CONTEXTUALIZING TECHNOLOGY USE

Abstract

This paper presents a contextualized analysis of the ways that organizers did and did not use Internet-enabled communication technologies in an organizing context in which material inequality was a prominent focus: a local homeless movement. Few studies on ICTs and social movements have taken seriously the very real material inequalities that structure technology use. While all movements include participants that either do not have access to ICTs or choose not to use them based on organizing contexts, these participants have been systematically excluded from analysis in the rush to understand how a narrow technological elite think, feel, and act in relation to ICTs. This paper draws on a communication-oriented participant observation of three overlapping campaigns to examine the communication practices employed by both housed and unhoused organizers: a campaign to ‘Stop the Sweeps’ of urban homeless encampments, a direct action tent-city project aimed at providing emergency shelter for up to 1,000 people called ‘Nickelsville’, and a campaign to stop the construction of a new jail organized around the ‘No New Jail’ slogan. Four themes are presented that characterize the strategies organizers used in communicating within and between constituents: how organizers emphasized ‘relational’ face-to-face communication, used ICTs to connect with housed allies, encouraged participants to move from the computer screen to street, and relied upon existing organizationally sponsored communications infrastructure in facilitating communication tasks. This paper proposes that an analysis of communication practices broadly defined is important in understanding the role of technologies of communication more specifically.

Keywords:

• technology
• communication
• social movement
• campaign
• homelessness
• participant observation
• brokerage

Notes

For the purposes of this paper, I refer to the direct action tent-city project as a campaign as it bears many but not all of the attributes often associated with political campaigns. This paper presents data that were developed through a participant observation as approved by the University of Washington Human Subjects Division (no. 34550). I would like to acknowledge the influential guidance of the late Dr Deborah Kaplan who inspired me to talk to strangers and see power in their actions, Dr Kirsten Foot for her detailed feedback on earlier versions of this paper, and the undergraduate researchers who contributed to the interviews and media texts analyzed in these pages: Crystal Cheairs, Travis Mark English, Gretchen Glaub, Marisa Laufer, Mesha Lockett, Vivian Luu, Barb Thomas, and Helen-Hien Tran.

All interview participants were given the option of being fully identified, choosing a pseudonym, or being anonymous. One participant chose to be anonymous, two asked that only their first names be used, and the remainder chose to have their full names used. Many participants felt socially marginalized and appreciated the opportunity to share their experiences. I am humbled by the many people I worked alongside during my fieldwork and present their names here as a way to recognize their substantive contributions to this paper as ‘movement intellectuals’ (Eyerman & Jamison 1991).

The Seattle/King County Coalition for the Homeless (SKCCH) relied on over 800 volunteers to count people sleeping outside or on busses in Seattle in January of 2009. While the number of people on the streets in the city of Seattle rose less in 2009 than in 2008, south King County saw a 68 per cent increase – a change some attribute to Mayor Nickels' homeless encampment ‘sweeps’ policy driving people out of locations closer to food and services for low-income citizens. It should be noted that there is much disagreement on how best to count a population that often relies on invisibility as a mechanism for survival, as the counting of populations has significant political implications (Wagner 1993). Rather than a conclusive count, these numbers are intended to provide readers with a reference for the general size of the population.

RCEP publishes a ‘street paper’ called Real Change News that is sold on the street by vendors who purchase the paper for 35 cents and sell it for a dollar. They also house a political action group called the Real Change Organizing Project (RCOP).