Sound and Vision

@ is for Activism:  Dissent, Resistance and Rebellion in a Digital Culture

Author: Joss Hands
Publisher: Pluto Press

Isobel Lindsay finds Joss Hands’ work on the opportunities presented to activists by fast-changing technology engaging but strangely outdated.

What bad luck to publish a book on the significance of digital activism with not even a passing reference to WikiLeaks or a discussion on cyber attacks.  This is, of course, an indication of how fast events change in the digital world but it’s unfortunate since the ongoing WikiLeaks story raises so many critical issues.

Has the web fundamentally changed the nature of activism as Joss Hands argues?  Having been involved in organising various strands of protest and resistance since the early 1960s, it’s useful to remind a younger generation that large demonstrations and boycotts were organised long before the PC and the mobile phone.  This included demonstrations called at short notice in response to to events like the Cuban missile crisis, the boycott of South African goods and, later, the Poll Tax non-payment campaign.  Apart from post and phone, there was more territoriality in the workplace and in other organisational structures.  A message to a shop stewards’ convener or a local political branch secretary could quickly be communicated to many others.  But we should not underestimate the importance of face-to-face communication today. It is not by chance that the large and sustained demonstrations against tuition fees in England have emerged from groups who are based in established institutions where there is regular interaction.  The core of these demonstrations is not a ‘smart mob’ but structured, interactive groups.  The significance of this difference is one of the points that Hands seeks to develop.

The book gives examples of where digital media and its capacity to co-ordinate horizontally has facilitated demonstrations in Iran, Moldova and even at the Gleneagles G8 protests.  But this is a protest version of ‘quantitative easing’ rather than a qualitative shift.  The Iranian revolution against the Shah did not require Twitter.  What the mobile phone has done that is different is to get pictures out to the world when independent professional photographers are not there.  The visual image was so important in undermining the moral authority of the US in Vietnam that great effort was made to control images in subsequent wars.  Now controlling the access of the professional photographer or journalist can’t entirely shut out the images that come from wars and demonstrations. 

The most original contribution that new media can make to activism is by weakening (possibly) the ability of the powerful to control knowledge.  WikiLeaks has not only enraged those in power by opening up their secret world but it has also disoriented them.  They have resorted to their traditional means of control by pressurising Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, Amazon and the various host sites to act as censors.  Many other repressive initiatives will follow but the nature of the web makes it very difficult to keep it under control.  And there are two spin-offs from the censorship which may come back and bite.  One is that it has illustrated the comparative ease with which a bunch of amateurs can cripple major corporate sites.  This will surely encourage others. The other outcome for the US in particular is that by showing how quickly it resorts to ruthless censorship to hide the truth, it can hardly lecture the Chinese and others when they try to censor Google.  If WikiLeaks or similar sites continue on to revelations on banking and other corporate issues as they are planning to do, the paranoia of the leadership class will grow with justification.

The implications of cyber attack for good or ill should have had serious treatment in the book. This is a potential tool of resistance quite different from any in the past. It may have surprised some that the new British Government’s National Security Review rated cyber warfare as one of the top security risks.  The total dependence of military, administrative and business activity on the web has the potential to undermine states if there is a co-ordinated attack.  This could come from other states or from the geek army.  No-one really knows who is ahead of whom in using the technology.

In all of this there needs to be a word of caution for over-optimistic radicals.  Most of the public still get their stories about the world from media dominated by neo-liberal values.  Many may get their news from the web but it is from conventional media via the web.  Unless they are already radicalised and motivated to seek out informative sites rather than those that are purely commercial or recreational, they might as well just be reading the tabloids.  So the big issue for those who want to see positive social change is how you achieve those first steps.  After that, new media can be an important tool for change but it cannot do the initiating work that takes place in communities , that involves face to face debate and the nurturing of values.

This book is a thoughtful, academic study that develops a good range of relevant material. Readers will get quite a lot from it but it misses some important issues and needs an early second edition to catch up.

Isobel Lindsay is Convener of Scotland’s For Peace (http://www.scotland4peace.org) and a member of the editorial board of Scottish Left Review (http://www.scottishleftreview.org/li/).