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Foreword
Manuel Castells
Over the last few years, a wave of social protests has rippled across the
world, and in its wake we have witnessed the profile of the social move-
ments of the information age. Yet, because of the novelty of their forms
of mobilization and organization, an ideological debate is raging over the
interpretation of these movements. Since in most cases they challenge
traditional forms of politics and organizations, the political establish-
ment, the media establishment, and the academic establishment have for
the most part refused to acknowledge their significance, even after
upheavals as important as those represented by the so-called Arab Spring,
the Icelandic democratic rebellion, the Spanish “ Indignant ” movement,
the Israeli demonstrations of 2012, Occupy Wall Street, the Brazilian
mobilizations of 2013, and the Taksim Square protests, which shook up
the entrenched Islamic government of Turkey. Indeed, between 2010 and
2014, thousands of cities in more than one hundred countries have seen
significant occupations of public space as activists have challenged the
domination of political and financial elites over common citizens, who,
according to the protesters, have been disenfranchised and alienated from
their democratic rights.
A key issue in this often blurred debate is the role of communication
technologies in the formation, organization, and development of the
movements. Throughout history, communication has been central to the
existence of social movements, which develop beyond the realm of insti-
tutionalized channels for the expression of popular demands. It is only by
communicating with others that outraged people are able to recognize
their collective power before those who control access to the institutions.
Institutions are vertical, and social movements always start as horizontal
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x Foreword
organizations, even if over time they may evolve into vertical organizations
for the sake of efficiency. (This evolution is seen by many in the move-
ments as the reproduction of the same power structures that they aim to
overthrow.)
If communication is at the heart of social mobilization, and if holding
power largely depends on the control of communication and information,
it follows that the transformation of communication in a given society
deeply affects the structure and dynamics of social movements. This trans-
formation is multidimensional: technological, organizational, institu-
tional, spatial, cultural. We live in a network society in which people and
organizations set up their own networks according to their interests and
values in all domains of the human experience, from sociability to politics,
and from networked individualism to multimodal communities. In the
twenty-first century there has been a major shift from mass communica-
tion (characterized by the centralized, controlled distribution of messages
from one sender to many receivers and involving limited interactivity, as
exemplified by television) to mass self-communication (characterized by
multimodality and interactivity of messages from many senders to many
receivers through the self-selection of messages and interlocutors and
through the self-retrieving, remixing, and sharing of content, as exempli-
fied by the Internet, social media, and mobile networks). The appropriation
of networked communication technologies by social movements has
empowered extraordinary social mobilizations, created communicative
autonomy vis- à -vis the mass media, business, and governments, and laid
the foundation for organizational and political autonomy. In a world of
2.5 billion Internet users and almost 7 billion mobile phone subscribers, a
significant share of communication power has shifted from corporations
and state bureaucracies to civil society — a shift well established by research.
However, we have only scant grounded analysis of the technological,
organizational, and cultural specificity of new processes of social mobiliza-
tion and community networking. Too often, there is a na ï ve interpretation
of these important phenomena that boils down to descriptive accounts of
the use of the newest communication technologies or applications by
social activists. Instead, a complex set of distinct developments is at work.
It is simply silly (or ideologically biased) to deny or downplay the empirical
observation of the crucial role of networking technologies in the dynamics
of networked social movements. On the other hand, it is equally silly to
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Foreword xi
pretend that Twitter, Facebook, or any other technology, for that matter,
is the generative force behind the new social movements. (No observer,
and certainly no activist, defends this latter position; it is a straw man
erected by traditional intellectuals, mainly from the left, as a way to garner
support for their belief in the role of “ the party ” — any party — in leading
“ the masses, ” who are deemed unable to organize themselves.) Moreover,
my observations of movements around the world reveal that the new social
movements are networked in multiple ways, not only online but in the
form of urban social networks, interpersonal networks, preexisting social
networks, and the networks that form and reform spontaneously in cyber-
space and in physical public space. This networking consists of a process
of communication that leads to mobilization and is facilitated by organiza-
tions emerging from the movement, rather than being imported from the
established political system. However, to make progress in understanding
these movements, we need scholarly research that goes beyond the cloud
of ideology and hype to examine with methodological reliability how
communication works in such movements and to understand with preci-
sion the interaction between communication and social movements.
From this perspective, the book you hold in your hands represents a
fundamental contribution to a rigorous characterization of the new avenues
of social change in societies around the world. The concept of transmedia
organizing that Sasha Costanza-Chock proposes integrates the variety of
modes of communication that exist in the real media practices of social
movements. From the activists ’ point of view, any communication mode
that works is adopted, so that the Internet and mobile platforms are used
alongside and in interaction with paper leaflets, interpersonal face-to-face
communication, bulletins and newspapers, graffiti, pirate radio, street art,
public speeches and assemblies in the square. Everything is included in
what Costanza-Chock calls the media ecology of the movement. This is
the reality of the new movements and the foundation of their communica-
tive autonomy, on which their very existence depends, particularly when
repression inevitably falls on them.
Costanza-Chock identified this novel interaction between the shifting
media ecology and social movements long before the Arab Spring uprisings
or the Occupy movement came to the attention of the mass media.
He focused on a most significant social development, the movement for
immigrant rights that exploded across the United States in 2006, with its
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xii Foreword
epicenter in Los Angeles. He studied this movement between 2006 and
2013, beginning with his participation in the Border Social Forum, where
the new realities of immigration were debated. Through a commitment to
methods of participatory research, he partnered with organizers and activ-
ists from the immigrant rights movement, and worked with them as code-
signers and coinvestigators in a range of popular communication initiatives.
This courageous strategy of engaged scholarship allowed him to see the
specific, sometimes contradictory effects of different communication pro-
cesses in the dynamics of the movement. For example, he identified the
centrality of critical digital literacy in grassroots social mobilization. In a
world in which the fight for one ’ s rights can be shaped decisively by one ’ s
ability to use the new means of communication, it is crucial to equalize
access to the direct use of communication technologies by grassroots
actors. By developing digital literacy, the movement can raise conscious-
ness as well as find better uses for digital tools as they are adapted
to movement goals. Otherwise the inevitable professionalization of
transmedia organizers leads to the formation of a technical leadership that
does not necessarily coincide with the leadership emerging from the
grassroots.
The close analysis of these and related processes presented in the pages
of this fascinating book is of utmost importance for understanding the
new, networked social movements of the Internet age, as well as the poten-
tial of new communication technologies to broaden citizen participation
in institutional decision making. In the midst of a widespread crisis of
legitimacy faced by governments around the world, understanding these
processes is crucial for activists, concerned citizens, open-minded officials,
and scholars everywhere. This book engages us in a fascinating intellectual
and political journey. It raises, and often solves, many of the questions
now being asked about networked social movements. It is based on impec-
cable scholarship, in which the author ’ s commitment to the defense of
immigrant rights does not impinge on the integrity of his observation and
analysis. This is social research as it best: when normative values are not
denied by a detached academic but are served by investigative imagination
and theoretical capacity, yielding an accurate assessment of the ways and
means of the new world in the making.
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