http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations98ce.html
Gene Sharp's book "From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation" is a short but jam-packed explanation of how to get rid of an authoritarian government. He explains how to plan ahead, how to spread out labor, what to do after you've succeeded, and on and on. It's just a dry but thorough how-to book.
Sharp doesn't deal with ICA, since the book was written in 1993. But an important point he makes is that for all your work and planning, it might not work anyway. You might have to step back and try again later.
The military crackdown in Libya shows what can go wrong when a dictator decides he wants to stay no matter who is telling him to leave (in this case, everybody). In Zimbabwe people may face the death penalty simply for watching videos and discussing what happened in Egypt. This article gives several reasons why protests in Algeria will probably not succeed at this time (including their recent history of brutal crackdowns).
So besides recommending Sharp's book, I'd also again like to stress that ICA is a tool, not a guarantee of success. It is a tool that makes things cheaper, faster, and better connected. It makes collective action more probable. It may even help lay the groundwork for success as well as doing it. But even if you have the safest car in the world, you can still crash.
It's good then, that there are resources like Sharp's to help think through any potential action. When we protested Scientology in Clearwater in the 1990s, we would spend weeks ahead of time thinking up "what if" scenarios. What if they physically assaulted one of us? What if they infiltrated our group? We were not thorough enough with this, because we never thought of "what if they tear up their own sidewalks?" But it was still a helpful process. One advantage of ICA is you get the resource of every brain involved. Fewer things get missed that way.
Internet Collective Action is people organizing in a nonhierarchical manner to accomplish a particular goal. The reward is in the doing, and how much or how little anyone participates is completely voluntary, depending on their abilities and commitment to the goal. By this process amazing things can be accomplished. ICA will grow so long as the Internet is free. http://www.lisamcpherson.org/pc.htm is an example of ICA.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Friday, March 11, 2011
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Why aren't sub-saharan countries revolting?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/08/revolution-winds-change-reach-across-sahara?INTCMP=SRCH
" For decades, under colonial rule and since independence, many leaders have exploited their peoples' ethnic rivalries and linguistic differences to sow division and maintain their ethnic group's hold on power and the country's purse strings. To this day, in many such states, ethnicity has greater resonance than national identity."
This is a useful article that tries to explain why some African countries probably won't have an uprising like Tunisia and Egypt, even though they have dictators running them. The author, Wangari Maathai, does mention an internet-organized protest in Angola, but generally, much fewer people have access to the Internet in these countries than in the northern countries like Egypt (though even there it is still a small percentage with Internet access).
I should say that I don't think there's a direct correlation of Internet access and revolution. I see the Internet as a tool that makes organizing much cheaper, faster, and easier. Anything cheaper, faster, and easier is more likely to happen. But of course there are other factors that this author covers that could negate the Internet advantage at any rate. And it's impossible to know when all the necessary factors will align so that an ICA will not only happen, but succeed.
There have been revolutions before the Internet, and there will no doubt be some that hardly utilize the Internet. But the Internet makes collective action more likely.
" For decades, under colonial rule and since independence, many leaders have exploited their peoples' ethnic rivalries and linguistic differences to sow division and maintain their ethnic group's hold on power and the country's purse strings. To this day, in many such states, ethnicity has greater resonance than national identity."
This is a useful article that tries to explain why some African countries probably won't have an uprising like Tunisia and Egypt, even though they have dictators running them. The author, Wangari Maathai, does mention an internet-organized protest in Angola, but generally, much fewer people have access to the Internet in these countries than in the northern countries like Egypt (though even there it is still a small percentage with Internet access).
I should say that I don't think there's a direct correlation of Internet access and revolution. I see the Internet as a tool that makes organizing much cheaper, faster, and easier. Anything cheaper, faster, and easier is more likely to happen. But of course there are other factors that this author covers that could negate the Internet advantage at any rate. And it's impossible to know when all the necessary factors will align so that an ICA will not only happen, but succeed.
There have been revolutions before the Internet, and there will no doubt be some that hardly utilize the Internet. But the Internet makes collective action more likely.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
A couple of articles on recent news and ICA
http://newmatilda.com/print/9319
"The rise of social media made a set of online tools for revolution readily available and accessible to the largest demographic in the Middle East — youth. Put a powerful tool of communication in the hands of a handful of highly motivated, highly educated activists with the potential to reach the largest and most important demographic of the society and add to it the spark of what happened in Tunisia — and you have the perfect storm."
http://crookedtimber.org/2011/03/07/realism-idealism-and-social-media/
"The North African revolutions and remind us that citizens aren’t so much political or apolitical as they are politicized or unpoliticized at any given moment; even people who don’t like discussing politics in their spare time can turn out in the Tahrir Square when the serious business starts." [Clay Shirky]
"The rise of social media made a set of online tools for revolution readily available and accessible to the largest demographic in the Middle East — youth. Put a powerful tool of communication in the hands of a handful of highly motivated, highly educated activists with the potential to reach the largest and most important demographic of the society and add to it the spark of what happened in Tunisia — and you have the perfect storm."
http://crookedtimber.org/2011/03/07/realism-idealism-and-social-media/
"The North African revolutions and remind us that citizens aren’t so much political or apolitical as they are politicized or unpoliticized at any given moment; even people who don’t like discussing politics in their spare time can turn out in the Tahrir Square when the serious business starts." [Clay Shirky]
Monday, March 7, 2011
history of collective action tools
http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/94/barricades.html
This is a great read about how different tools have been used against authoritarian regimes through history. It ends with speculation about what future Internet tools might be used.
"At the dawn of 2011 there is again hope that technology can birth the barricades of the 21st century. Perhaps the most exciting direction for activism is the increasing politicization of flashmobs. First capturing the public imagination in 2003, flashmobs are the sudden appearance of dozens, sometimes hundreds, of individuals who carry out a synchronized action that ranges from the absurd to the disobedient."
The author's web site looks useful as well.
This is a great read about how different tools have been used against authoritarian regimes through history. It ends with speculation about what future Internet tools might be used.
"At the dawn of 2011 there is again hope that technology can birth the barricades of the 21st century. Perhaps the most exciting direction for activism is the increasing politicization of flashmobs. First capturing the public imagination in 2003, flashmobs are the sudden appearance of dozens, sometimes hundreds, of individuals who carry out a synchronized action that ranges from the absurd to the disobedient."
The author's web site looks useful as well.
useful software for ICA?
http://www.frontlinesms.com/aboutthesoftware/about-the-software/
Has anybody used this? It looks useful for smaller actions. Better than using twitter? At least when the net goes down you can still use this for communicating.
Has anybody used this? It looks useful for smaller actions. Better than using twitter? At least when the net goes down you can still use this for communicating.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Stand Alone Complex
I really like the Ghost in the Shell anime. There are 3 movies and a TV series. Basically it's a ways in the future, and humans and cybernetic beings are becoming more and more alike. Humans have cyber parts, and cyber beings have minds quite close to human. So do the cyber beings have souls? And do the humans with cybernetic replacement parts still have a soul?
But I digress (but still watch the movies!). One important concept in the series is the stand alone complex. I don't get it completely, but basically it's like a meme that starts which then gets picked up and runs viral through society. People pick up the idea and copy it. This isn't exactly ICA, but it is a sort of collective action in that people spread an idea throughout society until it is accepted as fact. Here's a video that tries to explain it a bit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogvMnx-2nFg
If nothing else, it's a great program. Enjoy.
But I digress (but still watch the movies!). One important concept in the series is the stand alone complex. I don't get it completely, but basically it's like a meme that starts which then gets picked up and runs viral through society. People pick up the idea and copy it. This isn't exactly ICA, but it is a sort of collective action in that people spread an idea throughout society until it is accepted as fact. Here's a video that tries to explain it a bit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogvMnx-2nFg
If nothing else, it's a great program. Enjoy.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
I try to define Internet Collective Action
I got the notion of Internet collective action from my study of Project Chanology. This was a group of the network known as Anonymous who decided to protest the Church of Scientology. I spent about 6 months writing a paper on them. Clay Shirky's book "Here Comes Everybody" was especially helpful to me. In that book he lists levels of working together. The easiest is sharing, which is like putting up a photo on flikr.com. Next is cooperation, which is like me selling something on ebay; you win the bid, I send you the item. Finally, collective action requires distribution of responsibility, coordination, planning.
So here is an attempt to somewhat codify what my blog is about. Internet Collective Action is a loose-knit network of people communicating principally via the Internet who choose to accomplish a simple goal together. This network has the following features:
* It is non-hierarchical. There is no center.
* Membership is open.
* The degree and length of participation is up to the individual.
* Decision making is done by open argument and consensus.
* The action lives close to chaos.
* When the goal is accomplished, the network dissolves.
* Their formation is difficult to predict.
So here is an attempt to somewhat codify what my blog is about. Internet Collective Action is a loose-knit network of people communicating principally via the Internet who choose to accomplish a simple goal together. This network has the following features:
* It is non-hierarchical. There is no center.
* Membership is open.
* The degree and length of participation is up to the individual.
* Decision making is done by open argument and consensus.
* The action lives close to chaos.
* When the goal is accomplished, the network dissolves.
* Their formation is difficult to predict.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
in which I respond to Dr. Tufekci's article on leaderlessness
Dr. Zeynep Tufekci is a sociology professor at the University of Maryland. She wrote an article titled "Can 'Leaderless Revolutions' Stay Leaderless: Preferential Attachment, Iron Laws and Networks" that was published online Feburary 14 [http://technosociology.org/?p=366&cpage=1]. Tufekci claims that there is an inescapable mechanism that drives all organizations to create a hierarchy or leadership. This article has bugged me from the moment I finished reading it. I wrote a study of Project Chanology, which is an Internet collective action against the Church of Scientology that started in January of 2008 [http://www.lisamcpherson.org/pc.htm]. Project Chanology has never had a hierarchy and in fact almost by definition of the group cannot have one. So right away I have this example of a group that has never had leadership for three years. Why does Tufekci think this is not possible?
Her main point seems to be "it is wrong to assume that open networks 'naturally' facilitate 'leaderless' or horizontal structures. On the contrary, an examination of dynamics in such networks, and many examples from history, show that such set-ups often quickly evolve into very hierarchical and ossified networks not in spite of, but because of, their initial open nature."
Movements naturally evolve a hierarchy through random and meritorious selection, and "preferential attachment," which is defined as "the more followers you have, the more followers you will add, ceteris paribus – i.e. even if the merit of your tweets is the same as someone of fewer followers, your followers will grow at a faster rate."
She uses the number of twitter followers a group of Egyptian activists have to show this mechanism in action. "Let’s do a short-hand conceptualization and accept the number of followers in a Twitter network as a measure of importance." Basically, some people become more popular than others, partially by just being the first with the most. Apps on Facebook similarly spread and become popular by the three methods she delineates (random, meritorious, preferential attachment) and thus some become popular while others fade away.
I really don't think twitter following is a good example here. Just because you follow someone on twitter, it does not make them your leader. You might follow them over others because they give reliable information. Or you might be related. There are lots of reasons for having a big following on twitter.
Groups, such as a revolutionary movement, naturally develop people who are listened to more than others. Ok, I'll agree with that. If a random group of people give random dates and times for a protest, then that would be quite useless. So some person or group gets the job of distributing when the agreed-upon (by whom? some sort of consensus) time and place. I agree that this is natural. Another person may be the philosophical expounder of the reasons for revolution. This person would get a huge twitter following. Yet is that a leader? Kufekci doesn't define "leader," so this may be part of my problem with her article. I assume leadership is first people agreeing with you. Then they consider your words of importance. Then they either do what you suggest (meet here at such and such a time), or they promote your ideas. And THEN, and this is what I think Kufekci's means by the word, you might gain a hierarchical position of power. And this last step is not the case in Internet collective action or the recent revolutions.
Kufekci does take a step back and admits that yes, Iran's revolution was a mass-revolt rather than one based around any particular leader. Ok, and so is Tunisia and Egypt, probably. But then she's back out there punching for leadership: "However, few revolutions remain leaderless—which is exactly why it is very important to understand that the diffused nature of this revolution is hardly an inoculation against the emergence of this dynamic; in fact, it might even contain the seeds of extreme hierarchy."
So now she grabs the top 10 tweeters involved in the Egyptian revolution. Ghonim comes out on top. "Ghonim is the one that has been crowned the 'leader of the leaderless revolution' by Newsweek and he’s the one who is tweeting about meeting with top generals in the military." Although I quake to quarrel with Newsweek, Wael Ghonim works for Google. He was arrested early in the Egyptian movement and held for twelve days. During that time his arrest became a cause celebre as he had a popular facebook page.
So, does this "leader" consider himself a leader? "Ghonim revealed that he created the Facebook group that has been instrumental in the ongoing movement in the country. 'I didn't want anyone to know that I was the admin,' Ghonim said in a conversation with Mona El Shazly on Egypt's Dream TV. 'I'm not the hero.'" [http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2380402,00.asp] This is strange for a leader. He wanted to remain anonymous! 60 Minutes called him "the symbol of the leaderless revolution" when they interviewed him after the fall of Mubarak. "Ghonim told us he has no interest in politics, and he wants to go back to work at Google." Again, strange of a leader to relinquish his position.
Remember the title of Tufekci's article is "Can 'Leaderless Revolutions' Stay Leaderless: Preferential Attachment, Iron Laws and Networks." Her point is that leaders will naturally arise. Ghonim is her star leader in the Egyptian revolution. Yet Ghonim rejects that title. What can we make of this? Tufekci admits that Ghonim does not consider himself a leader; "Wael Ghonim especially has been careful to talk about how this is a revolution without heroes because so many are heroes." But then she argues that they are leaders anyway, because of the "iron law of oligarchy." This law states that with every organization, if you wait long enough "a group of insiders emerge and vigorously defend their turf, and almost always succeed." This happens so often in history that it can't be discounted, even if social media are now involved.
And here we come to the crux of the matter. Kufekci sees no difference historically between the pre-social media and current social media times. This is a mistake. Project Chanology, a branch of Anonymous that took on the Church of Scientology [http://www.lisamcpherson.org/pc.htm], has been going on for three years now and still has no hierachy. Internet collective action is a new thing with great changes in how such actions work socially. I'll just let you read that article to see my points there. Most academics and media still do not grasp these changes. For instance, the media kept asking the Egyptian protesters when they were going to appoint a leader or leadership. Consistently the protesters kept saying things like "There is no need for leadership. People are organizing themselves." (protester on Al Jazeera TV, Feb. 4).
Finally, the end of the collective action is important. The revolution's main goal was to remove Mubarak. They had seven points altogether, but this was the one that bound everyone together. When this was accomplished, that chapter in history was over. It was time to move on to organizing a country. And this is definitely where you need leaders. But now they can vote for those leaders. Too bad Ghonim doesn't want to be one because he seems to be the type of person Egypt needs in a position of power now.
The revolution was an Interenet collective action. It used Facebook, twitter, youtube, email, etc. to quickly and cheaply interconnect people and information. It had simple goals, no hierachy, it was extremely connected and flexible. This is a new type of organizing that has yet to be clearly understood. But we will see more and more of it. We should not try to apply the old models to the new system.
3/5/11 addition: here is Ghonim speaking at TED Talk:
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/03/wael-ghonim-at-ted/
Her main point seems to be "it is wrong to assume that open networks 'naturally' facilitate 'leaderless' or horizontal structures. On the contrary, an examination of dynamics in such networks, and many examples from history, show that such set-ups often quickly evolve into very hierarchical and ossified networks not in spite of, but because of, their initial open nature."
Movements naturally evolve a hierarchy through random and meritorious selection, and "preferential attachment," which is defined as "the more followers you have, the more followers you will add, ceteris paribus – i.e. even if the merit of your tweets is the same as someone of fewer followers, your followers will grow at a faster rate."
She uses the number of twitter followers a group of Egyptian activists have to show this mechanism in action. "Let’s do a short-hand conceptualization and accept the number of followers in a Twitter network as a measure of importance." Basically, some people become more popular than others, partially by just being the first with the most. Apps on Facebook similarly spread and become popular by the three methods she delineates (random, meritorious, preferential attachment) and thus some become popular while others fade away.
I really don't think twitter following is a good example here. Just because you follow someone on twitter, it does not make them your leader. You might follow them over others because they give reliable information. Or you might be related. There are lots of reasons for having a big following on twitter.
Groups, such as a revolutionary movement, naturally develop people who are listened to more than others. Ok, I'll agree with that. If a random group of people give random dates and times for a protest, then that would be quite useless. So some person or group gets the job of distributing when the agreed-upon (by whom? some sort of consensus) time and place. I agree that this is natural. Another person may be the philosophical expounder of the reasons for revolution. This person would get a huge twitter following. Yet is that a leader? Kufekci doesn't define "leader," so this may be part of my problem with her article. I assume leadership is first people agreeing with you. Then they consider your words of importance. Then they either do what you suggest (meet here at such and such a time), or they promote your ideas. And THEN, and this is what I think Kufekci's means by the word, you might gain a hierarchical position of power. And this last step is not the case in Internet collective action or the recent revolutions.
Kufekci does take a step back and admits that yes, Iran's revolution was a mass-revolt rather than one based around any particular leader. Ok, and so is Tunisia and Egypt, probably. But then she's back out there punching for leadership: "However, few revolutions remain leaderless—which is exactly why it is very important to understand that the diffused nature of this revolution is hardly an inoculation against the emergence of this dynamic; in fact, it might even contain the seeds of extreme hierarchy."
So now she grabs the top 10 tweeters involved in the Egyptian revolution. Ghonim comes out on top. "Ghonim is the one that has been crowned the 'leader of the leaderless revolution' by Newsweek and he’s the one who is tweeting about meeting with top generals in the military." Although I quake to quarrel with Newsweek, Wael Ghonim works for Google. He was arrested early in the Egyptian movement and held for twelve days. During that time his arrest became a cause celebre as he had a popular facebook page.
So, does this "leader" consider himself a leader? "Ghonim revealed that he created the Facebook group that has been instrumental in the ongoing movement in the country. 'I didn't want anyone to know that I was the admin,' Ghonim said in a conversation with Mona El Shazly on Egypt's Dream TV. 'I'm not the hero.'" [http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2380402,00.asp] This is strange for a leader. He wanted to remain anonymous! 60 Minutes called him "the symbol of the leaderless revolution" when they interviewed him after the fall of Mubarak. "Ghonim told us he has no interest in politics, and he wants to go back to work at Google." Again, strange of a leader to relinquish his position.
Remember the title of Tufekci's article is "Can 'Leaderless Revolutions' Stay Leaderless: Preferential Attachment, Iron Laws and Networks." Her point is that leaders will naturally arise. Ghonim is her star leader in the Egyptian revolution. Yet Ghonim rejects that title. What can we make of this? Tufekci admits that Ghonim does not consider himself a leader; "Wael Ghonim especially has been careful to talk about how this is a revolution without heroes because so many are heroes." But then she argues that they are leaders anyway, because of the "iron law of oligarchy." This law states that with every organization, if you wait long enough "a group of insiders emerge and vigorously defend their turf, and almost always succeed." This happens so often in history that it can't be discounted, even if social media are now involved.
And here we come to the crux of the matter. Kufekci sees no difference historically between the pre-social media and current social media times. This is a mistake. Project Chanology, a branch of Anonymous that took on the Church of Scientology [http://www.lisamcpherson.org/pc.htm], has been going on for three years now and still has no hierachy. Internet collective action is a new thing with great changes in how such actions work socially. I'll just let you read that article to see my points there. Most academics and media still do not grasp these changes. For instance, the media kept asking the Egyptian protesters when they were going to appoint a leader or leadership. Consistently the protesters kept saying things like "There is no need for leadership. People are organizing themselves." (protester on Al Jazeera TV, Feb. 4).
Finally, the end of the collective action is important. The revolution's main goal was to remove Mubarak. They had seven points altogether, but this was the one that bound everyone together. When this was accomplished, that chapter in history was over. It was time to move on to organizing a country. And this is definitely where you need leaders. But now they can vote for those leaders. Too bad Ghonim doesn't want to be one because he seems to be the type of person Egypt needs in a position of power now.
The revolution was an Interenet collective action. It used Facebook, twitter, youtube, email, etc. to quickly and cheaply interconnect people and information. It had simple goals, no hierachy, it was extremely connected and flexible. This is a new type of organizing that has yet to be clearly understood. But we will see more and more of it. We should not try to apply the old models to the new system.
3/5/11 addition: here is Ghonim speaking at TED Talk:
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/03/wael-ghonim-at-ted/
some more thougtful articles
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/03/2011317269573443.html
I don't really think Al Jazeera was much more in the know about when future protests were coming than anyone else. Heck, even the protesters wouldn't have known when the right spark would come along, at the same time that they were equipped and prepared to move. But Al Jazeera is much better at actually getting out into the community to see what's going on rather than U.S. media, which prefers to let officials and corporations tell them what's going on.
http://flipthemedia.com/index.php/2011/02/the-arab-revolution-and-social-media/
"Social media alone did not facilitate the Arab Revolution, but was a successful catalyst when combined with myriad methods of digital and traditional media. Technological advances like cell phones, video cameras, blog posts and Facebook, in conjunction with more traditional media outlets like Al Jazeera, created the circumstances for such effective information dissemination."
This article makes a great point that only a small percentage of people in the countries now in revolution have ever been on the Internet. But they explain how Al Jazeera TV and just printing pamphlets of things from the net reach the bigger percentage of people. So I'd still say these revolutions are Internet collective actions because their main source of information, as was Al Jazeera's, comes from the Internet.
I don't really think Al Jazeera was much more in the know about when future protests were coming than anyone else. Heck, even the protesters wouldn't have known when the right spark would come along, at the same time that they were equipped and prepared to move. But Al Jazeera is much better at actually getting out into the community to see what's going on rather than U.S. media, which prefers to let officials and corporations tell them what's going on.
http://flipthemedia.com/index.php/2011/02/the-arab-revolution-and-social-media/
"Social media alone did not facilitate the Arab Revolution, but was a successful catalyst when combined with myriad methods of digital and traditional media. Technological advances like cell phones, video cameras, blog posts and Facebook, in conjunction with more traditional media outlets like Al Jazeera, created the circumstances for such effective information dissemination."
This article makes a great point that only a small percentage of people in the countries now in revolution have ever been on the Internet. But they explain how Al Jazeera TV and just printing pamphlets of things from the net reach the bigger percentage of people. So I'd still say these revolutions are Internet collective actions because their main source of information, as was Al Jazeera's, comes from the Internet.
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