Kevin Gillan

The Difficult and Hopeful Ethics of Research on, and with, Social Movements

This article explores a number of key questions that serve to introduce this special issue on the ethics of research on activism. We first set out the limitations of the bureaucratic response to ethical complexities in our field. We then examine two approaches often used to justify research that demands time consuming and potentially risky participation in research by activists. We label these approaches the ethic of immediate reciprocity and the ethic of general reciprocity and question their impacts. We note, in particular, the tendency of ethics of reciprocity to preclude research on ‘ugly movements’ whose politics offends the left and liberal leanings predominant among movement researchers. The two ethics also imply different positionalities for the researcher vis-à-vis their subject movement which we explore, alongside dilemmas thrown up by multiple approaches to knowledge production and by complex issues of researcher and activist identities. The overall move to increasing complexity offered by this paper will, we hope, provide food for thought for others who confront real-world ethical dilemmas in fields marked by contention. We also hope that it will encourage readers to turn next to the wide range of contributions offered in this issue.

Transnational anti-war activism: Solidarity, diversity and the Internet in Australia, Britain and the United states after 9/11

The upsurge in activism opposing wars and occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq appears to represent a significant process of transnational collective action. Using data collected through participant observation, interviews and web site analysis, this article explores the role of the Internet in facilitating transnational activism between Australia, Britain and the United States. This research confirms Tarrows (2005a) assertion of ‘rooted cosmopolitanism’– a primary commitment to locally contextualised action combined with a desire for transnational support. The Internet is used primarily for gathering news and for sharing symbolic expressions of solidarity. In Australia, in particular, with fewer domestic anti-war resources on-line, international networking proves particularly useful. To an extent, on-line networks reach across both political diversity and geographical boundaries. However, on-line resources do not appear to enable the more personal connections required to build stable, working coalitions across borders.

The UK Anti-War Movement Online: Uses and Limitations of Internet Technologies for Contemporary Activism

This article uses interviews with committed anti-war and peace activists to offer an overview of both the benefits and challenges that social movements derive from new communication technologies. It shows contemporary political activism to be intensely informational; dependent on the sensitive adoption of a wide range of communication technologies. A hyperlink analysis is then employed to map the UK anti-war movement as it appears online. Through comparing these two sets of data it becomes possible to contrast the online practices of the UK anti-war movement with its offline ‘reality’. When encountered away from the web, recent anti-war contention is grounded in national-level political realities and internally divided by its political diversity; but to the extent that experience of the movement is mediated online, it routinely transcends national and political boundaries.

The UK anti-war movement online

This article uses interviews with committed anti-war and peace activists to offer an overview of both the benefits and challenges that social movements derive from new communication technologies. It shows contemporary political activism to be intensely informational; dependent on the sensitive adoption of a wide range of communication technologies. A hyperlink analysis is then employed to map the UK anti-war movement as it appears online. Through comparing these two sets of data it becomes possible to contrast the online practices of the UK anti-war movement with its offline ‘reality’. When encountered away from the web, recent anti-war contention is grounded in national-level political realities and internally divided by its political diversity; but to the extent that experience of the movement is mediated online, it routinely transcends national and political boundaries.

Party organizational change and ICTs: The growth of a virtual grassroots?

This paper examines the relationship between unofficial party blogs and official party sources in the UK using a mixed-method approach. Specifically we combine interview data with content analysis, user surveys and usage data, and finally hyperlink analysis to profile the emergence, popularity, audience and online prominence of four major party blogs since 2005. The core question posed is how far the blogs are challenging parties as the focal point for member activism and offering an alternative public ‘voice’. The findings show blogs occupy an important alternative critical space for party debate, particularly outside elections. They are not mobilizing tools, however, being used by the grassroots largely for information-gathering and discussion purposes.

Post 9/11

This book sets out to analyse the anti-war movement in Britain during the opening years of the 21st century. To address this subject adequately we need first to detail the circumstances in which anti-war activism developed over this period. That such activity is shaped by conditions beyond activists themselves is scarcely contentious, since it is obvious that it has waxed and waned depending on broad trends and issues. It would be hard, for instance, to comprehend the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND)-led protests during the late 1950s and early 1960s without acknowledging the post-war rivalries of the Soviet Union and the United States, just as the re-emergence of anti-war protests in the early 1980s owes much to the Second Cold War of that time and to NATO’s decisions to relocate nuclear missiles across Europe. None of this is to suggest that the anti-war activists, who are our main concern, are merely respondents to external forces rather than pro-active agents of change. Without trivializing the strength of protesters’ convictions or organizational efforts, we nevertheless recognize that those beliefs and actions are conditioned partly by their historical situation. For this reason, we begin by setting out the wider contexts within which our subject is situated.

Navigating the technology-media-movements complex

Abstract In this article we develop the notion of the technology-media-movements complex (TMMC) as a field-definition statement for ongoing inquiry into the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in social and political movements. We consider the definitions and boundaries of the TMMC, arguing particularly for a historically rooted conception of technological development that allows better integration of the different intellectual traditions that are currently focused on the same set of empirical phenomena. We then delineate two recurrent debates in the literature highlighting their contributions to emerging knowledge. The first debate concerns the divide between scholars who privilege media technologies, and see them as driving forces of movement dynamics, and those who privilege media practices over affordances. The second debate broadly opposes theorists who believe in the emancipatory potential of ICTs and those who highlight the ways they are used to repress social movements and grassroots mobilization. By mapping positions in these debates to the TMMC we identify and provide direction to three broad research areas which demand further consideration: (i) questions of power and agency in social movements; (ii) the relationships between, on the one hand, social movements and technology and media as politics (i.e. cyberpolitics and technopolitics), and on the other, the quotidian and ubiquitous use of digital tools in a digital age; and (iii) the significance of digital divides that cut across and beyond social movements, particularly in the way such divisions may overlay existing power relations in movements. In conclusion, we delineate six challenges for profitable further research on the TMMC.

Campaigning in a Changing Information Environment: The Anti-war and Peace Movement in Britain

This article reports a research project concerned with Information War (Robins and Webster, 1999; Webster 2003, 2006; Pickerill and Webster 2006). It stresses that, in privileged areas of the world, war is now fought generally at a distance, with little direct risk to citizens of these nations. Yet these populations experience war in much expanded mediated ways, so much so that perceptions of threat may be disproportionate during a period of declining armed conflict. The significance of mediation in war is thereby heightened, making this central to the conduct of Information War.

Review Essay: 2010+: The rejuvenation of New Social Movement theory?

The first half of this decade has seen a tremendous wave of protest. The universally recognised spark of the Arab Spring was the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in December 2010. Since then we’ve seen the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, protests turn to civil wars in Syria and Libya, the uprisings of the indignadas of Spain and the Occupiers of Wall Street (and passim), the Umbrella Movement of Hong Kong, a range of new movements in Brazil, Chile and Mexico, and much else besides. If we understand this ‘movement of the streets and the squares’ as a coherent global wave of protest, what exactly does it signify? The two books under review offer interpretations of the most recent wave of protest that may help answer this most central question.

THE UK ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT ONLINE: Uses and limitations of Internet technologies for contemporary activism1This article draws on the research project, Internet Activism: Anti-War Movements in the Information Age, carried out with Prof. Frank Webster and Dr Jenny Pickerill. The project was funded by the ESRC (RES-228-25-0060). Further information is available at http://www.antiwarresearch.info.View all notes

This article uses interviews with committed anti-war and peace activists to offer an overview of both the benefits and challenges that social movements derive from new communication technologies. It shows contemporary political activism to be intensely informational; dependent on the sensitive adoption of a wide range of communication technologies. A hyperlink analysis is then employed to map the UK anti-war movement as it appears online. Through comparing these two sets of data it becomes possible to contrast the online practices of the UK anti-war movement with its offline ‘reality’. When encountered away from the web, recent anti-war contention is grounded in national-level political realities and internally divided by its political diversity; but to the extent that experience of the movement is mediated online, it routinely transcends national and political boundaries.