[Air-l] social movements / social software

Anastasia Kavada anastasia_kavada at yahoo.co.uk
Fri Apr 14 04:09:50 PDT 2006


Hello all,

I'm currently writing-up my PhD thesis on the use of the internet by the
'movement for alternative globalization' or anti-globalization movement as
it is more widely known. I have focused on the European Social Forum, one of
the main events organized every year by the movement in Europe attracting
thousands of participants. I have examined the processes of mobilization,
organization and collective identity formation through interviews with
organizers, a content analysis of the main email lists devoted to the
organizing process, as well as a survey of activists who mobilized to
participate in it. 

One of the main patterns that seems to be emerging from this research is
that the impact of email lists and the internet in general cannot be fully
understood without examining their relationship and co-existence with other
modes of communication and particularly face-to-face. For instance, in the
European Social Forum organizing process the main decisions are taken in
face-to-face, large meetings, while the internet is used to prepare for
these meetings (in terms of circulating the agenda, circulating/co-writing
documents for discussion, publicising the time and place of meetings and
making practical arrangements for people to attend) and also circulate,
discuss and challenge the decisions that have been taken. In addition, while
face-to-face communication is deemed indispensable for the development of
relationships of trust and solidarity (a recurrent quote is that 'you have
to look people in the eyes' in order to trust them), the internet helps to
maintain these links in-between physical meetings and across geographical
boundaries. 

On a more general level, it seems that different modes of communication are
better suited to different functions within the political process depending
on how they configure time and space. In that respect, synchronous, oral,
interpersonal communication aids the development of a sense of unity and
belonging within a bounded space and time. On the other hand, asynchronous,
written and more impersonal communication expands the geographical scale of
social movements and helps to relax the constraints and frustrations of
direct face-to-face contact, allowing a looser, more flexible structure to
emerge. Of course this is a quite simplified suggestion as different
applications or modes of communication display varying degrees of
synchronous/asynchronous, oral/written and personal/impersonal
communication.

Now on the issue of mobilization, the results of my survey seem to agree
with Todd's suggestion that interpersonal communication is the most
important mode of communication. People attending the ESF in Paris in 2003
(my survey had 257 participants) were mobilized predominantly through
face-to-face communication and then through email or email lists. Only 4%
has heard about the ESF solely through the mass media and not also through a
political organization, friends or relatives, the workplace or the
university. (For anyone who might be interested in more info about this,
I've published an article in an open-access journal, which is available here
http://www.wmin.ac.uk/mad/pdf/Kavada.pdf)

I'm really sorry for the long email, it's just so exciting to see people
interested in this subject.

Anastasia Kavada

PhD Candidate
University of Westminster

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