ALTERNATIVE MEDIA IN CYBER ACTIVISM

Alternative media: In Cyber activism

This is the online alternatives to mainstream media, social movement media, and local media online just as major newspapers now cultivate online readerships, established left/right media are using the net to distribute part or all of their publications stock of articles and recruit readers. Specialized professional publications are moving online. Many persons online now use the net as primary source of news. To challenge the puerile, entertainment of corporate news that increasingly conservative.  Online alternative media and knowledge bases have become a major source of cultural information and formation of activism and movement internetworking. Various online media services such as Common Dreams and AlterNet are developing substantial readership Alternative media on the net have diversified greatly. MediaChannel.org, which networks around media topics, including online issues, lists roughly 1000 media affiliates, many with left/alternative focus. Just as corporate and alternative media have moved online, so do many social movement organizations local, regional, or global use net media to recruit, inform and engage members. Alternative media formats online are diverse, ranging from online zines and blogs (individualized web logs) to alternative news wires. Many community networks, sometimes called free nets, have developed on the net through combining alternative local political discourse, civic interfaces, and business portals (Castells 2001). Some successful projects include local media resources and possibly interactive communication with civic institutions and transparency of local government. Large networks of such community networks have begun organizing globally in the last few years. Networks such as Association For Community Networking seek to preserve and expand the development of new virtual public spheres through mutual support, shared strategies and local-global or local networking.

Grassroots networks are hybrid constructions. They include often networking and the fluid circulation of efforts by independent individuals, professionals from mainstream media organization groups, movement groups, and networks of networks. Email and UseNet newsgroups are among the earliest forms of net media used as grass roots news media. For cyber activism: List serves and newsgroups are both primary organizing tools and sources of news and analysis and yes, for community formation. Through increased interconnectivity of information technologies, information, and communications now flow quickly to a wide geographical audience, often as a chain of events is still occurring. Various forms of information media – websites, movement list serves, bulletin boards, even chat rooms for developing stories – are used to develop and expand coverage of media often difficult to obtain through corporate sources, or delayed through alternative editorial process. To date, grass roots online sources of information are highly decentralized and little subject to corporate or governmental control or censorship. Often, to pool resources, a dozen and more media groups collaborate by necessity via the net to produce and distribute large projects such as video documentaries of large AGM mobilizations. Such networking also occurs now at the level of alternative media policy and strategizing.

In conclusion, the Alternative media is the way of the community to get the information in different language for specific group of people for them to enjoy the new technology and to expand the development of new virtual public spheres.

By:  Ulaya Sijali

(BAPRM 42681)

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