Communicating Global Activism

TLDR

Digital media’s role in politics is contested, yet the Internet is central to global activism beyond merely lowering communication costs or overcoming geographic barriers. The study examines how transnational activism targeting corporations and development regimes can inform the creation of new politics through communication practices. Internet and digital media enable loosely structured networks, weak identity ties, and issue‑driven organizing that characterize new global protest politics. Case analysis reveals that digital network configurations support permanent campaigns, expansive networks with weak identity ties, organizational transformation, and cross‑media messaging, but these same features also expose the politics to control, decision‑making, and identity challenges.

Abstract

Many observers doubt the capacity of digital media to change the political game. The rise of a transnational activism that is aimed beyond states and directly at corporations, trade and development regimes offers a fruitful area for understanding how communication practices can help create a new politics. The Internet is implicated in the new global activism far beyond merely reducing the costs of communication, or transcending the geographical and temporal barriers associated with other communication media. Various uses of the Internet and digital media facilitate the loosely structured networks, the weak identity ties, and the patterns of issue and demonstration organizing that define a new global protest politics. Analysis of various cases shows how digital network configurations can facilitate: permanent campaigns; the growth of broad networks despite relatively weak social identity and ideology ties; transformation of individual member organizations and whole networks; and the capacity to communicate messages from desktops to television screens. The same qualities that make these communication-based politics durable also make them vulnerable to problems of control, decision-making and collective identity.