wonder-PONDer: re-telling the activist story

Today's PONDer (courtesy of my Uncle's garden) is about one of the problems with activism, and uses an article by Graham Meikle called Open Publishing, Open Technologies from the book Future Active: media activism and the internet as inspiration.

The article uses the specific example of the Sydney IMC (Independent Media Centre) during the 200 Olympics, and explains not only the different modes of communication used my 'alternative' media producers such as IMC but also the different content that they are able to produce because of their inherent independence. The part I found particularly fascinating was in the reporting on protests. Meikle points out that coverage of protests are almost covered by 'mainstream' media in the same way; through the construction of a conflict narrative: "conflicts and oppositions will be highlighted or manufactured, and discussion of issues will be replaced by a depiction of disruption to the status quo". This results in reporting that will show the angry/enraged/impliedly crazy protesters shown chanting/waving placards/breaking the law, often without even mentioning or explaining the actual reason behind their protest. Meikle says that consumers of media need to realize that these conflict-based narratives are constructions of events, not neutral, unbiased accounts. I also think that this form of reporting has another effect: potential activists, people who would like to get involved with an issue, don't want to do so in the traditional protest way because only mad/crazy people do so. This came to me because of another subject I am doing, KCB302 Political Communication, when our tutor asked us why we, as young Australians, were so apathetic about things? Why was noone concerned about voluntary student unionism/the industrial relations reforms/the world in general? And I thought to myself, I am very concerned about all those things, I consider myself to be reasonably aware/concerned about such issues, yet I have never protested. I have never made nor waved a placard, even though I feel very deeply about some issues. So why not? Part of it is I don't see myself as a crazed chanter. I'm sure there are other reasons I don't participate (uni, work, assignment due in 5 minutes), but the effects of the conflict narrative construction of activists definitely plays a part. Meikle says that one of the most important challenges for internet activists is to "develop ways of telling stories which are issues focused". I think this is more important than ever. Otherwise apathy will prevail.