[Air-l] Iraq and the internet

[Gina Neff]

Esteemed colleagues from many disciplines,

I think we're onto a really interesting line of discussion. I'll break my
longish comments into two sections.

1. Internet
The questions that David Silver raised here (and that he and several of us
on this list are working on) concern how the internet enables/makes/shapes a
public sphere and a public or publics. The rise of a seemingly more
democratic and interactive medium is occurring at the same time political
and military power is being wielded in very old-fashioned and
undemocratic -- nay, imperial -- ways. I think it behooves us to think about
what this means for the claims we're making about the transformation of
society. My research project on how social movements are using the internet
to organize is one such attempt, and I'd love to hear the ideas for further
research and/or writing that others have been inspired by recent world
events.

2. Politics (warning: explicitly political)
I was bothered by Angela's frustration about emails to representative being
deleted. (Sorry, Angela!) There are ways, in my opinion, that online
political  participation at this time is ultimately frustrating and perhaps
even demoralizing. For now, email doesn't seem to be an effective way for
citizens to communicate political sentiment. From the research I've seen,
emails aren't taken as seriously as handwritten notes or letters in one's
own words. And emails don't get covered by the New York Times; marches of
over 100,000 get covered by the New York Times (and the same is true for
other cities and their hometown papers and marches -- good turnouts lead to
coverage). By all means contact your elected officials -- this is the time
to do it -- but for goodness sake don't send them an email.

For the USA'ers on the list, I'm confident that most of you are already
plugged into the ways in which you want to be involved, but if you'd like
suggestions of groups, activities, readings, resources, etc., please contact
me off list.

Juggling my two hats,
Gina