* networked protest
This link has been bookmarked by 11 people . It was first bookmarked on 12 Jan 2009, by dong won.
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06 Sep 13
ICNC News Digest on Civil ResistanceBy: Evgeny Morozov, Open Democracy, December 29, 2008
Whatever their impact on the domestic politics in Greece, the youth riots that have besieged Athens and other Greek cities earlier this month have also given rise to a new global phenomenon - the "networked protest". While it was not for the first time that the Internet has made the planning and the execution of the protest actions more effective, it was probably the first time that an issue of mostly local importance has triggered solidarity protests across the whole continent, some of them led by the Greek diaspora, but many of them led by disaffected youth who were sympathetic of the movement's causes.Greece youth protest internet social media solidarity Articles of Interest
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13 Jan 11
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30 Sep 10
eknaub kHow the internet is impacting government
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22 Jan 10
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The Alternative's alternative
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Evgeny Morozov, 29 December 2008
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Add Sticky NoteWhatever their impact on the domestic politics in Greece, the youth riots that have besieged Athens and other Greek cities earlier this month have also given rise to a new global phenomenon - the "networked protest".
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Add Sticky Noteit was probably the first time that an issue of mostly local importance has triggered solidarity protests across the whole continent, some of them led by the Greek diaspora, but many of them led by disaffected youth who were sympathetic of the movement's causes.
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* Greek solidarity protests
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Add Sticky NoteThe Internet was crucial to this whole effort, as many amateur photos and videos were shared and uploaded online instantaneously by the very participants in the protests, creating an illusion of remote participation for anyone who was following the protests on blogs and other social media.
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* remote participation
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Add Sticky NoteWhether the Internet has actually helped to recruit many new protesters in Greece itself is debatable; it is, after all, a national issue that is hard to miss for anyone, whether they spend most of their offline or online.
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* not necessarily useful for recruiting protesters within Greece - don't need the Internet to know about major Greek national issues
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Add Sticky NoteThe Internet's role in generating protests outside of Greece has been much more prominent, as has made it possible for protesters to form networks across borders, better coordinate campaigns and to keep international protest activities, no matter how small, in the news.
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* more valuable for generating protests at a distance
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giving us a glimpse of what the transnational networked public sphere might look like
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That so many radicals have taken to the Web in seach of a global platform is not surprising; since its very early days, it has been a magnet for revolutionary forces. From the anti-Milosevic groups in Serbia in late 1990s to the Zimbabwean opposition in 2008, the democratic protest movements have been exploring and experimenting with the Internet, hoping that it could amplify their traditional methods of organizing and sustaining protest.
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Add Sticky NoteHowever, close observers of the riots on the Internet could not help noticing that the anti-globalists – the usual suspects of any loud public mischief – were hardly visible in the virtual space. This could have been strategic: their members may have preferred to act behind the curtains and avoid publicity. Yet another explanation is also possible: professional anti-globalists have simply been outnumbered by thousands of "freelance radicals", who have skilfully exploited the Internet, bypassing the cantankerous anti-globalist media in its entirety raising many questions about its usefulness and its future role.
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* comment on the anti-globalization movement -- see vanguardism and fast politics in my blog post at http://webography.wordpress.com/2010/01/21/this-failed-revolution-powered-by-twitter-revisiting-the-recurring-themes-of-the-moldova-twitter-revolution-and-raising-some-new-doubts/
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Historically, the anti-globalization movement and its earlier national precursors have had a long and eventful engagement with media, old and new, always eager to embrace the latest gadgets and trends. From clandestine radio stations that empowered the liberation movement in El Salvador in the 1980s to the Zapatista's flirtation with the Internet in mid 1990s, Che Guevara's heirs were in the avant guard of media innovation
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The most impressive of such networks- the Independent Media Center (or Indymedia)-- sprang up in the wake of the Seattle anti-WTO protests of 1999, acquiring a cult status in the anti-globalization community overnight. Since then, Indymedia has been busy supplying their contributors with reporting equipment, organizing media trainings, and helping their stringers get their stories out to the general public. The years that followed - with a plenty of protest action around WTO and G8 summits - marked the renaissance of the alternative media.
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Add Sticky NoteHowever, by 2008 the usefulness of such initiatives seems less obvious; what looked novel in 1999 looks unnecessarily centralized and hierarchical today. In the aftermath of the protests, many Greek bloggers and citizen journalists naturally fitted the live news sections of premier American and Europe TV stations, got a chance to tell their stories, didn't need any special equipment but cellphones and laptops, and they certainly didn't need yet another platform for documenting what they saw or what they thought - they all had their own blogs and Twitter accounts, to post to.
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* move towards "decentralization"? Is it Twitter versus IndyMedia?
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With so much riot-related digital content generated elsewhere, the anti-globalization media faces oblivion and needs to find a new role. Curating all the numerous amateur photos, videos, and comments emerging from the riots would be one meaningful contribution they can make. Consider thousands of videos uploaded to YouTube, photos uploaded to Flickr, as well as blog and Twitter messages flying around the Web – it was virtually impossible for Greek and foreign observers alike to make sense of what was going on. And although Indymedia and several other anti-globalization outlets did try to aggregate some of this content at the outset of the riots, they attempts were short-lived, leaving the global public without the curator it needed so badly.
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Indymedia's predicament is not unique. Many less radical institutions - governments, NGOs, think tanks – are struggling to address the same challenge, unable to respond to the rapidly shifting balance of power between the individual and the institution radically disrupted by the Internet. In today's ultra-networked world, an unaffiliated individual with a laptop and an Internet connection is often more influential and resourceful than an organization with a staff of twenty and a fax machine was only twenty years ago.
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This is a truly strange period of institutional change when an organization's vast assets also look like its greatest liabilities.
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just as traditional media organizations are gradually nudging towards embracing aggregation and curation as activities where they could add value, other institutions, whether anti-globalist or not, will have little choice but to follow suit and become the new networking hubs – rather than the headquarters – of social change, which would be increasingly enacted by individuals.
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28 Apr 09
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Add Sticky NoteMeier has found that an increase in cell-phone availability increases the likelihood (at least perceived by the public) that the government might be overthrown by violent means.
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What exactly does this mean? "At least perceived by the public"? That where cell-phone availability is high, the public perceives violent anti-government protest? Or that it is *actually* more likely to happen?
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Add Sticky NoteMeier has found that an increase in cell-phone availability increases the likelihood (at least perceived by the public) that the government might be overthrown by violent means.
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What exactly does this mean? "At least perceived by the public"? That where cell-phone availability is high, the public perceives violent anti-government protest as more likely happen? Or that it is *actually* more likely to happen?
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12 Jan 09
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04 Jan 09
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Michel BauwensIn today's ultra-networked world, an unaffiliated individual with a laptop and an Internet connection is often more influential and resourceful than an organization with a staff of twenty and a fax machine was only twenty years ago. This is a truly strang
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30 Dec 08
Christian KreutzThe "Alternative media", an early-adopter of web technologies, has been left behind by the hyper-individualism of citizen journalism's new turns.
Public Stiky Notes
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