Transnational Activism

I personally found Castell's piece to be the most interesting and truly enjoyed the manner in which he formulated his argument demonstrating how ICT is being used to mobilize people in various manners from discontent in the government, to voting, to even mentioning political scandal. Another thing I truly appreciated about the piece was that he also mentioned cases where mobile communication has had less of a significant impact such as in the 2004 Republican National Convention, the 2003 SARS outbreak in China, and lastly in Japan. He also brings up an interesting point how mobile communication seems to have more of an influence when it is coming from person to person (horizontal communication )as opposed to a top down approach which he greatly demonstrated with Berlusconi's last attempt by sending a SMS the night before the election.

Juris piece was also important because he describes the emergence of movements for global justice as involving broad bands of networks opposing growing corporate influence in our lives. He defines them as being global in scope, informational, and organized around flexible networks. All of the readings this week seemed to touch upon the concept that due to the emergence of ICTs and new information a new form of transnational activism has flourished coming from the people, which I believe is definitely a positive thing.