On Monday, 7 February 2005, i was delighted to host a CPCR Research Seminar with
Dr. Jenny Pickerill (University of Leicester). Jenny is one of the few true experts in grassroots online mobilisation in the UK (a field that in my humble opinion will grow and grow). The seminar was entitled "Indymedia and the Contested Understandings of Participation Online" and was based on Jenny's recent research project.
I have now edited my notes / minutes of the event and attach them here. Please feel free to use the Comments function of the blog below to add your own opinions or questions. If you participated in the seminar and would like to make a correction to those notes please also feel free to do that at the Comments section.
N.B.: These notes are not a verbatim transcription of the seminar, rather a summary of the points made based on my own interpretation and on the Powerpoint slides.Jenny Pickerill’s presentation: Jenny begins her talk by inviting comments and feedback on her work as this is an ongoing project. The starting point for Jenny’s research is the question ‘does
Indymedia facilitate participation?’. The broader question that lies behind that case study is ‘what exactly is participation?’. Her investigation is based upon two premises:
a) participation is good for democracy; engagement is (everyday) politics and necessary for socially just and environmentally sustainable decisions. It is the prefigurative politics of activists.
b) The internet facilitates participation (taking into account many contextual factors etc). Pickerill’s conceptualisation of online space goes beyond that of a mere source of information or even of a place to connect with others; it is “a place of experimentation in alternative forms of participation”. There is a potential in online interaction leading to participation and mobilisation. Jenny is less interested in the role of the internet in traditional mobilisation; she is more interested in understanding participation more broadly (e.g. can you be a ‘participant’ without meeting people or joining protests?). Essentially, it’s about awareness.
Pickerill’s presentation is organised around four key themes:
A] sharing by design
B] creating space for different voices?
C] Internal political organisation
D] Global audience, local agenda?
Indymedia is structured around the premise that media production and consumption should be a many-to-many process. It comprises a total of approximately 130 websites operating worldwide and includes offices, media labs, infoshops and social centres. When it started (Indymedia Australia) it was completely an open publishing project; then, it started having some editorial features. It poses a radical challenge to the newspaper structure. The groups that comprise Indymedia constantly review their work, criticise themselves and attempt to create improved forms of open publishing.
A] Sharing by design.Indymedia is “a community project written by everyone together and the way to keep that flowing and moving forward and working as a community of equal individuals is make the code open source”.
Its main premises are:
- use of open source software
- open management
- open up the space of contribution
- open up spaces of access
- contributions should be used openly
That openness also leads to risk from potential attack from users and from the State.
B] Creating space for different voices?One of the interesting tensions, and one of two key themes in Jenny’s presentation, is the question of what does Indymedia stand for – what exactly is it? The vision promoted by Indymedia can be a great idea, but if they don’t agree about what they’re doing it can create a lot of disharmony.
Australia does not have a variety of news channels and newspapers, thus Indymedia sought to increase the public space available. But is anyone else (outside the alternative globalisation movement) listening to it? And, is outreach Indymedia’s aim in the first place? Those questions are critical because they shape its strategy, structure and everyday activity.
Essentially Indymedia is about a new broadcast model available to everyone, yet that goes against another interpretation of it as an insular movement network (autonomous activist group space). Some people within Indymedia acknowledge strict editorial policies and limitations to what is published (e.g. excluding racists and sexists) which means that Indymedia has its own set agenda, rather than being an open public sphere.
So what exactly is Indymedia? Jenny mentions several labels that have been attached to it (such as an international news organisation, a decentralised social and digital network, an activist communications network, a bulletin board, a social phenomenon, a laboratory for social technological innovation). The problem is that it can’t be all of those things because they are quite different.
According to Pickerill, one way to understand Indymedia’s core purpose and audience is by looking at the material they use and how they use it. Indymedia makes use of the principle and logo of copyleft to ensure that all contributions could be used openly. According to one participant in Jenny’s research, “Indymedia is first hand accounts … all of which is interesting and lively and engaging but …it’s a definitional thing about what left wing journalism is, because they’re seeking to quite radically redefine it… we’ve still tried to follow professional left wing journalism … Indymedia is more anarchist or autonomous influenced”. [Jenny notes that in Australia the terms ‘autonomous’ and ‘anticapitalist’ are interpreted similarly]. Thus, on the one hand Indymedia is founded upon the principle of sharing; on the other hand, that leads to a potential acceptance of ‘multiple truths’ or competing interpretations of events.
C] Internal political organisationLooking at Indymedia’s internal political organisation and decision-making structures can be very useful. Because of spam, there is a strict editorial policy against racism, fascism, xenophobia, homophobia, sexism etc other forms of discrimination or contributions that were “obviously incorrect” or “devoid of content”, which raises all sorts of question, not least of Indymedia being hypocritical about open publishing and a public sphere that is accessible by all (regardless of their views).
A key characteristic of that (and any) organisation is the decision-making process. Indymedia sought to use online consensus as its decision-making principle. As the networks grew consensus became much more difficult and, while other solutions such as passive and modified consensus were tried, the role of the size is instrumental in the viability of any decision-making system. Hence Indymedia has moved to a more decentralised / localised system.
Access to Indymedia has been facing technical and cultural barriers, such as its relationship to the Aboriginals (Indymedia had to prove that they were different from other media organisations). Indymedia is still considered as a western radical media because it’s still in English, which excludes many people from the “Third World” who don’t even want to learn English.
D] Global audience, local agenda?In spite of the fact that it’s online, the material originates offline. The network seeks to assert the importance of locality, of place-based collective and their autonomy. Thus the “local” is of key importance, and a key aim of the Indymedia is to protect local voices. Despite its global spread, Indymedia has managed to nurture local cultures.
Conclusions:In summary, Indymedia is an attempt for online participatory democracy, although there are issues of:
- structure (idea of consensus-making didn’t work)
- scale (when smaller it’s easier, in global scale it doesn’t work).
A key issue emerging from Jenny’s research is the tension between the principle of sharing and open publishing and the realities of the online world (and of Indymedia’s own agenda, which may require editorial interventions).
Overall, Jenny wants to use Indymedia to examine broader patterns of participation, moving away from the focus on political voting and exploring alternative forms of participation.
End of main presentation.
Questions from the floor. [again these are only my notes rather a precise transcript].
Q: Do they promote their online presence in any other way – do they advertise?
JP: They use stickers, posters, t-shirts, while during protests they used to produce a paper format.
Q: Do they have a particular focus on youth?
JP: The actual collectives were very late 20s - early 30s, but when approaching activists, you’re also approaching a lot of young people.
Q: Do they have meetings about postings?
JP: They try to resolve most of it online and only get the very controversial ones into weekly / fortnightly meetings. A lot of it depends on who is the editor at the time.
Q: Where do you stand on the debate about the editorial process (against discrimination) or where is it roughly?
JP: The problem is that if they edit it they will end up like the other activist groups. If they leave it unedited you exclude others (e.g. minorities) who won’t go there. I like the idea of the collectives who make decisions; there should also be a way to pull out the good stuff.
Q: What other options do they have? Could they use rotating editorial boards?
JP: The problem is that the shelf-life of collectives can be quite short. Even with collectives there can be problems (e.g. if you are a spammer you can get your contacts to rate it high).
Q: Are the discussion boards free?
JP: It’s all anonymous and open access so you can post in whatever language.
RG: There was recently a story about a politician’s child and that developed into a very controversial case.
JP: Privacy v. right to know vis-à-vis Indymedia goes back to the age-old debate of media regulation and there are no easy answers.
RG: Could the Slashdot system work? [complex system of peer review/rating]
JP: The problem with the Slashdot rating system is that it’s not newcomer-friendly.
Q: What is Indymedia’s relationship with state authorities?
JP: Indymedia does not have good relations with state authorities. FBI have tried to sue Indymedia based on newspaper legislation. The FBI took their UK server out of service.
Q: What is Indymedia’s main source of income?
JP: It all comes from donations, which makes it a very fragile system, relies on people’s good will.
Q: Some claim that there are two superpowers in the world: the US and the global public opinion [Postscript: Lee Hadaway, who asked that question notes that the source for this was Radio 4 and the exact quote can be found online], and Indymedia is a very small part of the latter, so it may not be as independent as it claims. What are the differences between Indymedia and community media?
JP: Definitely interested in community media and plan to research that shortly. Community media is about going out to the local people and asking them what they want.
Q: You mentioned some of the ambitions to create a new commons or an alternative to the traditional/national public sphere. Are they serious about that ambition or is the ‘insular activist group’ element taking over?
JP: Have only heard the global public sphere / new commons idea in the US, not elsewhere.
Q: Maybe that’s also a matter of language (English).
JP: An interesting thing is not only how individual languages are used nationally but also how different Indymedia branches / languages communicate with each other. There is a focus on English and Spanish and an attempt to be bilingual.
Q: How many Asian communities are getting involved in it, given the slight bias in favour of individualistic cultures that Indymedia has?
JP: Not sure but definitely something to look into.
Q: Is there any information / facts and figures about the audience / users?
JP: The controversial nature of the website’s content makes audience research very difficult.
Q: You may be able to get an impression of the size through the comments/posts to existing news articles.
Q: Indymedia may be an example of groups who encourage participation within self-selected (already involved) samples of people. Are there any ambitions to break into the mainstream?
JP: Some argue that it’s not a place for discussion but one for reporting news. As for breaking into the mainstream, there are two main viewpoints (as stated before about insular v. new broadcast model).
Q: So are they trying to create a global brand?
JP: Different countries have different approaches (e.g. in Australia everyone is an “Indymedia journalist”, while in the US it’s different).
Q: Does the website get “hijacked” / dominated by protest groups (which would turn people off)?
JP: In the UK it has remained functional, because those groups don’t know about it and it’s still working. Again, something to look at.
Q: In defence of open software, we get spamming with Microsoft anyway.
JP: Absolutely, the open software ideas are working really well for Indymedia.
RG: Is the blurring of boundaries between truth/fiction, the collapse of the dominant narrative and the shift towards a more postmodernist framework a positive change?
JP: The actual shift towards the collapse of the dominant narrative is positive as long as it doesn’t lead to a situation where nothing makes any difference whatsoever.
RG: How can we manage that?
JP: Well the editorial process may be a way although it leads to all the problems mentioned above (discrimination against the discrimination).
Q: Do they link to other similar sites? How do they get visitors to the website?
JP: They do – a lot depends on the local thing (stickers etc). The whole thing of getting people involved is very gradual. But even if you access the site the whole process of actually contributing and being actively involved takes a lot of time.
Q: If participation were really representative it could leave to unexpected results.
JP: You are right. Participatory democracy can be just rhetoric but if everybody were to participate core activists would be outvoted. Indymedia may not be great for debate (if you write something against anti-glob protesters you may be rejected). But the debate is not the only element, there are other things that they have achieved (activists keep going, getting their news on a daily basis).
End of the event.Roman’s final point:If we were to summarise the tensions and key issues emerging from Jenny’s presentation about Indymedia, these would be:
- Tension in aims, activism v. outreach, that require different energies
- Editorial process (censoring discriminatory voices)
- Organisation and hierarchies (balancing consensus with global scale)
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