Page 253 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

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Information, Equality, and Integration
a war of propaganda and public relations to counter a lopsided mili-
tary conflict. Messages carried out of Chiapas, sometimes by hand, were
distributed globally by supporters with Internet access. This method of
communication rapidly evolved into an international network of in-
formation about the Chiapas struggle, as observations by international
visitors and delegations, along with stories and coverage from traditional
media inside and outside Mexico, were added to the network. This cre-
ated substantial political pressure on the Mexican government, which
was unable to dominate this new form of communication to the extent
it could traditional communication – Mexico has historically had one of
the most highly monopolized broadcast media systems in the world, one
where private control of media was tightly connected to the structure of
11
political power. As early as 1995, the government recognized the effec-
tiveness of decentralized, inexpensive communication networks for the
Zapatistas. In that year, the Secretary of State described the movement as
12
“a war of ink, of the written word, and of the Internet.” Several schol-
ars have reached the conclusion that without the Internet the Zapatista
movement would have failed. 13 The closest analogue among the U.S.
cases may be the Million Mom March, in which adept use of the Internet
was instrumental in gaining a marginal group attention from traditional
media and sources of political influence.
The consequences of new technology may have gone beyond simply
facilitating new organizational forms. As Sidney Tarrow writes in Power
in Movement, overcoming collective action problems requires “shared
understandings and identities” because these are the foundation of trust
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and cooperation. Building of such identities and understandings works
best in face-to-face communities and networks, of course, but absent
physical proximity, communication systems that bring people into con-
tact with the circumstances and plights of others can on occasion serve
as a viable alternative. The Zapatista Effect may rest in part on the power
of pervasive communication opportunities to foster shared identity and

11
Daniel C. Hallin, “Media, Political Power, and Democratization in Mexico,” in James
Curran and Myung-Jin Park, eds., De-Westernizing Media Studies (New York:
Routledge, 2000), pp. 97–110.
12
Cited in Harry Cleaver, “The Zapatistas and the Electronic Fabric of Struggle,” paper
presented at the INET Conference, Montreal, Dec. 23, 1996, http://www.isoc.org/isoc/
conferences/inet/96/proceedings/e1/e1.htm.
13
See Peter Ferdinand, “The Internet, Democracy, and Democratization,” in Ferdinand,
The Internet, Democracy, and Democratization, pp. 1–19.
14
SidneyTarrow,PowerinMovement:SocialMovementsandContentiousPolitics, 2nd ed.
(Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 21.
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