indymedia

Welcome to the relaunched Indymedia Australia website.

Indymedia has been an important and prominent part of global justice struggles since its genesis in 1999 and serves to allow activists and others to break through the corporate stranglehold over media to publish truthful and accurate information.

So-called social media movements in the Middle East and North Africa have been applauded by western governments. Leaders of the so-called 'free world', including Barack Obama asked leaders of these nations to respect the will of the people, to respect their right to freedom of speech and the right to protest, and in many cases for national leaders to step down.

Evgeny Morozov argues that Indymedia is no longer relevant today and "what looked novel in 1999 looks unnecessarily centralized and hierarchical today". He argues bloggers and citizen journalists can now tell their stories directly to "the live news sections of premier American and Europe TV stations" and they don't need any special equipment but cellphones and laptops, and they certainly don't need yet another platform for documenting what they see or what they think - they all have their own blogs and Twitter accounts, to post to." Has Indymedia outlived its usefulness or is it still a crucial central node "Within this 'networked hyper-individualist media environment" allowing co-ordination amidst an "increasingly fragmented audience."