Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
in which opposition parties utilized the web as an integral part of their strategy
(Warf
2009
). The Burmese/Myanmar government's ferocious oppression of
Buddhist monks and democracy activists was met with organized internet resis-
tance (Wasley
2007
), among other forms. The website Protest.net serves ''to help
progressive activists by providing a central place where the times and locations of
protests and meetings can be posted.''
Cyberspace has facilitated the resurgence of progressive grassroots politics in the
U.S. (Armstrong and Moulitsas
2006
) in various ways. Democratic Party fund
raising over the Web, for example, which was initiated by the presidential campaign
of Howard Dean in 2004, has consistently outpaced parallel attempts by conser-
vative groups. Internet-based groups such as Moveon.org, which began in 1998 and
had more than 6 million members in 2009, played important roles in supporting
Barack Obama's presidential bid in 2008, primarily through large numbers of small
contributions. Moveon.org's efforts have been imitated by like-minded groups such
as People for the American Way, New Democratic Network, and the New Majority
Fund. At the leftist edges of the political spectrum, PunkVoter.com used cyberspace
effectively to mobilize hundreds of thousands of new, typically young, voters.
Feminist cyberpolitics has also grown by leaps and bounds (Wise
1997
;
Escobar
1999
; van Zoonen
2001
; Youngs
2002
). This phenomenon is particularly
important given that the Internet has historically been an overwhelmingly mas-
culine phenomenon, and that even today in many countries, women are less likely
to use the internet than are men, although in the economically developed world the
gender dimension of the digital divide has essentially evaporated. Cyberfeminist
applications include connecting women's and reproductive rights groups, exposing
atrocities such as female genital mutilation and ''honor killings,'' mobilizing
against domestic abuse, struggles for sex workers' rights, advocating for women's
literacy in developing countries, and supporting women-owned businesses.
Feminist NGOs in Mexico, for example, use the internet to bypass state-dominated
media in their reform efforts (Merithew
2004
). Moreover, the internet allows for
the creation of feminist subaltern ''counterpublic'' spaces, run by women, for
women (Travers
2003
). In deeply patriarchal societies such as in much of the
Muslim world, the internet allows women far wider means of communication than
are found traditionally (Mojab
2001
). UNESCO's Women on the Net project,
launched in 1997, focuses on empowering women around the world. Finally,
cyberspace is both a vehicle for advancing women's rights in the non-virtual world
and an arena of struggle in its own right, as with attempts to combat pornography
or advertising that is degrading to women.
Internet-based activism plays a key role in numerous environmental movements
(Pickerill
2003
). An early example is O'Lear's (
1996
) observation of Russian
environmentalists using email to network and share information in the early 1990s.
More recently, Cammaerts (
2005
) describes how activists saved the Lapperfort
Forest near Brugge, Belgium, in 2001 by coordinating their actions online. The
group 350.org organized the International Day of Climate Action, held on October
24, 2009, which coordinated 5,200 events in 181 countries entirely using the
internet. Envirolink (
www.envirolink.org
)
lists 1,200 organizations dedicated to
