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.
Indymedia -- or, the Independent Media Centre, to use its full name -- has often been embedded with protest movements, uprisings and actions in order to provide up to the minute updates. Content is produced on an open publishing basis, and anyone is free to contribute articles, audio, video or photos providing they follow the editorial policy set out by the Editorial Collective. Your ability to publish to Indymedia is not decided by the size of the events you're reporting on, nor your experience as a journalist or writer. However, being able to publish your own content will be rewarding and empowering.
The editorial policy is used to ensure content is relevant and news-related and to allow open, non-discriminatory discussion. Contributors who consistently produce high-quality content may be able to become Trusted Users and publish straight to the newswire.
Only by building horizontal, collectively owned and managed communication methods free of corporate and party political influence can we hope to effectively resist and move beyond the current systems of social, economic and environmental injustice. If you are interested in joining the Editorial Collective you should check out our Principles of Unity and get in contact with us!
We also have an events list, which is equally as important as the newswire. In the early 2000s it was common practice for activist groups to post upcoming event details of marches, actions and meetings to Indymedia so that others would know what was coming up. In recent years, Facebook has become a popular organising space but it has several fundamental flaws that limit its potential.
As a commercial enterprise known to censor progressive causes and actively participate in the commodification of personal information, Facebook is inherently unsuited to anti-capitalist organising. The vast overstatement of "solidarity attendance" to Facebook events compared to actual attendees goes a long way to undermining the usefulness of the platform but, most of all, it is the inability to connect with non-Facebook members and difficulties connecting with those outside your own networks that are most limiting.
We have relaunched Indymedia in the hope that it will provide activists a space around which to coalesce and discuss, and to resist and succeed into the future.