A-Infos (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #38-24: Once upon a time. Indymedia: an example of militant communication. (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

There are anniversaries of all kinds, we remember, we celebrate, we 
celebrate events even very distant in time, both happy and sad, 
sometimes even forgotten (or unknown) by most people and even facts that 
historically have no foundation. Sometimes these occasions can be a way 
like any other, to remember a known past or to make it known to the 
younger ones. When it goes well, useful lessons can be drawn from these 
stories, as in our case. ---- At the end of November, among who knows 
how many other anniversaries, 25 years will have passed since the 
creation of "Indymedia", something that for anagraphic reasons does not 
belong to the personal memory of those who are between 20 and 30 years 
old today but that is truly worth remembering.

It all began, not entirely by chance, in the final months of the last 
millennium or, if you prefer, of the last century, one of those moments 
that have the charm of the end of an era, an event that in distant 
history was associated with apocalyptic events, often linked to the end 
of the world. And, in a certain sense, something similar hovered in the 
context. For a few years, a transnational movement had been roaming the 
globe that had brought to the fore a generation that was protesting 
against a globalization that was worsening social inequalities and 
accelerating the destruction of the ecosystem. This movement was clearly 
connected to and in continuation of the others that, starting from the 
end of the 1950s, had traveled kilometers in the streets and squares of 
the entire planet. Movements that were born, had grown and then 
disappeared more or less quickly from the stage of History, the one with 
a capital "H".

In November 1999, in a context where among the main innovations had 
appeared - with all their disruptive novelty - the Internet and 
especially the Web, it was precisely from the mixture of these two 
ingredients that the first and until now only attempt to turn the 
traditional system of mass communication upside down took off.

It would be too long and complicated to tell the story of "Indymedia", 
for those who are interested we refer to this old article and to the 
resources (good and bad) that are easily traceable on the Web, in this 
case we limit ourselves to pointing out some of the reasons why that 
story should still be remembered in 2024 when a quarter of a century has 
already passed.

Then as now the system of mass communication was in the hands of a few 
economic, political and power centers that were the only ones with the 
resources necessary to print a newspaper, to manage a radio or 
television network. Tools capable of transforming facts into news, of 
building a narrative of the present (but also of the past) functional to 
the system of capitalism that in those years celebrated its victory over 
the alleged "real socialism".

The creation of "Indymedia", starting from a simple website set up to 
document what was called the "Battle of Seattle" demonstrated, 
irrefutably, that even a small group of people with ridiculous economic 
resources compared to those available to the communication giants 
managed to set up a project capable of producing and disseminating 
independent information. The initial idea in the space of a couple of 
years transformed into a real international network that came to have 
more than a hundred nodes spread, even if in a non-homogeneous way, 
across all continents.

Contrary to what had happened previously, in 1999 the movement had 
managed to equip itself with a communication and information system, 
fast, modern and that used telematics in an absolutely new way. In the 
years to follow, there will be numerous commercial and non-commercial 
initiatives that will copy many of the technical innovations used for 
the first time by "Indymedia".

Good stories do not always have a happy ending and this one did not. 
After about ten years, the Internet that had tried, often succeeding, to 
counter the power of the official mass media lost strength, mainly 
because the movement that had provided it with lifeblood weakened, 
almost to the point of disappearing. But there are also other reasons 
for this disappearance and they fall, in large part, within the 
characteristics of all social movements and which are significantly 
affected by the transformations of the different historical contexts in 
which they have operated.In recent years, the official media system has 
almost completely colonized the Internet and many passively suffer this 
invasion, unable to imagine alternatives through which they can try to 
escape the widespread control that characterizes the digitalized society.

The history of "Indymedia", defects included, even if 25 years old, is 
an anniversary worth remembering and that still has much to teach those 
who want to learn.

pepsy.noblogs.org

The current panorama is characterized, among other things, by an extreme 
fragmentation of the forces that work for social change and, within this 
situation, there are also differences that concern the way of relating 
personally and collectively to digital media.

https://umanitanova.org/cera-una-volta-indymedia-un-esempio-di-comunicazione-militante/
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