Week 9 – Global Civil Society

Quick hits from:

A. Warkentin and Mingst on Global Civil Society:

• NGOs are political actors in their own right; the internet intensifies the facilitation of their agenda nationally and transnationally
• Ability to raise public concern and support depends on presenting agenda as a humanitarian issue, a personal issue—internet was used to facilitate this
• Warkentin’s definition of global civil society: transnationally defined ‘set of ideologically variable mechanisms or channels of opportunity for political involvement’ and, more broadly, as an ongoing phenomenon that exhibits certain (elemental) characteristics
• Campaign against Multilateral Agreement on Investment treat was stopped; when its provisions were leaked, MAI met a flood of protestations from slew of NGOs (globally); OECD discussed MAI as financial issue whereas NGOs switched focus to impact of treaty on environment, global development, human rights and democratic governance
• International campaign to ban landmines was successful thanks to NGOs and support from established forms of authority i.e. UN Security council members, especially France and Great Britain, Mines Action Canada, several dignitaries including the Pope; Existence of landmines existed on premise of security/military issue but anti-landmine parties framed it as humanitarian issue, personal safety of civilians (which made up 80 percent of landmine victims)

B. Denning’s Cyberwarriors

• Hacktivism: fusion of hacking with activism
• Cyberterrorism: refers to activity of terrorist nature
• Attraction of hacktivism: unconstrained by geography, low cost, little expertise
• Can tamper with domain name service, perform web sit-ins to disrupt normal service and denial of service attacks (DoS) to shut down websites and e-mail servers
• Likely that conflict in physical world has paralleled operation in cyberspace as cyberspace defense lags behind

C. Goldstein on the Ukrainian Orange Revolution:

• Citizen journalism: audience who was once on receiving end become actors who influence what becomes broadcast content, involves acts showing agency
• Be wary of cyberutopianism, not all digital tech leads to more inclusive political future
• Self-censorhip big in Kuchma-dominated Ukraine but state didn’t have gripping authority online; had anti-Kuchma organizations utilizing the internet as a way to mobilize ppl and get their message out without being completely shut down by the gov’t
• Gongadze’s violent death (journalist against self-censorship, was fired and co-founded Ukranian Parvada) triggered Ukraine Without Kuchma and the internet to be recognized as legit news source; other non-state internet media gained credibility
• Actually only few ppl had online access, but the message spread because those people were well-connected and had lots of networks (two step flow of info)

A + B + C = Mosaic of global civil society. It’s helpful for me to think of GCS as a mosaic because it’s a messy picture… it’s transnational… it’s made up of thousands of parts (organizations) that have their own values… the fact that some of them share the same values while some of them simultaneously oppose each other also makes it a political entity… An entity wherein diverse political interests are facilitated by technology and the internet. This set-up connects with the cosmopolitan theory in being characteristically democractic and multi-lateral in its values. The Ukraine article especially strongly links the global civil society to the cosmo theo considering the Ukrainian people’s struggle against state control on media and the Orange Revolution being firmly linked with Yuschenko who was leaning towards democracy than the Kuchma regime.

Taking the examples of the campaign to ban landmines and the Ukrainian people’s desire to fight state censorship/control, the good can be found in people’s ability to use technology, particularly the world wide web, as a tool to weaken authority that does not seem to fit with the best interests of people. In a more local context, the internet also creates opportunities for non-profits to get together to discuss ways to get their message out more effectively. Last Saturday, I attended a storytelling workshop for non-profits at George Brown College. It was delivered by broadcast reporter Kris Reyes. About 20 people from the non-profit sector attended to learn how to better tell their story in a way that appeals to the news industry. Some of the non-profits who had members attend are illustrated on my map. Many of them were able to network and share tips on how to maximize their resources, especially in ways of how to tell the stories of their organizations. Many of them said they found out about the workshop through e-mails, twitter feeds and word of mouth.

Bad forces can also be located in the same space that allows people to fight for their best interests. As Danning suggests, while conflicts in the real world spill into cyberspace, the consequences in cyberwarfare aren’t as lethal as physical warfare, at least not yet. So I think one of the ways wicked influences corrupt is in perpetuating evil dated narratives and ideologies in websites that deceive and attempt to pass-off prejudice ideas as fact. An example would be an anti-Semitic website called Bamboo Delight Company. In a philosophy course I took, it was critiqued as offering alternative healing methods while actually being full of ridiculously heinous and racist claims.

<a href=”http://www.mapbuilder.net/users/krozal” target=”MyMap”><img src=”http://www.mapbuilder.net/img/MyMap.gif” alt=”MyMaps at MapBuilder.net” width=”80″ height=”15″ border=”0″></a>

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