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Global-net for Global Movements? A Network of Networks for a Movement of Movements

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2005

DONATELLA DELLA PORTA  and
LORENZO MOSCA
DONATELLA DELLA PORTA
Affiliation:
Political Science European University Institute
LORENZO MOSCA
Affiliation:
Political Science University of Florence
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Abstract

This article focuses on the use of Computer-Mediated Communication by the movement for global justice, with special attention to the organisations involved in the movement and its activists. We examined data collected during two supranational protest events: the anti-G8 protest in Genoa in July 2001 and the European Social Forum (ESF) in Florence in November 2002. In both cases, we have complemented an analysis of the Genoa Social Forum and ESF websites with a survey of activists, including questions about their use of the Internet. We then examine hypotheses about changes new technologies introduce in collective action. The Internet empowers social movements in: (a) purely instrumental ways (an additional logistical resource for ‘resource-poor’ actors), (b) a protest function (direct expression of protest); (c) symbolically (as a medium favouring identification processes in collective actors) and (d) cognitively (informing and sensitising public opinion).

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Public Policy , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , May 2005 , pp. 165 - 190
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

Partial results of our research are published in Andretta, della Porta, Mosca and Reiter, 2002 and 2003. A previous version of this chapter was presented at the conference on ‘Internet and Governance’, Oxford Internet Institute, January 8–10 2004. We are grateful to the participants in the conference, and in particular to Richard Rose, as well as to Massimiliano Andretta and Herbet Reiter for useful comments. We also acknowledge the valuable assistance of Claudius Wagemann with data analysis.