Digital rebellion
Subtitle: the birth of the cyber left
By: Todd Wolfson
Series: History of communication; History of communication
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2014
Language: eng
Number of pages: 234
ISBN-13: 9780252038846; 9780252080388
Subjects: Political aspects; Mass media; Internet; Radicalism; Technological innovations; Political participation; Social movements
Description: "Digital Rebellion examines the impact of new media and communication technologies on the spatial, strategic, and organizational fabric of social movements. Todd Wolfson begins with the rise of the Zapatistas in the mid-1990s, and how aspects of the movement--network organizational structure, participatory democratic governance, and the use of communication tools as a binding agent--became essential parts of Indymedia and all 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. After examining the historical antecedents and rise of the global Indymedia network, Wolfson melds virtual and traditional ethnographic practice to explore the Cyber Left's cultural logic, mapping the social, spatial and communicative structure of the Indymedia network and detailing its operations on the local, national and global level. He also looks at the participatory democracy that governs global social movements and the ways the movement's twin ideologies, democracy and decentralization, have come into tension, and how what he calls the switchboard of struggle conducts stories of shared struggle from the hyper-local and dispersed worldwide. As Wolfson shows, understanding the intersection of Indymedia and the Global Social Justice Movement illuminates their foundational role in the Occupy struggle, Arab Spring uprising, and the other emergent movements that have in recent years re-energized radical politics."--

"The Cyber Left is an examination of how new media and communication technologies are impacting the spatial, strategic and organizational fabric of social movements. Todd Wolfson traces the rise of the a variety of networked organization and struggles--from the "Zapatistas of Cyberspace" of the mid-1990s through the Indymedia network that sprung up after the Battle of Seattle to anti-Iraq War activism--that preceded the more recent uprisings of the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street. Provoked by transformations in global capitalism and information, this transnational form of political organizing continues reconfigured not only how we understand socio-political resistance, but also sovereignty, democracy and social organization. Wolfson first concentrates on the historical antecedents that led to the initial formation of the first indymedia website and the rise of the global indymedia network. He then goes on to analyze the structure, governance and strategy of that network, making connections to the rise of Occupy Wall Street, the Global Justice Movement and the changing nature of social justice movements. The study is based on traditional and cyber-based ethnographic research and focuses on the Philadelphia node of indymedia (one of the first and most successful), as it intersects with local, national and global expressions of the network. Throughout Wolfson stresses that the embrace of computer organization should not be celebrated uncritically, as their adoption by social movements also generate new problems and vulnerabilities"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 211-225) and index.
Table of contents: title: The EZLN and Indymedia: "One no, many yeses"; title: Activist laboratories: the road to Seattle; title: The battle of Seattle and the birth of Indymedia; title: Structure: networks and nervous systems; title: Governance: democracy all the way down; title: Strategy: communications and the switchboard of struggle; title: Conclusion: social movement logics: past, present and future.