Social Movements, Development and ICTs

1. Social Movements, Development and ICTs Communications Technology and Social Change in Latin America Maria Garrido, PhD Center for Information & Society The Information School

2. Think about Product Development along three lines: • For Research • For Social Networking | targeting socio economic and development activities/organizations • For Convergence among different technologies (SNS, cell phones, websites, twitter, etc.)

3. What is this Talk About? ICTD with a Social Movements twist • How civil society organizations are using ICTs as a tool to build networks, collaborate, and mobilize resources in pursuit of social goal. • The contribution of social movements’ networks to promote economic and social development in marginalized communities in Latin America.

4. But First a bit of Context… • Globalization of the World Economy • Information and knowledge become crucial components for economic growth and competitiveness • Redistribution of power among states, markets, civil society, and supranational organizations (WTO, European Union, NAFTA, etc) • Development, spread, and evolution of ICTs • Enhanced opportunities for collaboration among different actors, specially, civil society organizations • Bypassing, to some extent, traditional centers of power | Example: Mass media vsCommunity media

5. What does Globalization really mean? • Globalization is a cultural, social, economic and political phenomenon. • Information technology has triggered the entrance of non-state actors in the International Arena. • Empowerment of unrepresented groups that have found a space to channel their demands • Giving people and civil society groups a common narrative for social change – not homogenous but common: United against the negative effects of economic globalization from North to South from East to West

6. What they are Fighting against? • Widening gap between the rich and the poor • The excesses of corporate power and financial institutions • Neglect of small farmers and rural areas • Undermining of labor rights • Increase in military spending at the expense of social spending • Discrimination of groups based on race, gender, economic status and sexual orientation • Government repression (covert or overt) • Against the detriment of the environment

7. What is This Common Narrative about? • Berlin 1990 - Against the IMF and the World Bank • Madrid 1994 – Against the IMF and the World Bank • Seattle 1999 - Against the IMF, World Bank, and WTO • Prague 2000 – Against all IMF, World Bank, and WTO • Genoa 2001 – Against the IMF, World Bank, and WTO • Different countries 2003 – Against the Iraq War • Mexico City 2006 – Against the IMF, World Bank, and WTO

8. What Makes ICTs a powerful tool for Social Movements? • Allows the creation of decentralized networks for mobilization and collaboration • Spreading of information at exponential levels • Enable civil society actors to establish alliances beyond their borders • Created social spaces where marginalized voices can be heard

9. The Zapatista Movementin Chiapas, Mexico

10. Origins of the Zapatista Movement Some facts: • The Zapatistas are a social movement that made their first appearance in the international media January 1st 1994 in the southern state of Chiapas, Mexico. • Indigenous peasant men and women of diverse Mayan origins who have lived in a stage of permanent poverty. • The uprising highlighted the ability of a locally engendered social movement to gain support from countries across the globe.

11. Where is Chiapas?

12. Where are the Zapatistas?

13. Zapatistas and ICTs: “Our Word is our Weapon” • Use of ICTs to build transnational alliances • Build a solidarity network with actors from many different countries around the world • Diverse groups from NGOs, grassroots organizations, and other social movements • Diverse struggles: women rights, environment, alternative development, human rights, peace, corporate transparency • ICTs (including cell phones) become one of the main tool to mobilize and coordinate efforts a multinational level | Not GLOBAL – But definitely TRANSNATIONAL

14. The Zapatista Network: Who, How, When, & For What Purpose • How do we map the Zapatista Network? • Who are the actors? • How do they collaborate, mobilize, act for together in pursuit of a common goal? • For what purpose? In short: Structure, Resources, and Context of Social movements networks

15. First Goal | Map the Zapatista network Social Network Analysis • Methodology to understand how people, their relationships, and roles in different social contexts or organization could shape their behavior and influence that of others. • Three measurements: Centrality, Betweeness, Cluster analysis Hyperlink Analysis | Or “You are what you link” • Suggests that “social (or communication) structures on the web may be analyzed based on the hyperlinks among websites” (Park, 2003) • It is based on the premise that the Internet’s increasing role in communication has been made possible by the continual change in the structure of the network of hyperlinks • Links in a website are not neutral or accidental but they usually convey a social interaction among two individual

16. Mapping the Zapatista Network as represented in Cyberspace • Tailored web crawler (Halavais, 2003) • Snow ball from the Zapatista website www.ezln.org • Data was a here was collected within a radius of two hyperlinks from the EZLN site in August 2004 • The criteria for selecting the sites that were crawled in the two radius of hyperlinked data were CSOs that were: 1. Clearly non-commercial; 2.Non governmental/Non for profit; 3. Specified in their website a social mission; 4. Whose website had a unique domain • 673 domains formed the final list of CSOs connected to the Zapatista Movement. • Arranged data in a matrix and ran clustering analysis using UCINET (Bogartti, et al)

17. The Zapatista Network | Structure 2005

18. The Zapatista Network | Resources • Network Ethnography | To understand the roles, the resources, and the contribution to advance development goals • Some of the resources that flow in the network for Zapatista communities: • Community Investment – Resources to support health and education initiatives, water systems, electrical wiring, etc • Information Infrastructure - Training and equipment for building community media (radio – traditional and Internet-based, community news bulletins); 2) creating email distribution lists with information from the communities and for the communities in indigenous languages; and 3) developing ICT capacity in local organizations • Productive Processes – Helping communities to own their means of production by forming cooperatives of small producers, training cooperatives in techniques that are more efficient and environmentally sound, providing links for these products under ‘fair trade’ conditions in national and international markets

19. Enough of Me: Let’s talk • How do you see the role of social movements as actors in the development process? • What challenges they encounter to promote “actual” social change? • What contribution Web 2.0 tools can have for organizations working on development and social change? • Mobilization • Collaboration • ICT convergence | AKA ICTs talking to each other

20. Resources • Zapatista Movement • Enlace Zapatista | Official weblog • Indymedia Center Chiapas | chiapas.indymedia.org • Radio Insurgente | Zapatista community radio • Network Visualization • Payek • GOVCOMORG | Issue network tool • Kraplot | UCINET’s visualization tool • Social network analysis software • UCINET | Bogartti et al