Change the world via e-mail. (use of Inernet by political activists)(Brief Article) Brian Doherty.

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1999 New Statesman, Ltd.

Open to everyone, the Internet offers new possibilities to those trying to challenge the established order.

"The revolutionary forces of the future may consist increasingly of widespread multi-organisational networks that have no particular national identity, claim to arise from civil society and include aggressive groups and individuals who are keenly adept at using advanced technology for communications." So spoke the Rand Corporation in 1993.

But did they mean multinational corporations or the social movements opposing them? Both sides could fit the description, and that tells us something about the most important political battle of our time, one in which the Internet is playing an increasingly important role.

For campaigning groups such as Earth First!, where actions speak louder than words, the real measure of the difference the Internet makes is in its effectiveness as a mobilising tool. Detailed tactical manuals on everything from tripods to tunnels are available online and may explain why this technology has spread so fast. It is also easy to find a local Earth First! group in Britain or any developed country.

The Reclaim the City protest in London on 18 June this year was a rare physical confrontation between the two groups, but it was, after all, just another demonstration. It was the extensive use of Internet technology that made it novel. A variety of websites provided easy access to information and directions for protesters, and during the day live webcasts from Sydney and London and reports from 43 countries meant the armchair protester could also experience the vicarious thrill of truly global dissent live and indirect. There may have been only 6,000 protesters in London, but they were linked to others around the globe, and many more joined in by logging on.

But has the nature of protest been changed by the Internet? It seems that it may be adding a new weapon to the protester's armoury, rather than simply replacing existing methods. For example, in the campaign against the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) - an agreement between the OECD nations that would have placed major restrictions on the ability of states to regulate the activities of multinational corporations - there were no significant street protests but a lot of online activity.

In fact, it was the Internet that gave campaigning groups the power to derail the agreement. Once the main discussion document was leaked and posted on the web, then unions, environmental groups, consumer groups and others promised so much opposition from such diverse sources that it became politically untenable for the OECD to proceed. The authority of civil servants and their private briefings was undermined by the fact that non-governmental organisations often knew more about what was going on than they did.

The campaign against the MAI shows that governments and multinationals are now less able to control flows of information and more vulnerable to popular reaction. While a new form of MAI is in the offing, it will be the subject of the same multi-organisational, non-national opposition, and this protest will again be mediated by the net.

The Internet is changing the way protest groups operate in more prosaic ways, too. It cuts costs, with no postage or printing to be paid for. And it reduces the reliance on sympathetic journalists to get the message across in the media.

For many groups, this is the biggest change brought by the new technology, because it reduces the imbalance between them and their opponents, often large multinational corporations. The millions of visits to the McSpotlight website created an impact beyond the wildest dreams of the original London Greenpeace demonstrators. By cutting the costs of networking and by making it more difficult for governments to maintain secrecy, the net has reduced the slope of the playing-field for protesters of all types.

This change is most obvious in the case of the developing contacts between groups opposed to economic globalisation. Linked through the loose network of Peoples' Global Action, anti-GM campaigners in Britain can co-ordinate their protests against Monsanto with those of Zapatistas, Indian farmers and Brazilian land-rights activists. In this way, the largely abstract and imaginary coalitions of the dispossessed beloved of many radical theorists are becoming real, even if they are still limited by access to computers.

The Internet is also changing the form of protest. Modern protest is less about showing that you are in the majority and more about demonstrating the moral force of a commitment. When the future of the world is under threat, actions by small groups who are prepared to suffer or to transgress the rules to point this out often have more impact than a traditional mass demonstration.

The drawback to this form of activism is that the media determine the context in which actions are presented. But the Internet changes this as protesters develop their own media. Online magazines such as Squall and Schnews help protesters preserve their own solidarity and influence the mainstream media. Even if they are mainly read by activists (and the security services), it is not too fanciful to suggest that somebody wanting to hear more about a protest by Reclaim the Streets will consider looking at the organisation's website instead of a report in the Daily Telegraph.

It is easy - and popular - to claim that the Internet is having a revolutionary effect on protest movements. In fact, the difference may be one of degree. Protest movements and new tactics have spread rapidly before - as with the barricades of 1848, for instance. Others have spread ideas through spectacle, as with the new left. Both these movements were more utopian than most today. Current social movements on the right and left develop what Manuel Castells has called "resistance identities", and these can become fundamentalist as well as progressive. Yet whatever the limitations, since the battle is to present an alternative vision of the future to that of neo-liberalism, technology that makes it possible to communicate cheaply certainly helps. Perhaps e-mail will turn out to be all you need to change the world.

Brian Doherty is a lecturer in politics at Keele University. His research interests include green politics and the ways protest organisations use new technology