There has already been one post on the NetSquared Blog concerning the revolution I want to write about. “Remixing The Web for Occupy The Wall Street” focused on the social media tools and techniques that the US protesters are making use of: “it is clear that [Occupy The Wall Street] represents a new form of protest in the digital age” wrote my colleague Trenton DuVal. What is so new about it? I’d dare say that it represents one of the most fascinating, and certainly the most horizontal (international and hierarchy-free) examples of a self organized community. I’d like to add to the previous article by focusing on the wider social aspects and implications of the entire movement.

Indignants

First of all, it must be said that Occupy The Wall Street is just a part of the picture. The protests have so far taken places in more than 80 countries all over the world and they have been described and hashtagged in many different languages. In my post I propose the movement of Indignants (Indignados is Spanish for “The Outraged”), as a term that covers the ongoing worldwide protests known as 15-M. 

The international context is crucial for understanding the revolution and its dynamics. From my perspective the entire movement forms a natural extension of what has started in North Africa this year and is referred to as Arab Spring. In May 2011, shortly after the Libyans took matters into their own hands, the protests started in Spain with an initial call in 58 Spanish cities. The Spanish, as the entire movement of Indignants, have claims pointing to the global financial crisis. The new media frame, though, along with the dream of “taking matters into one’s hands,” has been shared with and came from the Arab protests. The origin of the 15th of May (15-M) protests can be traced to social networks empowered and inspired but what happened in and Real Democracy NOW (in Spanish Democracia Real YA) among other civilian digital platforms and 200 other small associations. The Occupy Wall Street initiative began with a call published by Adbusters magazine on July 13, brought more international attention to the movement, as well as an English-language voice and the most recognizable #occupy hashatg. In case you are interested in how the movement organically grows I recommend you to follow one of the 15-M protests initiator’s − Democracia Real Ya − international twitter account (@dryinternational) as well as to check out the Conscience World Revolution reports from the 15th of October. 

There is logic to this chaos

The movement of Indignants is a great example of swarming, which literally is a behaviour where autonomous units of action attack an enemy from several different directions and then regroup. It can be viewed as a model for studying conflicts in a networked society. This revolution doesn’t spread, as the international context shows, it grows organically. The movement builds on the self-fulfilling prophecy mechanism: when a vast amount of people with shared beliefs are able to unite, the action follows. To paraphrase: “Behind the power of the movement the information architecture lies hidden”. New media driven discourse that the movement is linked to, decentralizes communications, and empowers the proportion change between what up until now has been considered as few and many. Protesters use Facebook to promote their actions, Twitter to share information in real time, blog posts, pictures, videos and to capture and share what is happening. Interestingly, the latter information pieces are treated equally regardless of the medium: photography, film and text transmit the information, moving the action further at the same time.

In this new digital language, activism is defined as social hacking. Even though the manifestations seem spontaneous, they are carefully organized, and based on excellent internal communications.  You need to be fluent in order to succeed.  Guides on how to bypass censorship as well as mobile tactics for participants of peaceful assemblies  are being published and translated to different languages using the Wikipedia/Booksprint model by How To Occupy – GrassRoot Practises for Global Change. 

We Are All Individuals

There are definitely aspects of the movement, especially in the political sense, that call for an in depth analysis that I will not include here. What I want to draw attention to, though, are the transparent social changes coming hand-in-hand with this revolution. Those who get the new media dynamics intuitively follow the threads. Some still need an old-school media coverage, but this will get them nowhere. Traditional media inevitably miss the crucial  aspect of the movement. What Robert David Graham, the author of one of the most insightful blog post on Occupy Wall Street finds ironic and puzzling - the paradox of individuals with shared ideas that unite despite many ideological differences - is what makes the movement so new and so special. This revolution assumes unity in diversity. 

Let me close this post with an old joke from the Soviet Union era that Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Żiżek shared with the Occupy Wall Street Protestants: “A guy was sent from East Germany to work in Siberia. He knew his mail would be read by censors, so he told his friends: let’s establish a code. If a letter you get from me is written in blue ink, it is true what I say. If it is written in red ink, it is false.” After a month, his friends get the first letter. Everything is in blue. It says, this letter: “Everything is wonderful here. Stores are full of good food. Movie theatres show good films from the west. Apartments are large and luxurious. The only thing you cannot buy is red ink.” To come back to the sentence about the digital age I have opened with: What does the revolution in a digital world mean? It seems that new media and new structures that they encourage give people the red ink. To live in a social network automatically assumes to live in diversity. 

photo by @acampadasol