INTERNET, SCALE AND THE GLOBAL GRASSROOTS: GEOGRAPHIES OF THE INDYMEDIA NETWORK OF INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTRES VIRGINIE MAMADOUH Department of Geography and Planning, University of Amsterdam, Nieuwe Prinsengracht 130, 1018 VZ Amsterdam, The Netherlands. E-Mail: [email protected] Received: June 2003; revised November 2003 ABSTRACT This paper addresses the role of the Internet in global collective action through an analysis of the scale practices of the Indymedia network. Indymedia is a worldwide network of interlinked websites run by volunteers organised in local Independent Media Centres (IMCs). These websites, a global site at www.indymedia.org and over one hundred local sites, are meant to empower activists groups by providing them with a media platform. The case study focuses on the role of the Internet in four facets of collective action: grievances and alternatives, organisation, mobilisation and identities. The analysis deals more specifically with scales, examining scaling practices in the light of three scale metaphors (scale as level, scale as size, scale as relation). While scales are also framed as bounded areas (territorial communities to be served) and as levels when targeting specific government agencies, the prevailing scale frame is that of a network of scales in which the local and the global mutually constitute each other. Key words: Collective action, Internet, scales, globalisation The anti-globalisation movement is not use the Internet and how does it affect their simply a network, it is an electronic network, geographies and more specifically the ways they it is an Internet-based movement (Castells organise and mobilise at different scales? Does 2001, p. 142). the Internet indeed empower global grassroots and how is it used to navigate between places The global dimension of the Web facilitates and between scales? transnational movements transcending the This paper explores the role of the Internet boundaries of the nation state (Norris 2001, in the multi-scalar politics of the global grass- p. 191). roots. It presents a case study of the Indymedia network, analysing the material scale pro- INTRODUCTION duction in the organisation and the mobilisation of the network and the discursive scale production While it is nowadays customary to acknowledge on its websites. The next section briefly reviews the potential of the Internet for global col- social movement approaches and discusses lective action, the ways grassroots groups and scale issues and the potential role of the Inter- organisations actually use the Internet are still net. The remainder of the paper analyses the rarely scrutinised (for a recent exception see: role of the Internet in Indymedia, a worldwide McCaughley & Ayers 2003). How does the Inter- network of news websites for grassroots activists. net influence the nature and shape of political The audience of the network was estimated organising? How do social-movement groups at 400,000 individual visits per day (in January Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie – 2004, Vol. 95, No. 5, pp. 482–497. © 2004 by the Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden MA 02148, USA INTERNET, SCALE AND THE GLOBAL GRASSROOTS 483 2002, reported in Uzelman 2002; p. 17). The at the national level only and neglecting local paper presents the Indymedia open publishing configurations of resources and local oppor- software; it analyses the use of the Internet to tunity structures inside the same country (Miller organise the Indymedia network and to mobi- 1994, 2000). Moving across scales, i.e. ‘jumping lise activists at different scales; and it examines scales’ is an important strategy for protagonists the use of the Internet in the framing of In- in a conflict. An action group might try to mobi- dymedia and the global grassroots and their lise individuals and seek support and allies at multiscalar practices. the scale with the most opportunities. Scales are therefore crucial to issues of empowerment COLLECTIVE ACTION, SCALE AND (Staeheli 1994; see also the notions of ‘spaces of THE INTERNET dependence’ and ‘spaces of engagement’, Cox 1998). Moreover it is not only about jumping Studying collective action – Broadly speaking pre-existing scales, but also about producing four approaches to social movements can be them. It is nowadays common in geography to distinguished. Early research on collective view scales as social constructs (Leitner 1997; action focused on grievances to explain why Delaney & Leitner 1997; Marston 2000; Bren- people get mobilised. By contrast, the resource ner 2001; Marston & Smith 2001; Herod & mobilisation approach (RMA) stresses the Wright 2002; Kurtz 2003). importance of resources available (or not) to The overused concept of globalisation sug- individuals and groups involved (or not) in gests the emergence of a new scale of politics: collective action (McCarthy & Zald 1973, 1977). the global scale, and a new scale of collective The third thread, sometimes labelled the Politi- action with a global grassroots (or globalisation cal Process Approach, criticised this actor- grassroots, as phrased by Appadurai 2000 centred approach and focuses on the political and Routledge 2003). Social movements are context with the central concept of political acknowledged to play an important role in opportunity structure (POS) (Kitschelt 1986; the renegotiation of political scales, as show Kriesi et al. 1992). While the RMA questions why examples concerning environmental issues some groups are more active than others, the (Lipschutz 2000; Heins 2000; Soyez 2000; Schä- POS approach wonders why groups in certain fer 2000) and the anti-globalisation movement countries or periods are more successful than and its resistance against global neo-liberalism others. A fourth strand of social movement (Routledge 2000, 2003; DeFilippis 2001). The research turns away from the material aspects relation between global and local is crucial of social movements to underline their discur- to these analyses. DeFilippis (2001) is worried sive practices: it focuses on so-called new social about disconnected scales (pp. 369–371): resist- movements (NSM) that challenge the hegem- ance to neoliberalism needs to be both global onic framing of social issues (Melucci 1989, and local, as capitalism. Others state that these 1996; Tarrow 1995). ‘These are movements to movements are ‘anchored locally, linked glo- seize the power of the mind, not state power’ bally’ (Soyez 2000), underlining the multi- (Castells 2001, p. 141). Collective action frames scalar politics of the anti-globalisation movement feature motivational elements (defining the (such as the Peoples’ Global Action analysed in community), diagnostic elements (stating the Routledge 2003). Transforming ‘local’ distur- problem) and prognostic elements (proposing bances into global activism (Herod & Wright a solution) (Martin 2003). These four appro- 2002, p. 4), ‘going globile’ (Routledge 1998, aches address different aspects of grassroots 2000), globalising resistance, globalising networks mobilisations and point at four complementary of communication, solidarity information sharing perspectives to structure this case study: griev- (Routledge 2003) are seen as crucial to oppose ances, resources, opportunities and identities. neoliberal globalisation. By contrast, Gibson- Graham (2002) (please note that Gibson-Graham Global grassroots and scale issues – Scale issues is the pen name of Katherine Gibson and Julie are generally neglected by collective action Graham) questions the ways ‘geographical research that tends to focus on the national rescaling’ is often depicted and the frequently scale, analysing resources and opportunities declared need for resistance to neoliberalism © 2004 by the Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG 484 VIRGINIE MAMADOUH to organise globally (for example: Hardt & Negri to share information and ideas across space, in 2000): and contends that local resistance is no other words to jump scales, and how this scale less important, and no less challenging to the politics of telecommunications alters the bal- global economy (Gibson-Graham 2002). ance of power in social struggles. This raises an Without taking a definitive position in this important question for the present study: How debate, it is important to underline that collec- do grassroots activists use the Internet to jump tive actions produced their own ‘scalar narra- scales between local, national and global pol- tives’ (Kelly 1997) or ‘scalar discourses’ (Herod itical arenas, to articulate new agendas and to & Wright 2002). ‘Scale frames’ (Kurtz 2003) can frame the configuration of local and global be seen as strategic discursive representations of issues? social grievances, including the practice of nam- The Internet is a communication network ing (i.e. constructing a social grievance), blaming linking computers worldwide. As such, it is (i.e. providing explanations for the present- both a communication medium and an organis- day situation), and claiming (i.e. formulating ational infrastructure. It can be an instrument solutions). This framing does not necessarily for collective action; Internet-based arenas involve one single scale, on the contrary, collec- (such as BBS or forums, and the Web as the pub- tive action groups might appeal to national lic space of the Internet) offer new arenas for solutions for local problems and vice versa collective action; Internet-based communi- (think