Why Indymedia Sucks - Thoughts From Conference09
Published:
June 07, 2009 19:09
by
yossarian
Neighbourhoods: mile_end tower_hamlets
Published by group:
Indymedia London
During the Anarchist Conference this weekend, some of us from Indymedia London took the time to ask people what they thought of Indymedia, what our job is in relation to the anarchist movement, how well we're doing it, and so on. Here's what we found out.
In a surprise move, one person (shockingly) told us that he thought the site was pretty good and had no problems showing it to friends, work colleagues, etc. Obviously this is not the majority view :). Once things got settled down, here were the criticisms of Indymedia in a nutshell. My suspicion is that people don't distinguish much between Indymedia sites, since from outside we look like one organization - so some of these criticisms may apply to the London site, some to Indymedia UK, and some to far-away Indymedia sites who we only hear about because their moderation collectives are dead and the sites are full of totally insane content.
The following observations are based on a collection of conversations with multiple activists in various conference meetings and social spaces.
Indymedia sucks because it's:
- ghettoized
- not accessible outside of a highly politicized activist elite
- good for leftist anarcho-educated people
- too navel gazing
- too dominated by actions and protests
- not addressing the reasons why people are protesting very well
- crappily designed
- [note: this list is probably not exhaustive, see below]
Indymedia works best as:
- a whistle-blowing forum
- a general information source for activist news
Indymedia would be better if:
- it could bring a more political perspective to things instead of having a laundry list of actions. The "why" of an action is often left out of reports.
- it would shut down sites which had no moderation collectives immediately. Some of the people we talked to had experiences where people were basically slandering their political groups (or them personally) on Cleveland Indymedia (or some such godforsaken place) but the moderators wouldn't do anything about it.
- the comments didn't suck so much
- it had more not-political stuff
- the sense of whining victimhood which shines through in most of the posts was not so apparent
While some people thought of Indymedia as a valuable resource, other people let us know that people in their movements basically refused to use it, due to the moderation problems already mentioned and the general craziness of some of the stuff in the open newswires. Their feedback was that if you're trying to organize people who could potentially lose their jobs or their homes due to their involvement in your movement, pointing them to a news source which has conspiracy theories, unmoderated slander, and so forth is not a way to make them more comfortable about the risks they're running.
Moderation problems and also the extremely low quality of comments in general were singled out as a huge turnoff. Groups get slandered on Indymedia with no moderator response and obviously people get extremely pissed off [note: this was in reference to some crazy guy who publishes outrageous articles about people in an international anarchist group on a U.S. Indymedia site and the moderators either don't respond to their complaints or just aren't there].
People said that they'd like Indymedia to be more accessible to people, various anarchist groups would probably be willing to take over quite a lot of the work of running local sites but the whole site is so uneven that it's hard to feel like it'd be worth getting involved. There was a feeling that many people have heard of Indymedia but when they actually go on the site it seems as though you need to know a whole lot of stuff in order to read the site.
Some ideas for future coverage which we could pick up on in London:
- Allotment struggles against the olympics are really interesting and they are much wider than just being against the Olympics.
- It would be cool to get someone in immigration detention to write stuff from inside the wire.
One tip which people thought would vastly improve the quality of the site: Indy should be contacting people and asking them directly to write issues-based articles when they have an action-only article.
Does anybody have other ideas for improvements? How can Indymedia best act to help people report their own struggles? Leave your thoughts in the comments!
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Thanks for this report!
.. that couldn't make it to the conference but that is very happy some imc-london peeps did and addressed the imc subject at the conference. Thanks Yossarian for your report.
I'd just like to coment, that I personally agree with a lot of the criticisms pointed out in this article. Indymedia runs a system of Open Publishing, and almost 10 years of history of running it, have clearly uncovered its faults. As imcitas we still see the need for open spaces of communication, and a lot of us see indymedia as not only a tool and part of the movement(s) autonomous infrastructure, but also of political engagement and action in itself.
And as such, it only makes sense if it keeps developing and reacting to its failures. But also, importantly, only if people involved in grass-roots movements and initiatives make it their own. One thing I don't really get though it is why a lot of people involved in these movements seem to be using indymedia all the time, but often seem to chose to only point out its failures.
Surely it has enough of these, and constructive criticism is always worthwhile and helpful. The new London Indymedia site (and project) is actually tryng to address a lot of the criticisms expressed in this report, as they have been identifyied and understood by the London-collective for quite a while, and hence the new site which tries to address Open Publishing in a different way from the single open wire where eveything goes.
It is not perfect at all, of course! .. and surely much more needs to be done. But this is not a project set in a stone, and neither it is so well populated of active imcistas that can achieve everything, and anything that it is expected from it.
In fact most of the legitimate criticissms expressend in this article could be addressed and probably resoved if there were more people willing to get involved in IMC-London or participate in aspects of maintaining the site.
The indymedia london meetings are always open, so are most of the lists (editorial or otherwise) It is true that we should probably have much more physical presence in the movements and beyond, but the collective is small and can only achieve a small part of what it would like to achieve, or that has in the pot of ideas.
This can only become what people want it to be. One thing it is definitely not though, is a service provider. To think of Indymedia as something that I use when I need to and then I throw away as I would do with a plastic bag (for example) is failing to see not only its potential, but also its political legitimacy.
Anyway, i'll end up ranting saying that I am very glad that some people in the conference took the time to express what they thought of Indymedia. This can only help to make it better.
In solidarity!