Indymedia

Graham Meikle

Bit 1 Scores of farm workers on hunger strike in the US. A campaigner for affordable housing abducted in Cape Town. Tens of thousands of anti-war demonstrators marching in Istanbul. None of those stories made my daily paper — instead, I read them all this morning on the global Indymedia network . Developments in communication technologies have often enabled new approaches to the production, distribution and reception of news. In this article, using Carey’s analysis of the impacts of the telegraph (1989) and Burnett and Marshall’s discussion of ‘informational news’ (2003) as starting points, I want to offer some examples from the brief history of the Indymedia movement to show how the Net is making possible a significant shift in who gets to make the news.

Dorothy Kidd

Since its birth in Seattle in late 1999 during demonstrations against the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Independent Media Center (IMC) Network has grown to over one hundred and ten autonomous centres in thirty-five countries. With half a million to two million page views a day, these multi-media sites provide an important source of counter information about struggles against corporate-led globalisation, as well as local, national and international campaigns for peace and social justice. Operating with very little cash, the Network sustains itself on volunteer labour and donations, and as importantly, news and information from its audience through ‘open publishing.’

DeeDee Halleck

In a space of less than three years, a grass roots media network has sprung up that has connected literally tens of thousands of media makers, created web sites visited by millions, projected videos in hundreds of venues, published newspapers in print runs of tens of thousands and transmitted web and micro radio programmes that have found avid and loyal audiences.

Arne Hintz

Northern Germany was a cold and bleak place during the final days of March 2001. Winter had returned for a final appearance, it was snowing and definitely not the time to go for a spring holiday in the countryside. Yet despite the inhospitable conditions, more than 10,000 people were travelling to the Wendland region, south of Hamburg, to spend the next few days in tents and on the streets. Another large shipment of nuclear waste – called ‘Castor transport’ after the name of the waste containers – was on its way to the depository in the little town of Gorleben, and these shipments had long been a focal point for social movements in Germany and beyond to mobilise around, not just involving the large environmental movement, but a wide variety of groups opposing the nuclear industry and the consistent, and often violent, State support for its aims. A daunting task, considering that 20,000 police were deployed to make the train reach its destination by almost any means, and that mainstream media did its best to discredit the protesters as violent extremists.

Annie and Sam

This is a story of the pre-history of imc-uk with an outlook to the present decentralised countrywide structure of the United Kollektives as experienced by some but not all of the volunteers who ‘were there’. The first phase of imc-uk was marked by the specifics of an imc located in the metropolitan geography of London, the richness of connectivity and inspiration, the lack of space, and the offline-practices of blagging and sharing. The second, post-decentralisation phase points to the process of building a larger network, using more cybertools than before, and allowing for localised reporting.

Bristol Indymedia was founded by local activists with help from the London Indymedia collective. It’s been going for over a year now and has a very definite local agenda. This direction was established at the initial public meetings that established the site. The discussion centred on the idea that for the site to truly be called ‘Bristol’ (a city in the south-west of the United Kingdom) it had to reflect Bristol and the surrounding area.

Aliza Dichter

When activists and independent journalists created a Website to challenge the media, could it become a model of the democratic media they were calling for? Aliza Dichter, one of the original founders and the former editor of MediaChannel.org, shares her reflections.

Prishani Naidoo

With apartheid gaining much attention internationally, the national liberation movement and the African National Congress (ANC), in particular, came to be seen as the voice and representative of the majority of South Africans, Black and poor. In 1994, the ANC was elected into a Government of National Unity, and assumed the seats of governance in South Africa. It had come to power on the promise of the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), a broadly redistributive programme developed through a policy of broad consultation amongst organs of civil society. In 1996, however, it adopted a neoliberal economic policy framework in the form of the Growth, Employment and Redistribution Strategy (GEAR), which was to signal the beginning of a series of attacks on the lives of the poor.

Robert Dannin

The media has made the concept of a global city into reality. Yet the more we watch and listen, the less we consciously participate in the positive construction of our public and private lives. Ironically, this loss of autonomy is accompanied by an unprecedented expenditure of energy and resources devoted to the aggressive reproduction of a for-profit electronic architecture. The ‘sacred media’ is so-called because it expresses the virtues of technical efficiency. It is quickly becoming the arbiter of all values. We are taught that its existence depends on an alleged free market. Without questioning this assumption we have engaged in building a global hive where any attempt to question the media’s legitimacy faces the opprobrium of a rigid social hierarchy, defended in the last instance by a Pentagon of brutal power. Consider the recent invasion of Iraq as the deployment of a multinational media army of thousands protected by the full might of the US and British military, and you understand the power of sacred media. Whatever fate holds for the poor Iraqis, we can be certain that the country will become safe, sooner or later, for the telecommunications market.

Len Masterman

Once again it has been war, with all the attendant horrors, pain and misery that it inflicts upon innocent men, women and children – which heightens awareness of the paramount importance of media literacy. As George Bush and Tony Blair were casting around for publicly credible reasons to justify their invasion of Iraq, both of their governments were engaged in a vigorous propaganda war against their own publics’ scepticism about the necessity for war. It was a process bolstered – as it was also on the Iraqi side – by misinformation, distortion, lies and the vilification, stereotyping and demonisation of the ‘other’, the enemy. It is a familiar process whose contribution to the total sum of human misery is incalculable. Could the need in all societies for a critical mass of knowledgeable and sceptical citizens who can understand, see through and oppose this process be clearer?