Kassandra Rothenstadt
the privacy of their users”( p. 16). The use of Internet as a tool for manipulation and control has been closely studied by Morozov( 2011), concluding that the Internet can and is used by certain governments to sustain authoritarian regimes, mastering the use of cyberspace for propaganda purposes. He calls this tactic‘ spinternet’ – a combination of spin on the one hand, and the Internet on the other.
Furthermore, activism practised on the Internet, according to many authors, is of questionable value( e. g. Eaton 2010; Zuckerman 2001). Eaton( 2010) calls the activism practised on the Internet as‘ fast activism’ – it is the consumerist approach to life that is also infiltrating the social movement sector, in which the latter is adapted to the former. Zuckerman( 2001) identifies it as‘ slacktivism,’ that is, support for a cause with minimal effort. By lowering the cost involved in activism, one also lowers its value in the public eyes, discrediting the voices of activists and cheapening the significance of the actual cause.
Given the importance of emotions in political mobilisation and politicisation, these represent a chief threat, becoming as a consequence the primary target of manipulation and subversion. Illouz( 1997, 2007) reiterates that emotions are not just individual, embodied responses to external factors; emotions are also political and can be utilised to maintain the status quo. Irvine( 2008) brings to attention the fact that sometimes the issues and causes that we contest through activism are themselves the result of emotional political configurations, in which emotional reactions can be strategically produced through discourse to shape public opinion. While the 2011 global political protests demonstrated that emotions can also be a powerful force for positive social change and can be cultivated to effectively challenge the unjust status quo, there are constant speculations debating to what extent have those uprisings been deliberately orchestrated for the execution of covert political and / or economic strategies.
Both coercive as well as symbolic means of power enforcement have been applied to the Occupy movement, with evidence to the former serving as the numerous violent evictions and arrests not only of protesters, but also of journalists who were trying to cover the event( Bershad 2011). Evidence also suggests that active censorship and other tactics of meaning perception have been deployed, creating controversy surrounding the movement’ s origin, key objectives and ultimate aim. As Žižek pointed out( 2012),“ over the last few decades, we have witnessed a whole series of emancipatory popular explosions which have been reappropriated by the global capitalist order, either in its liberal form( from South Africa to the Philippines) or in its fundamental form( Iran)”( p. 74). The Occupy has been interpreted as a“ communist movement run by socialists” having as sole intention“ to bring down the free enterprise system“( Snyder 2011). Beck has proclaimed it the SEIU‐driven( Service Employees International Union) world Marxist revolution, funded by the non‐profit organization Tides Centre, which is partly funded by Soros( Beck 2011). Reuters reported of Soros’ connection to Adbusters, the magazine that launched the Occupy movement( Klein 2011).
It has also been suggested that Occupy Wall Street has been co‐opted by MoveOn. org – an American public policy advocacy group that is said to be raising campaign funds for the US Democratic Party – for Obama’ s reelection( Horn 2011). In this respect OWS was interpreted to represent the Liberal Democrats’ response to the Republican Tea Party movement. A mixture of populism and libertarianism, the Tea Party gave voice to a variety of indignant opposition to Obama’ s government. But it eventually became clear that the movement was“ bankrolled by Koch Industries, among other corporations, and captured by the right of the Republican Party as storm‐troopers to be sacrificed in the final stage of the electoral process”( Castells 2012, p. 158). Still others have seen the Occupy movement as the promise of a‘ new world order’ or a‘ Third Way’ that would be neither capitalist nor socialist, but bridge between the two. Stiglitz( In Klein 2011) and former Soviet statesman Gorbachev as well as the late Pope John Paul II( Gorbachev 2011) have expressed their support for such a world order( 2011). All these controversies suggest that observers of the Occupy movement, as of similar protest movements in the past, are distrustful and are aware that‘ astroturfing’ – the creation of“ fake grassroots organisations usually sponsored by large corporations to support any arguments or claims in their favour, or to challenge and deny those against them”( Cho et al. 2011, p. 571) – is a widespread historical practice.
6. Frame of study and discussion
Throughout history, social movements have been dependent on the existing communication mechanisms that were available in a given context. Today, with the advent of online digital communication technology donning unique and unprecedented affordances, the processes of communication and interaction have resulted in a
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