[P2P-F] Fwd: [NetworkedLabour] Fwd: [WSF-Discuss] fw: World Forum of Free Media 2016: reawakening, pursuit and imagination

Wed Jul 6 17:57:23 CEST 2016

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From: Orsan Senalp <orsan1234 at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Jul 6, 2016 at 10:49 PM
Subject: [NetworkedLabour] Fwd: [WSF-Discuss] fw: World Forum of Free Media
2016: reawakening, pursuit and imagination
To: "<networkedlabour at lists.contrast.org>" <
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*From:* jasper teunissen <jasperteunissen at hotmail.com>
*Date:* 6 Jul 2016 16:08:13 GMT+2
*To:* Discussion list about the WSF <
WorldSocialForum-Discuss at openspaceforum.net>
*Subject:* *[WSF-Discuss] fw: World Forum of Free Media 2016: reawakening,
pursuit and imagination*
*Reply-To:* Discussion list about the WSF and social movement in general <
worldsocialforum-discuss at openspaceforum.net>

FYI, an introduction to the World Forum of Free Media, a thematic space of
the WSF of Montréal.

grts jasper

---
World Forum of Free Media 2016: reawakening, pursuit and imagination

http://www.fmml.net/spip.php?article169

Monday 13 June 2016* Traductions: [es]
<http://www.fmml.net/spip.php?article168> [en]
<http://www.fmml.net/spip.php?article169> [fr]
<http://www.fmml.net/spip.php?article170>*

“*We must either invent or err*” combatively claimed Venezuelan thinker
Simón Rodríguez to inspire the liberators of the Latin American continent
at the dawn of its first independence. This phrase gives a very clear idea
of what awaits the hundreds of communicators, media, networks and activists
meeting at the next World Forum of Free Media (WFFM), to be held in
parallel with the World Social Forum in August 2016 in Montreal. In the
face of a reality of communications that every day display a little more of
the weight of mercantile and identitarian fundamentalisms, the Forum is
inevitably called to deepen discussions and consolidate its roadmap.

Let us pause a moment on some media events that marked the last months and
changed the interpretation of the battles underway in various parts of the
world. In Brazil, a popular democracy in the heart of the multipolar
alliance comprising the BRICS countries, the recent deposition of head of
state Dilma Roussef was not prepared by a political opposition consisting
of traditional parties in usual connivance with the North-American
diplomatic apparatus. As this opposition does not really exist among the
political parties, it has learned to rebuild itself within the space
organized by media conglomerates, in alliance with certain financial and
judicial sectors. The “media” Folha de São Paulo, Globo, O Estado de São
Paulo, Isto E and Veja are the registered trademarks of powerful
ideological media instruments, whose controls are operated directly by
elites who now want to regain control of the Brazilian economy. This
media-judicial-financial troika never ceased to destabilize the popular
forces in the last decade; however, the novelty is that it has now moved to
a greater degree of coordination and offensive. In most Latin American
countries, the limits to deepen progressive projects are particularly
related to the maintenance of this media superstructure that is beyond
popular control and overlooks the political scene.

In the European Union, not just an electoral but also a social rise of the
extreme right has found indirect support in emotional saturation and
psychological spreading of fear by the media. The West as a whole has
suffered a statistical 2% of global terrorism since 2001; we forget that
these strikes occur mainly in Asia and Africa. But the hyper media coverage
of incidents and the resulting pressure on public opinion in a Europe
engaged in its identity force politicians to take reactionary U turns that
ultimately deliver ready-to-use propaganda to the jihadists and the extreme
right advancing on most European countries. As noted by journalist Martine
Turchi [1 <http://www.fmml.net/spip.php?article169#nb1>], the overflowing
of political groups of the left-right center by geopolitical realities
directly paves the way of a strategy of communicational marketing for
radical groups, against a backdrop of ultra-nationalism and dormant
xenophobia. Civil rights and liberties then turn into commas in a prose
considerably dominated by the return of vigilance and security.

In Africa and Asia, both factories of hope and of the new middle classes
worldwide who sanction social networking, the latest report on freedom of
expression by Reporters without Borders [2
<http://www.fmml.net/spip.php?article169#nb2>] indicates an authoritarian
hardening of political regimes towards the press and a growing influence of
media monopolies. The attack which targeted the journalists of the popular
channel Tolo TV in January 2016 in Kabul symbolizes perhaps more than
Charlie Hebdo in France the risks of media activities when they are
performed in an unstable global order, caught between the neo-imperialist
maneuvers of the powerful and the socio-cultural pressures that modernity
exercises on the societies of the South. The forcible entry in Western
modernity (in the name of economic competitiveness) exacerbates identity,
religious and ethnic tensions. The attack on Tolo TV in Kabul,
unfortunately one among many others in the so-called emerging countries, is
part of a growing movement of aggressions directed towards the information
vectors that are identified as catalysts of a subversive energy rebellious
against power.

Are these limited or momentary events? All indications are that like other
issues on the international agenda, the arrogance of the ruling elites and
major industrial states today prefer to plunge the world into a
non-egalitarian warrior order rather than slow down the race and
collectively study other possible outcomes. The media are obviously
involved in the turmoil. They line up sometimes on the side of the
offensive arsenal, other times on the side of the targets to be banned or
discredited. Independent initiatives have a hard life. Popular and citizen
journalism emerges or reactivates, yet with very few regulatory, legal and
financial tools. The MacBride report “Many Voices One world” has not aged a
day from when it called in the 80’s to argue over new information balances,
muttering an alternative exit from the bipolar system of the Cold War. The
world today can be proud to be moving to a multipolar order; however, it
remains precarious, hegemonized by the traditional players of world power
and dangerously left to random steering to say the least.

This most disturbing Gramscian chiaroscuro is not likely to extinguish the
hopes and sink the struggles for the right to communicate into the same
nihilism as the media-financial corporations. It is sufficient to observe
the impact of Wikileaks, Edward Snowden and recently the Panama Papers
(even if we know of their ambiguous extraction), or countless actions of
popular communication, to understand that media power relations are no
longer entirely established in a linear logic of accumulation. Of course,
monopolies continue to be an existential limit to popular and democratic
possibilities. That said, more media concentration is not proportionally
equivalent to more power to convince the crowds. The diffusion of power is
a fact and it was particularly well seized by influence marketers or
saboteurs of emancipation movements. Within the World Forum of Free Media
and elsewhere, we see a true spring blooming in favor of networked popular
and citizen communications, powered by new wills and initiatives as well as
by the new communication media and technologies. Whether bloggers,
journalists, whistleblowers, activists, communicators, hackers or
developers, there are many who affirm, in their own language and in their
own way, not only their rejection of the status quo but also a need for
decolonization and reinvention of communications.

The World Forum of Free Media has stressed the importance not just to
formulate but especially to build, here and now, the foundations of another
information order, respectful of cultures, of memory and of the identities
of Peoples. In the World Charter of Free Media, finalized in March 2015 in
Tunis, we stressed the commitment of independent media to promote other
ways of living, other representations of the world, and encourage new forms
of participation and political commitment. Ultimately, the debate is only
just beginning within this large constellation of “free” media, being the
adjective free still too simplistic to qualify the diversity of practices.
We already see a thematic agenda and initiatives coming into place. And
above all, great news, free and independent media coordination efforts are
set up in various places, at national or territorial level, to forge a
horizon of common understanding and action.

The common theme of this new stage in Montreal is clearly inspired by the
previously mentioned points. Issues central to this agenda are, for
example, the violence against media and journalists, the struggles for
legal and democratic frameworks of communications, tools and viability of
free media, rights and freedom of access to Internet, as well as
technological sovereignty. Beyond this indispensable pragmatic agenda, we
are also asked to go on the field of the transforming imaginary, so
important given the current context. The Forum, not as an institution but
primarily as history, agenda and social process, offers an unprecedented
convergence at a time when connectivity defies borders and is organized at
the transnational level. Can it be seen as a movement in motion, put in
other way, a collective subject building a kind of “international front of
emancipatory communication” as recently suggested by Mexican philosopher
Fernando Buen Abad when denouncing the implementation of a new Condor plan
for the media [3 <http://www.fmml.net/spip.php?article169#nb3>]? This is
obviously venturing on a perilous path. However, the debate is necessary as
the older cousin which is the World Social Forum and other initiatives are
slow to bring about a consistent socio-political force against the advance
of neoliberal globalization. The WFFM is unable to hold this debate alone;
however, its polyphonic, multi-sectoral, non-dogmatic nature, straddling
politics and social realities, puts it in a particularly appropriate place
from where to provoke it.
------------------------------

[1 <http://www.fmml.net/spip.php?article169#nh1>] Martine Turchi, Médiapart
<https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/france/151015/la-methode-du-fn-pour-recruter-droite?page_article=1>

[2 <http://www.fmml.net/spip.php?article169#nh2>]  <https://rsf.org/>
https://rsf.org/

[3 <http://www.fmml.net/spip.php?article169#nh3>] Plan Condor
<http://www.politicaymedios.com.ar/nota/7155/fernando_buen_abad_dominguez_en_america_latina_se_ha_puesto_en_marcha_un_plan_condor_mediatico_contra_los_gobiernos_progresistas/>

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