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Protest on the Information Highway

Protest on the Information Highway. Jennifer Earl Department of Sociology University of California, Santa Barbara. “Internet Activism”. Use of the Internet to support of facilitate offline protests Use of the Internet to help organize protest actions that happen offline (TxtMob)

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Protest on the Information Highway

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  1. Protest on the Information Highway Jennifer Earl Department of Sociology University of California, Santa Barbara

  2. “Internet Activism” • Use of the Internet to support of facilitate offline protests • Use of the Internet to help organize protest actions that happen offline (TxtMob) • Use of the Internet to organize and produce online protest actions • Online participation in protest actions

  3. Stacking the Theoretical Deck • DiMaggio et al. (2001): pre-existing entities domesticate technologies • Research findings show domestication: the Internet “super-sizes” activism by making it bigger, faster and cheaper • Are there changes beyond scale changes?

  4. Model, versus Scale, Changes • Earl and Schussman’s (2001; 2003; 2004; Schussman and Earl 2004; Earl 2005) work suggests protest actions produced online can differ in: • Organization and infrastructure (e.g., role of SMOs) • Internal processes (e.g., leadership, decision-making) • Relations with external actors (e.g., repression) • Relationship with key structuring elements that run across (e.g., changing role of resources)

  5. Networks in Explanations • Scholars who see predict no lasting change often see networks rooted in face-to-face encounters and activism rooted in networks • Scholars who see scale changes seem to believe that networks still matter, but can be facilitated and extended online • I would predict larger long term changes and would argue that networks will matter for only some forms of activism

  6. Why such different findings? Two key questions: -Where does participation occur (although one could think of organization too)? -What kinds of actors are doing the organizing?

  7. NSF CAREER Project • Part 1: How the format of participation changes activism • Part 2: Are the organizers of “internet activism” different and/or behave differently? • Specifically, the project examines whether: • the lower up-front costs of organizing protest actions online will allow new kinds of organizers to enter social movements; • the lower up-front costs of organizing protest actions will also allow organizers to target broader ranges of entities more cost-effectively, making protest against non-governmental targets more likely over time; • social movement organizations established prior to the pervasive use of the Internet will be more likely to rely on for-profit technological contractors for creating and maintaining online opportunities to participate in protest; and • social movement organizations established prior to the pervasive use of the Internet will be less likely to engage in illegal online protest activities than other kinds of organizers

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