Net·i·vism (nět-ĭ-vĭz´əm) n. The theory or practice of using the Internet to conduct strategic political action. – net-i-vist n.*

This blog is an experiment. Assigned during the spring semester of 2007 to create a multimedia news package around a specific theme, 11 students at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism developed the Netivism blog to test the hypothesis that the Internet (and, by extension, the blogosphere) is an effective means for an individual to shape a political movement.

That hypothesis rests on two pillars of assumed logic. First, that the Internet is a democratic forum open to anyone with access to a computer. Second, that its advent is transforming citizen participation in democracy.

In his seminal 1973 paper, “The Strength of Weak Ties,” (will open PDF) mathematician Mark S. Granovetter said social networks are most effective when they open up borders between them that had been closed. As this experimental blog demonstrates, the Internet is creating coalitions among groups and individuals previously divided by chasms of geography, ideology, and opportunity.

Are these political movements on the Internet still spinning on the traditional axes of hierarchy, or are they being pushed and pulled by individuals with individualized agendas? That is a deceptively simple question. “Societies create structures of authority for producing and distributing knowledge, information, and opinion,” wrote Nicholas Lemann, our professor and the dean of the Journalism School, in a 2006 New Yorker magazine piece. “These structures are always waxing and waning, depending not only on the invention of new means of communication but also on political, cultural, and economic developments.”

In other words, the devil of a democratic Internet society is in its details. And human beings, like many other species, do tend to gravitate toward the safe, comfortable equilibrium that structural hierarchies—including political organizations—provide.

Pursuing those devilish details, the creators of this blog opened windows into diverse political groups.

Justine Sharrock’s story calls Stormfront.org an effective megaphone for racism. Dubiously, Stormfront.org strengthens the white supremacist movement by drawing together adherents who otherwise would be isolated by prevailing social mores, as in New York City, or by laws in foreign countries that prohibit hate speech. More to the point, the website encourages cross-pollination between factions that were once at odds with each other: Members of the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, the Creativity movement, and National Socialism rallied together with skinheads at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania in 2004.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, Deepa Fernandes and Basharat Peer explore the history and goals of the Campaign to Stop Funding Hate, formed by native-born and second-generation progressive Indians in reaction to the 2002 anti-Muslim massacre in the Indian state of Gujarat. Their Internet-based coalition of leftist groups exposed those who funded the hate politics of the Indian Hindu right and later empowered coalition members here in the U.S. to target Narendra Modi. As a result of their efforts, Modi—Gujarat’s chief minister, who was widely condemned for doing nothing to stop the killings—was denied a visa to visit the U.S. That goal had once seemed so lofty that it had threatened to jeopardize U.S. relations with India.

And Stephanie Akin, Ryan Davis, and Cyrus Sanati tell the story of two grassroots anti-war activists from very different worlds who might not have found each other but for the Internet. B. Han, an immigrant from South Korea, and Samantha Goldman, who comes from Philadelphia, are both 19. Both attend New York University. And both are opposed to the war in Iraq. They traveled in separate social circles and might never have crossed paths in the vast NYU campus—except that Goldman, a grassroots organizer for a peace group, uses Facebook to recruit supporters. Han, who took his less focused political beliefs to Facebook in search of a cause, found Goldman there. On March 20, 2007, he joined her at an anti-war protest in Washington Square Park.

Whether they practice netivism to promote some malignant or benign form of nativism, or are simply seeking solidarity and kinship, the members of these groups evidence the unifying power of the Internet: It helps groups find common ground, helps people find others who share their convictions, and helps individuals take meaningful action to further their goals. Look for the links to the video and audio recordings and the still images that help to tell those stories, as well as links that allow a viewer to jump from one story to another. This blog was designed to function as the Internet does, offering visitors the opportunity to set their own course.

Whether netivism will have staying power in the long run against the competing political, cultural and economic influences that help shape societal hierarchies would be the subject of a different hypothesis altogether. Testing that would require a looking glass into the future. But it could be argued that all idealistic movements are eventually reshaped by the reality of group-think. Individuals may contribute to the extent that they are willing and able, but highly professionalized organizations and even loosely joined ad hoc groups are already trying to redefine netivism more as a top-down tool for organizing the masses than as a ladder for individuals to climb aboard.

Each in their second year, the Journalism School’s Master of Arts Program and the course for which this blog was created, Evidence and Inference, are both works in progress. The 11 students known for the purpose of this project as Team B were not just the creators of the Netivism blog but were also participants in an experiment on journalistic collaboration. As humans will do, they formed sub-groups that took on distinct tasks, forged allegiances behind separate ideas and common interests, and eschewed individualism in favor of a paradigm supported by majority consensus. For those reasons, this blog could be viewed as an experiment within an experiment within an experiment.

And doesn’t that mirror the nested hierarchy of the Internet itself?

—J.C.M.

*Definition by the Netivism team, derived in part from TKdictionary and TKdictionary.

Visit the three Netivism projects:
White Nation | Gujarat | myProtest