[HacktionLab] Help with Indymedia talk

[Michael Reinsborough]

Hi Mike,

You might flag this archive reference for interested folks
https://seize-the-media.maydayrooms.org/intro/

One thing that independent media might add in the future is one thing that Indymedia didn't take seriously enough at the beginning- links to dependy-media through trade union organizing.  Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman were writing Manufacturing Consent to discuss the existing consolidation of mass-media and other filters on news coverage in the 90s.  The Wapping Strike<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wapping_dispute> in Britain and later the Gannet strike<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_newspaper_strike_of_1995%E2%80%931997> in USA were crushed by the big media conglomerates in order to consolidate their control over media workers.   This was part of the context in which Indymedia was thought to be necessary.  But there are always journalists who are fighting their employers (working conditions but also about content) so links to the National Union of Journalists https://www.nuj.org.uk/ would create more potential for an inside/outside strategy to open up news.  In the past I know their have been anarchists in leadership positions in this union.

Similarly, organizing efforts for our own platforms that we control need to think also how they link to the existing major platforms- no major campaign that needs a lot of bandwidth can run on our infrastructure so inside/outside strategies for big organizing should be thought through.  Twitter was destroyed because it was useful in a way that mastodon isn't (you could talk to everyone, but it wasn't, as it now does, amplifying right wing loonies and hiding normal and left voices).  Mastodon seems useful to talk to ourselves.  Big meetings online require zoom, facebook or some other corporate platform with bandwidth- it would be hard to get 1000 people in one Jitzi room but it works for small meetings.  How would we build inside/outside infrastructure arrangements to maximise our control but still enable the bandwidth necessary to do big organizing<https://mobilisationlab.org/stories/big-organizing-guide-to-2017-and-beyond/>

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Subject: Re: [HacktionLab] Help with Indymedia talk

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My 2p if it helps.

> - what has replaced Indymedia in your opinion?  What platforms, services, approaches do we have to do filling the gap?
> - what are we lacking? What have we lost?
> - do you have any ideas for what we could do in the future? How do you see the future?

My answers to this switch between all those already given, particularly Charlie and Bou's. I think this is because Indymedia was always a dichotomy. One was media as made by the participants for a somewhat broader audience: maybe what is now the novaras and counterpunchs of the world. The bit that required more editorial and presention. The other was media as made by the participants for other activists, it's a smaller audience with a higher existing insider knowledge. This is now provided by a disparate and sometimes difficult to find and follow set of blogs, still existing Indymedias, Mutus and a few 'social media'
accounts.

I disagree that 'social media' (be it surveillance capitalist, or free and federated) has filled much of the gap. It is largely too individualised. Federation isn't a political solution in and of itself.
While Indymedia theoretically didn't editorialise. It did collectively organise reporting, and moderate, and create direction (when it works).
So it is more collectives who run blogs together (or sometimes associated 'social media' accounts) that give the similar content and depth. These blogs and accounts are usually hinged around a particular
(anarchist) group, or sometimes (action) movement. So what's lost is the collective generalist, yet still, scene media to orientate people from disparate activist strands together; and occasionally be the trusted source for 'outsiders'.

Future? I'd kinda like to leave that to the kids (who are organising the actions now). But it absolutely has to be on infrastructure that 'we'
(they) control and can make decisions collectively about - there I'm still happy to help (and campaign).

ekes




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