I love how Tsing verbalizes the frontier as ideology. Her description is very close to how we're discussing the concept of frontier in my history class this term (history of the American West), from the creation of wilderness to be conquered/salvaged, its "inert" landscape to be "discovered" and subsequently "dismembered and packaged" (29).

One of the reasons I'm taking that history class, and one of the reasons I love Tsing's description, is because part of my overall diss work looks at how the "frontier" continues to manifest in popular culture through the post-apocalyptic. So many representations of the post-apocalyptic landscape include a defunct urban setting where "the wilderness" is beginning to creep back in, sometimes violently. I'm thinking of I Am Legend, where former zoo animals are roaming the dead streets of New York City, or A.I., where again New York City is mostly flooded. Compare with some more rural pA landscapes such as in the miniseries The Stand (and the Stephen King book on which it is based), where the plague survivors tend to run around the entire US countryside and all the weather is the same (from New England to Boulder, CO to Las Vegas, with all of the Midwest in between). The landscape's main function as a character in these representations is either to remain "inert" and something that survivors can pass through/ignore, or as a barrier characterized by some kind of deadness (Cormac McCarthy's The Road is a good example).

I'm still working through these connections, but I think it's important for me to think about how the pA wasteland functions as a new frontier, of sorts -- how that frontier differs from the frontier that allows for resource extraction, how audiences respond to this "new" frontier, and how that notion of frontier informs how they understand survival for themselves.

One point Tsing makes that is blowing my mind right now (in terms of usefulness for my own work) is its strange temporality. She says, "The frontier is not a philosophy but rather a series of historically nonlinear leaps and skirmishes" (33). The influence of Frederick Jackson Turner is still present, I would say, in the way many people think about frontier. Even if it is a creation, it still acts for many in a linear way. In pA literature, the landscape is often presented as a "back to frontier" scenario, which is simplified as a "back to wilderness" scenario. But Tsing is giving me different ways to think about various frontiers, and it's exciting to see how they might apply to our creative landscapes.

(Blog post is mostly way off topic from the book as a whole, I know, but this is where my brain goes quite often -- especially when I'm sick. Weeee!) 

Manuel Castells' text Networks of Outrage and Hope attempts to provide a small and inexhaustive exploration of the role the internet and cybercommunication has played and continues to play in varying liberal social movements across the globe. While this is an interesting point of inquiry and certainly a topic for discussion, I can't help but feel that Castells came at the project with a predetermined understanding of this role that is perhaps shaped more by his personal imagination than realities of any social movement he studied. 

Yes, the Occupy Movement utilized the internet extensively. Yes, people in Cairo with access to internet utilized it to disseminate information and to report to the rest of the world. No, Castells has not provided a compelling argument suggesting that either movement was totally dependent on the internet, or that cybercommunication was the fundamental building block therein. This would be especially difficult to prove in the case of the Arab Spring, particularly considering a number of scholars and activists who were either witnesses or participants in these revolutions have firmly denounced such claims with a wide array of empirical evidence. 

Moreover, Castells seems to be writing personal fantasy into these narratives in a really problematic way--to some degree, every writer does this, but the utter lack of critical engagement with any of the criticisms of his arguments or the movements themselves (which have been published continually and long before this book was made available) is a disappointment at best. For example, Castells recognizes the Occupy Movement was primarily comprised of white college graduates, but says nothing of why that was the case or how redundant and violent it is for a bunch of white BA-holding 20-somethings claiming public space in the name of All People Everywhere (except for POC and women, who were largely unsafe in these spaces before, after, and during these occupations)--as if public space isn't already allocated primarily for such people. Though Occupy Oakland was one of the more 'critical' protests, my experience living in Oakland at the time was that low-income and POC neighborhoods did not support the movement, which was again primarily comprised of white Berkeley and Mills students who had been gentrifying their neighborhoods for years, and at times were very angry with the ensuing increased militarization on Oakland streets (which disproportionately affects POC). Moreover, Oakland has a long history of activism re: classism, racism, police brutality, etc that Occupy protestors largely did not engage with, and to my knowledge one of the few times they attempted to work with a local movement, they physically antagonized riot police until violence erupted--that's a tactic and a luxury very few POC would indulge in...I realize this is anecdotal, but this is all to say that there are axes of privilege at work both in these movements and in Castells' writing that need to be interrogated. 

Hey guys, I am so sorry I posted this my response so late. I am not feeling very well. I ate something yesterday that made me sick and I've been throwing up all night. However, I will be in class today, but I just wanted to apologize in advance for my late response. You all have great questions that I will include in my facilitation today. I look forward to class and our discussion of today's text. 

Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age by Manuel Castells looks at a number of worldwide social movements that have used the internet as a platform for mobilizing awareness and creating autonomy. He specifically calls for a “grounded theory of power” in order to argue that networked social movements are today’s denouncement of corporatized democracy. In other words, Castells believes that these movements are in search for authentic democratic practices of freedom for all people. In his introduction he discusses systems of power that materially and symbolically manipulate people’s mind into believing that that structure distributes resources equally and fairly. However, similar to Coombe and Coleman, he speaks to the importance of counterpower, which he believes is as important because it is an outcome or response to the hegemonic powers of the state. Networked social movements, as he argues, provide an analysis of counterpower resistance because they not only ground themselves in exemplifying the distrust of their own government, but they also allow people to become agents of their lives by demanding recognition from the state. He adds, “the way people think determines the fate of the institutions, norms, and values on which societies are organized” (5). Networked social movements are spaces of awareness and critical consciousness because the people participating are not only challenging institutional constructions of democracy, but in doing so, they are redefining their own understanding of democratic freedom. Castells does not privilege material change; (although he briefly mentions some institutional/structural changes that occurred in certain societies as a result of their social movements) instead he decides to value what consciousness is doing in these movements. He says,

 

Castells is specifically speaking to a materialized democracy where personal freedom is a form of individual agency and liberation, but only when the participants themselves consciously decide to redefine their freedom and individual rights. Awareness to him seems to be the essence of these movements, since it exemplifies the people’s disappointment of their own country’s inability to take care of all its citizens. For Castells, action begins with the self, but more specifically, it begins with a critical consciousness that reclaims subjectivity and practices that subjectivity in the internet and in urban public spaces. The internet and the urban space, as he argues, provide a third space for social movements to practice their own democracy. A third space that practices autonomy by not only transforming public spaces as spaces for reclamation, but also to exercise individual freedom through networked relationships that allow these movements to be narrated through their voice and gaze.

Questions:

1.      Castells speaks of the importance of people’s consciousness in the effectiveness of social movements. Is consciousness strategically essentialized on interactive networks of communication? What does consciousness look like?

2.      Can social movements that focus more on “the discourses of its actors, rather than in specific demands” successfully bring about structural change? (125)

3.      I believe Castells in some way romanticizes networked social movements because he doesn’t really invest in the material tensions that come about having a structure-less social movement. Ideally, all his examples express the distrust of the “political class” and he further illustrates the importance of autonomy in social movements. However, does autonomy look different for different people because it is often influenced by their own social locality, which as we know is also a direct result of historical constructions of race, gender, class, sexuality, nationality, etc. Therefore, what are the dangers of romanticizing networked social movements that Castells argues ground themselves in authentic democratic practices? If ones definition of freedom, or ones response to institutional discrimination, inequality, prejudice or state repression looks different because of the historical stratification of identities, can we say there is such thing as an authentic democracy? Is Castells doing more harm than good when he romanticizes collaborative efforts of political change, instead of addressing, perhaps racial, gender, and class tensions within the movement? Or do movements themselves strategically or momentarily abandon these realities in order to mobilize a larger political goal that challenges ideological distributions of power. 

    Manuel Castells’ Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age (2012) excavates global commonalities between 21st century social movements such as the uprisings of Tunisia, Egypt, Spain’s Indignada movement, the state’s Occupy Wall Street, as well as the Arab Spring Revolutions. Conceptualizing these distinct movements under a framework of counter-networks of power, mass self-communication, and individual-communal emotional-behavior, Castells argues that contemporary social movements have and will continue to need to mobilize counter-networks of power (social media) in order to raise awareness and bring consciousness to the exploitive practices of free market economies, military dictatorships, and illusionary-democratic states.
    Assessing the prelude to revolution Castells compares the Tunisian and Icelandic Kitchenware revolution. Accordingly, he writes “both movements became role models for the social movements that, inspired by them, emerged thereafter in the landscape of a world in crisis of searching for new forms of living together” (46). This influence he attributes to “—feelings of outrage [that were] often induced by humiliation—and these feelings prompted spontaneous protests initiated by individuals: by young people using their networks” (27). Castells attributes the significance of these and ensued social movements to “the existence of an Internet culture, made up of bloggers, social networks and cyberactivsm” (27). It is in this vein that Castells merges theories of counter-networks of power with his theory of mass self-communication and the mobilizing human emotions of outrage and hope.
    One of the things that stuck out when reading Networks of Outrage and Hope is its analysis into the reciprocal relationship between cyberspace and physical space. For example, in his account of the Egyptian Revolution, Castells observes:

This evidences the concrete beneficial potentialities in integrating social media applications with the innate desire for human societies to obtain political and material securities. Similarly, Castells notion comes to light when reading about the Occupy Wall Street Movement. Viewing the Occupy movement as building “a new form of space, a mixture of space of places, in a given territory, and space of flows, on the Internet,” (169) Castells complicates conceptions to the purposes and meaning behind social media by suggesting this to be a third space. Additionally, this space of autonomy should be recognized in congruency with newly conceived formulations of time. Conclusively, Castells brings to light that “while these movements usually start on the Internet social networks, they become a movement by occupying the urban space, be it the standing occupation of public squares or the persistence of street demonstrations.” (222) I found this connection between power-space-time to be one of Castells most interesting articulations.
    Reading this really provided me with a much better understanding to the significance of social media for political means.  It also made me reflect on my own privilege—having daily access to the Internet’s immense capabilities. As such, my questions for this week fall along this line of thought.
Discussion Questions:
1)    Castells brings awareness to the Indignada movement that has undergone in various big cities of Spain, such as Madrid and Barcelona: “They were unanimously opposed to the government’s budget cuts, and asked instead for taxation of the rich and of the corporations.” (122) However Castells brings little attention between the urban-rural complexities of Spain. Specifically, I am thinking about the independence movements and repressions that have undergone in Basque Country. Does Castells, in seeking to find commonalities in a variety of global phenomenon’s, privilege metropolitan cyber-activism over “other” projects rooted in self-determination?
2)     Social media remains a vital tool for bridging various forms of inequities. However, as learned a few weeks ago in class discussion, humanities access and knowledge to use and navigate the Internet remains highly disproportionate. What, if any, problematics does this bring to Castells’ argument?

Using the worldwide spread of social movement as the framework for analysis, Manuel Castells' Networks
of Outrage and Hopespecifically examines communication power, active intelligence, networked social movements, and the Occupy movement. Through his descriptions and comparisons of movements in Iceland and Tunisia, Egypt, The Arab Spring, Social Movements in Spain and the Occupy Movement Castells
describes the features common to a wide variety of contemporary movements. He highlights "their formation, their dynamics, their values, and their prospects for social transformation" (p. 4). In his description of the theorization of power, he specifies,

I was specifically interested in his treatment of the different characteristics of the revolution. I will address
them accordingly. First, he indicates that these movements were all networked in multiple forms, which allowed for its lack of formal leadership. Castells observes that the networks of the movement were resilient because they constantly reconfigure themselves and this made them more resistant to repression,
factionalism, infighting etc. Castells describes that another characteristic of the movements were their
visibility. While these movements were born in, and have made effective use of, the internet and other technologies for communication and coordination, they become movements by becoming visible in urban spaces. The many modalities of networks were manifested in a public space within which the occupation
of urban spaces created material conditions of togetherness. Further, Castells emphasizes the importance of affective intelligence and emotions. Beyond appeals to class or community, people respond emotionally, as  individuals, to that which takes place around them. Particularly significant is the issue of individual's response to fear. When individuals come together, their collective outrage can generate hope, which presents a challenge and an antidote to fear. In case of the movements, images were vital to the success of
these movements because of their appeal to emotions, and their distribution drew individuals into a
collective affective response.  Additionally, these movements were explicitly nonviolent, steeped in  
principles of civil disobedience. However, Castells indicates that when paths to civil disobedience are blocked, pressures emerge, which can lead to violence. Beyond nonviolence as a cornerstone, the current movements were remarkably open and non-programmatic. As social movements, they were aimed at the values of society, not at particular ideologies or outcomes. As Castells states, it was the "battle
for the construction of meaning in the minds of the people" (p. 5). Additionally, Castells stresses the importance of the process of movement process over the outcomes, because he indicates that only through the transformation of the political process, the institutional resistance to change can be overcome.
Even though lots of concepts used by Castells drew my attention, probably I was most drawn to the section describing the women in revolution in the Egyptian uprising, which the author calls, "revolution within a revolution" (p. 78). I have read many other reports and articles on the Egyptian revolution but none has explicitly described the contribution of women. I really appreciate the author's coverage of the women's 
contribution in the revolution. This raises important questions, why has it not been generally covered in most publishes articles. Feminism has been a dominant, rising movement since long. Even though women in the 20th century have achieved many of the rights, they had fought so hard for, such as suffrage, and despite the many years of battling for rights, still today, as the author states the agency of women is
perceived as threat to the dominant males. How should we address such inequalities? Should we simply assume that internal dynamics within the revolution merely created structural inequalities? Coombe in her book also addresses gender politics and feminism. As many authors have started to point out until we explicitly address the issues of gender politics, I think we will continue to see repression of women. 
   
My questions for this week
1. Castells stars of in this book by claiming that his "analysis is based on the grounded theory of power"
(p. 4). We have talked a bit about methodology in class; I was wondering what do you all think about the effectiveness of grounded theory as a method? 

2. Castells indicates that "because mass media are largely controlled by the governments....in the network society communicative autonomy is primarily constructed in the Internet networks..."(p. 9). How about censorship? In Egypt as the author describes censorship was imposed later, what about societies,
which has Internet controlled from the beginning. Do you think such a society (for example, China) can never achieve communicative autonomy?  

3. What do you think of the proposed new Icelandic constitution (p. 40)? Is it utopian thinking? Or maybe it
will be viable only because of its sparse population?

 4. Castells indicated a "hybrid public space made of digital social networks and a newly created urban
community" where he states, "powerlessness was turned to empowerment" (p. 45). I do admit the contribution of internet in the revolution, but I was wondering in the new information how will the voices of people will be heard who do not have access to technology? 

5. Do you think that internal dynamics of the movement, which is structural inequalities among movement
participants that reproduce inequalities (for example, the representation of women and people of color within the movement) was an obvious side effect?

6. "Indeed, it was because of those well- developed, digital networks, that civic leaders so successfully
activated such large numbers of people to protest" (p. 105). This statement made by Castells reminded me of Said's argument "The Arabs are so inept that they cannot even aspire to, let alone consummate the ambitions of revolution" (Said, 1979, p. 314). What do you think would Edward Said about this?

7. With regards to the self- mediated movement described in the Rhizomatic revolution, what happens to
credibility in case of citizen journalism?

References

Castells, M. (2012). Networks of outrage and hope: Social movements in the Internet age. Maiden, MA: Polity.

 Coombe, R. J. (1998). The cultural life of intellectual properties: Authorship, appropriation, and    the
law. Duke University Press Books.

 Said, E. W. (1979). Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books.                   

Manuel Castells' Networks of Outrage and Hope (2012) details the process of creating networked social movements that are born of outrage over an "unbearable tragedy" and fueled by hope for change. These movements make use of what Castells calls "autonomous communication" to develop social power via individuals that counters institutional power monopolies. The movement is a hybrid of online social media networks and public space through which protesters make themselves heard. Castells uses various recent social movements – Tunisia, Island, Egypt, Spain, and the United States – to highlight the similarities in the formations of these movements as well as how some of them have served as partial catalysts (or at least inspirations) for later ones.

One aspect of this study that draws my attention is the hybridization of these movements, their simultaneous online/offline presence. Castells argues, speaking specifically about OWS, that the movement built "a new form of space, a mixture of space of places, in a given territory, and a space of flows, on the Internet." Also, occupied spaces create "a new form of time"  which is characterized by a feeling of "'forever'" due to the disruption of protesters' daily lives (168-169). I would add that the new temporality also comes from the connection to the occupied public space: the participant may feel stuck in time while staying in a camp, but time still moves when one is following tweets, Facebook status updates, and YouTube videos. The colliding of Internet space and time and public space and time may be one factor in the eventual "success" or "failure" of particular movements (depending on how one defines those terms).

I am also intrigued by the demographics of the movements that Castells charts. A pattern seems to emerge where those most active in each movement are the educated youth, sometimes seen as those who have the worst job prospects as well as those most aware of and familiar with digital technologies and online social media. I am still processing this information, and perhaps I do not have enough in-depth knowledge of the formation and progress of social movements historically, but it does seem as if the heavy use of online social media to fuel these particular uprisings (as well as the results of said movements) could benefit from a detailed discussion of how digital technologies have affected the ways people process information and use that processing to act upon the offline world.

Discussion Questions:

1) Regarding autonomous communication, Castells says, "The autonomy of communication is the essence of social movements because it is what allows the movement to be formed, and what enables the movement to relate to society at large beyond the control of the power holders over communication power" (11). My brain is getting stuck on the word "autonomy." After reading about the massive failure of the Egyptian government to disable the uprising against Mubarak by attempting to shut down the Internet, I am not arguing against the physical inability to completely disrupt an Internet-based movement. But since the Internet functions on a corporate model (ISPs providing service for fees, corporate control over individual use of bandwidth, images, sound, etc.), Castells seems a bit idealistic regarding this concept.

2) For each of these social movements, the resistance used a horizontal (aka "leaderless") model rather than a vertical hierarchy of power, thus demonstrating that social organization and social change are both possible using said model. However, when the goals were achieved (or in the case of OWS, when the moral statement seemed to have been sufficiently disseminated), the resistance seemed to fade and hierarchical structures of power resumed dominance (even if certain dictators were deposed). Can a leaderless, non-violent society exist on a national, international, global scale? How might the Internet serve as its own example of a longer-term functioning model, especially as it continues to affect how people think and respond to the world around them? (I totally have Marshal McLuhan running through my head – "The medium is the message.")

    Grassroots democratic consensus as demonstrated in Castelles' chapter on Occupy Wall Street is a ghosty representation of many Native American forms of government intact prior to the European invasion, from whence we got our democratic representative form (borrowed from the Irriquois).  Governing from the bottom up defies the trope of "enlightened European" forms of governing from the top down.  Kings, Queens, and corporate executive styles of getting things done are the basis of colonial governing.  Exclusion of the masses from decision making processes is dictatorial, fascist government.  The long fight for parliamentary representation gives only a vicarious mirroring of the people's perspectives.  Castelles timely book is much appreciated as historical documentation in a format other than the internet itself.  It clearly represents the creation of the Arab spring as a bottom up reaction to suppression and oppression in colonialized places suffering from dictatorial regimes.  The elites running Tunisia, Egypt, and Lybia, and sooner or later, Syria have been disposed of by the people, leaving behind them a vacuum of governing that will probably be filled by more of the same elitism unless the power of the masses is concentrated on forming government by grassroots democratic consensus in an ongoing creative enterprise that may finally result in constitutions that include checks and balances, democratic representation, and leaderships grounded in humility.  Meanwhile, back in the USA, the occupy wall street movement ran out of gas.  I think the movement was suppressed by the police state and simply went back to its technocratic comfort zone, and it will not come out again without a repeat of totally outrageous behavior by the elites in power.  In the USA the masses of people are too self-satisfied for meaningful revolution.  It is too easy for Americans to find other entertainment, that which does not result in blood in the streets.  The comraderie of the Occupy movement reminded me of the sixties (as everything does these days).  We burned the hippie in effigy after the mass media tortured us with flower power and haight-ashbury, and we quietly left town to live in tipis in the hills.  Now the Occupy movement has quietly returned to its yuppie technocracy, probably not to be heard from again, with the exception of the few freaks on the fringes of society who will see in the movement's shredded remains, the glimmer of a false hope.  The United States is too rich for revolution. 
Question: Agree or disagree? Question: Do you think the internet is a powerful tool for social change? Question: Will the US government control and suppress the internet?  Question: Will it simply delete it when threatened? Question: Will the new pentagon cyber-warfare unit be turned on our own people?

In Networks of Outrage and Hope (2012) Manuel Castells presents an “inquiry into the social movements of the network society” motivated by the “hope of identifying new paths of social change in our time” (p. 4). His analysis of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, the Arab Uprisings, the Indignadas in Spain, and Occupy Wall Street leads him to locate several common characteristics of networked social movements (p. 221-228). For instance, he concludes that networked social movements have horizontal rather than vertical organizational power structures, are non-violent in principal, are simultaneously local and global, and become movements through the occupation of urban space. An important aspect of his project is to challenge the “meaningless discussion in the media and in academic circles denying that communications technologies are at the roots of social movements” by showing how networked social movements are fundamentally different than those that came before (p. 228). In order to demonstrate these differences, he turns to the theory of power that he presented in Communication Power (2009) to show how “communication networks are decisive sources of power-making” (p. 9). Optimistic about the potential outcomes of networked social movements, Castells insists that “the Internet provides the organizational communication platform to translate the culture of freedom into the practice of autonomy” (p. 231). In other words, social networking and digital multimedia have the potential to support movements that make “real democracy” a reality.

I was particularly interested in one of Castell’s common characteristics of networked social movements: his observation that they are rarely programmatic movements (p. 227). He explores this idea at length in his chapter on Occupy Wall Street (p. 287-297). The OWS protestors often did not have a shared list of demands or policy changes that they were able to mobilize around. Since the groups were leaderless and represented desperate interests brought together through a loose horizontal power structure, they did not come to a consensus about concrete outcomes and plans for strategic, focused policy changes. Nevertheless, Castells points to some important achievements of the OWS, namely, a greater awareness among people both in and out of the movement of class struggle and a more widespread distrust of financial capitalism. Indeed, I think that George Lakoff’s characterization of OWS as primarily a “moral movement” is quite apt. Castells explains that the non-programmatic nature of networked social movements are both their greatest strength and their greatest weakness. On the one hand, a lack of specific demands makes a movement more open to mass participation and more difficult for political parties to co-opt. On the other hand, there is the question of how much concrete change can happen if the movement is unable to focus on any one particular goal or project.    

This same question about networked social movement’s ability to enact meaningful change was taken up by Malcolm Gladwell in “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted” (2010). Unlike Castells, Gladwell is convinced that networked social movements cannot make the same concrete impact that earlier movements – such as the civil rights movements in the US – were able to because of their vertical power hierarchies and the “close tie” relationships of the pre-internet era.

Personally, I am not sure where I stand on this question. I understand that horizontal power structures of the networked social movements are the only ones that are “truly democratic.” I also think that a movement that promotes critical consciousness of class struggle in a large portion of the population is accomplishing something meaningful. After all, a change in values and assumptions can lead to changes in the political system. However, I feel like Gladwell has a point too. How can a social movement achieve goals if the power structure of the movement does not allow for the official adoption by the group of specific goals?      

Discussion questions:

1.     How do you react to Castells’ and Gladwell’s different approaches to the question of meaningful change and networked social movements?  

2.     Castell offers an interesting analysis of the ways that communication technologies restructure social movements. Castells suggests that part of the reason that power structures in networked social movements are horizontal is because of a distrust of political parties. However, he recognizes that the majority of OWS protestors identified with the democratic party and that the democratic party consciously presented Obama as representing the interests of the 99%. In a way, it did seem to me that the OWS movement was co-opted by a political party. Is it possible for a networked social movement in the US to forward a radical critique of the political system if it is still dominantly situated within the mainstream bipartisan system? Where are the implications of networked social movements for the future of the far left? 

The first paragraph of this might seem familiar to some of you as I used it in my "Justification of Research" section of my research project proposal.  I figured there was no sense in reinventing the wheel, but I do go on in the subsequent paragraphs to add new material, and to start to articulate more of why I am interested in specifically studying the "It Gets Better" campaign as-- to borrow a term from Dr. Christen-- a "hybrid" social movement.  ~Rachel
       
          In Networks of Outrage and Hope, Castells’ (2012) examined the role of new communication technologies, like social networking, and their impact on social movements around the world.  Outlining several different social and political movements from around the world, Castells (2012) explored what he calls “the new public space”—that “…networked space between the digital space and the urban space…” (p. 11) which he sees as a space of autonomous communication.  This new public space is ground for the coalition of what Castells (2012) saw as networks of outrage and hope.  As he conceptualized it, social movements are often born out of outrage: outrage at oppression and hegemony, personal rights violations and abuses.  These movements are sustained through hope: hope that these movements can and will illicit social and political change.  His research demonstrates how these new social movements fluidly move back and forth between the virtual and physical realms and that while much of the social and political change happens in the physical realm, movements are sustained, organized and given a global audience in the virtual realm (Castells, 2012). 

          What I thought was of particular interest was the fact that movements like those of the Arab Spring were started by the actions one or a handful of people and those actions sparked the outrage of the many.  For example, in Tunisia, Castells’ (2012) talked about how Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation sparked (no pun intended) the protests of the government by hundreds of youth.  From there, the outrage spread both physically and virtually until a full-on revolution was taking place in Tunisia.  The social movements in Egypt and Iceland followed a similar pattern, where one or a few people initially protest out of outrage, and soon their efforts grow and are broadcast within the virtual realm.  Interestingly, as Castells’ (2012) pointed out, with movements like the “Occupy” movement, we are now seeing social movements that are initially born in the virtual realm and then find footing later within the physical realm.  Originally conceptualized by the Canadian-based journal, Adbusters, the Occupy movement put out the call on its blog for people to coalesce and protest the flagrant abuses they saw Wall Street committing.  What is interesting about this movement is that while it was born online, it got a lot of its visibility in the physical realm, soon mirroring protests like those in Tunisia and Tehrir Square.  Like the aforementioned movements, the Occupy movement still relied heavily on virtual social networks and the Internet to connect people as the protests spread to communities across the globe.  Perhaps the most interesting part about the Occupy movement that was because it was a “non-demand movement” (Castells, 2012), it can be concluded that there was not much policy change that resulted from it.  There were, as Castells’ (2012) stated “…multiple campaigns everywhere that obtained partial corrections in a number of unfair practices” (p. 191).  Because the Occupy movement did not result in sweeping changes, many have seen it as a failure.  I, however, am interested in how not only are these movements moving more and more into the virtual realm, but also how we are now conceptualizing success of social movements.  For many, the Occupy movement did signal progress in regards to how neoliberal capitalism functions in regards to financial management between big business and the little people.  At the very least, it also signals to the government that there is outrage in the hearts of American citizens, and as Castells’ (2012) has very minutely detailed, outrage can lead to sweeping, dramatic changes. 

          Some of the concepts that Castells’ (2012) examined in the Occupy Wall Street chapter are of particular interest to me, especially in regards to my research project for this class.  The first is the concept of the non-demand movement.  My question for the class is this:

1.     Are non-demand movements successful in the long run at creating tangible change?  Or is there a need   
        for specific “demands for change” that are required for a movement to create a true shift in political  
        ideology and rule?

My other question is about movements that are actually born online, like the Occupy movement.  As was seen in my research project proposal, I am also interested in a movement that was first born online: the movement to stop homophobic bullying whose catalyst was the “It Gets Better” campaign.  In the Occupy movement, Adbusters was trying to create a physical protest that grew from a single event.  In the It Gets Better campaign, Dan Savage and Terry Miller were not trying to create a movement, but simply voice their outrage at the apathy shown toward homophobic bullying and suicides.  This leads me to my second question.

2.     Can the protests and calls for change as generated by the It Gets Better campaign be considered a social 
        movement?  Is it a hybrid between a social movement and a media event?  Can something that was 
        never considered to be a movement develop into one?

References

Castells, M. (2012). Networks of outrage and hope: Social movements in the Internet age. Maiden, MA: Polity.