[Air-l] FC: How anti-Iraq war protesters employed technology, from NYT

[Ed Lamoureux]

the other side of this also strikes me as interesting/compelling, and 
worthy of study:
in that digital leaves tracks [tracks which are generally unprotected 
by both technology and law], and in that laws of all sorts protect 
phone, mail, and personal exchanges [the old ways of organizing were, 
in many instances, "protected" or at least covered over by civil 
liberties] . . . the real "difference" may be the extent to which new 
[digital] and  ostensibly "secret" and "subversive" activities may be 
even more open to surveillance and prosecution.

On Sunday, February 23, 2003, at 08:45  AM, Steve Jones wrote:

> To be the devil's advocate (or at least a media historian) is what we 
> are describing a difference in kind or in scale? Most of us on air-l 
> are probably aware of the use of the phone (landline, then mobile) and 
> fax for organizing...and I recall reading about examples of the use of 
> audio cassettes and letters for organizing (though obviously on a 
> different timeline). So as I see it there are three fairly obvious 
> things the internet brings that are different than media before it in 
> this regard: One is the internet's relative instantaneity, another its 
> reach to so many people, and another is the inherent "copy-ability" of 
> internet communication (e.g., the ease of forwarding, posting). Which 
> of these matters most, or are they all equal? And what I'd like to 
> know more than that: Is there something else, something about the 
> internet as a medium, that makes it more than a faster/broader medium 
> in comparison to what has come before it?
>
> Thanks,
> Sj
>
> At 6:28 AM -0500 2/23/03, Michael Gurstein wrote:
>> Pace Gina and others... I think the article below provides some 
>> extremely
>> useful insight into the role that the Internet played, is playing and 
>> will
>> play in the variety of political transformations that are taking 
>> place.
>>
>> The demonstrations were, we should note, occuring on day 1.5 of a war 
>> that
>> hadn't yet happened and yet according to CNN who referred us to their
>> website for confirmation, there were significant "anti" activities in 
>> some
>> 603 (not sure where the 3 came from) communities across the globe.
>>
>> Some observations:
>> 	* pre-Internet, we would probably not have known (certainly not in a 
>> timely
>> fashion) about 90% of those activities as they occurred mostly in 
>> places
>> where AP/Reuters and the traditional national/international media 
>> never
>> tread
>> 	* pre-Internet, almost certainly 90% of those activities might never 
>> have
>> happened since the people in those communities would not have 
>> expected that
>> their activities in Peoria and Penticton would register on any sort of
>> international demo chart and thus they would have been invisible to 
>> all but
>> the direct participants
>> 	* pre-Internet, at day 1.5 of a war that hadn't happened yet, the 
>> turnout
>> would have been in the thousands rather than the millions and would 
>> have
>> represented the success of organizing efforts among the league of the
>> committed (the usual cast of fringe political parties and a few 
>> politically
>> active unions) rather than the infinitely larger and much more 
>> diverse (and
>> ultimately much more powerful) league of the conscious and concerned.
>>
>> I think the results that Gina presented are an indication of the 
>> limitations
>> of attempting to study phenomena which are emergent, systemic and
>> tranformative with purely (and dare I say, narrowly) empirical 
>> methodology
>> and tools that are meant to study phenomena that are incremental and
>> particularistic.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Mike Gurstein
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Air-l mailing list
> Air-l at aoir.org
> http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l
>
Edward Lee Lamoureux, Ph. D.
Interim Director, Multimedia Program and New Media Center
Associate Professor, Speech Communication
1501 W. Bradley
Bradley University
Peoria IL  61625
309-677-2378
Editor, Journal of Communication and Religion