Can A Decentralized Global Justice Movement Work?

Jeffrey Juris' article "Networked Social Movements: Global Movements for Global Justice" brings up a theme we've discussed in class on multiple occasions: decentralization. In his argument, Juris describes social movements of the modern day as reliant upon information communication technologies (ICTs) to effectively rally activists around the world for one particular cause. Juris notes that these transnational advocacy networks (which he actually refers to as global justice movements) have been revolutionary in the way connections are bridged via network-based technologies like list-servs, social sites and wiki-type open source software.

The crux of transnational activism, according to Juris, is that using networks decentralizes the process, yet communicates the message over a farther distance to a greater number of people, resulting in mass worldwide protests like the one against the World Trade Organization in 1999 in Seattle and subsequent anti-corporate protests, many of which take place at the same time as major economic forums or summits to gain more attention.

Juris cites many protests in the early Millennium, but perhaps the most current and (to be honest) blatant example of a worldwide anti-corporate global justice movement would be more fitting. I wonder what that could be? Oh, that's right. That whole Occupy thing.

Occupy is everywhere nowadays, with protests in nearly all US cities and many more across the globe including Rome, Brisbane, Paris and Cape Town. It seems to follow Juris' notion of a decentralized movement, gaining steam through networks of like-minded citizens around the world working together in a horizontal and autonomous fashion where there is no clear authority figure, just a "power of the people" so to speak. For some fascinating news on how this is happening in real time, check out an article about how Occupy is starting the Free Network Foundation to provide decentralize peer-to-peer Internet for the movement.

It all sounds idyllic, right? Concerned activists around the world join forces of their own volition and create a united front against global corporate control. Well, I'm afraid the success of the Occupy movement, or of any decentralized movement, will depend upon its ability to change from a decentralized state to a more organized, identifiable state.

I'll invoke the early sociological work of Herbert Blumer, who first identified the four stages of social movements: Emergence, Coalescence, Bureaucratization and Decline. If we look at the Occupy movement, we can see that it is somewhere between Emergence and Coalescence. In Emergence, there is no defined leadership of a movement and there are no clear goals, simply a rising sense of unrest. In Coalescence the movement begins occurring on a mass scale as more realize they are unhappy. However, in this stage there are some critical transformations, such as the election or appointment of leadership throughout the movement as well as a refining of what exact goals the movement is attempting to attain and exactly what targets they should be protesting against.

These are steps the Occupy movement hasn't reached, and according to Blumer many movements do not fully complete Coalescence before they fizzle out. I can make an inference and say that if the Occupy movement does not alter its decentralized global justice popularity and turn it into something more tangible it may suffer the consequences.

I understand what Juris is saying. It is very revolutionary that ICTs allow transnational networks to form and enabled globally united groups of people. However, I think when the information and communication processes speed up, the time we expect action and progress does as well. Is it really possible in the month or so the Occupy movement has really picked up steam that they could change their tactics enough to get all of its rabble-rousers to agree on points of change as well as leaders before the media fire dies? Will the decentralized nature of the Occupy movement even be able to change, as its supporters note its network approach to be one of its best traits?

I look forward to watching further coverage to see if Occupy goes by the wayside or puts on a different hat in order to stay afloat.

News through Networks

Transnational Advocacy Networks (TANs) are an emerging power in the global scene. Increasingly non-state actors are taking on some of the roles that originally belonged to the nation-state. We read about TANs this week in Aday and Livingstone’s piece, “Taking the state out of state-media relations theory.” Aday and Livingstone write of the way journalism that relies entirely on the nation-state as a source is incomplete. Because of the beat system and the amount of news that comes from government officials, the news the public actually receives can be limited.

            TANs are groups made up of NGOs, international organizations, governments and individuals that communicate and exchange info with a common goal. When journalists cannot get the facts on stories from traditional government sources, TANS can prove to be a good source. Aday and Livingstone say that TANs often produce information and the news media can distribute it. Together, “transnational advocacy networks and the global media serve as vibrant alternative sources of information and news frames” (Aday and Livingstone).

            Two very different news stories I’ve been following for different reasons are excellent examples of this. First, I’ve working on a project for a class, about the lack of media coverage on the famine and drought in the Horn of Africa. Because there is so little traditional media coverage of the ongoing problem, I have been turning to other sources for information. I’ve used the few stories in the media I have found to figure out which NGOs are actively involved in the cause. Then, I’ve gone to their websites, where many of them have produced their own content, posted press releases or linked to other news stories. On CAREInternational’s Kenyan office’s site, I found many articles and press releases written by their staff and on Mercy Corps’s website, I found a video produced by one of their employees. International organizations like UNICEF are also a source. UNICEF has an entire tab on their homepage dedicated to videos, photos and articles on the famine. These sources (media, NGOs, international orgs) all make up a large TAN focused on famine in eastern Africa.

            I’ve also been interested in the floods in the Cinque Terre, Italy, simply because it’s my favorite place in the world and I care what happens there. There were a few bare-bones stories in the traditional media, but not nearly enough to satisfy my curiosity. I was devastated to learn that these gorgeous, authentic villages filled with amazing people had been so damaged and I wanted to find out which parts of town, restaurants, beaches and hiking trails had been destroyed. And although I don’t know anyone currently living there, it’s obviously heart-breaking that a dozen people in the region have died or a re missing. I found information through businesses, like Rick Steves Travel. He is often credited with “discovering” Cinque as a tourist destination and he kept his website up-to-date with the events happening in Cinque. I also used individual accounts, like the blogs of American expats, Nicole and Kate, living in Cinque and videosuploaded by tourists to YouTube. And I found a newly formed NGO, Save Vernazza, that’s goal is to raise money for reconstruction and their site is full of photos and updates. All of these groups, organizations and individuals link to each other online and form a network for the disaster in Cinque.

One of my favorite photos of Vernazza in Cinque Terre

            In both cases, I started my research in traditional media, but ended up finding everything I was looking for in TANs. 

New Media Technology: A Help or Hindrance?

Media technologies that utilize network theory to become successful gain a network power or authority. Forget everything you read in my last post about the role of the individual in these technologies, this time we're talking about the powerhouse organizations themselves and what they can have influence over.

Sangeet Kumar gave a fantastic example of this in his article about Google Earth. To briefly summarize his work, he asserts that Google's international use of its Maps and Earth features have had heavy hands in international conflicts, serving as a tool of warfare in both India and Israel-Palestine. The 2008 bombings in Mumbai were strategically placed with the help of these Google tools, according to an article in The Telegraph. And we thought it was worrisome that Google may be peeping on us in the shower (although that has its fair share of concern too). This is on another level entirely.

While reading this piece I cannot help but think back to the Public Diplomacy Forum at George Washington University that our class attended. In particular, I recall hearing former Foreign Service Officers in Bahrain and Iraq speaking of media technologies and their use in these still hostile areas. These workers operated Facebook pages that became vital sources of information for locals, who could then interact with one another. However, they could not control the arguments and slurs that would eventually develop between parties and were displayed publicly for all to see. Even if the embassies did decide to exercise their power to remove certain rabble-rousers, what is to stop more from flooding in?

I think these two instances are connected in that Google and Facebook are what could be considered new, supra-national entities that sometimes can function like another form of nation-state, as Kumar notes. These technologies can pull significant and self-sustaining profits, organize a digitally connected citizenry and employ the ability to spur political debate and action...it certainly seems like a recipe for its own nation. This becomes troublesome because these "nation-states" are governed under the principles of business, not democracy or any other system we've discussed in a sixth-grade civics course. Regulation of these bodies is becoming less and less rigid, especially when governments themselves are relying upon these technologies to do international outreach and development. I can recall the conference mentioning the use of everything from iPads to mobile devices to spread diplomacy around the world.

As these technologies become the bread and butter of connecting our world, are we even going to think of regulating it?

I hate to ruminate on this positively, but I think there is something to be said when a nation-state does reaffirm its authority over some of these supra-national technologies, if anything to keep them from monopolizing. China has opted out of using Google. Yes, China is poor example because of its restrictive media policies and government authoritarianism, but regardless, it is a state exercising power over a supra-national entity, which I think is important to note. This struggle is more evident in the Kumar article. He mentions a host of countries that protested the invasion of Google's satellites and cameras into their cities. Not too long ago, Germany opted out of Google Maps for pure privacy reasons, with many other countries thinking the same way.

I think it will be interesting to see where this power struggle will head. As these technologies become more important and even alluded to as nation-states in their own right, I'd like to see how sovereign states respond. It is very much a conflict of interest because these corporations are so widely used and are quite useful, but with these high rewards come high costs. You can't censor a street map for a terrorist and un-censor it for a traveling couple. In this all-or-nothing battle, there truly is not clear winner as of yet.

Defeating Terrorism with Network Theory

The study of networks was not the easiest concept of the semester to understand. According to Amelia Arsenault in “Networks: Emerging Frameworks for Analysis,” one of the predominant reasons for this is the confusion of networks as a social construct versus networks as a form of network technology. But looking at networks as a way that people connect is an interesting way to examine the connections that bind different groups together.

One of the most interesting groups Arsenault applies Network Theory to is a terrorist group. Much criminal activity can now be classified as Netwars. This means the strength of the relationships or connections within the network are what decide the outcome. If a terrorist group has a star-format network, the hub will have to be taken out to defeat the cell. If they are built as a mesh network, meaning all the nodes are interconnected to each other and not just to a few central nodes, it becomes infinitely more difficult to take down a terrorist group. The government and military should use this information to be better equipped to take down terrorist organizations. This information can show them where to strike to eliminate the most important nodes in a network.

Another way networks can be used to battle terrorism is by tracing and connecting the nodes of a network to find the next node. In a 2006 New York Times magazine article, Can Network Theory Thwart Terrorists?, Patrick Radden Keefe examines how the National Security Agency uses Network Theory to make connections between terrorists to locate other members of a cell. Keefe writes about a Cleveland consultant, Valdis Krebs, who created a network map connecting all of the 19 terrorist involved in the 9/11 attacks within just a few links, using shared addresses, phone numbers, frequent flier numbers, etc. Most of these men were linked to each other through one leader. In retrospect, it has more of a reflective value, but if found beforehand, this time of work could provide preventative measures.

An issue that occurs with this kind of network mapping though is surveillance of everyone, even just innocent, everyday citizens. Because we are all supposedly linked within six degrees of separation, most of us are probably surprisingly close on network maps to people we wouldn’t expect, such as terrorists and criminals. That means many innocent people will end up being watched because of such linkages. This topic quickly morphs into the much-discussed, hot-topic battle of national security vs. individual privacy.