Introduction
By Andrew Boyd & Dave Oswald Mitchell
"The clowns are organizing. They are organizing. Over and out."
-Overheard on UK police radio during action
by Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army, July 2004
"Tweets and the Streets analyses the culture of the new protest movements of the 21st century. From the Arab Spring to the "indignados" protests in Spain and the Occupy movement, Paolo Gerbaudo examines the relationship between the rise of social media and the emergence of new forms of protest. Gerbaudo argues that activists' use of Twitter and Facebook does not fit with the image of a "cyberspace" detached from physical reality. Instead, social media is used as part of a project of re-appropriation of public space, which involves the assembling of different groups around "occupied" places such as Cairo's Tahrir Square or New York's Zuccotti Park."
Indymedia is the name given to a particular network with a rather uneven global reach, to which many hundreds of local independent media projects, mostly web-based, have been affiliated at one time or another. It is also the name for a particular approach to news media - one that attempts to avoid hierarchal production and hence promote grassroots reports on events.
ReadViva La Piracy! An intellectual freedoms documentary based around the interpersonal triumphs, and defeats of the three main characters against the largest industry in the known universe. The media industry.
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In memoriam: Aaron Swartz
Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to
keep it for themselves. The world's entire scientific and cultural
heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is
increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private
corporations. Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results
of the sciences? You'll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like
Reed Elsevier.
At the end of the third 'Next 5 Minutes' conference on tactical media (March 1999) in Amsterdam, an interesting discussion emerged around the question of how the minor media practices elaborated and highlighted in this vibrant event would ever reach a wider audience for lack of being covered by any mainstream outlet. At one point, some people from the back of the room (unfortunately I don't know anymore who exactly, I believe an Italian group), shouted: 'We don't want to be mediated - we mediate ourselves!'
ReadPresence in the mediated environment of digital networks is probably one of the most complex phenomena of the new types of social interaction that have emerged in these environments. In the current phase of radical deployment (or penetration) of the Internet, various attempts are being made to come to terms with the social dynamics of networked communication spaces. It seems that traditional media theory is not able to contextualise these social dynamics, as it remains stuck on a meta-level discourse of media and power structures (Virilio), hyperreality (Baudrillard), or on a retrograde analysis of media structures deeply rooted in the functionality and structural characteristics of broadcast media (McLuhan).
ReadThis article focuses on grassroots digital activism in the Arab world and the risks of what seems to be an inevitable collusion with U.S foreign policy and interests. It sums up the most important elements of the conversation I have been having for the last two years with many actors involved in defending online free speech and the use of technology for social and political change. While the main focus is Arab digital activism, I have made sure to include similar concerns raised by activists and online free speech advocates from other parts of the world, such as China, Thailand, and Iran.
ReadOccupy Sandy gained the attention denied to Occupy Our Homes because it replaced militant Occupy! with "do-it-yourself" Occupy. Feel-good mutual aid displaced attention from the underlying contradiction between public housing and private utilities onto the quick fix of digital media. Occupy Our Homes, on the other hand, confronts the system with its failures ? predatory lending, homelessness, and empty bank-owned houses. The problems it addresses can't be solved by rolling up our sleeves and getting involved; they require political solutions.
ReadOn Mute and the Cultural Politics of the Net
It is neither easy nor popular to go against prevailing assumptions in society, especially when they pertain to how justice is dispensed in this country. But speaking out against injustice is and always has been the moral assignment of those who are inspired by the promise of American Freedom. That's why Johanna Fernandez and Kouross Esmaeli sought to tell this difficult story of a system gone awry in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Dissecting what went wrong - and what continues to go wrong - in the American justice system when it comes to people of color or of lesser economic means (and working toward correcting those injustices) is an essential civic duty, and the basis of Justice on Trial.
ReadAs much as images of violence, civil war, and sectarian strife become prominent in the media narrative of the Syrian uprising, little gems of innovative cultural production, artistic resistance, and creative disobedience continue to sprout across the virtual alleys of the Internet. These creative gems are also the germs of a viral peer-production process at work at a grassroots level in the new Syrian public sphere. Such acts of creativity - mash-ups, cartoons, slogans, jokes, songs, and web series - are probably too small and inconsistent in impact compared to the horrific magnificence that shelling, bombing, sniping, and killing scenes that provide daily fodder to global television viewers. It is also challenging to discover them; in fact, as remarked by Tunisian blogger Sami ben Gharbia at the Arab Bloggers meeting in Tunis (3-6 October 2011), Facebook is not the most suitable platform for activists to store, archive, tag, search for content, and give it a context.
ReadFriends,
At Zuccotti Park, there was always a bit of
social service involved in the occupation:-- homeless people sheltered,
the hungry fed -- but it was ancillary to Occupy's main objectives,
which dealt with societal, structural problems. But the reaction to
hurricane Sandy, and the formation of Occupy Sandy, brought out a
different aspect of the Occupy movement, not directed at Wall Street or
big systemic issues, but directly providing help to those in need.What
kind of role is that for Occupy? How does it fit in with Occupy Wall
Street's basic thrust?
A small handbook which explains complex economic terms and theories in simple language, to help everyone understand what has caused the economic mess, why it's still continuing, and enable them to engage in the debate about what needs to be changed for the better in our economic system. It is NOT a manifesto. It has been created to stimulate people to engage in discussion, and so to make up their own minds as to what they think should be done to create a better and fairer world.
ReadThe Critical Engineering Working Group - Berlin, October 2011
The exposure of undercover policeman Mark Kennedy in the eco-activist movement revealed how the state monitors and undermines political activism. This book shows the other grave threat to our political freedoms - undercover activities by corporations.
ReadIn recent years Amsterdam has become known for its free-net the Digital City. Less well known but in some ways equally remarkable has been the emergence of Amsterdam's radical movement for public access television. This text is just a beginning, a highly selective historical snap shot.
ReadRepublished with permission from metamute / Mute Magazine in London:
Moving beyond the conceptual polarisation of tight-knit vanguardist
parties and loose-tie virtual networks, Rodrigo Nunes sifts the residue
of last year's wave of revolts to produce a more nuanced picture of
organisational dynamics in the age of Web 2.0
The punk band Pussy Riot, which I belong to, is a musical group that conducts unexpected performances in different urban spaces. Pussy Riot's songs address topical political issues. The interests of the group members are: political activism, ecology, and the elimination of authoritarian tendencies in the Russian state system through the creation of the civil society.
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