Don’t Touch My Web!

The street protests in Istanbul has forcefully revived in the past few weeks, reminiscent of the Gezi protests in Summer 2013. On Sunday, protesters in Taksim Square was shouting in tandem: “Do not touch my Internet!”

The recent political crisis that began after a major graft probe in Turkey has now a new arena of contestation: Web activism. The ruling AKP government has increasingly been freaky about circulation of news about the corruption. Here is the first few sentences of a recent New York Times article on the issue:

Shortly after an audio recording in which Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is said to be heard talking about easing zoning laws for a construction tycoon in exchange for two villas for his family, SoundCloud, the file-sharing site where it was leaked last month, was suddenly unavailable to Internet users in Turkey.

Other recordings, also apparently from wiretaps connected with a corruption inquiry linked to Mr. Erdogan and those close to him, have shown up on YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter and other social media sites. Often, just as quickly as they appear, they disappear, only to show up soon after somewhere else on the Internet, like a game of Whac-a-Mole.

The Racialist Movement: Past and Present Strategies, Opportunities, and Constraints

By Todd J. Schroer

The constraints that are faced by the current racialist movement are in many ways the same that they have always historically faced:  governmental and countermovement opposition, negative publicity, movement infighting, etc.  Looming great over these is the bifurcation within the movement concerning the strategies and tactics that they feel should be used to achieve movement goals.  Namely, should they be focusing upon legal or extralegal actions?  Should they go underground, engaging in violence, or try to gain power through the political process? The path chosen can greatly affect recruitment, mobilization efforts, and the likelihood of success.

Thoughts on Continuity and Change in White Power Movement Recruitment Strategies in the United States

By Betty A. Dobratz and Lisa K. Waldner

We focus on a few aspects of a very complex set of questions about recruitment in the white power movement (WPM), including cultural influences on the WPM, whether framing of recruitment strategies have changed, and what the future may hold for the WPM.  We discuss the perceptions of WPM members (WPMMs) in part because we agree with W. I. Thomas’s Theorem that perceptions can have real consequences whether rooted in fact or not (Robertson 1981:289).

We believe it important to place possible changes in WPM recruitment strategies in a broad historical and cultural perspective recognizing that societal changes beyond the control of movement members have affected WPM framing of issues. 

Upsetting Rape Culture’s Victoria’s Secret Campaign

You may have caught wind of the dust-up the group Upsetting Rape Culture produced when they launched a slick social media campaign they called Pink Loves Consent.  The goal of the campaign was to generate discussion about consent in sexual relations among teens and young adults, who are the target demographic of Victoria’s Secret’s Pink product line and marketing campaign.  Mobilizing Ideas has commented on a number of aspects of social media mobilization (see here, here, and here), and readers who have an interest in this topic will want to read about this campaign.

Among many others, Jezebel and Erica Cheung, over at HuffPo, both blogged about it (see here and here), but I especially encourage you to read this online interview Upsetting Rape Culture activists Hannah Brancato and Rebecca Nagle over at Baltimore Fish Bowl.

Big Data and Big Money

By Zephyr Teachout

The last ten years have witnessed two revolutions in political organizing: I will identify them as the big data transformation, and the big money transformation. The first is the revolution wrought by the internet and data mining: the use of the internet for organizing, fundraising, spreading news, and voter turn out. This is what is covered in what looks to be a fascinating book, Kleis Nielsen¹s Ground Wars: Personalized Communication in Political Campaigns. The second is the revolution wrought by law, namely, the Supreme Court. In a series of cases culminating in Citizens United, the Supreme Court struck down several democratically passed laws designed to cabin the direct political influence of corporations.

I am particularly interested in observing the interaction between these two changes, both of which have implications for the institutions of campaigns.

The Big Data change gives relative power to two groups:

Data Wizardry, An Ocean of Cash, and “Mundane” Revolutions: The 2012 Election and the Internet

By David Karpf

2012 is the year when the Internet moves firmly into the background for political campaigns.

In the 2000 election, the web was a novelty.  Candidate McCain attracted headlines through his post-New Hampshire online fundraising, but otherwise the medium was mostly used for reinforcement, not persuasion.

In the 2004 election, Howard Dean demonstrated the power of the new medium for partisan mobilization.  Dean supporters used the web to donate, to volunteer online, and to MeetUp offline.  Heavy media attention followed, even if primary victories did not.  

From Paper Petitions to E-Petitions

Every day, I receive an email petition. I sign one maybe once a month, but I hardly ever follow up specifically on what happened to the particular petition I signed online. Today was the first time I tracked down the petitioning outcomes, or what the sites call “victories” and “more victories“. Surprisingly, I could not find any overall statistics regarding online petitioning after googling around for a while.

Internet Censorship Bill Proposed in Russia

The Russian Parliament has proposed legislation that would amend federal law to create an internet blacklist, requiring internet providers to ban access to each website appearing on a federally sanctioned list. Though intended to target child pornography and websites that promote drug use and teen suicide, some commentators have voiced caution that Bill № 89417-6 could be used to stymie collective action against the state.

Online Surveillance as a Demobilizing Deterrent

Credit: The Syrian Free Computer Society

Mobilizing Ideas has published a number of posts on digitally enabled social activism, online censorship, the impact of online resources upon mobilization, and related issues (see here and here.) Gary King and his colleagues recently released an interesting paper that analyzes the Chinese government’s censorship of social media sites.  In a nut shell they scraped posts to over 1,300 social media sites in China and scraped them before human government censors were able to remove the posts. Rescraping the sites, they were able to determine what posts had been removed by the Chinese government.  They developed 85 topic areas, and thereby cataloged the states’ interests by comparing what was removed with what was allowed to remain posted across those issue areas.

Contrary to previous understandings, posts with negative, even vitriolic, criticism of the state, its leaders, and its policies are not more likely to be censored.

Social Movement Organizations and Online Directories

Photo by How can I recycle this

It has long been established that social movement organizations (SMOs) adopt many business-like practices in the pursuit of social change. These practices typically include acquiring labor, capital, and talent through a competitive process. Social movement organizations will then appropriate those resources toward acquiring the attention of the public and political officials. In order to sustain such attention, professional SMOs must engage with the public through both presenting self-initiated messages and availing themselves for further messages if prompted. After a publicized demonstration concludes, a professional SMO should prepare to receive–and answer–follow-up telephone calls.

In order to acquire the commerce of potential customers and possibly divert such commerce from competitors, local businesses will traditionally provide their contact information and location in community directories. Likewise, in order to acquire the attention of the public and possibly divert such attention from competitors, SMOs may provide their contact information and location in community directories. With the global rise of communication infrastructure, such directories have grown exponentially in scale and made great strides in centralizing previously fragmented information. One’s inclusion in these vast directories is typically cheap, if not free, and extremely convenient for organizations and the broader public alike.