Thoughts about the evolution of indymedia since 1999

international | arts and media | other press Friday September 03, 2004 12:07 by redjade

from http://www.anarchogeek.com

This conception of opening space is important to understanding indymedia. It gets to why indymedia is so wedded to Open Publishing. What indymedia is trying to do is reconstruct how media for social change is organized. One of the accomplishments of the Leninists was to create a model for media and communication which advanced social change. The 'What is to be done' model lays out a conception of society as a Fordist factory, with the news and ideology flowing from the cadre, or capitalist press, to the masses. Much of the left around the world still operates what is basically a Leninist model of media for social change. An intellectual elite create quality news and content which goes out to the masses who consume it.

With the media movements in the 70's there started to be a trend of community media, which is more participatory, but often less politicized. Indymedia draws on this more multidirectional tradition of media. We also draw on the concept of the Zapatistas of leading by following, of a dialog lead revolution to make revolution possible. This anti-vanguardist tradition says that we don't know the path to the revolution. Social change is something that grows up out of the crowd and through action not theory.


Indymedia is a media system built upon the premise that only by radical participation in a communal discursive space can a new conception of politics be created. It is this open publishing, participatory media making network which invites a broad spectrum of social movements to participate that makes indymedia special.