Speaking Notes
April 16, 2003

Please do not cite or quote without permission of the author.

The war in Iraqi – whatever else its significance – may become known as a major event in the history of journalism and public access to information. It is an internet-based event: a war in which the internet has an unprecedented role as provider of information, text and images, as an arena of debate, and a site of opposition to television and mainstream print media.

The "war blog" phenomenon has taken off – the web log, such as warblogging.com – which had to start a web-based fundraising campaign in order to increase its bandwidth. We see individual Iraqis (Salam Pax) setting up their web logs to give us their views from Baghdad as the bombs fall . . .

The web logs had precedents of course – they took off after Sept 11 2001. And of course the anti-globalization movement of recent years made very effective use of the internet.

The advantages of web-based information and organizing include speed and extent of dissemination. We see protest marches organized via the internet. And we see petitions organized and dispatched at hitherto unknown speeds and breadth of coverage. In January of this year at the American Historical Association, a group of historians, created "Historians Against the War." By March 16 their petition had 1,921 signatures. They created a virtual movement archives, a national speakers’ bureau, they organized teach-ins across the US.

In March a few of us in the History Department put together a statement calling for a halt to the march to war and calling on the Canadian government to oppose the war. The web site was launched on March 14, and we began to circulate the web address and to ask people to sign on. Within 5 days we had 700 signatures. A few people down the hall from me heard about it from elsewhere in Canada before anybody at UVic told them. Today we have 1739 signatures.

The speed was impressive. But a cautionary note: This does not happen overnight. One must have the appropriate technical expertise to design the site appropriately, to find the server – and to get the text translated into French.

We sent the statement with the signatures to the Prime Minister’s office on March 18. But we wanted wider dissemination, and we tried the newspapers. We sent the statement as a letter to the editor, with 2 signatures and the web address. The Globe and Mail never printed it. The Victoria Times Colonist printed the letter with my signature only and left off the web address.

So do not count on much support from the print media, unless you can afford the costs of an advertisement. We are left with a question: how far will the print media advertise or support a form of electronic communication which threatens so deeply its control of public knowledge and opinion-making?

We conclude that as a means of collecting names on a petition the internet is an enormously powerful tool for collective action.