Environmental activism and advocacy - Environmental Reform in the Information Age - page 199

3. Transnational spaces for environmental movements

Today, one can hardly envision a thorough analysis and understand-
ing of the anti- or other-globalisation movement without paying close
attention to the Internet and computer-mediated communications.
Global protests at the Seattle, Genoa and Cancun summits (and at all
other summits in the early years of the new millennium) of the leading
global economic and political institutions have strongly been enabled,
facilitated and strengthened by these new communication and infor-
mation systems. But also understanding the strategies and networks of
more organised, structured and institutionalised global NGO players
such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and the World Wide Fund
for Nature is no longer possible when the Internet and ICT are not
taken into account. Cleaver ( 1998 ) and Chesters and Welsh ( 2005 )
refer to this ICT centrality in social movements as the 'electronic fab-
ric of struggle'. Although at a local level the Internet does not really
increase the ability to mobilize participation in protest events (Pickerill,
2001 ), arguably this is different internationally. And, perhaps even
more important, the preparations by and the feedback to the wider
environmentalist constituency - so crucial in constructing a global
movement - was built on the new technological systems with their time-
less global information flows. The global interlinking of the many local
campaigns construct the feeling of being part of a truly global (anti-
capitalist, antiglobalisation, antinuclear, anti-GMO, etc.) movement.
It is here that working methods, communication patterns, informa-
tion exchange and/or decision-making structures really have shifted
to virtuality, and that corporeal interactions have reduced in impor-
tance. In their study on Web sites of NGOs in the antiglobalisation
movement van Aelst and Walgrave ( 2004 ) give evidence of the role of
ICT in global network formation through joint mobilization, Web site
linkages, and the development of common ideas, discourses, frames
and counterexpertise. Although also in these global networks, face-to-
face interactions are essential to build trust, facilitate cooperation and
confirm jointness in goals and identities, 8

cyberspace interactions do

8

Global networks, for example, of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth make
ample use of the Internet but also meet face to face regularly to plan and discuss
global campaigns, compare national priorities and strategies, and discuss the
allocation of resources. These meetings with corporal presence are also essential
in building trust and continuing financial solidarity between the resource-rich