Misplaced Pages

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45-458: The Independent Media Center , better known as Indymedia , is an open publishing network of activist journalist collectives that report on political and social issues. Following beginnings during the 1999 Carnival Against Capital and 1999 Seattle WTO protests , Indymedia became closely associated with the global justice movement . The Indymedia network extended internationally in the early 2000s with volunteer-run centers that shared software and

90-631: A United States Attorney sent a letter to an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation stating that the subpoena had been withdrawn. At the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa , Italian police assaulted Indymedia journalists at the Armando Diaz School where Indymedia had set up a temporary office and radio station. Twenty-nine police officers were indicted for beating people, planting evidence and wrongful arrest during

135-485: A common format with a newswire and columns. Police raided several centers and seized computer equipment. The centers declined in the 2010s with the waning of the global justice movement. Indymedia is a website for citizen journalism that promotes activism and counters mainstream media news and commentary perspectives. Indymedia originated from protests against the concentrated ownership and perceived biases in corporate media reporting. The first Indymedia node, attached to

180-501: A company with self-managing teams is Valve , which also has rotating, not permanent, team leaders - which Valve terms "group contributors", in recognition of the fact that contributing individually and leading at Valve form a spectrum, not a binary dichotomy. Generally the term of a group contributor at Valve is at most one project, after which time they (voluntarily) rotate back to being an individual contributor. Valve also allows team members to work on whatever they find interesting. This

225-400: A critical size, organizations can retain a streamlined structure but cannot keep a completely flat manager-to-staff relationship without affecting productivity . Certain financial responsibilities may also require a more conventional structure. A company would not have to give a raise or promotion, based on service length but on greater productivity. Also eliminating certain departments from

270-434: A lack of internal controls , due to its lack of managers. Prof. Cliff Oswick from Cass Business School , who has studied Valve and other examples of "non-leadership", believes that Valve works because it hires high-calibre people who are a good fit for the leaderless environment, and because it was founded as a flat organization from the outset, so that new hires always knew what they were getting into. However, he warns that

315-436: A manager in self-managing teams determines the overall purpose or goal of the team, the team is at liberty to manage the methods by which to achieve that goal. This can cause conflict with people whose career path expectations include a promotion , which may not be available within the organization due to its flat structure. However, alternative "horizontal" career paths may be available, such as developing greater expertise in

360-514: A role or mastery of a craft , and/or receiving pay raises for loyalty . An absence of middle managers does not preclude the adoption and retention of mandatory work procedures, including quality assurance procedures. However, due to the fact that significant responsibilities are given to the team members themselves, if a team collectively arrives at the view that the procedures it is following are outdated, or could be improved, it may be able to change them. Such changes may, in some cases, require

405-573: A teachers strike. Reporters Without Borders condemned the actions of the Mexican government in allowing the accused gunmen to go free. On January 30, 2009, one of the system administrators of the server that hosts indymedia.us received a grand jury subpoena from the Southern District of Indiana federal court. The subpoena asked the administrator to provide all " IP addresses , times, and any other identifying information" for every visitor to

450-521: Is known as open allocation , and means that employees can switch to another team at any time, no questions asked; all desks are on wheels to make this easy. However, because new ideas may require significant resources, someone with a new idea may need to persuade a number of their coworkers to join them in order to create a new team and reach the necessary "critical mass" for the new idea to come to fruition. Valve's co-founder has admitted that it has issues with failing to catch bad decisions early on due to

495-558: Is only sometimes "open publishing". Online historical and existing networks typically associated with open publishing include the Independent Media Center network, Kuro5hin , Slashdot , Misplaced Pages and Wikinews . Flat organization A flat organization (also known as horizontal organization or flat hierarchy ) is an organizational structure with few or no levels of middle management between staff and executives. An organizational structure refers to

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540-555: Is possible to redefine the position of existing staff within the new flatter structure - the two often coincide". Frank Ostroff, in The Horizontal Organisation , argues that the horizontal structure "delivers value to customers". A "strong form" of flat organization is an organization with no middle management at all . Very small businesses may lack middle managers because there are too few staff to justify hiring middle managers; in this type of organization,

585-413: Is shallow". The term "open publishing" is intended to be much more open than the more restricted idea of open access publishing , in which the publishing of material organized in such a way that there is no financial or other barrier to the reader, but there is no claim for transparency in the methods and procedures of publishing. In other words, open publishing is open access , but open access publishing

630-568: The World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC) also voiced criticism. EFF attorney Kurt Opsahl compared the case with Steve Jackson Games, Inc. v. United States Secret Service . New York–based journalist and Indymedia volunteer Bradley Roland Will was killed in October 2006 along with two Mexican protesters in the city of Oaxaca . People had been demonstrating in the city since May as part of an uprising prompted by

675-622: The World Bank or G8 , to world forum events, or to party conventions, such as Democrat or Republican meetings in the US. By 2002, there were 90 Indymedia websites, mainly in the US, Canada and Western Europe but also Australia, New Zealand and Latin America. The number of centers continued growing, especially in Europe, reaching 142 in 2004 and 175 by 2010. The Indymedia movement reached its peak in

720-421: The decision-making process rather than closely supervised by many layers of management. Delayering plans may aim to secure these benefits, although potential risks include undermining employee's confidence in their managers and putting the remaining managers under greater pressure. This structure is generally possible only in smaller organizations or individual units within larger organizations. Having reached

765-510: The peer-review -based stack ranking system Valve uses for determining employee remuneration, might become problematic if in the future Valve becomes short of cash. Other examples of companies with self-managing teams include the following: In technology, agile development involves teams self-managing to a large extent (though agile development is commonly still practiced within a hierarchical organization, which means that certain types of decisions such as hiring, firing, and pay raises remain

810-729: The Bristol Indymedia group was arrested. Indymedia was supported in this matter by the National Union of Journalists and Liberty . In August 2014, Bristol Indymedia's servers were again seized by police after a string of attacks in the Bristol area were claimed on the Indymedia service, including a communique signed by Informal Anarchist Federation claiming the successful arson of a police firearms training centre. Bristol Indymedia stated that they would not cooperate with

855-456: The Seattle anti-corporate globalization protests, was seen by activists as an alternative news source to that of the corporate media, which they accused of only showing violence and confrontation, and portraying all protesters negatively. Indymedia initially covered protests between 1999 and 2001. As protests began to wane, Indymedia covered global social justice movements, such as opposition to

900-433: The approval of executive management and/or customers (consider, for example, a digital agency producing bespoke websites for corporate clients). If executive management is not involved in the decision, or merely rubber-stamps it, this might be an example of consensus decision-making or workplace democracy at the level of a team - or group of teams, if multiple teams are involved in the decision. The foremost example of

945-721: The authorities and that they "do not intend to voluntarily hand over information to the police as they have requested". On October 7, 2004, the Federal Bureau Investigation took possession of several server hard drives used by a number of IMCs and hosted by U.S.-based Rackspace Managed Hosting. The servers in question were located in the United Kingdom and managed by the British arm of Rackspace, but some 20 mainly European IMC websites were affected, and several unrelated websites were affected, including

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990-470: The business owner or the CEO may perform some of the functions performed by middle managers in larger organizations. However, some organizations do not take on middle managers even as they become larger, remaining extremely flat. An organization with self-managing teams who organize their own work without the need for a middle manager or supervisor above the team may meet or closely approximate this model. While

1035-552: The first Indymedia center websites, was written by activists in Sydney. It went live in January 1999 and featured open publishing, calendars, events and contacts. Indymedia also ran a global radio project which aggregated audio RSS feeds from around the world. The origins of Indymedia can be traced to the global justice protest Carnival Against Capital , which took place in over forty countries on June 18, 1999. In late November 1999,

1080-433: The first dedicated Indymedia project was ready to cover the 1999 Seattle WTO protests . The first post was made on November 24. It read: The resistance is global ... The web dramatically alters the balance between multinational and activist media. With just a bit of coding and some cheap equipment, we can set up a live automated website that rivals the corporates'. Prepare to be swamped by the tide of activist media makers on

1125-521: The formation of informal cliques, the " soft power " of popular employees, un professional and sexist attitudes, and lack of workplace diversity . Suzanne J. Baker argues that new power dynamics can emerge that undermine the equality afforded by a non-hierarchical context. When an organization decides to no longer place value on a person's position, Baker suggests that new hierarchies based on personality type, skill set, and communication style can emerge. If these hierarchies don't get acknowledged, it

1170-516: The gag order, and that the subpoena request "violated the SCA's restrictions on what types of data the government could obtain using a subpoena." Under Justice Department guidelines , subpoenas to news media must have the authorization of the attorney general. According to a CBS News blog, the subpoena of indymedia.us was never submitted to the Attorney General for review. On February 25, 2009,

1215-426: The global justice movement. Corporate Watch saw the rise of social media sites and the normalization of 'open publishing' as recommodifying Indymedia's key innovations for the cultural industry. In a 2019 article published on occasion of Indymedia's 20th anniversary, April Glaser suggested that factors such as volunteer burnout, lack of resources, lack of centralized accountability, lack of leadership development, and

1260-658: The ground in Seattle and around the world, telling the real story behind the World Trade Agreement. When the protests began, a hundred videographers were on the streets filming, joined by photographers and journalists, all working as volunteers. After Seattle, local, autonomous collectives formed. Local sociopolitical context determined each individual center's focus. However, it was a core theme that centers would have both an open publishing structure to which anyone could contribute and an open archive. Centers tended to be set up in response to meetings of groups such as

1305-521: The mid-2000s. Centers in the United States began to atrophy around 2008, and by 2014, the global network had declined significantly, with the number of active sites down to 68. A number of reasons for the decline have been put forward. In February 2013, Ceasefire magazine had noted a decline in the use of Nottingham Indymedia, stating that activist usage of commercial social media had increased. The poverty of activist collectives to invest in resources

1350-430: The nature of the distribution of the units and positions within it, and also to the nature of the relationships among those units and positions. Tall and flat organizations differ based on how many levels of management are present in the organization and how much control managers are endowed with. Transforming a highly hierarchical organization into a flat organization is known as delayering . In flat organizations,

1395-554: The night-time raid. Thirteen were convicted. In the aftermath of the 2017 G20 Hamburg summit protests, the German Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Community banned a chapter of the network called Linksunten. This had been set up in 2008, in southwestern Germany. The ministry described the network as "the central communications platform among far-left extremists prone to violence" and stated that it

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1440-455: The number of people directly supervised by each manager is large, and the number of people in the chain of command above each person is small. A manager in a flat organization possesses more responsibility than a manager in a tall organization because there is a greater number of individuals immediately below them who are dependent on direction, help, and support. Moreover, managers in a flat organization rely less on guidance from superiors because

1485-437: The number of superiors above the manager is limited. Empirical evidence from Ghiselli and Johnson suggests that the amount of independence that managers in flat organizations possess as a result of the flat organizational structure satisfies many of their needs in terms of autonomy and self-realization. The idea behind flat organizations is that well-trained workers will be more productive when they are more directly involved in

1530-678: The organizations and sites dedicated to open publishing, though they do so to varying degrees. These principles include non-hierarchy, public participation, minimal editorial control, and transparency. Arnison's idea of open publishing can be compared to Eric S. Raymond 's point of view in the open source software versus free software debate. Given a large enough audience of peers, readers and/or commentators, supporters of open publishing hope or expect that almost all problematic content will quickly be noticed, highlighted and fixed. Linus's law could in this be context be described as Arnison's Law, reworded as, "Given enough eyeballs, problematic content

1575-579: The payroll means saving money. The flat organization model promotes employee involvement through decentralized decision-making processes. By elevating the level of responsibility of baseline employees and eliminating layers of middle management, comments and feedback reach all personnel involved in decisions more quickly. Expected response to customer feedback becomes more rapid. Australian researchers Dunford, Bramble and Littler note that delayering in an organisation may also lead to down-sizing: "[a]lthough delayering need not involve down-sizing - because it

1620-408: The prerogative of managers). In scrum , an agile framework, team members assign work to be done among themselves, either by free choice or by consensus. The scrum master role in scrum is not a management role as such, but is a role that involves helping remove obstacles to progress and ensuring that the basic scrum framework is adhered to by all parties, inside and outside the team - both aspects of

1665-404: The role being more akin to facilitation than to top-down micromanagement . Agile frameworks such as scrum have also begun being used in non-technology companies and organizations. Drawing on Jo Freeman 's famous essay The Tyranny of Structurelessness , Klint Finley has argued that "bossless" companies like Valve might suffer from problems related to the appropriate handling of grievances ,

1710-475: The site on June 25, 2008. The subpoena also included a gag order that stated that the recipient is "not to disclose the existence of this request unless authorized by the Assistant U.S. Attorney." The administrator of indymedia.us could not have provided the information because Indymedia sites generally do not keep IP address logs. The Electronic Frontier Foundation determined that there was no legal basis for

1755-416: The software because it is free and open source to change it and start their own site. If they want to redistribute the news, they can, preferably on an open publishing site. Internet sites run on open publishing software allow anyone with Internet access to visit the site and upload content directly without having to penetrate the filters of traditional media. Several fundamental principles tend to inform

1800-501: The waning of the anti-globalization movement all contributed to the decline of Indymedia. Police seized servers in the UK in June 2005. An anonymous post on the Bristol Indymedia server came to police attention for suggesting an "action" against a freight train carrying new cars as part of a protest against cars and climate change in the run up to that year's Gleneagles G8 summit. A member of

1845-506: The war in Iraq. Indymedia was purported to be the first network on-the-scene in reporting the 2008 Greek riots and the resistance towards the 2009 Honduran coup . The network also has a focus in covering the social justice campaigns of students, Indigenous people, immigrants, and peace activists. A slogan was "Don't Hate the Media, Become the Media!" Active, the software used as the basis for

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1890-771: The website of a Linux distribution . Some, but not all, of the legal documents relating to the confiscation of the servers were unsealed by a Texas district court in August 2005, following legal action by the Electronic Frontier Foundation . The documents revealed that the only action requested by the government was to surrender server log files. The move was condemned by the International Federation of Journalists , who stated that, "The way this has been done smacks more of intimidation of legitimate journalistic inquiry than crime-busting" and called for an investigation. European civil liberties organization Statewatch and

1935-512: Was contrasted with the massive investments made by corporations such as Facebook and Twitter . In an article published by the journal Convergence Eva Giraud summarised some of the different arguments that had been made by academics and activists, which included informal hierarchy , bureaucracy , security issues including IP address logging, lack of regional engagement, lack of class politics, increase in web 2.0 social media use, website underdevelopment, decline in volunteers and decline in

1980-436: Was that anybody could contribute a story and see it instantly appear in the pool of stories publicly available. Those stories are filtered as little as possible to help the readers find the stories they want. Readers can see editorial decisions being made by others. They can see how to get involved and help make editorial decisions. If they can think of a better way for the software to help shape editorial decisions, they can copy

2025-559: Was used to spread information about violent protest tactics. German internet service providers were ordered to block communication to the website, on which police were referred to as "pigs" and "murderers" and instructions for making Molotov cocktails could be found. The German police also raided the home addresses of several activists in the Baden-Württemberg region, seizing computers and weapons. Open publishing The aim of open publishing described by Matthew Arnison

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