Environmental activism and advocacy - Environmental Reform in the Information Age - page 203

conventional media (compared to news of the official summit). Con-
ventional media seems to be more interested in covering law and order
conflicts of these protests than in substantive issues, although these
protests were successful in setting the dark side of globalisation on the
agenda.
Quite remarkably, environmental activists and NGOs hardly use the
Internet and ICT to block or frustrate informational processes of state
authorities, transnational companies or other targets of environmen-
tally unfriendly behaviour. Netstrikes, e-mail bombing, computer hack-
ing or other subversive actions using the Internet have been used to a
very limited extent by green activists, although there has always been a
core of techno-elite cyberactivists among the greens that are, in princi-
ple, able to (and sometimes do) develop such strategies. Only inciden-
tally - on the peripheries of the environmental movement - have such
destructive strategies on the Internet been applied.
The Internet also provides global activists with a considerable degree
of information, communication and media independence, compared to
the conventional information and communication technologies, media
and networks (cf. Scott and Street, 2001 : 46). This is especially cru-
cial because environmental NGOs and civil society rely so strongly
on informational resources and power in their confrontation with the
powers of state and capital. Both on collecting and on disseminating
information weblogs, Internet search engines, e-zones, listservs and
their own media networks (such as Indymedia; see later in this chapter)
have greatly stimulated the effectiveness, global operations and inde-
pendence of the global greens. In addition, and most vitally, these new
media outlets also have been discovered by the conventional media
as a source of information and news. There is increasing evidence
that the underground protest information of activist Web sites and
e-mails bypass conventional 'gatekeepers' (journalists and newswork-
ers) and make it directly into the mass media, enabling the destruction
of the reputation of corporations or the downfall of ministers or gov-
ernments within a few months. In the Information Age, reputational
capital of the private sector, often crystallised in logos and brands
(cf. Klein, 2000 ) has been the key target of both green activists and
private corporations, as Nike, Shell, Exxon, Microsoft and numerous
other companies have witnessed. 12

12

The case of Nike shows how significant information is nowadays. At the turn
of the millennium, mainly in the United States, Nike was one of the main