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Resistanbul: An analysis of mediated communication in transnational activism in Turkey
Abstract by Dr. Murat Yuksel
Coauthors: Ilke Sanlier Yuksel
On Session 146  (Blogs and Internet Expressions)

On Saturday, November 20 at 02:30 pm

2010 Annual Meeting

Abstract
Today the world is full of various transnational contentious mobilizations, demonstrations, and movements initiated by various NGOs, INGOs, and/or transnational advocacy networks devoted to a number of issues, including but not limited to human rights, the environment, women's rights, peace and justice, and development. Whatever their origins, agendas, orientations or targets, all social movement mobilizations depend heavily on communication media. This has obliged social movements to seek the communication strategies that are most suitable for satisfying their constituencies as well as for increasing support and sympathy from the general public. While social movements of earlier periods depended on the printing press, telegraph, radio, and even television, the prospects of new local as well as transnational social mobilizations depend not only on these, but also on new media, such as the Internet, cell phones and other digital media. Resistanbul, a transnational anti-capitalist action network, was started by a coalition of activists in May 2009 to mobilize and coordinate wide-scale, mass demonstrations against International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB) meetings scheduled to be held in nstanbul in October 2009. Organized through a web site (http://resistanbul.wordpress.com), Resistanbul is basically an umbrella protest network, an internetworked "hyper-organization" of anti-globalization. Although initially started to facilitate the mobilization and organization of a transnational protest action against the IMF and WB meetings, along the way it also rapidly responded to a number of local and national issues and threats against humanity. From its founding in May 2009 until the main anti-IMF and anti-WB demonstration, the activists of Resistanbul organized about 20 public demonstrations, including the one in Kumkap neighborhood in hstanbul, to show their solidarity with 'illegal immigrants' detained in a center euphemistically called "Foreigner's Guesthouse". In this paper we explore the ways in which Resistanbul, a transnational activist network, communicates both among its active members and with the public it seeks to influence. For that purpose we analyze different means of communication Resistanbul utilizes, by looking first at its use of the Internet to mobilize people and organize protest actions, and second at its attempts to attract mass media attention. We argue that in order to achieve the passage from micro to mass media, Resistanbul also organized various local protest campaigns on issues not directly related to their main cause, including the detention center demonstration.
Discipline
Sociology
Geographic Area
Turkey
Sub Area
Transnationalism