SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

Social Movements Through the Net

Internetworking: The Internet has enabled the wide spread expansion of established movements. We would like to distinguish two types of internetworking:

a) organization and network coordination,

b) grass roots global internetworking, and

1. Institutional coordination: Just as many mainstream corporations and media now have an Internet presence and increasingly conduct their affairs on the net, traditional social movement organizations such as ACLU, NAACP, and AFL-CIO and new social movements such as NOW, ACT-UP, and Greenpeace maintain online resources and organize online in diverse ways. The Internet is now used as an effective medium to extend the reach of existing struggles and enable new actions. A number of more established environmental groups, feminists, human rights, and other movement groups have had web sites for years. Many organize through lusters and provide websites with alternative information/articles, news/plans of demonstrations and ways that people can get more information, more involved etc. social movements have expanded on a global scale.
   An example of this is the political lobbying of The International Campaign to Ban Landmines. USAS formed in 1998 to protest the use by Universities of overseas apparel sweatshops to produce University paraphernalia (a multi-billion-dollar industry). Partly through consultation with various progressive labor and human rights organizations and through networking internationally with indigenous rights and labor organizations, USAS groups are well informed in terms of labor issues and theory and link their online discussion and websites to broader issues such as the WTO and demands for living wages for all workers. At the same time, the USAS affiliated groups are focused in their strategies and demands, having a multiple point program of demands for University disinvestments and monitoring of that. The linking of USAS via Internet media to other enduring activist organizations has resulted in socialization of student activists into sophisticated activist theory and practice. Through internet use, we may be seeing a qualitative shift in the sophistication of student activists that will influence their success in subsequent activism, enabling the creative efficacy of movements and the civil society.
2. Grass roots global internetworking: Various AGMs as alternative globalization movement protests are expressions of a form of political networking and internetworking, often across a wide variety networks/movements cooperating with others at odds, that culminate in mobilizations and diverse sets of actions by a diversity of groups. A fundamental change in social movement activity is the linking of diverse movements into super movement spheres for the networking of information and resources and the creation of universal social justice and rights charters. Other movements are doing the same. International environmental groups now participate in social justice and labor issue. Feminist organizations are involved in diverse spheres of activity. Peace movement strategies include social justice and environmental work. Such global internet workings and the global charters are signs of the actualization of a global sphere of movement activity.
   
   
   In conclusion, the global cyber activism, movements form dense nets of links with other movements to quickly organize and manifest actions with local and global impact.

By:  ULAYA SIJALI A. (BAPRM 42681)