Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
sweatshops, often focused on Nike, was primarily a web-based campaign (Carty
2001
). Fair trade movements, such as that advocating coffee grown under envi-
ronmentally beneficial conditions and purchased directly from growers for higher
prices than standard coffee, have been significant users of web-based tactics
(Bennett
2003
). Successful internet campaigns against large multinational firms
such as Monsanto, Microsoft, and De Beers have held their logos, brands and
reputations hostage to the media spotlight (Bennett
2003
; Clark and Themundo
2003
). Other anti-corporate cybercampaigns include boycotts against companies
producing genetically engineered foods, forcing the Sydney Hilton hotel in
Australia to rehire employees laid off due to renovations, and forcing Samsonite
suitcase manufacturer to rehire workers in Thailand who had been illegally fired
(Cammaerts
2005
). In other cases, corporations have been the targets of email
campaigns by unhappy employees or consumers. The Corporate Watch website
(corpwatch.org) enables viewers to see hundreds of instances of company mal-
feasance around the world. So effective has anti-corporate cyberactivism become
that Juris (
2005
) asserts that police often specifically target independent media
coordinators in crackdowns on protesters designed to protect corporate rights and
property. At a minimum, such campaigns have forced companies to be more
careful in their actions to protect their reputation and public image (Illia
2003
).
Progressive political uses of cyberspace abound. At the local level, ''insurgent
campaigns'' can make use of cyberspace as a low cost medium (Chadwick
2006
).
Rutherford (
2000
) describes how the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, a
loose coalition of over 1,300 groups from more than 75 countries that won the
Nobel Peace Prize in 1997, made extensive use of the Internet in a successful
campaign to prohibit their future use. The worldwide protests against the war in
Iraq that materialized on February 15, 2003, relied enormously on internet link-
ages. Routledge (
2003
,
2008
) offers the example of People's Global Action, an
international alliance of progressive activists in places as distant from one another
as India, Brazil, and Europe, which crystallized using the internet as their primary
means of communication, forming what he labels a ''space of convergence.''
Similarly, Bosco (
2007
) describes how the internet was used by Argentine human
rights activists deploring the disappearance of thousands of loved ones under the
murderous military regime of the 1970s to organize local as well as trans-national
networks of supporters, utilizing cyberspace as a complement to the deep emo-
tional bonds they forged through face-to-face contacts. When the Turkish gov-
ernment arrested Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan in 1999, the Kurdish
diaspora responded with worldwide demonstrations within a matter of hours,
calling upon supporters using well established internet linkages (Denning
2002
).
During the U.S. bombing of Serbia in 1999, Serbs deplored their status with
messages seeking to generate support in an effort led by cybermonk Sava Janjic
(Wasley
2007
), although such email was often derided as ''Yugospam'' (Denning
2002
); cyberspace was also a critical link to the world for anti-Milosevic forces.
The first World Social Forum, launched in Porto Alegre, Brazil in 2001, was
primarily organized over cyberspace (Juris
2005
). Between 2003 and 2005,
Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan all experienced democratic ''color revolutions,''
