Information overload

“There is no shortage of activities” an activist concluded at a meeting I attended, and asked the other 7 participating activists to please keep to the program for the evening where they were to decide on how to arrange a public event in October, while he tried to keep his 4-year-old son busy and not disturbing the meeting. A woman in her 50’s commented that her family will have to put up a picture of her in her home, since she is never there but constantly attending meetings and activities with the environmental organization and related networks which she is working with. She continued with a sigh that there is not one single weekend that isn’t filled with activities until Christmas. The issue of having sufficient time for all the meetings resonated in an interview which I performed with a man who is deeply involved with a national organisation, and in an interview I performed with an activist who is dedicated to Greenpeace campaigns which she can help out with from home over the internet. Two girls I interviewed the other day commented on how unhealthy they eat when they are in reunions all the time when someone stops by the “kiosco” to by something sweet to nibble on for the group. “We will get really fat soon” she said and laughed while she opened a box of alfajores and placed in on the table where we were going to perform the interview.

Ruth Lister et al. observe that citizenship studies gain from “a multi-tiered analysis, which pays attention to the spaces and places in which lived citizenship is practiced” (Lister et al. 2007),which the above is an example of. But it also relate to what is commonly called “information overload”. That at the same time as social movements gain from the possibility to communicate and share information at a low cost, having time to read all that one has the possibility to read, and to sort between sources and bountiful information is more difficult. During the last month I have probably received 300- 400 e-mails with invitations to public events, reports on the results from marches and protest activities, invitations to facebook lists and pages, new blog entries, news letters, excerpts from interviews with leading activists and scholars, and “heads up” about advancements and environmental impacts by companies which are extracting the Argentine resources. Some of the information is sent over and over again by people from different lists, and it is possible to notice patterns and repetitions in the information. Based on this one cannot only draw the conclusion that activists have problems making it to all the events, reunions and network meetings, but more importantly that there ARE so many activities organized with the attempt to influence environmental politics. The questions a researcher can pose based on this is what the activists believe they accomplish, how they keep the faith when their attempts do not seem to result in any changes, and moreover how the continuous flow of information about what other participants in the movement do and think all over the country influences individual participants’ identity as members of a social movement.