Protest and the scale politics of telecommunications

Abstract Telecommunications do not simply rearrange information and ideas in space, they also alter the balance of power in social struggles. Although it supports centralization of power and capital, subordinated groups can achieve certain goals by exploiting the existing telecommunication infrastructure. This tactic is geographical in that it refuses to accept the territorial boundaries fundamental to established systems of domination. Protest is therefore a politics of scale. Examination of these scale politics in China, the Philippines and the USA indicates that distant bystanders may or may not be of assistance to protesters, and that the media affect but do not determine the course of events. The protest in China does not yet appear to have succeeded; that in the Philippines did not solve long-term problems; while the US protest brought political but not economic power to a racial minority. Regardless of their success, these protests show new terrains of struggle not yet acknowledged by geography.

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