Indymedia as a social movement? Theorizing the new global justice movements.

In four years, the Independent Media Center (IMC) has become the largest alternative media network in the world. From its humble and uncertain beginnings in November, 1999 at the massive protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle, Indymedia, as it has come to be known, has developed a democratic and participatory communication system that challenges the dominance of the corporate mainstream media. However, so far Indymedia has been examined almost exclusively as a component of the new global justice movements that seek to contest the oppressive forces of capitalism. In this thesis, it is my contention that Indymedia has developed into something much broader than its originators first envisioned. Thus, I examine IMC as a social movement in its own right, independent of other movements to which it remains aligned. An interrogation of current literature finds it lacking in the ability to account for Internet-mediated movements, and revealing the need for a new theoretical formulation. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 43-01, page: 0015. Adviser: V. Scatamburlo-D\u27Annibale. Thesis (M.A.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 2004