Paper on IMC Ireland
national |
miscellaneous |
news report 
Friday September 27, 2002 16:05
by Graham Caswell
caswell at indigo dot ie
Ireland IMC: A Citizen’s View
This is a paper written by Thomas Maguire, a Ph.D. student in Communications at the University of Texas on the topic of IMC Ireland. It's just a short paper written for a course on Alternative Media, but it's well worth a look. Thomas lived in Ireland for a year in the 1990's and uses indymedia to keep up with grass roots happenings.
In his essay he suggests that that Indymedia.ie offers a means for overseas Irish to keep in touch with grassroots Irish society. Maguire also suggests that, by debunking the myth of Ireland's part in the American conservative neoliberal story (i.e. as a model globalised success story), the Irish alternative view has a role to play in changing contemparory American social attitudes by pointing out that things aren't quite a rosy as all that.
Check the full paper out at the link below....
(Right-click and choose 'save target as..' to download the Word document to your hard drive)
Comments (10 of 10)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10Yep! Without IMC, I would have to rely on Sir Tony's Independent and Kevin Myer's Irish Times...oh God forbid!!!
Fair play to Indymedia Ireland!
Ruairi, Canada
Ah yes, feckin Indymedia is run on non-Free, closed code (called "Dada") to allow "more features" and priveleged students at Trinity College write pretentious papers in the non-Free Micro$oft Word .doc format. Fucking brilliant. Role on the hegemony rupturing research paper attacks. The capitalists are quaking in their boots while you replicate and propagage their structures you motherfuckers.
Why Free software?
http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Why should we avoid Micro$oft$ proprietary formats and what can we do about it?
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
well really isn´t it interesting to read that my use of Irish on the IMC site seriously upsets Irish-american preconcieved notions.
Hmmmmm.
I think you should have included a translation of what I wrote in Irish.
and then you could consider the messages I´ve left in seven other living European languages across the IMC network.
Then you consider the messages I have left on the walls of European cities in six more langauges.
Then maybe
you might have good reason to upset Irish-american notions.
Iosaf mac diarmada
which is an anagram for
If Osama mad ira cad.
or as some comentators liken it
"total mongolisation of self"
write to me and engage in critical research.
Interesting paper but seems a little detached, it would have been much better with more engagement with the participants - I don't think you can divorce the form of the site from the people who designed it, run it, and contribute to it. I also think a look at the mailing lists would have given more information than any scan through the sites.
(It's quite likely that there was a request for help with this paper was put on the wire during the summer, if so, I apologise for not coming forward. I see Graham was quoted in it and that's a start. The history and the arguments in the archives are quite illuminative)
And on the free software point - if at all possible, download Mozilla now (www.mozilla.org). Open source web browsing is the way, and just by downloading and using you will help to build the next version (the browser can send feedback and bug reports automatically)
Maidir le usaid an teanga anseo, 'se mo naire nach bhfuil nios mo a scriobh agam as Gaeilge - ba cheart dom cupla focail a caitheamh isteach o am go cheile agus beidh me ag meascadh an reabhloid 's an stair. Ach nil aon sineadh fada agam ar an riomhaire seo...
Daithi, the fact that someone so involved with indymedia can confuse "Free" and "Open" http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html suggests a reason why indymedia.ie is using non-Free code to run its server.
to all else regulars on site blisset will go away now as someone has (finally) stolen my name.
I mean to say open, not free. Mozilla is open source, and I pointed that out. Using "free" was not meant to have any idealogical connotations, of course Internet Explorer is "free".
Free meaning freedom, not free meaning no cost.
Comprendez?
Blisset, you will be missed
fuck the indymedia trolls
Choosing a collective name as an identity militates against a desire for individuality. But all this ignores the central point: Indymedia.ie is encouraging the use of software that denies some of the basic freedoms that many of us would espouse. Why is this? Why do the WicklowGreens propagate documents in Microsoft's proprietary .doc format that is only easily read by people that buy their crippleware software? Is Indymedia.ie staffed by the totally clueless that are turning up their noses at all the other perfectly wonderful site-software (such as the slashcode run by Philly IMC etc.) which is Free Software? Don't they care about freedom?
Stop trying to reduce this to an issue of "they stole my name" or "Indymedia trolls". Sounds suspiciously like an attempt to silence criticism by displacement and disparagement.
now the connections between comhaontas glas and certain american entities has much been mused and mooted.
my friends check this Texan university.
this poorly written paper amounts to little more than a bad intelligence report.
I am very dissapointed.
But not surprised.
and i suppose i shall go on being quoted again and again as before.
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