Social Movements on the Net
Osvaldo León, Sally Burch, Eduardo Tamayo
ALAI, september 2001
http://alainet.org/publica/msred/

PART II
Latin @merica: movimientos.org

Chapter 4.
Internet and Social Organizations:
An Exploratory Study
(Part II)

Information Processing

It is widely recognized that the development of knowledge includes the possibility of finding and applying pertinent information when needed. The scarcity of reliable sources and information that is current, relevant and easily accessible – especially with regard to the international scene – has been a constant for social organizations in the region. Also, few have been able to organize a documentary archive, to the point that more than once internal documentation has been lost, resulting in a loss of historical memory.

With computers and Internet access, this situation changes rapidly, which does not mean it is solved. This is because the possibilities for accessing, storing, and searching information are enormously broadened, to the point that what prevails is abundance, putting those criteria and habits formed in the previous situation of deficiency, up against the wall. This change of parameter raises new demands to respond to new challenges including mechanisms and skills for searching, selecting, ordering and channeling information as required, so that it reaches the hands of those who need it at the right time and in a functional way.

Many organizations, acknowledging its potential for their work, seek to establish procedures that respond to these challenges. Others, not having developed the appropriate mechanisms, remain practically as uninformed as before, or the new technologies may even bring more problems than solutions.

Information circulating through the Internet is received in two main forms: it either arrives (requested or not) at a mail box where it can be processed, or else it is actively searched for in answer to a concrete need (on the Web, in data bases, etc.).

In the case of information received in the electronic mailbox, one can chose to read it, revise it, save it, print it, erase it, or simply let it accumulate, but in order to take advantage of it, one needs to define some selection and ordering criteria. The larger the flow and volume of information, the greater the need to distinguish between what is useful and what is not, and thus be able to send it on to the right persons or departments. This is easy to say, but for social organizations learning to administer an abundance of information it is a fundamental issue, since historically the problem has been a dearth of information.

In the case of active information searches, volume as such is not so much the problem. It is rather whether one’s search tools are the most appropriate for finding the necessary information, and having the knowledge, skills and source locations needed to rapidly access required information.

Selection and distribution

Soon after they open their mail account, aside from individual correspondence, organizations start to receive messages from the list of their respective coordinating bodies or regional networks, information distributed through thematic exchange lists or aliases (address lists created by senders), etc. This information includes bulletins, communiqués, invitations, news items, documents, denouncements and more coming from sister organizations, networks, coordinating bodies, NGOs, cooperation agencies, etc. The organizations we consulted claim to be affiliated to 5–10 regular lists, and some to over 20. Sometimes they are the ones who request subscription to a given list, but mostly things arrive unsolicited.

Generally, the information circulating on these lists is seen as positive by the organizations consulted, as they find it up-to-date and referred to organizational processes, that it helps them join national and international campaigns, and comes from sources that “do not distort the contents”. They feel that these lists, among other things, enable them to follow up on aspects of national and international current events that do not appear in the national press, access information on their topics of interest, and exercise solidarity with similar struggles and organizations on a domestic, continental and world scale. Therefore, they qualify them as “very useful”, especially for keeping up on current affairs; and also useful for being informed on topics, events and solidarity campaigns.

Managing this information requires a certain organizational system and clear criteria for selecting and distributing to interested parties. For this purpose, some take advantage of the facilities computers offer to classify and store what they receive, for example creating folders for the coordinating bodies they belong to and the topics they work on. In this way, although printed copies may be distributed, there is always a backup on disk.

For distribution, those responsible state that when they receive useful information via e-mail or download it from Web portals, generally they print and deliver it to the different work areas and members of the executive, to be used for training activities and development of proposals. Information is transmitted to leaders in the provinces by two means: the most frequent is for folders of photocopied information to be delivered at face-to-face meetings. In organizations where the different departments, leaders and/or affiliates have their own e-mail boxes, distribution is done by this means instead.

But several organizations recognize that, even when the information is of obvious interest, it is not always processed appropriately. To solve this problem, some have recurred to agreements with friendly institutions, to which they transfer information arriving on a given issue, to be reviewed, processed and then returned.

Information Overload

From the time when organizations open their electronic mail account and start participating in information exchange circuits, flows and sources of information multiply rapidly due, among other factors, to the habit that many users have of “borrowing” address lists from messages they receive to set up their own distribution lists.¹³

Related to the above is the problem of messages that arrive repeatedly through different lists. Although certain duplication may be inevitable, the problem worsens when messages are duplicated with scant criteria as to the contents or addressees, and with zero added value.

Regarding this point, a women’s movement representative was conclusive: “We are facing a serious problem, because with Internet many fellow activists are dedicated to electronic pamphleteering, perhaps thinking that this puts them in a vanguard position in the ‘digital war’, bombarding any e-mail address that falls into their hands with messages that they download from other sources, because nothing of their own vintage ever appears. What is worse, these pamphleteers gravitate towards each other and each reproduces what the others send, to the misfortune of those on their lists, meaning that we receive the same messages 5, 10 or more times. They must feel fulfilled, but I don’t think they realize the damage they do to our organizations. I don’t know whether it is a problem of avant-gardism, of misled people, or of egos who want to shine in someone else’s light, saying ‘Here I am’. Whatever it is, my feeling is that these are people with a vacuum-cleaner mentality, who pick up everything they can and then unload it on anyone who crosses their path.”

The overall feeling of these organizations is that they only want to be on lists of those producing, and not of those who only reproduce and are content to use the “forward” button indiscriminately. However, the situation is not that simple, as one communicator in a rural organization underlines, because “many of these people who spend their time duplicating messages are friends of the organization. We can’t just ask them not to send us anything more, although out of 100 messages that they send, if we use two or three it’s a lot.”

But also, the speed of electronic communications imposes paces and times that organizations are unaccustomed to. So it exceeds their ability to process and respond to the many demands and requirements that arrive, not only from their own countries but from the entire world. Almost all complain of the time problem this causes. For some, it is just a nuisance. Others say it would be necessary to have a full-time person to administer the information, but few can afford this.

The head of communications in an Ecuadorian indigenous organization explained that sometimes he receives 400 to 500 messages per day, which take a lot of time to process, since “we pass on to our leaders key information, that which is very summarized, polished, didactic, and helps explain what is happening on the planet.” So “when we see on the first few lines that they are very general or very repetitive topics or unrelated to our reality, we immediately eliminate them,” he stated, adding that “there are other messages that require a level of solidarity, of urgency, with regard to the situations that indigenous peoples or some other societies are going through, and then we pass that on.”

The fact is that for most organizations it is still a pending matter to develop mechanisms that would allow them to quickly differentiate between useful and useless information, decide what messages require immediate response and which can wait; ultimately, how to get along in this world of abundant information.

One Mexican peasant leader commented on the difficulties his organization faces to process topics. “Most organizations are in the provinces, and you can’t create larger teams for help with information, which is already saturating us as there is no human capacity to process it, in complex topics such as genetically modified seeds or the use of pesticides in Latin America.”

One element that organizations are starting to use in response to information overload is to learn how to discriminate sources; that is, to identify and use credible sources that are more useful for organizational and political work, and to discard those that contribute very little.

Information Searches

Processing and ordering incoming information is only one part of the new challenges. Web access opens a large array of possibilities to those who wish to research and actively seek out specific information sources. Some organizations that have started to “navigate” in this sea of information say they do so several times a week, and others very sporadically.

The most visited Web sites are those of the continental coordinating bodies they belong to, pages referring to their respective sectors, besides well-known search engines and portals (Altavista, Yahoo, Lycos, Ole, Google) and the Web sites of several newspapers.

As for the type of information searched, among others they mentioned: current news; statistics on their sectors or topics specific to their networks; productive projects; environmental and tourism matters; business and public service topics; human rights; housing and land rights; training topics; social movements and the trends of neoliberalism. Aside from these topics, they research the activities of other similar organizations, national and international NGOs, and news on their own organizations that is disseminated by other Web sites.

Although the organizations say they usually find what they look for, they also hope for other types of information that they cannot find in the Web sites they consult. These include: updated statistics on their countries; technical matters relating to development strategies in the countryside; information on organizational processes throughout the world; social topics and related movements (such as women, gender, race, racism, the afro movement); and project development manuals.

The problems encountered have to do with limited use time, slow connections, very heavy pages, connection costs, and the predominance of English.

Dissemination by Internet

Producing Information

The Internet, being interactive, offers not only the ability to receive information, but also to generate one’s own, a potential that normally is made little use of due to the strength with which the consumer culture has been implanted. Some organizations participating in this initiative have had practice in producing information and even their own dissemination channels for some time now. The information they generate refers primarily to current domestic issues, the political juncture, human rights violations, urgent actions, organizational topics, solidarity campaigns, and others. They also disseminate their conquests and inform of their proposals, congresses or meetings, and activities.

This information is disseminated through the newspapers, magazines or bulletins that certain national organizations or regional networks edit, aimed primarily at their affiliates and the surrounding milieu. Some also produce radio programs or videos, or occasionally publish books. Many of them regularly or occasionally issue communiqués aimed at the domestic press.

Most consider, however, that they disseminate very little of their own information in contrast to the large volumes they receive via the Internet. The main reasons cited to explain this fact include a lack of trained human resources, precarious infrastructure, or that it is not given much importance. But above all, one of the main obstacles is a lack of policies in this regard. Because it is precisely where policy decisions exist, that a way is generally sought to overcome these difficulties.

Another reason may be that they do not realize that their own experiences with proposal building or new forms of organization could be newsworthy, and so they do not communicate about them. Some commented that sometimes this information is not even communicated from one sector to the next within the same organization. Or else, when valuable information is produced, sometimes it “dies in the internal bureaucratic machinery,” as a Brazilian leader said. In other words, it does not receive much importance.

To what extent can being connected to the Internet support the generation of one’s own information? Actually, it is not an obvious priority source for production by national organizations, which usually base their content on internal experiences or direct sources. At least this is what a leader of MST-Brazil said: “Newspaper preparation could do without the Internet,” he explains, “there is just that page of the ‘fighters’ that we tend to look for mostly on the Internet. As for radio, we have a program that goes out to 1200 radios stations, but there we interview national personalities that the radios have no possibility of reaching, aside from very specific topics.”

The case may be different for a regional coordinating body that receives most of its information from members or sister organizations through this channel.

But in another sense, information sources received through Internet do potentially offer new dissemination opportunities. For example, by compiling information on international topics relating to their sectors, with a minimum of processing, and supplementing it with some domestic content, organizations could become a source for consultation by domestic press.

The Asociación Nacional de Mujeres Rurales e Indígenas (ANAMURI – National Association of Rural and Indigenous Women) of Chile acknowledges that this medium has provided it with a thus-far novel experience: preparing a file on the effects of pesticides, based on information received from the Internet, which it delivered to different media: TV, radios, newspapers. A few of the media used the material and the topic was publicized, although they did not always give credit to the organization for sending in the information.

Generally, however, Internet sources are given little use for re-dissemination and when they are used, it is with little or no added value; that is, they send on information without reprocessing it.

But the relationship between Internet use and the dissemination capacity of an organization is complex. It is often difficult to establish a direct cause-effect relationship. For example, the international repercussions of an organization in the case of an emergency situation, where Internet dissemination may be an important ingredient but not the only one, may in turn result indirectly in coverage by domestic media.

During mobilizations, the Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador (CONAIE – Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador) comments that it has sent out urgent action requests via e-mail, including photographs of the mortal victims of repression, to a list including friends, indigenous movements, human rights groups and networks, and ecologists of Latin America, North America and Europe. “They not only sent letters of support to the indigenous movement, but also sent hundreds of petitions to Ecuador’s President to cease repression and open a formal dialogue.” The domestic media, reports the organization’s head of communications, seeing the international impact of the news, were forced to give the issue more coverage, not just for national audiences, but especially to respond to international expectations regarding their Internet editions.

E-mail for Dissemination

At least at the start, the information that organizations disseminate via e-mail and distribution lists is the same that they produce for written communications (communiqués, documents, magazines). The topics, they say, refer mainly to denouncements and, to a lesser extent, to information on their activities, current events, solidarity campaigns, events, or rights. Frequently, the initial steps in this field are a response to some emergency situation, such as the need to denounce and seek solidarity vis-a-vis flagrant violations of basic rights or important mobilizations.

In Nicaragua, during the Marcha por la Vida (March for Life, 1999), the importance of international dissemination via e-mail became visible, first due to support messages that arrived, second for dissemination abroad, and finally because it enabled a follow-up in terms of public opinion.

But even when a distribution mechanism has been established, the production of information tends to fluctuate according to the changing situations: when social conflicts become acute and organizations are involved in collective struggles and actions, information flows reach a peaks, but tend to drop off as the waters subside.

This fact is noteworthy, as it mostly started with the introduction of e-mail (and to a lesser extent, fax). Before, when dissemination depended on the post and the pace was different (that is, until the early 90’s) the tendency was the other way around: information stopped flowing abroad during emergency situations – either due to blockades and repression, or because the urgencies of the moment prevented prioritizing dissemination activities. The ease and immediacy of e-mail dissemination seems to have helped overcome this blockage. The result has shown the great importance of this change, as it enables expressions of international solidarity, which in some cases has an effect on the attitude of authorities, as they feel they are under the world’s gaze.

In effect, the consulted organizations perceive that e-mail and distribution lists help them to reach a supportive environment, whether domestic or international, of sister or like-minded organizations, which in turn can use the same means, supplemented by faxes, letters, etc., to express their solidarity. Organizations value these dissemination opportunities and feel they afford them more direct and multiplying communication abroad, with up-dated information on their social processes. Likewise, they recognize that the use they make of e-mail to disseminate information is still limited.

Some organizations are opening direct, immediate information channels with the media, even via e-mail, which is especially useful in times of greater conflict.

Stepping up to the Web

Web-based dissemination is perceived by social organizations as a higher, more complex step than dissemination via e-mail and lists. Because it is actually a communications medium with formats at least as varied as print, from introductory brochures to books, including magazines or data banks, and even radio and television programs.

Thus, the Web site of a social organization or coordinating body can simultaneously have basic introductory information (about the organization, its history and components), its basic documents (on congresses, key declarations); also up-dated information flashes on its activities, struggles, proposals regarding current events, requests for solidarity; it can incorporate cultural elements, too, such as graphic archives, music, etc.

A Web site can also combine several of these formats, with a flexibility that printed materials lack in terms of frequent up-dates, the ability to directly link different contents and levels of information, and the option to highlight different aspects according to the moment or in different spaces. It has the additional advantage that the Web makes it possible to organize different types of contents by categories or topics, and to differentiate their presentation, though that demands some planning.

Almost all organizations consulted within the framework of this study either have a Web site or are working on creating one. Often a driving factor is external demand (“everyone asks us if we have a Web page”), which leads organizations to perceive it as a way to gain presence and respond to outside expectations. Being organizations that have become social protagonists that are recognized for their mobilizing capacity and just demands, they awaken public interest and many people want to know their history, plans for the future, and proposals. Under these circumstances, it is more practical for organizations to remit those asking for information to their Web pages, with the advantage that they can be consulted any time, anywhere, and do not require individual answers.

“When a person wants to know about the organization or asks for information on some activity, we tell them we have a page they can consult, and that they can contact us to send supplementary photos or texts,” says an MST-Brazil communicator in this regard.

Often, initial Web presence is simply a page introducing the organization (its nature, objectives, structure, executive committee). As long as the organization has not decided on a development plan, this page may very well remain the same for weeks or months. Organizations that have understood the potential for visibility on the Web go on to regular up-dating of information, uploading their press releases, documents, projects, etc.

What advantages do organizations perceive a Web site gives them? Several feel it has enabled them to strengthen their public presence and facilitate their external relations work. Other responses underline that it is an opportunity to reach the young public that uses it the most, and mention the ease of linking up with international coordinating bodies and participating in international solidarity events under improved conditions.

Web Presence: Some Challenges

Most organizations know little about how to create and develop a Web site, so this threshold is harder to cross than the use of e-mail and lists. While communications via e-mail are often characterized by a certain informality and even spontaneity, joining the Web is seen as a more formal gesture. This perception is largely true, since information lasts longer and its design is more polished, but also because it is potentially visited by a much larger audience, whose makeup is unknown. Also it is considered technically more complex, so it is often put off or left in the hands of third parties, with a resulting lack of control over the process.

In practice in several organizations, volunteers or students of national universities have been the ones who, with the organization’s consent, have taken the initiative to create the site. Although this is a big help, it can be an easy way out and does not necessarily mean that the organization assumes the implications or follow-up after the volunteers have left. In other cases, the site is entrusted to solidarity groups abroad, which generally do it in their free time. Or else an introductory page is opened in some external agency with limited up-dating possibilities.

This difficulty to assume technical production is due in part to the way software is currently developed, as it practically necessitates recurring to specialized technical personnel, whether to design the pages or to place them on the site, although technology makes it possible to create easier solutions. When depending on external solidarity, the organization cannot control the timing, and often information arrives late, enormously limiting its ability to respond promptly to current events. Furthermore, even if the work of designing and manually uploading information to the site is done internally, some organizations find this demanding in terms of time and human resources. Thus in practice, only one of the organizations with a Web site participating in the study updates the information at least weekly, and the rest do it every two weeks, sporadically, or almost never.

Difficulties in producing and regularly updating information can negatively affect a site’s impact, because when visitors open a Web page several times and find no new information, they usually do not return to the site.

Nevertheless, the organizations acknowledge that the basic problem is a lack of policies, as well as a need for means to turn the organization’s experiences and activities into news. Few organizations have developed Web site policies so far and integrated them into a general communications policy and their action plans.

Sometimes there is a vision of what they want to disseminate, but as long as it is not integrated as a project at all levels of the organization, it will not prosper.

The CONAIE of Ecuador, whose Web site is mostly focussed on current events (http://conaie.org), says: “We plan to develop a Web page that enables us to portray what we are as indigenous peoples and nationalities, what we produce, our spiritual and medicinal practices, our marketing systems, and our biotechnology developments. We have an archive of photographic and video material, but as for placing it on the site, we have not had the time and resources to upload it.” To do so, they also wish to connect their grass roots, for “each organization to feed in the part relating to its people, that is, for the Tsáchilas to be continually feeding information on the Tsáchila nationality, the same for the Sionas, Secoyas, etc. In this way, we would decentralize the information.”

Another problem is the pace imposed by the Internet, which is very fast relative to the speed at which most organizations are used to working. The simultaneous nature of this medium pushes for immediate answers, day-to-day information. But in many organizations, information production follows the pace of the printing press era. The setup is the same as used for producing newspapers, bulletins, magazines, press releases, etc., sometimes without realizing the new demands and requirements of virtual spaces. These problems are not exclusive to social organizations, but are more generalized and relate to a lack of understanding of the Internet’s peculiarities.

Social organizations perceive the Web as an Instrument for international relations. However, the information they produce is usually conceived as being for a local audience. In order to be comprehensible abroad, many would need to contextualize more (essential background, exact location of places, times, explanation of acronyms, etc.). Some organizations adapt their information like this before uploading it to the Web, but not all do because they lack the necessary human resources.¹⁴

“We have not measured the impact of the Web, but we have e-mails and phone calls saying ‘Please update the Web, we need this kind of information, on the Web you propose pluri-nationality, and we want to know what that is, what a multiethnic State is’. This means it is being used by students and researchers. I think there is much more attention to Web pages abroad, and they ask us for this type of information,” commented a CONAIE communicator from Ecuador.

One of the difficulties with Web publications is knowing precisely who they are meant for and who visits them, since audiences are not visible and not always easy to identify. Even organizations that have developed a Web policy are not always clear on whether it is for the general public or a more specific audience, for example sister organizations, international solidarity, media, students and professors, etc.

Among the external factors influencing the audience of a Web site is language. Sites in Spanish only will have an audience mainly in Latin America and Spain. For social organizations, the ability to publicize in other languages generally depends on the voluntary cooperation of solidarity groups, in which case coverage is broader.

This is the case of the Brazilian Movimento Sem Terra with a Portuguese site (http://www.mst.org.br) aimed primarily inwards. Since language limited broader dissemination, they created a Spanish site (within the WCSM: http://www.movimientos.org/cloc/mst-br) for Latin America, and sites in English, Italian and German, managed by solidarity groups in Europe.

Likewise, few indigenous organizations in Latin America handle their own Web sites, and many do not even have Web access, but they have sites in English created by solidarity groups in the US, Canada or Europe. These receive information by e-mail, translate it, and place it on the organization’s Web page.

Another problem identified is the use of designs that hamper navigation and reading. This often happens when designing is left in external hands that over-use heavy graphics and animation. Their appeal evaporates rapidly with sluggish access which, for many Latin American organizations connecting to the Web with slow equipment or congested lines, means they will never return. A page design that is very full of text may also hinder reading or the ability to download texts for printing on paper.¹⁵

One last important factor limiting visibility is a lack of site promotion or links from other pages, leaving them lost like drops in the ocean. Some organizations are happy if they receive 200 visits in six months, which is very little for this medium, and shows a lack of understanding of the dissemination possibilities that this system can offer.

Networking

Internal Flows

One of the characteristics of current processes of social organization is the importance given to democratic, participatory procedures. However, often this intention ends up diluted in practice due to financial costs (travel to meetings, national long distance telephone calls or faxes, etc.). That is why many organizations believe the Internet could be an important resource, not just to save them money and time, but also to effectively establish on-going dynamics of consultation and information exchange. However, this hope runs up against problems of infrastructure, but above all of training and creating Internet use habits in leaders.

In ANAMURI, says one leader of this Chilean organization of peasant and indigenous women, “At the start we did not want a hierarchical organization, but the high cost of the board meetings every two months forced us to establish an executive committee that meets monthly, and the plenary board meetings are less frequent. This leaves 50% of the elected leaders out of general decision-making. We turned to telephone consultations for decision-making, although that didn’t solve anything either, but rather degenerated into a formality . . . the agreements were won from the outset.” Also, the monthly telephone bills were larger than the office rent.

Realizing that e-mail could help overcome this situation, they decided to open electronic mail boxes on a commercial portal for each of the regional coordinators. From cybercafes, universities, schools, or friendly NGOs, they download messages sent regularly from the national coordination office. In this way, as this leader adds, “at least we have achieved an intermediate executive team that is more or less informed. In this way we try to make decision-making collective, and that lets us express an opinion and know what others are saying. Our hope is to have an internal communications system, that is, to have the organization connected in networks. Hopefully, each region can have a computer and a connection.”

This interest in moving towards internal networking is a constant throughout most of the organizations, which have recognized that the traditional method of oral transmission has become insufficient. As one Honduran farmer leader observed, “We still have the setup where each board member transmits board decisions to the grass roots, and that same person reports back on the activities and events of his or her grass-roots organization. We definitely believe that this has to change, that communication is our most serious problem, and this is felt on both the national and regional level.”

In the CONAIE of Ecuador, a communications official said, “we want to develop a series of telecenters or multiple communications rooms in the cantons, parishes and, if possible, communities. We are encouraging our co-workers in educational centers and others to get an electronic mailbox, because we have found that electronic communications can help us improve our marketing work. For example, if we need 500 sacks of rice, yucca, plantain, etc., we can notify our co-workers in the Coast or Amazon. That means we can do business, lower costs, and eliminate intermediaries who take a large cut. In this way, we see electronic communication as a means for organizational strengthening that enables us to interact in all areas of life: education, economy, knowledge production, etc.”

Internet has helped decentralize and de-concentrate information flows, both internally and towards society, acknowledges a Brazilian MST organizer, adding, “Before, with telex and fax, everything was centralized in the national secretariat, and from the national level it went out to the states. Now the states themselves are able to disseminate directly on their own to other states. With this network, the sectors have also organized their own lists with preferential addressees for their specific use. You could say that they have acquired a life of their own to communicate with each other. This matter has become more decentralized. Now at the national office we receive the same things that go out to the other states, as one more recipient.”

During the consultations, one or two cases were mentioned of officials who keep information to themselves and do not share it or do so only partially. However, the tendency is to adopt the idea that the more information circulates the more it is enriched. For example, the more is known within organizations about the relations they have with a regional coordinating body, the deeper the sense of belonging to this coordination and the greater the possibilities for proposals and solidarity within this framework.

In general, the organizations that were consulted recognize that the information flow facilitates collective processes of consultation, opinion making, consensus building, and decision making. That is, it contributes to democratizing internal life, and to having decisions made in national or regional offices communicated immediately to grass-roots organizations, no matter how far away they may be. Furthermore, it improves the development of internal events. If members of the executive receive the agenda and documents for a meeting beforehand via electronic means, they will be able to participate more fully and use their time wisely.

Aside from this understanding and whatever attitudes leaders may have in this matter, there are a number of barriers in the road, from economic limitations (“most of our grass-roots organizations can’t even afford a telephone line”), to cultural ones (“the illiteracy rate is very high in our country”, “there is a cultural block to new technologies”), including institutional resistance (“decentralization is a good idea, but very complicated”).

International Liaison

Up until now, it is evident that networking is more developed internationally than internally within organizations. Usually, observes a leader of the Mexican popular urban movement, “we interact better in continental networks and by sectors, such as among women, than between different women’s groups within the country, not to mention among different sectors.” It seems that the broader the circle, the better networks operate, as testified by one of the organizers of an international campaign: “It is easier and quicker to have a debate, make decisions and start an action plan at the level of coordinating bodies in three continents, than to do it on a continental level. Making sure that information is received, multiplied and built into social processes creates constant conflicts, because work demands and opportunities move at a different pace and have different possibilities for participation.” However, all the data gathered seems to indicate, at least as a working hypothesis, that these difficulties do not occur in the case of organizations that operate through internal networking.

The fact of participating in joint dynamics in networks and sectorial coordinating bodies motivates organizations to share their realities, ideas, proposals, and experiences with one another. This sharing enables them to see more clearly that their situation is not isolated, that the problems they are going through are similar to those in other countries, and that the answers each has come up with might be a source of inspiration to others, but it also helps them identify global issues they can act on jointly.

This is what happened, for example, among the women in the CLOC. The contact and exchange between rural women’s organizations, on the one hand, and women’s committees within mixed-gender organizations, on the other, means that each has discovered that the problems and resistance they face are not unique to them, so they feel empowered to justify and defend their demands within their respective national contexts.

These exchanges among organizations are often face-to-face at first, but once a relationship and trust have been established, maintaining this relationship via Internet strengthens and prolongs these contacts. Thus, to understand the Internet’s contribution to these dynamics, it is not enough to study what goes through this channel. That would be like trying to understand the relationship between two individuals from their telephone conversations. Rather, electronic communication becomes one component of a much more complex relationship going through diverse channels, but the frequency of their contacts and the quality of their exchanges are transformed by incorporating the Internet.

The consulted organizations coincide in pointing out that one of the advantages of using electronic networks for coordination activities is that they enable information to flow among them all – or at least the “connected” ones – and all can participate in decision-making; although they also agree that this does not necessarily happen, and that decisions tend to be adopted by the most dynamic organizations. In any case, in contrast with what used to happen, underlines a Central American farmers’ leader, “now we cannot say ‘we didn’t know’, ‘they made these decisions behind our backs’ or things like that; if we had the information and failed to speak up, then it is our fault.”

Due to their inclusive nature, there is a strong concern within the coordinating bodies for those members who remain outside the networks and, therefore, at the margin of information and decision-making. However, it is not clear how this concern translates into effective ways to keep the “flow logic” from subordinating the course of these organizational processes. In a world marked by stress and fast pace, ultimately it is the “connected” ones who can speak up when, for example, seeking a consensus on the go about a public statement or similar situations.

We must acknowledge, states a women’s movement member, that “the rhythm of movements and social processes is not the same as the speed of the Internet. In Internet time, things are much faster, and not all organizations are able to keep up with this pace. Technology can even get in the way if one does not have a communications strategy. New communications technologies broaden opportunities, but also gaps.”

In general, there is a recognition that electronic lists for internal exchanges work irregularly and that most messages circulating are denouncements and reports on events occurring in different countries, particularly when a member organization is involved. They have also made it possible to share among the whole group specific issues that are initially taken up by only one or other organization. Thus, for example, an Andean peasant-indigenous leader recognized that his organization “took seriously” the topic of GM crops, thanks to information sent out to the CLOC list by “sister organizations in other countries.”

At critical moments such as flagrant human rights violations, urgent actions have also been implemented taking advantage of the fact that the Internet, by acting in real time, offers great opportunities for synchrony. This is how, within a given time period, organizations have responded to calls for solidarity to influence a specific point, turning their weakness (size and dispersion) into a strength, which is crucial in the international pressure game.

Likewise, this technological resource has made it possible to coordinate actions and mobilizations in a synchronized way, overcoming time and distance barriers, and to report them as they happen, thus reinforcing internal cohesion and adding public impact both internationally and internally. A recent example of this occurred on April 17, 2001, on the occasion of the “International Day on Farmers’ Struggles” promoted by the worldwide organization Vía Campesina (farmer’s way), which CLOC is a member of.

Most of the organizations consulted also participate in other thematic networks (pesticide use, fair business practices, foreign debt, etc.), both to enrich their first-hand information and to establish specific alliances (for example with organizations of ecologists, consumers and human rights, etc.), get involved in campaigns and urgent actions, and participate in international events.

Experience in networking is even reproduced in other areas, as an ANAMURI leader tells us: “We took the experience we had from the CLOC and applied it to the Action Network against Pesticides in Latin America (RAPAL from the Spanish) which, in spite of being a movement of NGOs and researchers, had no network connections.”

In the dynamics of coordinating bodies and social networks contemplated here, campaigns have played a highly motivating role, like a kind of “lubricant” for getting them to act, both internally and in interrelations between them and other social processes and sectors. But there is one in particular that has been key to their individual development as well as for joint actions as expressed in the WCSM: the “Cry of the Excluded”, which in certain ways is the continuation of the 500 Years Campaign.

The Cry of the Excluded
The “Cry of the Excluded” was created in Brazil in 1995 as an initiative of the National Conference of Bishops and social movements of Brazil, for the purpose of attracting attention to the situations of exclusion generated by the neoliberal model. During 1999 it extended to Latin America, with October 12 as the symbolic date of the general protest carried out under the motto “For Work, Justice and Life”.
In the year 2000, the “Cry” took a qualitative and quantitative leap forward, since it became a permanent continental mobilization that begins the first days of September and continues until the third week of October; also, because it sketched a strategy of convergence with other processes and initiatives with a similar orientation, such as the World March of Women against violence and poverty, Jubilee 2000, the movement against racism, and the coalition fighting in the US in favor of the legalization of undocumented immigrants and their immediate reuniting with family members, among others.
The speed at which it is expanding is no doubt due to the depth and gravity of social exclusion, but also to the fact that this convergent space does not require creating its own infrastructure, being based on a web of interconnected social networks, including the CLOC and FCOC, and fed by existing dynamics of peasant / indigenous movements, unions, ecumenical and human rights groups, NGOs, and other entities. Moreover, it operates under criteria of decentralization, flexibility and freedom to act, in such a way that each sector and country can raise its own “Cry” and include its own topics, decide on the modalities and moments that best suit their own activities, etc.
That is, the “Cry” has basically been able to interconnect diverse organizations and entities due to its size and range of action, its motives, its areas of interest and intervention, its methodologies and strategic guidelines, etc., by which everyone, even the smallest, can speak up and share their points of view. Thus the strength of action resides in the virtuality of being linked up: in the minds of its participants is the idea that they belong to a broad international movement, whereby local actions take on new meaning.
Based on these characteristics, the key is managing information and communications with an eye to multiplication. Support materials are minimal: a poster and postcards to depict the “Cry’s” public image. Most of this activity is carried on via Internet, along with a web site in several languages (http://www.movimientos.org/grito/) through which information is disseminated, documents and articles are gathered, and links are established to other sites and like-minded entities. There is an electronic list with the addresses of focal points acting as a central circuit and fed by a regular electronic bulletin and a continual flow of information updates and on-going reflections, which each focal point duplicates for its own milieu, and so on. But not everything is Internet-based, because at different intersections of the network, indistinctly, these information flows are transferred to print or used for radio programs, etc. Furthermore, this is all complemented by specific initiatives, large and small, driven by each organization, sector or country.

From means to ends: Media and policy

A Pending Challenge

Communication is a basic component of human relations that is molded by social change and that has assumed a central role in modern life. It only became an independent field during the late 19^th Century, and its importance has grown to the beat of the continual, accelerating expansion of the media through technological innovations. This in turn has made the media predominate to the point where it has become common to reduce communications to the media.

Because of this turn of affairs, it is very common to speak of “media policies” as synonymous with “communications policies”. But beyond this, that fact is that if this concern has acquired importance and become generalized, it is because public influence depends on the field of communication – whose central function is precisely to provide visibility – making the media a venue that is strategically disputed by different social stakeholders.

A few years ago, for example, with goodwill and internal cohesion, a few good lawyers and a just cause, a trade union had a good chance of coming through a conflict with flying colors. Now, not necessarily, unless it also takes public opinion into account.

The social organizations we consulted realize they face a challenge on this front, and are aware that one of their functions is to strengthen their position as social stakeholders that offer proposals vis-a-vis the situations of the sector they represent and before society, which means being able to influence public agendas.

A Mexican popular urban leader expressed this situation eloquently: “There is a dynamism in these movements that arises from unsatisfied needs and inequality, and there are sectors of the population that seek to improve their situation. These movements can consciously decide whether or not to intervene on the public scene, more concretely in sectors with power. However, one of the ways to measure the maturity and depth of these movements is if their goals include the mission to apply pressure, to mobilize, to negotiate, to influence the decisions of society as a whole. We must realize that there is a difference between having a just cause, having a fundamental reason to mobilize, having a clearly-defined proposal vis-a-vis social issues, and knowing how to communicate all this to the people.”

But although this statement is shared in general terms by the organizations, when the topic of communications is touched specifically, a whole range of values and approaches arise. There are those who feel it is “a priority task”, those who acknowledge it as “a task that is pending” due to other urgencies, and even those who see it as a matter of “specialists” helping leaders improve their image.

Be this as it may, all claim to have it on their agendas, and there is a tendency to see it as an issue that cuts across all an organization’s activities, although weighed down by a tradition that identifies communication with instruments (a press release, the production of a video or radio program), or in the best cases in its modern version, with the media (written press, radio, TV, Web sites).

Some organizations are nonetheless dedicated to overcoming this instrumental approach, and to proposing and adopting an overall communications policy and strategy that is not limited to the media or only to information flows. This is the case of the Nicaraguan ATC, which acknowledges that with the strategy review processed by the organization a few years ago, it changed its communications approach, basically centered on agitation and propaganda, and communication has become a component of different activities: education, mobilization, campaigns, media presence, international relations, etc.

The MST of Brazil perceives that its having become a national movement and receiving the support of society has depended largely on its ability to communicate. “Once we had clarified our policy that agrarian reform is not just a matter of the Landless, it became clear that we must either involve society as a whole or fail. Now there is an understanding that everything we do must be communicated, both internally to strengthen the organization and externally to show society what our ideals and values are, the results of our struggles, and what agrarian reform is. Thus, if there is a land occupation, we inform the municipalities and the people; if a sack of beans produced by our members is sold, we inform others; each achievement of the movement, a poem, a song, is communication,” says one woman leader.

The two cases stated here are not the only ones, but they are the ones that have most clearly processed the need to develop communication strategies that respond to their political and organizational goals. In general, organizations share the criteria of dealing with communications on two different levels: one aimed at the grass roots and the other directed towards public opinion, both nationally and internationally.

More highly structured organizations have communications departments (generally made up of hired communicators) with direct Internet connections and at least one communications vehicle of their own (a newspaper, magazine, bulletin, radio program, etc.). These departments generally have few resources and communicators (three at the most) in charge of the multiple tasks related to producing for their own communication vehicles, public relations, generating information for the media, training courses, monitoring the written press, etc. In others, the elected official in charge of the sector fulfills these duties, mainly at critical times, like when an abuse of public power must be denounced, or on the occasion of some special activity.

Use of their communications media or channels is obviously subject to organizational decisions in this area. The MST, for example, has the Jornal Sem Terra, a monthly newspaper it has published regularly for 20 years, mainly as an organizing instrument; radios to communicate with broader publics; the Revista Sem Terra to reach the opinion-shaping urban public; and computer networks to make information flow quickly to different levels and provide a data base through its Web page. It also seeks to regenerate other resources: posters, shows, conferences, cassettes, videos, sales of produce, etc. to reach society as a whole. But there are other organizations that, not having defined their guiding principles, have remained in the formality of the instrument or even – due to the economic crisis – with none at all. He who knows not where to go, goes nowhere, says the proverb.

Mass media

The other side of communications decisions has to do with the mass media, due to the role they play in shaping public opinion. Here a situation of ambiguity prevails, swinging from condemnation to fascination, not necessarily as set positions, but rather as a fluctuating attitude. However, the tendency to focus on the matter from a communications policy standpoint has made way for introducing variations on the theme, at least in two senses: one regarding alliances, and the other relating to the reality of the mass media itself.

Social movements and those media identified as popular, alternative, democratic, citizen’s media, etc. have “walked together” for decades, but only recently are they really coming to meet. Whether the instrumental logic led social movements to “take advantage” of these media, or for many other reasons, the fact is that this walking together was parallel, with certain stations along the way (times of great social struggle) that afforded them shared moments. What is new is that a sense of alliance has been introduced in this relationship, which supposes acknowledgement and mutual respect based on common agendas. And this is a fact that several of the organizations we consulted have identified.

Also, there is a growing perception among the latter that the criticism of the media as instruments of the powers that be should not lose sight of the nuances and contradictions existing among them. There are glimpses of wanting to take advantage of the cracks left open in traditional media and take steps towards getting to know their policies and internal organization, democratic journalists and writers, means of operating, and the interests to which they respond.

Once again we take the case of the MST: in order to counteract the strong offensive actions orchestrated by the federal government and mainstream press to morally disqualify and politically isolate the MST, it was necessary to distinguish between the media and journalists who had been “co-opted by the regime” and those who had an ethical position. Then they worked on sensitizing friendly journalists, personalities writing for the press, radio reporters and television presenters. The result is that at times objective photographs, reports and articles on the Landless appear in the major media.

Obviously there is an unwritten law in the mainstream media: ignore social movements. This law is usually broken when social struggles reach levels of conflict that cannot be ignored. “We are a ‘news-breaking organization’ and the media are forced to give us space. This is really not because the media agree with our struggles, but because they are obliged by our being a serious organization that makes news,” said a leader of the Consejo Coordinador de Organizaciones Campesinas de Honduras (COCOCH – Coordinating Council of Farmer Organizations of Honduras).

This criterion is corroborated by a leader of the CONIC of Guatemala, who says that in order to have the organization’s positions disseminated, “we are always depending on whatever goodwill there is in the media to give us space. On days when there is not much news, the media do respond to our calls. We actually are news in Guatemala, but only when there are mass demonstrations. Otherwise the space they give us is minimal.”

Likewise in Brazil, for the media, news is conflict, states an MST organizer, adding that there is a “systematic blockage of all achievements coming from the Movement. We launched an eco-agricultural seed, with many activities, but not one line came out in the press.” With the mainstream media, he notes, “we are always on guard because we mistrust them. Even at times of most emphasis, when the press was always on top of us and anything and everything was news,¹⁶ we had the feeling of being suffocated by their activities. Then we sat down and said, this is not getting us anywhere. They can put us on a pedestal, but they are in control, and later they can throw us back down again. Internally we are always discussing how we cannot carry out actions just to have a repercussion in the media. That is a trap, because it creates the illusion that things are like that, but they aren’t. We cannot let the press determine our behavior, and should be very careful with that. Sometimes we even feel it is better not to occupy that space. We believe that within the movement there is a certain framework, in the sense that we are not interested in occupying certain spaces, certain programs. And this has been important, even for our internal grass roots, because it helps us show that there is no point in getting our hopes up about this.”

The head of communications of an Ecuadorian peasant-indigenous organization also related: “After the uprising, the media were following us around, but all the time they were trying to manipulate us, even telling us who should be the spokespersons for the movement, sometimes taking advantage of the vanities or mistakes of our colleagues; but this happened because we left this end loose internally. We understand that what the media is looking for is stars, which is radically opposed to our community world view. However, there are compañeros who fall into the trap due to leadership disputes, false leadership, which the media inflate to create internal problems for us.”

From the testimonies gathered, it is clear that when there are events that the media cannot silence, if organizations have not created their own mechanisms for communicating with society, enabling them to report their own version of the facts, the only thing that circulates is the version elaborated by the mainstream press that often, rather than giving expression to the voice of social organizations, purports to undermine the legitimacy of their actions. Moreover, when levels of polarization are reached, as has happened in Brazil, Ecuador and Mexico, being countries with strong social movements that question the exclusive economic model (a position that has gained legitimacy in public opinion), the sectors in power, with help from the media, have deployed a strategy that combines repression, disqualification, and even criminalization of the social struggle, in an attempt to isolate them and undermine their social and political support.

The situation changes somewhat in the case of local media outside of the large cities, which especially farmer organizations are more able to influence. These media – especially radio – are important for reaching the grass roots of the organization itself and the local milieu; but when it remains at this level it is difficult to have an impact on national public opinion.

In general terms, the organizations are progressively realizing that vis-a-vis the media, criticism is not enough, but that it is necessary to develop actions to occupy media spaces, without thereby losing sight of the enormous disadvantage they are at in a context where large corporations, after two decades of neoliberal adjustments, have merged and re-concentrated as oligopolies that own the largest newspapers and magazines, television channels, radio stations, and production companies.

As a Colombian peasant leader relates, “The major media have been taken over by transnational companies and by the country’s own economic groups. For example, the Santo Domingo group, that owns the breweries and aviation, has the Caracol radio chain and a television company. The same is true of another group that monopolizes soft drinks and sugar in Colombia and is the owner of another national radio and television chain.” This situation is seen repeatedly in the other countries of the region.

The general tendency is towards private interests prevailing over communication processes, towards reducing them to their minimum expression or, where possible, towards eliminating public and community media. A clear example of this is the offensive against Latin America’s community radios and popular radios, and the strong pressures by commercial media to close them down, accusing them of being “pirate” and “clandestine”.

ICTs to Break down Barriers

It is in this context that social organizations are giving particular importance to the Internet. Until recently, the ability to communicate with society depended exclusively on the mass media, which escaped the control of these organizations. Now, however, new technologies have opened fresh communications channels that, without replacing the need to reach the mass media, complement them, with the added possibility of reaching an international audience. “To a certain point, they make it possible for us to break the information barriers of the mass media on a national and international scale,” claims one communicator of an indigenous organization.

Thus, in some organizations this resource is being capitalized politically to “send information to the outside in order to pressure on the inside.” Whenever there is a conflict and information flows abroad – taking advantage of the immediacy of electronic networks – towards receptive points that react and apply pressure, results can be achieved inside the country. This happened, for example, in the case of the sterilization of women carried out within the context of the Peruvian government’s social programs. “Only when there was heavy international pressure did Alberto Fujimori’s regime react and do something about it,” says a member of the Red de Mujeres Transformando la Economía.

In Brazil, the MST has given much importance to international relations work, both with supportive networks, organizations and personalities and with the international press, which oftentimes “is more positive than the national press.” This work includes a flow of information towards foreign correspondents, global media networks and solidarity organizations, mainly in Europe. Numerous reports have reached global TV chains (like CNN), high circulation newspapers like the New York Times of the US and media in Spain, Ireland, England and other European countries. The consequence of this policy is that the dominant elite are beginning to admit the MST as being a legitimate interlocutor, once the Movement was able to apply international pressure and the cause of agrarian reform reached high levels of citizen acceptance in the country.

Some organizations are combining the new communications and information technologies with other communication activities. The printed bulletin Cimarronas of the Red de Mujeres Afrolatinamericanas y Afrocaribeñas is basically developed with material arriving via e-mail. In Ecuador, an indigenous organization has used the Internet to send its information to indigenous radios and the networks of popular and alternative radios.

In other organizations, like the MST, electronic communications have enabled its newspaper to circulate with the latest news and photographs, submitted on closing day by the newspaper’s reporters and collaborators. “Today it would be impossible to produce the Journal Sem Terra without the Internet. Before, when we wanted to close an edition, we had to send news three or four days in advance. Now if something happens on closing day, it will get in the newspaper. As for photos, in the past we had to make copies and send them by mail. Now we send them by Internet, although from some states this is not possible yet because they lack a scanner. It has been more difficult to combine Internet use with the radio stations, because they are located in places where communication is very difficult, and often they do not even have a telephone. In other cases, the rural telephone service is incompatible with the Internet,” says a communicator of that organization.

However, the organizations are aware that there is still much to do before they will be taking best advantage of the benefits Internet offers, such as access to data banks, consulting sources, information archives, speed of transmission for information and photos, requesting articles from collaborators within the country or in any part of the world, etc., but also to capitalize on its usefulness for disseminating their own materials and productions.

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