. He lectures in the degrees of Sociology
in the MCs of Communication, Culture and Information Technologies and
Digital Libraries, and in the PostDegree on Journalism. He also works as a
researcher at the Communication Studies Research Team of ISCTE and, during
the past five years, he has been conducting research related to the Information
Society national policies and working as an adviser for ‘Information Society and
Telecommunications’ at the Portuguese Presidency of the Republic,
[email protected]
Rita Cheta is a PhD candidate in Sociology and Communications Studies at
ISCTE, Lisbon, Portugal. She is a junior researchmember at CIES and is a
researcher of the Communication Studies Research Team at ISCTE. Her
previous research related to Portuguese mass media representations of crime,
social contexts of ICT uses in Portugal and the underlying identity
transformation processes. [email protected]
Arthur Edwards is senior lecturer at the Department of Public
Administration, Erasmus University, Rotterdam. His research fields are: ICTs
and democracy, local democracy, and the public sphere. His most recent research
concerns comparative research on interactive policy making in Dutch
municipalities and also on new forms of local democracy in European countries,
[email protected]
Brigitte le Grignou is Professor of Political Science at the Paris Dauphine
University, France. Her research focuses on political communication, particularly
vii
in relation to the use of television as a political communication media, on social
movements and audience studies, [email protected]
Brian D.Loader is Director of the Community Informatics Research and
Applications Unit (www.cira.org.uk) based at the University of Teesside, UK.
He is also General Editor of the international journal Information,
Communication & Society (www.infosoc.co.uk) and has edited a number of
books including The Governance of Cyberspace (Routledge, 1997), Cyberspace
Divide (Routledge, 1998), (with Barry Hague) Digital Democracy (Routledge,
1999), (with Doug Thomas) Cybercrime (Routledge, 2000), (with Leigh Keeble)
Community Informatics (Routledge, 2001), (with Bill Dutton) The Digital
Academe (Routledge, 2002), and (with David Bell, Nicholas Pleace, and Doug
Schuler) Key Concepts in Cyberculture (Routledge, 2004). He has also published
articles and reports on technological change and social and political restructuring,
[email protected]
Pedro Pereira Neto is conducting research in the field of the impact of ICTs
on the Mass Media and of Social and Economic Inclusion and ICTs. He is an
affiliate researcher at CAVJSCTE (Center for Audiovisual Technologies at
ISCTE). His recent research projects and publications concern: digital libraries
and citizens’ use of the internet, and social movements and new media,
[email protected]
Joyce Y.M.Nip is Assistant Professor in the Department of Journalism at
Hong Kong Baptist University. [email protected]
Paul G.Nixon is a Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the Haagse
Hogeschool, Den Haag, The Netherlands. He is a visiting Professor of European
Politics at Mitthogskolan, Sweden. He has contributed chapters to many edited
collections on the use of ICTs, particularly in the fields of political parties,
electronic democracy and social welfare. He is at present editing a book, Political
Parties and the Internet, for Routledge (with Steve Ward and Rachel Gibson).
He has also published in the fields of culture and literature, including editing a
collection entitled Representations of Education in Literature (Edwin Mellen
Press, 2000). [email protected]
Charles Patou is a PhD student in Political Science at the Paris Dauphine
University, France. His research focuses on political communication, social
movements and social movement expertise. [email protected]
Barbara Pini is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the School of Management at
Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. [email protected]
Josephine Previte is Associate Lecturer at University of Queensland Business
School, Ipswich, Australia, [email protected]
Jacob Rosenkrands is a journalist and commentator for the weekly magazine
Mandag Morgen, based in Copenhagen, Denmark, which offers selective news
coverage and analysis for those working at a senior level in business, politics and
the third sector in Denmark. He covers topics centred around business affairs,
politics, political campaigning, protest, and social movements, and has a
viii
particular interest in issues relating to the renewal of democracy. jacobr@
jacobr.dk
Dieter Rucht is Professor of Sociology at the Social Science Research Center,
Berlin, Germany. His research interests include modernization processes in a
comparative perspective, social movements and political protest. Among his
recent books are: (together with Ruud Koopmans and Friedhelm Neidhardt, eds)
Acts of Dissent, Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999; (together with
Donatella della Porta and Hanspeter Kriesi, eds) Social Movements in a
Globalizing World, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999; (together with Myra Marx
Ferree, William Gamson, and Jiirgen Gerhards) Shaping Abortion Discourse:
Democracy and the Public Sphere in Germany and the United States,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002; (together with Lee Ann Banaszak
and Karen Beckwith, eds) Women’s Movements Facing the Reconfigured State.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. [email protected]
Peter Van Aelst is a member of the Communication Department and a
researcher in the ‘Media, Movements and Polities’ group of the University of
Antwerp (Belgium). His research focuses on social movements and political
campaigns, with special interest in the role of the (new) media,
[email protected]
Wim van de Donk is Professor of Public Administration at Tilburg
University, and a member of the Scientific Council for Government Policy in
The Hague. He has published widely on the meaning of informatization for the
democratic arena, e.g. books published in the IOS Press series on
‘informatization developments in the public sector’, notably Orwell in Athens
(IOS, 1995) and Public Administration in an Information Age (IOS, 1998), and
(together with Steve Coleman and John Taylor) Parliaments in an Information
Age (Oxford University Press, 2000). [email protected]
Stefaan Walgrave is Professor of Political Science and Co-ordinator of the
Media Movements and Politics Group (M2P) at the University of Antwerp,
Belgium. His current research focuses on social movements, civil society,
extreme right parties and media and politics. [email protected]
Steve Wright is a Research Fellow at the University of Monash, Australia.
His PhD concerned workers’ responses to industrial restructuring in Italy during
the 1960s and 1970s, and is to be published by Pluto Press in Britain. Workplace
politics in Italy and Australia remain among his research interests, along with the
place of information technologies in social movements, and the question of
online access for disadvantaged groups, such as people with disabilities.
[email protected]
Foreword
Peter Dahlgren
Since the early 1990s the signs of democracy’s dilemmas have internationally
become increasingly apparent. Political systems modelled on the Western liberal
model show signs of stagnation; the margins of governmental manoeuvrability
are narrowing. Institutions central to democratic life, in particular political
parties, seem less responsive in the face of the major changes of late modernity.
The sovereignty of the nation-state itself is being downsized in the face of neo-
liberal globalization, as well as—in the European context—the EU. In the latter
case democracy is being challenged to develop at the supranational regional
level. In Central and Eastern Europe, the new democratic institutions struggle to
take root. In Asia, Latin America and Africa, many societies are still in the
process of trying to make the transition from authoritarian to democratic
regimes.
Among citizens in the West, the arena of official politics has witnessed a
decline in support and participation. Voter turnouts are decreasing, party loyalty
is in decline, especially among the young. One can see signs of contempt for the
political class, with a climate of cynicism emerging in some places. The
extensive disenchantment with formal politics and the crisis of citizenship are
themes addressed by many today. Economic insecurity, unemployment, low
wages, declining social services, growing class cleavages, ecological dilemmas,
and a sense of powerlessness among many citizens are all part of the picture.
One can speak of a retreat from public culture, with an everincreasing emphasis
on private consumption and life style.
However, we also have evidence of alternative developments, a more
optimistic renewal of democracy, largely outside the parliamentarian context, that
can be said to represent forms of alternative or ‘new politics’, ‘life politics’, life-
style politics’, or ‘sub-politics’. There are a variety of labels, and many
variations in the way these alternatives manifest themselves. There are many
kinds of social movements, special interest organizations, activist groups, single-
issue coalitions, and civic networks. These all suggest that if we look beyond the
formal political arena, we can see clear signs that many people have decidedly
not retreated from the arena of common concerns and abandoned political
engagement. Rather, they have refocused their political attention in other arenas,