Democracy or autonomy? Indymedia and the contradictions of global social movement networks

Abstract

In this article, I examine the indymedia movement as exemplar of a transnational network where the dynamics of democracy and local autonomy come into tension. Indymedia was launched during the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle in 1999. Since 1999, indymedia has mushroomed into a transnational social movement based network. Through the lens of indymedia's networked structure, I examine the tension between participatory decision‐making and local autonomy. In specific I look at the decision of the global indymedia network to reject a large grant from the Ford Foundation because of Ford's history in the Argentine dirty wars. The heated episode, which almost forced the growing network to shut down, brings to the fore the complex contradictions of local autonomy and shared decision‐making in the age of networks. Moreover, this episode and indymedia in general, brings to light the inability of decentralized networks to build proactive power, highlighting the disorganizing and at times debilitating logic of contemporary social movements.

Open publishing, decentralisation, and the rise of new media platforms: reflecting on the IMC experience of Australia

“…When observing the context of online activism, the aspect of the rise of social media and its impact on alternative media platforms deserves additional reflections. As others have already noted (see for example, Wolfson, 2013), the new global social movements are thriving, thanks to the horizontal, democratic and networked structures that have formed from the new communication technologies that have become available. The claim that has been advanced on these new forms of organising and their accompanying practices, is that they are opening possibilities for a more egalitarian world, while transforming the nature of social change.…”

Indymedia legacies in Brazil and Spain: the integration of technopolitical and intersectional media practices

“…Intersectional practices within Midia Ninja are integral to the technopolitical practices of the collective house. These post-Indymedia practices have moved beyond critiques of straight-white-male domination within horizontal practices – which we characterize as horizontality from above, also noted by Wolfson (2013) – to create an equality-based form of intersectional horizontality that can be characterized as horizontal power from the margins.…”

“…While Indymedia has championed directly democratic processes (Atton, 2003;Giraud, 2014;Milioni, 2009), scholars and activists alike have observed inequalities in practice. Open processes tend to favor individuals whose race, gender, and/or class privilege provide access to time, digital literacies, and public discourse (Jeppesen and Petrick, 2018), rendering horizontality vulnerable to informal power hierarchies (Costanza-Chock, 2012;Wolfson, 2013). To address this, feminist and anarchist movements have introduced intersectionality into practices of horizontality (Breton et al, 2012;Rodríguez and Moreno, 2016;Sitrin, 2006).…”

Revisión de usos sociales y formas de ejercer la política a través de los nuevos medios

“…De esta manera consiguió que grandes eventos que acababan siendo silenciados por los medios convencionales tuvieran repercusión mediática, a lo que contribuyó el auge de internet y la incipiente capacidad de los ciudadanos para decidir y reprogramar sus prioridades a nivel informativo. Pese a ello, su priorización de una estrategia de descentralización y autonomía local le dificultó crear estrategias proactivas y decisiones colectivas (Wolfson, 2013), e Indymedia perdió influencia en el mundo de la contrainformación con la aparición de las redes sociales, exhibiendo su debilidad para adaptarse a un mundo que cambiaba vertiginosamente. La estrategia de apropiarse de los contenidos y establecer las prioridades en la comunicación por parte de los movimientos sociales ha ido acompañada de la idea inherente de apropiarse de la tecnología y de los medios necesarios (Candón, 2012, p. 83) para poder crear y difundir un mensaje que los grandes medios de comunicación escondían a los ciudadanos.…”