train crash and apparent efforts to cover up the accident by burying the wreckage, netizens forced a full investigation and the reversal of an earlier decision prohibiting victims from filing lawsuits. Beijing professor Zhan Jiang has referred to this as the revolution” (cited in “microblogging Wines 2009). Citizens reflect on this new relationship to government as well: "With just one person's efforts, [conditions] wouldn't change […] but with the power of the Internet, things will be different” (Richburg 2009). Efficiencies in Local Relationships among Individuals and Non-Governmental Organizations When governing bodies are not judged to be fulfilling their duties, new technologies provide the means for networking, organizing, and fomenting resistance. One of the more ironic examples has been the grassroots” anti-globalization movement’s use of the Internet and cell “global phones in organizing mass street demonstrations protesting virtually every international G-8, IMF, and World Bank conference in recent years (Sachs 2005). Yang (2009) argues that technology-supported transnationalism has facilitated the activism because of several features: it expands the scope of some issues and invites wider audiences; can involve transnational strategies; and can involve targets and actors situated in different geographic spaces. Such technologies have the potential to provide persons living under oppressive regimes with outside ideas (Madon 2000). Local abuses in human rights can be reported to networked human rights groups, who can apply external pressure to resolve a situation (Metzl 1996; Keck and Sikkink 1997; Labiad 2006), as happened in China in 1989 and the Soviet Union in 1990 (Frederick 1993). To provide a more recent detailed case, and the most significant social resistance movement in China since 1989, the spiritual-religious group Falun Gong has been the subject of
train crash and apparent efforts to cover up the accident by burying the wreckage, netizens forced a full investigation and the reversal of an earlier decision prohibiting victims from filing lawsuits. Beijing professor Zhan Jiang has referred to this as the “microblogging revolution” (cited in Wines 2009). Citizens reflect on this new relationship to government as well: "With just one person's efforts, [conditions] wouldn't change […] but with the power of the Internet, things will be different” (Richburg 2009). Efficiencies in Local Relationships among Individuals and Non-Governmental Organizations When governing bodies are not judged to be fulfilling their duties, new technologies provide the means for networking, organizing, and fomenting resistance. One of the more ironic examples has been the “global grassroots” anti-globalization movement’s use of the Internet and cell phones in organizing mass street demonstrations protesting virtually every international G-8, IMF, and World Bank conference in recent years (Sachs 2005). Yang (2009) argues that technology-supported transnationalism has facilitated the activism because of several features: it expands the scope of some issues and invites wider audiences; can involve transnational strategies; and can involve targets and actors situated in different geographic spaces. Such technologies have the potential to provide persons living under oppressive regimes with outside ideas (Madon 2000). Local abuses in human rights can be reported to networked human rights groups, who can apply external pressure to resolve a situation (Metzl 1996; Keck and Sikkink 1997; Labiad 2006), as happened in China in 1989 and the Soviet Union in 1990 (Frederick 1993). To provide a more recent detailed case, and the most significant social resistance movement in China since 1989, the spiritual-religious group Falun Gong has been the subject of
PalmerPerkins_TD_PGDT_Final.docx