SOCIAL MOVEMENTS,

DEVELOPMENT
AND ICTS
Communications Technology and Social Change in
Latin America

Maria Garrido, PhD

Center for Information & Society
The Information School
THINK ABOUT PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
ALONG THREE LINES:

 For Research

 ForSocial Networking | targeting socio economic

and development activities/organizations

 ForConvergence among different technologies

(SNS, cell phones, websites, twitter, etc.)
WHAT IS THIS TALK ABOUT?
ICTD WITH A SOCIAL MOVEMENTS TWIST

 How civil society organizations are using ICTs as a

tool to build networks, collaborate, and mobilize
resources in pursuit of social goal.

 The contribution of social movements’ networks to

promote economic and social development in
marginalized communities in Latin America.
BUT FIRST A BIT OF CONTEXT…

 Globalization of the World Economy

 Information and knowledge become crucial components
for economic growth and competitiveness
 Redistribution of power among states, markets, civil
society, and supranational organizations (WTO, European
Union, NAFTA, etc)

 Development, spread, and evolution of ICTs

 Enhanced opportunities for collaboration among different
actors, specially, civil society organizations
 Bypassing, to some extent, traditional centers of power |
Example: Mass media vs Community media
WHAT DOES GLOBALIZATION REALLY MEAN?
 Globalization is a cultural, social, economic and political
phenomenon.
 Information technology has triggered the entrance of
non-state actors in the International Arena.
 Empowerment of unrepresented groups that have found
a space to channel their demands
 Giving people and civil society groups a common
narrative for social change – not homogenous but
common:
United against the negative effects of economic globalization
from North to South from East to West
WHAT THEY ARE FIGHTING AGAINST?
 Widening gap between the rich and the poor
 The excesses of corporate power and financial institutions
 Neglect of small farmers and rural areas
 Undermining of labor rights
 Increase in military spending at the expense of social
spending
 Discrimination of groups based on race, gender, economic
status and sexual orientation
 Government repression (covert or overt)
 Against the detriment of the environment
WHAT IS THIS COMMON NARRATIVE
ABOUT?

 Berlin 1990 - Against the IMF and the World Bank

 Madrid 1994 – Against the IMF and the World Bank

 Seattle 1999 - Against the IMF, World Bank, and WTO

 Prague 2000 – Against all IMF, World Bank, and WTO

 Genoa 2001 – Against the IMF, World Bank, and WTO

 Different countries 2003 – Against the Iraq War

 Mexico City 2006 – Against the IMF, World Bank, and WTO
WHAT MAKES ICTS A POWERFUL TOOL
FOR SOCIAL MOVEMENTS?

 Allows the creation of decentralized networks

for mobilization and collaboration

 Spreading of information at exponential levels

 Enable civil society actors to establish alliances

beyond their borders

 Created social spaces where marginalized voices

can be heard
THE ZAPATISTA MOVEMENT
IN CHIAPAS, MEXICO
ORIGINS OF THE ZAPATISTA MOVEMENT

Some facts:
o The Zapatistas are a social movement that made their first
appearance in the international media January 1st 1994 in
the southern state of Chiapas, Mexico.

o Indigenous peasant men and women of diverse Mayan

origins who have lived in a stage of permanent poverty.

o The uprising highlighted the ability of a locally engendered

social movement to gain support from countries across the
globe.
WHERE IS CHIAPAS?
WHERE ARE THE ZAPATISTAS?
ZAPATISTAS AND ICTS:
“OUR WORD IS OUR WEAPON”

 Use of ICTs to build transnational alliances

 Build a solidarity network with actors from many
different countries around the world
 Diverse groups from NGOs, grassroots organizations, and
other social movements
 Diverse struggles: women rights, environment,
alternative development, human rights, peace, corporate
transparency
 ICTs (including cell phones) become one of the main tool
to mobilize and coordinate efforts a multinational level |
Not GLOBAL – But definitely TRANSNATIONAL
THE ZAPATISTA NETWORK:
WHO, HOW, WHEN, & FOR WHAT PURPOSE

 How do we map the Zapatista Network?

 Who are the actors?

 How do they collaborate, mobilize, act for

together in pursuit of a common goal?

 For what purpose?

In short: Structure, Resources, and Context of Social

movements networks
FIRST GOAL |
MAP THE ZAPATISTA NETWORK
Social Network Analysis
 Methodology to understand how people, their relationships, and roles
in different social contexts or organization could shape their behavior
and influence that of others.
 Three measurements: Centrality, Betweeness, Cluster analysis

Hyperlink Analysis | Or “You are what you link”

 Suggests that “social (or communication) structures on the web may
be analyzed based on the hyperlinks among websites” (Park, 2003)
 It is based on the premise that the Internet’s increasing role in
communication has been made possible by the continual change in
the structure of the network of hyperlinks
 Links in a website are not neutral or accidental but they usually
convey a social interaction among two individual
MAPPING THE ZAPATISTA NETWORK AS
REPRESENTED IN CYBERSPACE

 Tailored web crawler (Halavais, 2003)

 Snow ball from the Zapatista website www.ezln.org
 Data was a here was collected within a radius of two hyperlinks from
the EZLN site in August 2004
 The criteria for selecting the sites that were crawled in the two radius
of hyperlinked data were CSOs that were:
1. Clearly non-commercial; 2.Non governmental/Non for profit; 3. Specified in
their website a social mission; 4. Whose website had a unique domain

 673 domains formed the final list of CSOs connected to the Zapatista
Movement.

 Arranged data in a matrix and ran clustering analysis using UCINET

(Bogartti, et al)
THE ZAPATISTA NETWORK | STRUCTURE 2005
THE ZAPATISTA NETWORK | RESOURCES

Network Ethnography | To understand the roles, the resources, and the

contribution to advance development goals
Some of the resources that flow in the network for Zapatista communities:
A. Community Investment – Resources to support health and education initiatives, water
systems, electrical wiring, etc

B. Information Infrastructure - Training and equipment for building community media

(radio – traditional and Internet-based, community news bulletins); 2) creating email
distribution lists with information from the communities and for the communities in
indigenous languages; and 3) developing ICT capacity in local organizations

C. Productive Processes – Helping communities to own their means of production by

forming cooperatives of small producers, training cooperatives in techniques
that are more efficient and environmentally sound, providing links for these
products under ‘fair trade’ conditions in national and international markets
ENOUGH OF ME: LET’S TALK

 How do you see the role of social movements as

actors in the development process?
 What challenges they encounter to promote “actual”
social change?
 What contribution Web 2.0 tools can have for
organizations working on development and social
change?
 Mobilization
 Collaboration
 ICT convergence | AKA ICTs talking to each other
RESOURCES
 Zapatista Movement
 Enlace Zapatista | Official weblog
 Indymedia Center Chiapas | chiapas.indymedia.org
 Radio Insurgente | Zapatista community radio

 Network Visualization
 Payek
 GOVCOMORG | Issue network tool
 Kraplot | UCINET’s visualization tool

 Social network analysis software

 UCINET | Bogartti et al