Complexity and Social Movements: Multitudes at the Edge of Chaos ...

62 Identities, protest dynamics and technology
tapped, we would be followed by some elements, the other policemen would
tell us about it’ (Interview Czech Activist [9]) they concluded that:
part of the police command even welcomed the violence because it
proved they were right and uh...later on we have studied more, or
near to seventy hours of videos, we have a written analysis of it and it
proves very clearly that Czech police, excuse the expression, fucked up
completely.
(Czech Activist [9])
Reflexive framing and the S26 Diaspora
Melucci’s insight that movement are media (Melucci 1996a, Atton 2002,
Chesters and Welsh 2004) is rendered tangible by the dissemination of
events in Prague through personal and collective CMC networks such as
Indymedia, these immediate representations being followed by print (e.g.
Do or Die) and video products (Praha 2000: Rebel Colours, Tactical
Frivolity, Crowd Bites Wolf) within the national movement milieus of participating
network actors. Public viewings, discussions and debate of video
accounts become central to post-event interpretations, refinement and
finessing central to the process of reflexive framing (Chesters and Welsh
2001). Within the shadow realm such autonomous media product blurs the
producer/consumer dichotomy dominating media studies accounts of media
production and consumption power relations.
These subterranean networks are part of the process of encoding/decoding
(Hall 1980) which formalise oppositional codes and frequently coincide
with moments of crisis within mainstream broadcast organizations. 13 As
Hall concludes, ‘Here the “politics of signification” – the struggle in
discourse – is joined’ (1980: 138). These processes have intensified as withdrawal
of public trust, weakening political media management capacities, and
fragmented audiences reading niche products combine with increasingly
diverse global media.
The ensuing siege of the signs is conducted through the definition and
contestation of symbolic stakes which simultaneously ‘hollow out’ the state
(Held 2000) and erode the ‘imagined communities’ (Anderson 1989) created
by national media. The increasing reliance of reporters upon indymedia,
with key centres receiving more ‘hits’ than CNN websites during significant
events reflects this struggle as mainstream media begin to recognise the need
to incorporate voices from the street (Cottle 1999).
Plateau effects
In terms of the themes addressed in this chapter it is important to sketch
some of the network consequences arising from reflexive framing of the
Prague plateau paying attention to both ‘national local’ and ‘global’
domains.