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Global Transformations in Media and Communication Research
Networks, Movements and

Technopolitics in Latin America
Critical Analysis and Current Challenges
Edited by Francisco Sierra Caballero

and Tommaso Gravante
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Francisco Sierra Caballero
Tommaso Gravante
Editors
Networks, Movements
and Technopolitics
in Latin America
Editors
Francisco Sierra Caballero Tommaso Gravante
University of Seville Universidad Nacional Autónoma de
Seville, Spain México
Mexico City, Mexico
Global Transformations in Media and Communication Research – A Palgrave

and IAMCR Series
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Foreword—The Era of the Both
It is my pleasure and honor to welcome you, reader of Networks,

Movements & Technopolitics in Latin America to these first pages of
the book. I can only tempt you to continue reading this book, in any
way you deem fit, as I believe that it will be a pleasant and enriching
experience.
I believe this book raises a set of significant questions about our con-
temporary world, and stimulates an in-depth reflection about participa-
tion, activism, social movements and democracy. One issue, I believe,
merits our special attention. This is the paradox of the growing levels
of participation in a variety of societal fields and the decreasing levels of
control over the levers of societal power. Often, this paradox is mediated
and “solved” through a defense (or a critique) of either utopian or dys-
topian perspectives, where this dys/utopianism is sometimes related to
communication technologies, or in other cases to citizen or civil society
powers, or to state or company powers. I believe we need to heed this
paradox much more as a paradox, as a seemingly contradictory statement.
We need to take both components of the paradox serious, acknowledge
that there is a history of coexistence combined with a present-day inten-
sification, and scrutinize how they dynamically and contingently relate to
each other. In other words, we need to gain a better understanding of
how we now live in the era of the both.
If we apply a Longue Durée approach (Braudel 1969) to the establish-
ment and growth of democracy, we can hardly deny that we have come a
long way. Of course, the history of our diverse democratization processes
v
vi Foreword—The Era of the Both
is characterized by continuities and discontinuities, dead-ends, contra-

dictions, and horrible regressions. But what Mouffe (2000: 1–2) called
the “democratic revolution” “led to the disappearance of a power that
was embodied in the person of the prince and tied to a transcendental
authority. A new kind of institution of the social was hereby inaugurated
in which power became ‘an empty place’.” Even if we zoom in on the
twentieth and twenty-first century, it is hard not to see the differences
with the past. It is equally hard to ignore that the history of more than
200 years of democratic revolution has brought us more participation, in
a variety of ways and levels.
Of course, it makes sense to clarify what I mean with (more) partici-
pation, as this is a slippery notion—an empty signifier—given meaning
by two structurally different and competing approaches (see Carpentier
2016, for a more detailed discussion). What I have labeled the socio-
logical approach defines participation as taking part in particular social
processes, which is a very open and broad perspective, that tends to con-
flate interaction and participation. We find this approach, for instance,
in the field of cultural participation, where a museum visit is defined as a
form of participation. The second approach towards participation—the
political studies approach—uses a more restrictive perspective, defining
participation as a process of power-sharing in particular decision-making
processes. Interaction, however socially and politically relevant it is, then
becomes distinguishable from participation, allowing for a more fine-
grained analysis of participation. To return to my museum visit: In the
political studies approach, attending a museum is seen as a form of art
access, allowing for interaction with cultural artefacts and other texts, a
particular cultural institution, and other visitors. But, as the museum visit
does not allow a visitor to co-decide on the creation, or display, of these
cultural artefacts, or on the policies of that cultural institution, it is not a
form of participation. This second approach, which is also the one I pre-
fer, allows us to notice and validate practices that do allow for (arts) par-
ticipation, as they have been, for instance, developed by the community
arts movement (Binns 1991; De Bruyne and Gielen 2011). Somehow,
the work of Boal (1979) also comes to mind…
Even if we take the second approach as our guide, with its more
narrow definition of participation as power-sharing, we still have to
acknowledge that the democratic revolution has brought more par-
ticipation, even though a more qualified and careful analysis becomes
Foreword—The Era of the Both vii
necessary. Here I want to refer to Jenkins’s words: “This is in part why

I see participation more and more in relational rather than absolute
terms—a matter of degree rather than of difference. So yes, all culture
is in some sense participatory, but the more hierarchical a culture is,
the less participatory it becomes. I am today more likely to talk about
a shift towards ‘a more participatory culture’.” (Jenkins in Jenkins, Ito
and boyd 2015: 22) If we look at the histories of media participation
(Ekström, et al. 2011; Carpentier and Dahlgren 2014), we can identify
several key moments where citizens’ communication rights have been
structurally strengthened, discursively (e.g., the development of the con-
cept of communication rights in the first place) and materially (by the
increased availability of communication technologies).
Of course, this evolution towards more participation has not remained
restricted to the media field. Also the relationships between citizens and
their political leaders, between employees and employers, and, more in
general, between ordinary people and the fluid assemblage of societal
elites, has changed over the past decades, sometimes in societal fields that
would not immediately come to mind. Take, for instance, the domain
of health, where patients have become more empowered in the past
decades, with the development of patient rights and other legal frame-
works (e.g., euthanasia laws) as a result. If we aggregate these participa-
tory practices across the many different societal fields in which they are
located, we can find support for the idea that power has become more
decentralized, and that this decentralization is sometimes accepted, and
even institutionalized, and in other cases can be wrestled from societal
elites by a combination of tactics, struggles, resistances, disobediences,
and activisms.
Of course, I do not want to imply that these changes have led to
societies that are characterized by omnipresent power balances and
equalities, where leadership, expertise and ownership have become fully
democratized, where difference is acknowledged and respected, with-
out it resulting in the capacity to dominate others. Full participation,
as Pateman (1970: 71) labeled it, or maximalist participation as I pre-
fer to call it, has not been achieved on a large scale, even though there
are some maximalist participatory Temporary Autonomous Zones (Bey
1985) throughout the world. I also do not want to imply that the pre-
sent state of democracy, with its minimalist levels of participation, has
not been paid dearly, with the pain, blood and tears of the generations
that came before us, and is still costing contemporary generations a lot in
viii Foreword—The Era of the Both
order to maintain the current participatory intensities. And finally, I also

do not want to claim that the democratic revolution is a merely linear
historical process, that will necessarily and unabatingly continue through-
out time, eventually bringing us at the gates of a participatory heaven.
Whatever has been gained, can still be lost. To use Enwezor et al.’s
(2002) words: Democracy is unrealized, it is an horizon that is never
reached, and that serves a crucial purpose as ideological reference point.
But there is also no guarantee that we will continue heading towards this
horizon, as we might have set out on a course towards a much darker
future.
This darker side merits our attention, also because it is not situated
in a distant future. Arguably, the (stronger) presence of minimalist par-
ticipation coexists—in the era of the both—with a series of undemo-
cratic forces, that centralize power. Here we should keep in mind that
war and violence are opposites of democracy. Some of the armed con-
flicts, and the structural violence they encompass, have caused intense
suffering, but also structural disruptions of democratic practices. Armed
conflicts, such as the war in Afghanistan, the civil wars in Iraq and Syria,
and the drug war in Mexico—to mention only the most bloody armed
conflicts of today—create large enclaves where democracy is suspended,
and where participation ceases to be a prime concern, as it is replaced by
mere survival. But these undemocratic forces do not remain contained to
the enclaves that I have just mentioned (and to the many other medium-
intensity conflicts, for instance, on the African continent). Not only are
many countries from the northern hemisphere military involved in these
armed conflicts, these conflicts are also imported and transported to
other parts of the world, where the involved states (in the northern hem-
isphere), their populations, and foreign fighters (often labeled terrorists)
become involved in a downward spiral of discrimination, oppression,
violence, destruction, and death. One component of this process is cap-
tured by Agamben’s (2003) argumentation that we are living in the state
of exception, where civil and human rights are curtailed in the name of
security. Another component is the rise and mainstreaming of antago-
nistic xenophobic, racist, and nationalist ideologies in democratic states,
combined with calls for strong leadership, that pave the way for populist
and authoritarian regimes, for the legitimation of corruption and other
forms of unethical behavior, and for the politics of fear (see, e.g., Wodak
2015).
Foreword—The Era of the Both ix
This also has theoretical consequences for our thinking about par-
ticipation, because it raises questions about the instrumentalization
of participation and the hijacking of participatory techniques by non-
participatory forces. How to handle situations where authoritarian and
intrinsically undemocratic leaders use participatory tools to manufacture
consent—a concept I borrow from Herman and Chomsky (1988)—
or to mobilize populations for undemocratic purposes? What to think
about radical right-wing groups (Caiani and Parenti 2013) that use the
online to live out their nationalist and racist fantasies in ways that make
use of participatory techniques, at least accessible to the members of
these groups, and to those who are ideologically aligned with them? As
argued elsewhere (Carpentier 2017: 96), this brings us to the distinc-
tion between procedural and substantive participation, which is inspired
by the difference between procedural and substantive democracy, or
between “rule-centered and outcome-centered conceptions of democ-
racy” (Shapiro 1996: 123). In parallel with these concepts, we can
distinguish between procedural and substantive participation, where pro-
cedural participation refers to the mere use of participatory techniques,
while substantive participation refers to the necessary embedding of
these participatory techniques in the core values of democracy, especially
those of human rights and (respect for) societal diversity.
If we return to the role of communication technologies in the era of
the both, we have to acknowledge that they are an integrative part of the
two constitutive components of this era of the both. This book, with its
ambition to move beyond the online/offline divide and to avoid the trap
of digital utopianism, which artificially separates the “virtual” from the
“real,” allows us to reflect better about how communication technolo-
gies, more than before, span the both. Surveillance technologies coexist
with sousveillance technologies, black propaganda with dialogical com-
munication, media legitimations of war and violence with pacifist mes-
sages, celebrations of bigotry with respect for diversity, sealed-off media
empires with maximalist participatory media platforms, spirals of silence
with practices of voice, symbolic annihilations with the politics of pres-
ence, media-induced amnesia with deep-rooted historical awareness, the
defense of the status-quo with the loud propagation that another world
is possible.
This leaves us with two final questions: What is the role of the criti-
cal intellectual in the era of the both, and can we avoid the scale being
(further) tipped into (what I consider to be the) wrong direction? The
x Foreword—The Era of the Both
era of the both is characterized by increasing levels of diversity, but this

diversity also includes the uncanny combination of the democratic and
the undemocratic in one glocal assemblage. Which tactics should be
deployed by those actors who are committed to what Mouffe (1988:
42) has called the “deepen[ing of ] the democratic revolution” and what
Giddens (1994: 113) labeled the “democratisation of democracy?”
These are questions that merit more attention than what I accord them
here. But to give a fraction of an answer: I would like to argue that there is
a strong need for the deployment of a double tactic, or better, two sets of
tactics. One set of tactics consists out of the radically critical and radically
contextualized analyses of the current problematic state of representative
liberal democracy—one interesting example is Van Reybrouck’s (2016)
critique of elections, but many others exist, and many more are needed—
and the equally problematic state of the capitalist economies entangled
with our representative liberal democracies. The second set of tactics is
more difficult to put into practice, as it is a more generative approach,
grounded in the critiques that result from the first set of tactics. This sec-
ond set of tactics consists out of the further development of a participa-
tory-democratic ideology. This ideology needs to articulate a participatory
communicational ethics, a strong commitment to agonism—or in other
words, to the democratic taming of conflict without denying it—and clear
articulations of democratic leadership, democratic ownership, and demo-
cratic expertise (see Carpentier 2017), among many other elements.
In an intellectual landscape where critical intellectuals are dispersed
throughout many regions, institutions, academic disciplines, and other
frameworks of intelligibility, collaboration becomes a requirement. For that
reason, I would argue that this double tactic has to be grounded in a global
and multivoiced project that uses the strategy of modularity, where sub-net-
works of intellectuals collaborate within their disciplines and fields, in order
to build ideological modules grounded in their expertise, in combination
with interdisciplinary articulatory practices that connect and integrate these
different modules into one counter-hegemonic participatory-democratic
project (see Carpentier 2014 for a more developed argument). This book,
with its broad geographical span, with its commitment to intercontinental
dialogue and with its search for ways to deepen democracy and to intensify
contemporary participatory levels, is, in my very humble opinion, one of
the contributions towards the establishment of this new republic of letters.
Nico Carpentier
Foreword—The Era of the Both xi
References
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Press.
Bey, Hakim. (1985). T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological
Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism. Brooklyn: Autonomedia.
Binns, Vivienne (Ed.). (1991). Community and the Arts. History, Theory,
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Braudel, Fernand. (1969). Écrits sur l’Histoire. Paris: Flammarion.
Caiani, Manuela, Parenti, Linda. (2013). European and American Extreme Right
Groups and the Internet. Farnham: Ashgate.
Carpentier, Nico. (2014). A call to arms. An essay on the role of the intellec-
tual and the need for producing new imaginaries, Javnost–The Public, 21(3),
77–92.
Carpentier, Nico. (2016). Beyond the ladder of participation: An analytical
toolkit for the critical analysis of participatory media processes, Javnost–The
Public, 23(1), 70–88.
Carpentier, Nico. (2017). The discursive-material knot: Cyprus in conflict and
community media participation. New York: Peter Lang.
Carpentier, Nico & Dahlgren, Peter (Eds.). (2014). Histories of media(ted) par-
ticipation, CM, Communication Management Quarterly, 30.
De Bruyne, Paul & Gielen, Pascal (Eds.). (2011). Community art: The politics of
trespassing. Amsterdam: Valiz.
Ekström, Anders, Jülich, Solveig, Lundgren, Frans, Wisselgren, Per (eds.) (2011)
History of participatory media. Politics and publics. New York: Routledge.
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Sarat, Nash, Mark, Zaya, Octavio (Eds.). (2002). Democracy unrealized:
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Herman, Edward S., Chomsky, Noam. (1988). Manufacturing consent: The polit-
ical economy of the mass media. New York: Pantheon Books.
Jenkins, Henry, Ito, Mizuko, boyd, danah. (2015). Participatory culture in
a networked era: A conversation on youth, learning, commerce, and politics.
Chichester: John Wiley and Sons.
Mouffe, Chantal. (1988). Radical democracy: Modern or postmodern, Andrew
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xii Foreword—The Era of the Both
Shapiro, Ian. (1996). Democracy’s place. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Van Reybrouck, David. (2016). Against elections: The case for democracy.
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Wodak, Ruth. (2015). The politics of fear: What right-wing populist dis-
courses mean. London: Sage.
Nico Carpentier is Professor in Media and Communication Studies

at the Department of Informatics and Media of Uppsala University. In
addition, he holds two part-time positions, those of Associate Professor
at the Communication Studies Department of the Vrije Universiteit
Brussel (VUB—Free University of Brussels) and Docent at Charles
University in Prague. Moreover, he is a Research Fellow at the Cyprus
University of Technology and Loughborough University. His most
recent book is The Discursive-Material Knot: Cyprus in Conflict and
Community Media Participation, published by Peter Lang in 2017.
Contents
1 Introduction 1
Francisco Sierra Caballero and Tommaso Gravante
Part I Technopolitics: A Theoretical Framework
2 Digital Media Practices and Social Movements.

A Theoretical Framework from Latin America 17
3 Tracing the Roots of Technopolitics: Towards

a North-South Dialogue 43
Emiliano Treré and Alejandro Barranquero Carretero
4 E-Democracy. Ideal vs Real, Exclusion vs Inclusion 65

Andrea Ricci and Jan Servaes
5 Technopolitics in the Age of Big Data 95

Stefania Milan and Miren Gutierrez
xiii
xiv Contents
Part II Dissident Technopolitics Practices in Latin America:

6 The Brazilian Protest Wave and Digital Media: Issues

and Consequences of the “Jornadas de Junho”
and Dilma Rousseff’s Impeachment Process 113
Nina Santos
7 Social Networks, Cyberdemocracy and Social Conflict

in Colombia 133
Elias Said-Hung and David Luquetta-Cediel
8 Communication in Movement and Techno-Political

Media Networks: the case of Mexico 147
César Augusto Rodríguez Cano
9 #CompartirNoEsDelito: Creating Counter-Hegemonic

Spaces Online for Alternative Production and
Dissemination of Scientific Knowledge 177
Jean-Marie Chenou and Rodulfo Armando
Castiblanco Carrasco
10 #OcupaEscola: Media Activism and the Movement

for Public Education in Brazil 199
Ana Lúcia Nunes de Sousa and Marcela Canavarro
Index 221
Editors and Contributors
About the Editors
Francisco Sierra Caballero is Senior Researcher and Professor of

Communication Theory from the Department of Journalism at the
University of Seville, Spain. He is also Director of the Interdisciplinary
Research Group on Communication, Politics and Social Change
(www.compoliticas.org) and Editor of the Journal of Studies for Social
Development of Communication (REDES.COM) (www.revista-redes.
com). He is President of the Latin Union of Political Economy of
Information, Communication and Culture (www.ulepicc.org). He has
written over 20 books and more than 50 scientific articles in journals of
impact. Furthermore, he has been professor at prestigious universities
and research centers in Europe and Latin America.
Tommaso Gravante is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for
Interdisciplinary Research in the Sciences and Humanities (CEIICH),
National Autonomous University of Mexico. More generally, his work
explores the role of emotions in social movement and protest, and col-
lective action and social change. Tommaso is author of Cuando la gente
toma la palabra. Medios digitales y cambio social en la insurgencia de
Oaxaca (CIESPAL, 2016).
xv
xvi Editors and Contributors
Contributors
Alejandro Barranquero Carretero is Assistant professor at the

Department of Journalism and Audiovisual Communication in
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid where he teaches research method-
ologies, theory, and history of communication. His research lays at the
intersection of communication, citizenship and social change, includ-
ing insights to communication for social change, community and citi-
zen media, communication strategies by NGOs and social movements,
and critical perspectives on media literacy. He is the president of the
Research Association in Community, Alternative and Participatory
Communication-RICCAP (www.riccap.org) and permanent member
of the research group Dialectic Mediation of Social Communication
(MDCS) at Universidad Complutense de Madrid (www.ucm.es/mdcs).
Marcela Canavarro is Journalist, media-activist and Ph.D. candidate in
Digital Media (University of Porto). She has a Master in Communication
& Culture (UFRJ) with expertise in Technologies of Communication.
She researches information diffusion on social networks for politi-
cal mobilization, with focus on the so-called Journeys of June (Brazil,
2013). In this research, she crosses digital and traditional methods such
as network analysis, computational processing of Facebook data and
questionnaires. She is also part of the research group Communication
Networks & Social Change at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute
(IN3) at Universitat Obierta de Catalunya (UOC) and collaborates with
Inesc-Tec (U.Porto).
César Augusto Rodríguez Cano is Professor at the Department of
Communication and Design, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana uni-
dad Cuajimalpa in Mexico City, and holds a Ph.D. in Social and Political
Sciences from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. He was
a Postdoctoral Researcher at Universidad Iberoamericana and a Visiting
Graduate Researcher at University of California Los Angeles. His
research has focussed mainly in studying political culture on social media,
cyberactivism, new media ecology, and digital methods with special inter-
est in Social Network Analysis.
Nico Carpentier is Professor in Media and Communication Studies
at the Department of Informatics and Media of Uppsala University. In
addition, he holds two part-time positions, those of Associate Professor
Editors and Contributors xvii
at the Communication Studies Department of the Vrije Universiteit

Brussel (VUB—Free University of Brussels) and Docent at Charles
University in Prague. Moreover, he is a Research Fellow at the Cyprus
University of Technology and Loughborough University. His most
recent book is The Discursive-Material Knot: Cyprus in Conflict and
Community Media Participation, published by Peter Lang in 2017.
Dr. Rodulfo Armando Castiblanco Carrasco is an independ-
ent researcher and occasional professor at the Social Sciences at the
Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas, Bogotá, Colombia. He
obtained his doctoral degree in social anthropology from University of
los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia. His research interests are in the fields of
digital anthropology, hacktivism, appropriation of technology in global
south, education, and pedagogy.
David Luquetta-Cediel, Ph.D. Anthropologist, Doctor of Social
Sciences. Principal investigator in several projects with regional and
national impact. He is currently a full-time teaching researcher in the
Social Communication—Journalism Programme of the Autonomous
University of the Caribbean and the leader of the communication and
regional research group in the same department.
Dr. Jean-Marie Chenou is an Assistant Professor at the Department of
Political Science at the University of los Andes, Bogotá Colombia and a
member of the Centre for International Studies. He obtained his Ph.D.
in Political Science from the University of Lausanne. He is specializing in
Internet governance and the regulation of digital markets.
Ana Lucia Nunes de Sousa is a Ph.D. student in communication and
journalism at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain)/Federal
University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), and is a CAPES (Brazil) scholarship
student. She also has a degree in social communication, a postgraduate
degree in hypermedia and in creative documentary, as well as a Master’s in
communication and culture. Her research and professional experience focus
on community media, audio-visual, the Internet and social movements.
Miren Gutierrez (@gutierrezmiren) is a Professor of Communication
and Director of the postgraduate program “Data Analysis, Research
and Communication” at the University of Deusto, Spain. She is also a
Research Associate at the Overseas Development Institute of London,
where she develops data-based research projects around development
xviii Editors and Contributors
issues, and at DATACTIVE of Amsterdam. She is also a trainer at the

Thomson Reuters Foundation. Her work explores how people take
action, mobilize and organize via software and data. She holds a Ph.D. in
Communication Sciences of the University of Deusto.
Stefania Milan (stefaniamilan.net) is Associate Professor of New
Media at the University of Amsterdam, and Associate Professor (II) of
Media Innovation at the University of Oslo. She is also the Principal
Investigator of the DATACTIVE project (StG-2014_639379), explor-
ing the evolution of citizenship and participation vis-à-vis datafication
and massive data collection (data-activism.net). More generally, her work
explores the intersection of digital technology, governance and activ-
ism. She holds a Ph.D. in political and social sciences of the European
University Institute. Stefania is the author of Social Movements and
Their Technologies: Wiring Social Change (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013),
and coauthor of Media/Society (Sage, 2011).
Andrea Ricci holds a Master’s degrees in European Studies from the
College of Europe and a Ph.D. on Information and Communication
Sciences from ULB in Brussels. His professional and academic interests are
related to the role of communication and (open and secret source) intel-
ligence in fields like crisis management, conflict analysis, risk analysis, early
warning, scenario analysis, political mobilization, terrorism, and propaganda.
Elias Said-Hung, Ph.D. Researcher, consultant and Scrum Master
Consultant with over 10 years professional experience in social media,
digital media and ICT in education. Currently a Lecturer in the
Education Faculty of the International University and a consultant at
Con-Tacto Humano.
Nina Santos is a Ph.D. candidate in Communication at Université
Panthéon-Assas. She has a Master in Communication and Contemporary
Cultures, at Universidade Federal da Bahia (Brazil) and a Specialization
in Communication and Politics, at the same university. Also has been
working and researching in the field of political communication,
e-democracy, political campaigns, social media marketing, social media
monitoring since 2008.
Jan Servaes, Ph.D. is Editor-in-Chief of the Elsevier journal “Telematics
and Informatics: An Interdisciplinary Journal on the Social Impacts
of New Technologies” (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/tele), and
Editor of the Lexington Book Series “Communication, Globalization
Editors and Contributors xix
and Cultural Identity” (https://rowman.com/Action/SERIES/LEX/

LEXCGC), and the Springer Book Series “Communication, Culture
and Change in Asia” (http://www.springer.com/series/13565). Servaes
has taught International Communication and Communication for
Social Change in Australia, Belgium, China, Hong Kong, the USA, The
Netherlands, and Thailand, in addition to several teaching stints at about
120 universities in 55 countries. Servaes has undertaken research, devel-
opment, and advisory work around the world and is the author of jour-
nal articles and books on such topics as international and development
communication; ICT and media policies; intercultural communication;
participation and social change; and human rights and conflict manage-
ment. He is known for his “multiplicity paradigm” in “Communication
for Development. One World, Multiple Cultures” (1999).
Emiliano Treré is Lecturer at Cardiff’s School of Journalism, Media
and Cultural Studies (UK), and Research Fellow at the Center of Social
Movements Studies of the Scuola Normale Superiore (Italy). He has
published extensively on the challenges and the myths of media tech-
nologies for social movements and political parties. He is coeditor of
“Social Media and Protest Identities” (Information, Communication &
Society, 2015), “Latin American Struggles & Digital Media Resistance”
(International Journal of Communication, 2015), and “From
Global Justice to Occupy and Podemos: Mapping Three Stages of
Contemporary Activism” (tripleC, 2017). His book is forthcoming with
the Routledge Studies in Radical History and Politics.
List of Figures
Fig. 8.1 Occupy Wall St. Page Like Network, elaborated

by the author 156
Fig. 8.2 #YoSoy132 Page Like Network, elaborated
by the author 157
Fig. 8.3 Spanish Revolution Page Like Network, elaborated
by the author 158
Fig. 8.4 Mídia Ninja Page Like Network, elaborated by the author 159
Fig. 8.5 #YoSoy132 Sample Mega-Network, elaborated by author 161
Fig. 8.6 #YoSoy132 Mega-Network, elaborated by author 163
Fig. 8.7 Centro Prodh Mega-Network, elaborated by author 164
Fig. 8.8 #YoSoy132 Mega-Network by Category, elaborated
by the author 166
Fig. 8.9 Centro Prodh Mega-Network by Category, elaborated
by the author 167
Fig. 9.1 Media coverage of Diego’s case, created by the authors 178
Fig. 9.2 Comparison of sentencing for different crimes.
This example compares sentencing for smuggling with
the sharing of knowledge on the internet, created
by authors 185
Fig. 9.3 Comparison of sentencing for different crimes.
This example compares sentencing for smuggling with
the sharing of knowledge on the internet, created
by authors 185
Fig. 9.4 Snapshot of the Twitter hashtag #CompartirNoEsDelito
(August 2016) and identification of some key players,
created by authors 186
xxi
xxii List of Figures
Fig. 9.5 The important role of the Electronic Frontier Foundation

in the global campaign (Visualisation of English language
web pages mentioning Diego’s case that link to the EFF.),
created by authors 188
Fig. 9.6 Comparison between the EFF and FK campaigns, created
by authors 189
Fig. 10.1 1—WUNC display on Hub pages’ top-50 videos 211
Fig. 10.2 2—WUNC display on Satellite pages’ top-50 videos 211
Fig. 10.3 Hub pages show high indegree. This graph considers
the 112 nodes that constitute the giant component
of the 1-degree network. That means 68.7% of the total
network (nodes size = indegree; nodes colors
manually = hub pages in black and others pages in gray) 213
Fig. 10.4 Connectedness and Unity: hub pages play a relevant role
in linking nodes at the 2-degree network’s giant component,
which gathers 476 nodes (93.5% of the total network).
Graph: directed network; gephi layout = Force Atlas 2;
size nodes = indegree; nodes colors = strongly-connected
ID (black represents the most connected nodes while
lighter grey indicates the least connected nodes in the giant
component). Data collected in October, 21, 2016 214
Fig. 10.5 Giant component’s most cohesive core (2-degree network).
Network cohesiveness: some of the hub pages appear
amongst the 51 nodes (10% of the total network) left
in the giant component, when the highest k-core possible
before the network completely disappears is applied
(k-core = 9). Data collected in October, 21, 2016 216
Fig. 10.6 O Mal Educado’s 3-degree ego sub-network (103 nodes)
gathers 63.2% of the total 1-degree network (103 nodes)
and 87% of all links, showing its relevance for information
diffusion 217
List of Tables
Table 8.1 #YoSoy132 Mega-Network pages, elaborated by author 162

Table 8.2 Centro Prodh Mega-Network’s communities and topics,
elaborated by the author 168
Table 10.1 Satellite pages’ and Hub pages’ videos on Facebook
(summary) 202
Table 10.2 Data sets attributes/Facebook public pages data retrieved
with Netvizz 203
xxiii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
All knowledge is traversed by social construction and mediation.

Research agendas, together with the basic methods and epistemologies
that shape knowledge regarding society and nature, are as a rule condi-
tioned by the potential awareness and historical development of produc-
tive forces. Yet, in some cases, these conditioning factors are relative, as
can be observed for instance in communicology. Two illustrative exam-
ples of this logic are the Internet galaxy and technopolitics. Although
despite living in the era of intelligent multitudes, studies in this regard
are still rather thin on the ground.
Scientific project funding policies that sideline studies based on a critical
vision of the social appropriation and use of digital networks, from the point
of view of their impact on processes of social empowerment and change,
F. Sierra Caballero
Departament of Journalism I, Universidad de Sevilla, Office D7, Americo
Vespucio s/n Isla de la Cartuja, 41092 Seville, Andalusia, Spain
e-mail: fcompoliticas@gmail.com
T. Gravante (*)
Center for Interdisciplinary Research in the Sciences and Humanities
(CEIICH), National Autonomous University of Mexico, Torre II de
Humanidades, 6º piso, Circuito Interior, Ciudad Universitaria, Delegación
Coyoacan, 4510 Ciudad de México, Ciudad de México, Mexico
e-mail: t.gravante@gmail.com
© The Author(s) 2018 1

F.S. Caballero and T. Gravante (eds.), Networks, Movements and Technopolitics in
Latin America, Global Transformations in Media and Communication Research -
A Palgrave and IAMCR Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65560-4_1
2 F. SIERRA CABALLERO AND T. GRAVANTE
set a research agenda that is paradoxically unproductive or, at the very least,
lacking in sociological imagination. This is especially the case when rethink-
ing the mediations that those using the digital ecosystem experience nowa-
days, at a moment when, as in the case of Latin America, many political
experiences and processes are taking place.
However, there is a memory of the practices and a theory and
research responsive to those experiences of cultural subversion and
resistance which, in due course, would fuel the paradigm of the phi-
losophy of liberation. To give just one example from a critical his-
torical approach, it is worth recalling the dialogue and innovation
that Latin America experienced throughout the 1960s and 1970s
with alternative communication, which recognizes the diversity of
voices and actors, gives voice to the normally voiceless and, thanks
to its praxeological vision, respects mediation as a constituted and
constituent process of popular cultures. The inspiration of new per-
spectives and productive knowhow on the leading edge of knowledge
regarding the appropriation and use of new technologies for local
development, fostered by the pioneers in Latin American communi-
cation research, articulated—in line with the demands of subaltern
collectives and ancestral wisdom in the development of communitar-
ian and democratic forms of inserting cultural representation systems
and devices—transformation processes that nowadays, of course, have
persisted in the contemporary forms of intervention and social revi-
talization of the so-called “technopolitics”. Although the aim of this
introduction is not to offer a history of participatory communication
that illustrates and gives meaning to modern-day cyberactivism, it is
nonetheless worth noting the importance that heterodox and creative
interpretations, which endeavored to follow other paths and courses
denied, by omission or will to power, by communication as domina-
tion, have had in Latin America.
From this viewpoint, community communication is the autonomous
field of production that articulates voices for an emancipatory purpose
as a counter-hegemonic opportunity for social change, in resistance to
the antagonistic critique based on group or collective organization, unity
and empowerment. By the same token, technopolitics should be under-
stood—in the logical framework of this book—as a transformative and
decentralizing mediation grounded in the democracy of the code as a
pooled construction of possible reality on the basis of digital culture and
collective co-creation.
1 INTRODUCTION 3
Understanding Technopolitical Ecologies: Main

Perspectives and Key Lessons
The digital revolution has modified and redesigned conceptually the
conventional media system by shaping new forms of production and
organization of information mediation. The mutations that introduce the
“Internet galaxy” into the new social morphology are particularly visible
in the perturbations and interruptions of social activity which affect cul-
ture. These reticular and centrifugal transformations of the new cultural
ecology go a long way to enabling the political subject of post-modernity
to permeate reality itself, customize the world, appropriate possible and
real worlds of interaction with his or her imagination, and design new
rationales of local participation and development.
The basis of participatory democracy harnessing new information
technologies now recognizes the existence of a new information eco-
system that articulates what Oskar Negt calls the “oppositional pub-
lic space” (Negt 2007). In the new media culture, the communication
process has broken free from the time/space coordinates described by
Descartes at the dawn of modernity, with broadened forms of experi-
ence that transcend the local horizon of events. Furthermore, the spa-
tialization of time in the Web anticipates a new conceptualization of the
“local”. In this regard, Castells talks about a new spatial logic based on
information flows versus the logic of social organization rooted in the
history of immediate localities and territories. The new model of urban
development, the space of immaterial flows of the organization of social
practices, disassociates the experience of the physical space by making
both virtual simultaneousness and fragmented timeless space possible.
Such transformations become particularly evident in, and have an espe-
cially strong impact on, urban planning and particularly citizen participa-
tion and political deliberation.
The cyberspace introduces new habits and relationships as regards the
conventional forms of social ties, in addition to modern practices and
symbolic representations. As Echevarría has rightly pointed out, although
the technical issues relating to the access to information on the Internet,
as well as to its circulation and safe and rapid transmission, are impor-
tant, reflecting on the Web as a new civic space is a far more pressing
matter. The shaping of a new telepolis is, in this respect, the main chal-
lenge that the communication research agenda should meet. The breach
of internal and external limits of cities and territories, the integration
and confusion of the public and private spheres, traditionally conceived

individually in discourse and in modern political communication, not
only promotes new cultural trends of organization and human sociality,
but also the creation of a new space of identity and political participa-
tion through different electronic forms of interaction and information
exchange.
The culture of surfing, of communication crisis, of migrations and
hybrid and decentralized cultural mediations, both polyvalent and
diverse, has transgressed the cultural laws of proxemics, of territory
and frontiers, of the ways of identifying the self and the other, of the
cosmopolitan and of the local, to establish gradually, and once and for
all, a transversal and constructive logic—autonomous, if you will—of
the production of cultural differences. And this transgression has come
about in terms of a new form of space/time organization of experience,
of feeling and of meaning, which has necessarily taken interculturality—
namely, acknowledgement of the other, of otherness as identity—and
the assumption of a culture of dialogue as its guiding principles. This
involves, of course, an unprecedented cultural shift that highlights col-
lective memory. Nowadays, the Web is becoming the space or environ-
ment/memory of popular culture. But, as Héctor Schmucler cautioned,
the escape velocity poses a problem between memory and communica-
tion insofar as they are characterized by contrasting elements: instan-
taneousness, simultaneousness and on the brink, the timelessness of
communication versus the duration, persistence and slowness of memory.
To dwell upon the contribution made by NTIC to memory and
democracy requires, first and foremost, modifying analytic strategies,
questioning research methods and techniques, integrating disciplines
and study prospects, and shifting the perspective in a productive and
ecological sense. The complex contexts of cyberspace and technological
networks call for reflexive critical research and a new theoretical frame-
work capable of describing and understanding the technical conditions
of the post-modern electronic world through an endogenous and gen-
erative approach to the complex technoworld of the new media, since
only a second-order observation will allow us to design new mediation
processes.
In this context, more than a play on words, the metaphor of the web
describes an imaginary process that attempts to convert social actors
into dream weavers, architects of the material, symbolic and sociopo-
litical processes of the city. Hence the relevance, as has already been
1 INTRODUCTION 5
reasoned, of deploying a generative research culture that contributes to

develop collective appropriation processes of communication technolo-
gies and knowledge, thus broadening information culture by means of
a dialogic, emancipating and productive communication conception of
cyberculture.
Along these lines, the media activism propounded by the new tech-
nopolitics with cyberspace culture shares a complex idea of communica-
tion, according to which the scope of telematic networks, the promotion
of autonomous intervention groups and the design of community pro-
jects on the basis of the language of links constitute the pillars of pro-
ductive cooperation of the new social contract, as well as a platform for
constructing democratic local communication by multiplying three dis-
tinctive strategies of alternative communication: firstly, a collective and
liberating reflection on communication practices; secondly, a dialogic
culture of consensus-building; and lastly recognizing multiplicity and
difference.
Conceived as a strategic dimension for rebuilding cities and revitaliz-
ing citizenship and governability, the application of new technologies to
the participatory democracy implicit in the processes of collective mobili-
zation and action of contemporary technopolitics opens up new spaces of
coexistence. These are created by social networks in city neighborhoods
and districts in order to define a new framework of social relations which,
from an ecological perspective, makes an oppositional public space pos-
sible as a complex participatory context pluralistically built in recogni-
tion of the multiples voices and actors comprising it. This would make it
possible to recover the word, the communication practices established by
the citizens themselves, so as to define a new development model based
on their self-assurance to express their opinions, put forward proposals
and reach agreements; in short, to transform their participation in politi-
cal life through a commitment to the community and social harmony.
According to this philosophy, the innovation and social creativity poli-
cies relating to the new media underscore the relevance of participatory
action research as a program of autonomous projects in which commu-
nication is directly and transversally linked to local development in all its
phases, endeavoring at all times to identify the possibilities for co-deter-
mination, for outreach and social change and for defining and stating
the desire for a policy of self-governance, of autonomy in the global net-
work. This can be seen in the Mexican, Brazilian and Colombian prac-
tices and processes presented in this book.
In Latin America, the processes of cultural hybridization and of reor-

ganizing the symbolic universe, the product of a market whose globaliz-
ing progression is relentless, has generated out of necessity new forms
of establishing cultural identities by fragmenting group discourses in the
intersection between the massive, the cultured, and the popular. Hence,
the need to understand the meaning of that space, or world of life, in
which new social movements perceive that there is a need to take action
against forms of social control deriving from an exacerbated techno-
logical rationalization, above all taking into account that cultural iden-
tity is a crucial factor for understanding and cognitively controlling the
environment.
In this sense, participatory communication in mobilization processes
can, on the one hand, help social movements to build identity and gener-
ate differences and symbolic integration. On the other, dialogically speak-
ing, technopolitics can also enable networks to generate shared dialogues
and meaning between competing groups, since in this theoretical frame-
work social movements assume the configuration of the area, or social
network, in which a collective identity is built, negotiated or recomposed.
Accordingly, the new social movements can be defined as networks for
shaping meaning, generators of public spaces of management, of presen-
tation and recognition, and as self-made movements whose “significant
practices are imbued with affective values and can be expressed regardless
of the formal structure of society” (Ramírez 1996, p. 33).
In Latin America, the technopolitics of social movements strives to
guarantee the democratization of the social media in order to create a
space where subjects can exercise their rights and obligations, instead
of reward system between transmitters and audiences based on com-
mercial logic. Here, to participate means placing the main actors in the
communication circuit on an equal footing. Communication is under-
stood as the real relationship established between two or more people,
by virtue of which one involves the other or both participate together.
Communication presupposes participation, joint possession, sharing
with the other, making subjects a stakeholder in something. As Redondo
points out, “Communication cannot be defined without resorting to
the concept of participation which implies extending something to
another, all of which forms an integral part of communication. At the
risk of sounding idealistic, the term “participation” expresses a synthesis
of unity and duality in the communication process” (Redondo 1999, p.
185).
1 INTRODUCTION 7
If alternative communication can be defined in relation to the appro-

priation and use of the conventional media, whose perspective is subor-
dinating and counter-hegemonic, rather than alternative communication
in its restrictive sense, here it would be more appropriate to talk about an
alternative to communication. From this perspective, the democratiza-
tion process of communication that technopolitics proposes in the region
would, to paraphrase Alfaro, be committed to a new model of articula-
tion sustained by the capacity for dialogue, negotiation and exchange,
creating and legitimizing public spaces of shared social and community
interests for broadening and discussing new development horizons.
True enough, achieving a greater organizational potential would
directly lead neither to development nor to social transformations in
favor of a better territorial balance. However, the self-organization of
social movements in networks, the construction of institutions open to
the community fabric and, lastly, placing communication and culture at
the service of local promotion and development, are independent aspects
that establish, as a priori conditions, the possibilities of political, eco-
nomic and cultural autonomy at this level and which perceive new cul-
tural and subjective conditions in contemporary politics.
The development and consolidation of social movements represent,
as a matter of fact, an expansion of the citizenry’s personal and collec-
tive autonomy, transcending the delegation of objectives and functions
in favor of a participatory appropriation of public spaces from the experi-
enced to the conceived. This is achieved, without subordinating one level
to another, by means of dialectic integration in a higher level of social
awareness and responsibility of the joint activities that local institutions
pursue in the community setting.
The rejection of rigid hierarchies and the defense of direct democracy
within small, decentralized groups is in fact the essence and peculiarity
of technopolitics and the process of collective mobilization as networks
submerged in daily life. The defining characteristic of the functioning
of social movements is precisely their reticular articulation, since as a
result of cross-links at all levels the activities of each group and differ-
ent collectives develop jointly sharing similar objectives, given the late-
capitalist requirement of transversality. In this respect, social movements
can be considered as a “cross-linking of networks”, similar to a spring-
like object with multiple free-flowing and ambiguous frontiers, open
to change and the personal participation of subjects in the definition of
knowledge for action and collective functioning with other social groups.
In a way, any social movement is an internal and informal participatory

research-action mesh or network supported by the culture of the group
and the social promotion of its members as the main social change-mak-
ers. Thus, social movements foster awareness-raising in order to discover
their own possibilities and resources collectively, on the basis of virtual
tools, spaces and rationales of enunciation that make hyper-developed
technology possible.
With technopolitics, human groups and collectives can exchange
experiences and compare discourses and targets for action. Yet it is pos-
sible that collective experience and knowledge transfer never actually
occurs between them. As Ardoino remarks, the whole question is to
know whether the imaginary that praxis produces conjointly in and with
networks can lead to a ritual innovation of change and to the transforma-
tion of individual and collective imaginaries through intervention, since
access to the analysis of relations of production makes the social nuances
of domination more understandable—intellectually speaking—although
this does not guarantee in advance the transformation of the context
analyzed or the inter-group dialogue in pursuit of consensus. In this
regard, it should be noted that, historically, the experiences of alternative
or transformational communication have been formally and ideologically
(for discursive purposes) classified as an autonomous process of socially
designing all the possible and necessary mediations. It is the represen-
tational perspective that has prevailed, that of the content or ideology
of mediation and, despite its importance, to a lesser extent its logic or
structure. Hence, the failure of many participatory communication expe-
riences and projects in the region should come as no surprise.
In point of fact, a perspective all but restricted to an information concept
or imaginary of the processes involved in the construction of the public
sphere currently prevails in the analysis of the participatory social innova-
tion experiences of technopolitics. Thus, the concept of self-management
has been deformed and reduced by the state and capital to a regulatory
conception of domesticated social cooperation, conceiving the praxis of
subjects immersed in such dynamics as a mere process of delegated partici-
pation in which a few decide and others participate sporadically, needless to
say. Moreover, the concept of appropriation has been negatively suggested
as a practice against private ownership, as an antagonistic form of socializing
third-party assets converted into resources available to the community as a
whole. Both commonly accepted meanings have nothing to do, however,
1 INTRODUCTION 9
with the struggles and cultural fronts of resistance that exist, persist and
offer democratic alternatives to the instrumental rationality of the technop-
olitics of our time.
Notwithstanding the predominance of a sedentary reasoning in com-
municology incapable of suggesting other possible forms of social pro-
duction in mediations with old and new technologies, experiences of
social appropriation and self-management are still being understood, due
to the cognitive gaps, as chinks in the armor of liberal and state capi-
talism. The practical experiences of self-management promoted by activ-
ists, militants or specific political groups have frequently been observed
and analyzed, above all by scholars, forgetting, omitting, the small cracks
that each day break pre-established cultural codes and traditional power
relations that are often difficult to define from a revolutionary orthodox
perspective, when they have not been directly considered as irrelevant
objects of study in social communication.
From the point of view of the rationales inherent to digital culture,
now more than ever we are aware that it is necessary to define new
matrixes and our own way of thinking on the basis of a productive
approach capable of breaking with the binary and externalized rational-
ity of media activism as a mere process of appropriation, resistance and
political opportunity. In Latin America and the Caribbean, as with the
15-M movement in Spain, we have noted that there are different politi-
cal practices all but ignored by traditional leftwing parties and even more
so by scholarship, despite the knowledge that these types of practices
point to the emergence of another narrative and organizational model of
the common weal.
So, under the aegis of the COMPOLITICAS research group (www.
compoliticas.org), we have created the “Technopolitics, digital culture and
citizenship” working group (CLACSO) and the TECNOPOLITICAS
network of social thought and activism (http://www.tecnopoliticas.org/).
It is satisfying to see how these efforts are no longer isolated initiatives.
Political and social movements, such as some of the research groups and
authors included here, have become fully aware of this shift in the way
that part of a new generation of social activists talk about and do politics.
In other works, that mastery of technique (soundness) for emancipatory
purposes is possible, that there cannot be social change without coherence
(rigor) in the ways of informing and debating. And that any alternative
politics depends, in Gramscian terms, on a bit of democratic pedagogy.
The Performative Function of the Media

in Latin America
In Latin America, the digital era has been characterized by decades of

neoliberalism, marked by the dismantling of public infrastructures and
the extraction of common assets in favor of national and transnational
corporate interests. In media policy, this has been reflected in three main
aspects. Firstly, the dominance of the private sector and the control of
audiovisual media by the main transnational telecommunications opera-
tors have led to a lack of channels for public visibility and representation.
The media landscape this has produced is unfavorable (or barely favora-
ble) to the population’s interests and the opening of channels for pub-
lic dialogue. Secondly, thanks to the wide-reaching communication for
development experiences built up in the region since the 1970s, citizens
have engaged with social movements, rich in experiences, commitments
and reflections. So, empowerment processes—ranging from protests to
other forms of social resistance—have become easier with technology and
digital culture. Thirdly, this period has also been characterized through-
out the region by the emergence of a new cycle of resistances, struggles
and subjectivities which, unlike the classic struggles of the 1970s, have
been able to question the traditional forms of understanding and doing
politics.
Since the uprising of the indigenous communities in Chiapas in
1994, the dispute over codes, information and knowledge has proven to
be central to current sociocultural mediation practices following in the
wake of the digital revolution. Therefore, technopolitics represents a
field of research focusing on the models that are assumed by this battle
over meaning, how these models are defined by the appropriation and
use of new digital tools of representation—on-line and off-line—and,
among other things, how digital media form part of an integrated pro-
cess of providing new codes and new meanings for the public and social
spheres in Latin America. These are only some of the issues that have
been broached here with an eye to imparting practical knowledge of the
connections between social movements and media technologies, and
their complexity.
The experiences of the Zapatista communities in Chiapas constituted
one of the first times in history that the Internet was used as a means of
protest and to support a social struggle which was unique in its rhetoric
and global in its antagonistic expression. However, while the movements
1 INTRODUCTION 11
supporting the Zapatista cause paved the way for media activism in a
context of social conflict, only 10 years later the massive dissemination
of low-cost technology and the Internet made it possible to use social
media as a component of social protest. Examples include the webpages
that were launched during the people’s protests in Argentina in 2001,
with the aim of breaking the mainstream media siege; the Oaxaca insur-
gency in 2006; the use of Facebook and other social media platforms in
the “Penguins’ Revolution” student protests in Chile; the #YoSoy123
movement in Mexico; and the protests in Brazil and Venezuela in 2014.
The emergence of new appropriation processes and the use of new tech-
nologies by indigenous peoples on the continent to defend their territo-
ries and natural resources can also be observed. Cases in point include
the digital media used by the Mapuche people in Chile; the Wiwa indig-
enous communities in Colombia; the communities of the Peruvian
rainforest, the Chaco Boliviano, North Cauca in Colombia, and the
Neuquen Province of Argentina, etc. Mention should also be made of a
recently created Cuban blogosphere which is using the digital network
in an attempt to reproduce and build new autonomy processes based on
the values of the 1959 Revolution.
These experiences, like many others, have not only strengthened
forms of urban and rural community integration and social mobiliza-
tion on the continent, but have also helped to radically transform forms
of collective action. Gradually, step-by-step, they have begun to weaken
the institutional bases of the centralized, hierarchical model of the
Latin American political representation system, and in recent years have
inspired new transformations in the continent’s public policy landscape,
with particular focus on technological sovereignty, free culture and citi-
zen participation. These processes have intensified above all over the past
few decades, due to a great extent to the fact that in the context of glo-
balization the raison d´être and actions of social movements take on a
whole new meaning and decisively gain in structural importance, thanks
in no small measure to the Internet galaxy.
The aim of the first section of this book is to understand the differ-
ent scenarios and challenges regarding the power relations deriving from
new digital technologies and the social processes of which they form
part. To this end, the authors propose a theoretical framework developed
by researchers from different countries that conceptualizes the different
mediation processes emerging between cyberdemocracy and the emanci-
pation practices of new social movements. In the first chapter, Francisco
Sierra and Tommaso Gravante suggest a theoretical and methodological

framework inspired by the critical tradition of participatory communica-
tion for social change as it has developed in Latin America. By focus-
ing on media practices and the mediation process paradigm, the authors
outline a proposal covering three pivotal aspects of the process of appro-
priating and using digital media or the so-called “net activism practice”.
The origin and evolution of the concept of technopolitics, which has
recently gained popularity among scholars and social activists in both
the North and especially the South, is the topic of Emiliano Treré and
Alejandro Barranquero’s chapter. They place the concept within the cur-
rent debate on media activism, digital resistance and the rationales and
dynamics of contemporary social movements. Jan Servaes and Andrea
Ricci show how the impact of new media on party politics or presidential
elections has hitherto evolved in cyclical waves, covering the emergence
of television, the development of global telecommunications, the birth
of the Internet and finally what is popularly known as the Web 2.0. The
chapter reviews a large empirical study of more than 1200 political party
websites (using the world’s largest inventory at the time of writing), per-
formed roughly 10 years after the advent of the World Wide Web. Its
findings corroborate the “politics as usual” thesis and provide evidence
that these sites are tools for exclusion rather than inclusion.
What proactive data activism has in common with investigative,
advocacy and citizen journalism of an analytic, political, collaborative,
and grassroots nature is the main theme of Stefania Milan and Miren
Gutierrez’s contribution. In this closing chapter of the theoretical sec-
tion, the authors address on social movement studies, alternative media
and journalism studies, as well as critical theory, in order to categorize
and examine proactive data activism initiatives and to explore the mobi-
lizing dynamics of data activism.
The second section of this book takes a look at a number of Latin
American practices and experiences that are, autonomously and using
self-management, creating other identities and social spaces on the
margins of and against the neoliberal system through the use of digital
technology. They are experiences in which technologies are a pretext
for rethinking and collectively rebuilding on the margins of and out-
side the state. There is a particular emphasis on collective writing about
common culture, assets and knowledge, as well as successes, failures and
challenges. Nina Santos opens this section with an analysis of the role
of social media in the organization of the different stages of and groups
1 INTRODUCTION 13
participating in the wave of Brazilian protests, from the “Jornadas de

Junho” in 2013 to the impeachment process against Dilma Rousseff in
2016. To analyze the specific role of social media, the authoress offers us
a comprehensive thematic and temporal cartography of the movements,
the transformations that led to the different stages of the protest, and the
role social media played in it.
If anything has marked the armed conflict in Colombia, then that has
been the use of violence as a political instrument. Elias Said-Hung and
David Luquetta Cediel’s chapter focuses on Facebook, particularly on
six groups and/or pages that address issues relating to the peace talks
in Cuba. Their analysis addresses the qualitative representation that each
had, depending on whether they were for or against the peace process.
In order to define the media players that reveal social conflicts and
the human rights situation in Mexico, César Augusto Rodríguez Cano
presents an analysis of the technopolitical media networks created by
activists, grassroots groups, alternative media and non-governmental
organizations in the Mexican context—a social phenomenon that the
author calls “Communication in Movement”.
For their part, Jean-Marie Chenou and Rodulfo Armando Castiblanco
Carrasco deal with the role of knowledge in society and the conditions of
production and dissemination of scientific knowledge in the digital era.
By analyzing a Colombian web campaign entitled Compartir no es del-
ito (sharing is not a crime) in 2014, the authors study the creation of
transnational virtual spaces of resistance, the map of online interactions
through indicators such as twitter hashtags and hyperlinks, the identifica-
tion of key actors, and lastly an analysis of their correlations.
Making the final contribution to this book, Ana Lúcia Nunes de Sousa
and Marcela Canavarro invite us all to dwell on the digital narratives
built by students demanding improvements and transparency in public
education, highlighting the role played by video activism practices. The
authoress’ hypothesis is that the network of Facebook pages conceived
by the students included a number of hub and satellite pages cooperating
constantly to share information.
To conclude, we would like to thank Nico Carpentier for his preface.
His conscientious contribution stresses the paradox between the grow-
ing levels of participation in a variety of societal fields and the decreas-
ing levels of control over the levers of societal power. Our thanks also
go to Claudia Padovani and Marjan de Bruin, the editors of Global
Transformations in Media and Communication Research, a Palgrave and
IAMCR Series, who have supported us in this endeavor. We are also

grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their very useful and construc-
tive comments and to Martina O’Sullivan, publisher for Journalism,
Media and Communication at Palgrave Macmillan, and her staff for their
invaluable assistance in preparing this manuscript for publication.
We sincerely hope that the original contributions to this book will
allow us to move forward in the conflicts and emancipation processes
currently traversing the continent and, of course, contribute generally to
broaden our knowledge in this regard. This at least is the desire of the
editors.
References
Negt, O. (2007). L’espace public oppositionnel. Paris: Payot.
Redondo, E. G. (1999). Educación y comunicación. Barcelona: Ariel.
Ramírez, J. M. (1996). Las teorías sociológicas y la acción colectiva. Ciudades,
29, 28–40.
PART I
Technopolitics: A Theoretical Framework

CHAPTER 2
Digital Media Practices and Social

Movements. A Theoretical Framework
from Latin America
Introduction
Citizen participation in Latin America using digital media is the result
of a long, continuous process of social appropriation of communication
technologies from the culture of subordinated groups. One of the classic
examples is the network of miners’ radio stations in Bolivia since 1949,
which represent one of the most outstanding examples of grassroots,
participatory communication in the world (O’Connor 2004). However,
this process of social appropriation of communication technologies has
F. Sierra Caballero (*)

Department of Journalism I, University of Seville, Office D7, Americo
Vespucio s/n Isla de la Cartuja, 41092 Seville, Andalusia, Spain
e-mail: fcompoliticas@gmail.com
T. Gravante
Center for Interdisciplinary Research in the Sciences and Humanities
(CEIICH), National Autonomous University of Mexico, Torre II de
Humanidades, 6º piso, Circuito Interior, Ciudad Universitaria, Delegación
Coyoacan, 4510 Ciudad de México, Ciudad de México, Mexico
e-mail: t.gravante@gmail.com
© The Author(s) 2018 17

F.S. Caballero and T. Gravante (eds.), Networks, Movements and Technopolitics in
Latin America, Global Transformations in Media and Communication Research -
A Palgrave and IAMCR Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65560-4_2
18 F. Sierra Caballero and T. Gravante
marked the difficult and contradictory fights for democracy in the region
in light of the lack of visibility channels in an exclusive system that is at
times virtually monopolised by the dominant mainstream media, both
analogue and digital (Sierra 2006). Regarding digital media, the upris-
ing of the indigenous communities in Chiapas in 1994 was one of the
first times in the world that the internet was used as a means of protest,
to support a social struggle, which was original in its rhetoric and global
in its expression of opposition. The Zapatista uprising of the Zapatista
Army of National Liberation (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional,
EZLN) was a symbolic and media-focused breaking point in Mexico
and Latin America. This was firstly because it coincided with the entry
into force of the North American Free Trade Agreement and secondly
because it gave the situation of the indigenous population visibility in the
media, as it was a group that had historically been excluded from tel-
evision (Sierra 1997, 1999). Later, the massive spread of low-cost tech-
nologies and the broad experience built up since the 1970s in the region
in community-based, grassroots communication aided the empower-
ment processes of the new media and digital culture for protests and in
all aspects of social life. This could be seen in student movements such
as #YoSoy132 in Mexico and the “Penguins’ Revolution” in Chile, and
the convergence between analogue and digital citizens’ media projects
operating in contexts of armed conflict such as in Colombia (Rodriguez
2008, 2011).
Starting with the alternative digital media experiences that have taken
place in the last two decades in Latin America, this chapter proposes a
theoretical and methodological framework inspired by the critical tradi-
tion of participatory communication for social change as it developed in
Latin America (McAnany and Atwood 1986; Beltrán 1974, 1993) and
the contributions made by the scientific community of the so-called
Latin American School of Communication—ELACOM1—(Sierra 2010;
León 2007, 2008, 2010). ELACOM, from the last decade to the pre-
sent, is the work programme which best symbolises and represents
the search for identity in Latin American thought on communication
(Marques and Gobbi 2000, 2004; Fuentes 1999). We also propose an
analysis focused on an approach from below that helps to better under-
stand media practices (Couldry 2004, 2012; Cammaerts et al. 2013)
1 In Spanish Escuela Latinoamericana de Comunicación.

2 DIGITAL MEDIA PRACTICES AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS. A THEORETICAL … 19
and the mediation process (Martin-Barbero 1993, 2006) in the Latin

American region.
The chapter is structured as follows. Firstly, we underline the lat-
est framework of collective action that has characterised the new cycle
of struggles in Latin America. Secondly, we outline our proposal, which
will consider three pivotal aspects of the process of appropriating and
using digital media. We will introduce the importance of the emotional
dimension in the process of appropriation, and how the protagonists give
digital media new meanings and uses, such as Do It Together, which are
the result of the cultural hybridisation in Latin America. Afterwards, we
explore how the bonds that are formed between the media and the pro-
tagonists reflect a “new” community of reference distinguished by hori-
zontal processes. Finally, we analyse how the net activism practice leads
the participating people to experience a process of empowerment. We
explore the potential of our conceptual framework based on some con-
crete examples drawn from secondary and primary sources related to
the Latin American struggles and movements that have been studied
by the authors in the last two decades (Sierra 1997, 1999, 2006, 2010;
Gravante 2016; Sierra and Gravante 2012, 2014, 2017). In the conclu-
sion, we discuss how the language and narratives of Latin American grass-
roots communication establish, as a result, the relevance of proposing
another “point of view” for communication studies in the Western world.
To summarise, our theoretical and methodological framework can
serve as an analytical lens that helps us better understand the performa-
tive function of media (Rodriguez 2001, p. 82), that is, how people use
digital media to re-create their identities, values, ways of life, cultural
practices, and forms of interaction that have at have not been perme-
ated by capitalist-driven logic. Examples of these actors include indig-
enous movements and urban grassroots movements, which together
question theories on the use of collective action and social conflict from
the point of view of the media and the representation of digital culture
(Treré and Magallanes-Blanco 2015). The historical context experienced
by Latin America will then be considered in order to rethink the con-
cepts of the public sphere and media citizenship (Sierra and Gravante
2012). The geopolitical and social background justifies the need to con-
sider conflicts and the role of communication in accordance with a new
epistemic framework and new thought that establishes a non-colonial
focus on the south (De Sousa Santos 2010a, b, 2014; Yehia 2007) and
an approach from below with a view to breaking away from the binary,
techno-centred rationality of media activism as a simple process of appro-

priation, resistance and political opportunity (Treré and Barranquero
2013).
New Media and Emerging Subjectivities in Latin America

After the expansion of the transnational network of solidarity with the
indigenous people in Chiapas in 1994 over the internet, the spread of
the World Wide Web and increased access to and use of digital technol-
ogy in the second half of the 1990s were celebrated by many activists
and scholars around the world—particularly in the USA and Europe—
as the advent of a “Renaissance 2.0”. According to techno-optimists,
new information technologies would give rise to a new humanism
that would lead to another possible (and utopian) world. In fact, the
start of the new millennium brought with it a change in world geo-
politics, and it was not caused by digital technologies. The violent
repressions enacted by the police and paramilitary groups on com-
mon, ordinary people who had participated en masse in demonstra-
tions against the meetings of large international economic institutions2;
the systematic co-opting of the more active individuals in collectives
and grassroots movements by protest professionals—the NGOs that
composed the Social Mundial Forum, left-wing parties and unions3;
finally, the new “national security” laws and priorities since the attacks
on September 11, 2001 that would identify all activism as a terrorist
threat led to (especially in Europe, Canada and the USA) the decline
of movements against the neoliberal policies that had characterised the
end of the 1990s. Meanwhile, in Latin America, besides the fall of the
anti-globalisation movement, a new cycle of resistance was beginning,
led by individuals and groups (peasants, indigenous communities, col-
lectives of homeless people, the unemployed, villeros, chavos banda,
2 A fundamental episode that marked the end of citizen participation was the repression
at the G8 protests in Geneva in 2001, with the murder of a young activist, Carlo Giuliani,
by Italian police.
3 This co-option also involved a group of hackers who had helped create dozens of pro-
jects and virtual networks, which were then absorbed by defence and military intelligence
departments through different companies for creating and managing espionage, surveil-
lance, and remote arms control software.
students, cartoneros, housekeepers, etc.),4 which outgrew the classic

studies of collective action and the traditional frameworks of politics
and the social sphere (Zibechi 2007, 2010a, b, 2012, 2014; Regalado
2010, 2011; Regalado and Gravante 2016). These social subjects, based
on the patchwork of everyday life (De Certeau 1984; De Certeau et al.
1980), in line with the Latin American tradition of popular and partic-
ipatory communication, produced multiple links with digital and ana-
logue media in their protests, such as the Argentina protest in 2001 with
the alternative media Red Eco Alternativo, Cono Sur, Indymedia, Red
Acción (Vinelli and Rodríguez Espéron 2008), and in the Oaxaca insur-
gency with the hybrid-digital radio station Radio Escopeta and Radio
Disturbio (Gravante 2016). Furthermore, as Jeffrey Juris had stressed
in his research about the emerging forms of tactical and alternative
media associated with the global justice movement in Spain (2008), the
social movement digital media experienced in Latin America share two
important, interconnected dimensions with the so-called anti-globalisa-
tion movement: the media activist networks’ structures have no centre,
their organisations are structured using a horizontal networking logic
(set of practices for political activities such as horizontal and anti-hier-
archical organisation, consensus-based decision-making, direct action,
self-organisation, self-managed and self-reliant projects, and so on);
the alternative media are characterised by prefigurative politics, in other
words, the media projects anticipate or enact an ‘alternative world’ in
the present. For this reason, and following Barassi and Treré’s analysis,
it is possible to explore the relationship between digital media, media
strategies and social movements’ tactics by considering everyday media
uses (2012).
So, the original experiences that emerged throughout the Latin
American region revealed, within this new framework of action, that the
4 Villeros are people who live in suburbs of large Latin American cities like Buenos Aires
or Santiago del Chile. These working-class barrios and neighborhoods are excluded from
all sorts of facilities in terms of education, culture, health, etc. Chavos banda are very young
people, generally from rural, poor villages, who live like beggars in urban areas such as
Oaxaca, Mexico City, Guadalajara. Cartoneros are people who make their living collecting
and selling salvaged materials to recycling plants. This movement began in Argentina in
2003 and has since spread to countries throughout Latin America. Most of these people
live under the shadow of the informal economy; they do not exist for nor are they repre-
sented by the ruling class.
process of appropriating digital technology was not limited to know-

ing how to use a computer or connecting to the internet, nor was it a
process that simply meant possessing digital technology. Instead, digital
media were part of an integrated process of providing new codes and
new meaning for the public and social spheres (Neuman 2008). In the
same way, other scholars (Barassi and Treré 2012; Treré 2012; McCurdy
2011; Mattoni 2012; Juris 2008), in their research on digital media and
social movements, stressed the need to rethink the relationship between
media and culture and move beyond functionalist approaches in order to
start to analyse media as practice, as Treré has pointed out: “[t]his means
taking into account not only ‘what people do’ with the media, but also
the sets of beliefs, ideologies, and understandings whereby practices are
ordered” (2012, p. 2363).
Starting from these media practice approaches based on Couldry’s
theorisation (2004) and on Martín-Barbero’s pivotal work (1993),
which urged for a shift away “from media to mediations”, we start
our proposal by exploring everyday practices of (digital and analogue)
media appropriation through which the protagonists play out resist-
ance and resilience against the hegemonic system. In doing this, the
fieldwork of our research experience has shown that an approach from
below is needed in this cycle of struggles that began with the outbreak
of protests in Argentina in 2001. It means, above all, placing the focus
of the study on the individual and his/her subjectivity, without separat-
ing the person from the collective. In other words, we need to look at
the ordinary, working people5 generally ignored by those in power and by
scholars. In fact, this proposal is not based on the experiences of hack-
tivists or members of the organisations that participated in the protests,
because of the understanding that fundamentally all social change is the
result of transformation only visible in the everyday actions of millions
of people (Holloway 2010). Therefore, taking an approach from below
involves analysing digital media experiences that are performed by ordi-
nary people in the cities or places where the fights are taking place and
that involve self-managed media, i.e., they are not the result of any initia-
tive or support from official organisations (parties, NGOs, unions, etc.).
5 “We, the ordinary, working people” was and still is the way in which the people of the
Water and Life Defence Coordination Group in Cochabamba, Bolivia, describe themselves.
Now that the new cycle of struggles that has characterised Latin
America has been put into context, and what we understand to be the
focus of analysis from below in our approach has been explained, the
following section will break down the first aspect of our theoretical and
methodological approach, focusing on tools to better understand why
ordinary people decide to appropriate a form of digital media, and how
that type of media is modified, adapted and given meaning.
Appropriation Processes
and Creative Resilience Practices
Analysing net activism practices from below means moving away from a
technology-focused perspective and concentrating on the processes that
occur between the form of digital media and its users, always bearing in
mind that the appropriation process is vitally linked to the social and cul-
tural fabric in which the form of media is developed, in terms of the eve-
ryday culture and the life experience of the subjects. In other words, it is
necessary to consider the appropriation and uses of technology as pro-
cesses of sociocultural mediation that go beyond establishing the video
technology (Orozco 1996, 2007) and the processes of sublimating and
creating myths linked to the birth of each “new” technology (Trerè and
Barranquero 2013).
Emotional Dimensions of the Appropriation Process

Over the last twenty years, studies of social movements and collec-
tive action have highlighted the role of emotion in studying protest.
There are numerous scientific contributions which show that includ-
ing the emotional dimensions as a variable in analysis helps to explain
the origin, development and success or otherwise of a social movement
(Jasper 1997; Polletta 2006; Flam 2000; Goodwin et al. 2001, 2004).
Furthermore, it is hard to find activities and relationships that are
more openly emotional than those linked to political protest and resist-
ance (Goodwin et al. 2000). It is unsurprising, then, that in net activ-
ism there should also be a reconsideration of a series of emotional and
cognitive processes that push common, ordinary people to appropriate
digital technology (Poma and Gravante 2013). Other research projects
in the communication field have shown that the rage and pain caused
by repression, anger against the ruling class, and the feeling of injustice
are created through processes like moral shock, the emergence of threats,
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
MEMOIRS
OF THE
LIFE OF DAVID RITTENHOUSE;
ANTERIOR TO
HIS SETTLEMENT IN PHILADELPHIA.
The paternal ancestors of David Rittenhouse were early and long

seated at Arnheim, a fortified city on the Rhine, and capital of the
district of Velewe or Veluive, sometimes called the Velau, in the
Batavian province of Guelderland;[55] where, it is said, they
conducted manufactories of paper,[56] during the course of some
generations. The orthography of the name was formerly
Rittinghuysen, as the writer of these memoirs was informed by an
European member of this family.[57] But it is net improbable, that, in
more strict conformity to the idiom of its Saxo-Germanic original, the
name was spelt Ritterhuysen[58]—or, perhaps, Ritterhausen; which
signifies, in our language, Knights’ Houses: a conjecture that seems
to be somewhat corroborated by the chivalrous emblems alluding to
this name, belonging to the family, and which have been already
noticed.
It has been asserted, that the first of the Rittenhouses who

migrated to America, was named William; and that he went from
Guelderland to the (now) state of New-York, while it was yet a Dutch
colony. This William was also said to have left at Arnheim a brother,
Nicholas, who continued to carry on the paper-making business in
that city.[59] But, in a genealogical account of the family in the
possession of the Memorialist, Garrett (or Gerard) and Nicholas
Rittenhouse are stated to have arrived at New-York, from Holland, so
late as the year 1690: it likewise states, that Nicholas there married
Wilhelmina Dewees, a sister of William Dewees, who came thither
about the same time; and that, soon afterwards, they all removed to
the neighbourhood of Germantown in Pennsylvania; where Nicholas
established the first paper-mill ever erected in America.[60] It is
believed, however, that Garrett and Nicholas Rittenhouse were sons
of William; who is supposed to have arrived in some part of the
original territories of New-York, prior to the year 1674;[61] that the
Nicholas left in Arnheim, was his brother; and that his sons Garrett
and Nicholas, who are stated to have been the first of the family that
settled in New-York, in 1690 (from whence they removed, “soon
afterwards,” into Pennsylvania,) did, in fact, transfer themselves into
this latter province, in that year.—Garrett left children; some of
whose descendants are resident in Pennsylvania, and others in
New-Jersey.
Nicholas Rittenhouse, the grandfather of our Philosopher, died

about the year 1730; leaving three sons, William, Henry, and
Matthias; and four daughters, Psyche, Mary, Catharine, and
Susanna. Of these daughters, Psyche intermarried with John
Gorgas, from whom are descended the Gorgas’s of Cresham and
Cocolico; Mary, with John Johnson, the father of Casper, John,
Nicholas, William, and Benjamin Johnson, some of whom are now
(or were lately) living, in the neighbourhood of Germantown;
Catharine, with Jacob Engle, in the same vicinity; and Susanna, with
Henry Heiley of Goshehoppen.
William Rittenhouse, the eldest brother of our Philosopher’s father,

died at the paper-mills, near Germantown. He left several children,
one of whom did lately, and perhaps yet does, carry on those works.
—Henry and Matthias removed to the townships of Worcester and
Norriton, about the year 1732 or 1733; where both lived to be
upwards of seventy years of age.
The old American stock of the Rittenhouses were Anabaptists,[62]

and persons of very considerable note in that religious society.
Probably, therefore, they were induced to establish their residence in
Pennsylvania, towards the close of the seventeenth century, by the
tolerating principles held forth by William Penn,[63] in respect to
religious[64] concerns; the justness of the tenure by which he became
proprietor of the soil;[65] and the excellence of the political regulations
established by that great legislator, for the civil government of his
newly-acquired domains.
Matthias, the youngest son of Nicholas Rittenhouse, by

Wilhelmina Dewees his wife, was born at the paper-mills belonging
to his family, near Germantown,[66] in the county of Philadelphia and
about eight miles from the capital of Pennsylvania, in the year 1703.
Having abandoned the occupation of a paper-maker, when about
twenty-nine years of age, and two years after his father’s death, he
then commenced the business of a farmer, on a piece of land he had
purchased in the township of Norriton,[67] about twenty miles from the
city of Philadelphia; his brother Henry establishing himself in the
same manner, in the adjoining township of Worcester. In October,
1727,—about three years prior to Matthias’s removal from the vicinity
of Germantown,—he had become a married man. His wife was
Elizabeth William (or Williams) who was born in 1704, and was
daughter of Evan William, a native of Wales. Her father, a farmer,
dying while she was a child, she was placed under the charge of an
elderly English (or, more probably, Welsh) gentleman, in the
neighbourhood, of the name of Richard Jones; a relation of her
family. That truly respectable woman possessed a cheerful temper,
with a mind uncommonly vigorous and comprehensive: but her
education was much neglected, as is too often the fate of orphan
children. Yet, perhaps, no censure ought justly to be imputable to Mr.
Jones, in this case; because there were very few schools of any
kind, in country situations, at that early day.[68]
The extraordinary natural understanding of this person, so very

nearly related as she was to the subject of these memoirs, seemed
to the writer to merit particular notice; and the more especially, for a
reason which shall be hereafter mentioned.
By this wife, Matthias Rittenhouse had four sons and six
daughters;[69] three of whom died in their minority. The three eldest of
the children were born at the place of their father’s nativity; the
others, at Norriton. Of the former number was David, the eldest son,
the subject of these memoirs.—He was born on the 8th day of April,
1732.[70]
This son was an infant, when his family removed to Norriton and
engaged in the business of farming; and his father appears, early, to
have designed him for this most useful and very respectable
employment. Accordingly, as soon as the boy arrived at a sufficient
age to assist in conducting the affairs of the farm, he was occupied
as an husbandman. This kind of occupation seems to have
commenced at a very early period of his life; for it is ascertained,
that, about the fourteenth year of his age, he was actually employed
in ploughing his father’s fields.[71]
At that period of our future Philosopher’s life, early as it was, his

uncultivated mind, naturally teeming with the most prolific germs of
yet unexpanded science, began to unfold those buds of genius,
which soon after attained that wonderful luxuriance of growth by
which the usefulness and splendour of his talents became eminently
conspicuous. His brother Benjamin relates,[72] that, while David was
thus employed at the plough, from the age of fourteen years and for
some time after, he (this informant,) then a young boy, was
frequently sent to call him to his meals; at which times he repeatedly
observed, that not only the fences at the head of many of the
furrows, but even his plough and its handles, were covered over with
chalked numerical figures, &c.[73]—Hence it is evident, that the
exuberance of a sublime native genius and of almost unbounded
intellectual powers, unaided by any artificial means of excitement,
were enabled, by dint of their own energy, to burst through those
restraints which the corporeal employments of his youth necessarily
imposed upon them.
During that portion of his life in which this youthful philosopher

pursued the ordinary occupations of a husbandman, which continued
until about the eighteenth year of his age, as well as in his earlier
youth, he appeared to have inherited from healthful parents a sound
constitution, and to have enjoyed good health.
It was at this period, or rather about the seventeenth year of his

age, that he made a wooden clock, of very ingenious workmanship:
and soon after, he constructed one of the same materials that
compose the common four-and-twenty hour clock, and upon the
same principles. But he had exhibited much earlier proofs of his
mechanical genius, by making, when only seven or eight years old, a
complete water-mill in miniature.
Mr. Rittenhouse’s father was a very respectable man: he

possessed a good understanding, united to a most benevolent heart
and great simplicity of manners. The writer long knew him; and, from
his early acquaintance with the character, the appearance, and the
habits of this worthy sire of an illustrious son, he had long supposed
him to have been inclined to the religious principles of the society
called Friends, although he had been bred a Baptist:—but a
circumstance which shall be noticed hereafter, will evince the
liberality of this good man’s opinions, in the all-important concern of
religion. Yet, with truly estimable qualities, both of the head and
heart, old Mr. Rittenhouse had no claims to what is termed genius;
and therefore did not, probably, duly appreciate the early specimens
of that talent, which appeared so conspicuous in his son David.
Hence, he was for some time opposed to the young man’s earnest
desire to renounce agricultural employments; for the purpose of
devoting himself, altogether, to philosophical pursuits, in connexion
with some such mechanical profession as might best comport with
useful objects of natural philosophy, and be most likely, at the same
time, to afford him the means of a comfortable subsistence. At
length, however, the father yielded his own inclinations, in order to
gratify what was manifestly the irresistible impulse of his son’s
genius: he supplied him with money to purchase, in Philadelphia,
such tools as were more immediately necessary for commencing the
clock-making business, which the son then adopted as his
profession.
About the same time, young Mr. Rittenhouse erected on the side
of a public road, and on his father’s land in the township of Norriton,
a small but commodious work-shop; and, after having made many
implements of the trade with his own hands, to supply the deficiency
of many such as were wanting in his purchased stock, he set out in
good earnest as a clock and mathematical instrument maker.
From the age of eighteen or nineteen to twenty-five, Mr.

Rittenhouse applied himself unremittingly, both to his trade and his
studies. Employed throughout the day in his attention to the former,
he devoted much of his nights to the latter. Indeed he deprived
himself of the necessary hours of rest; for it was his almost invariable
practice to sit up, at his books, until midnight, sometimes much later.
It was in this interval and by these means, that our young

philosopher impaired his constitution, and contracted a pain in his
breast; or rather, as he himself described that malady to the writer, “a
constant heat in the pit of the stomach, affecting a space not
exceeding the size of half a guinea, attended at times with much
pain;” a sensation from which he was never exempt, during the
remainder of his life. About this time, he retired from all business,
and passed several weeks at the Yellow Springs, distant but a few
miles from his place of residence. He there bathed and drank the
waters; and from the use of this chalybeate, he appeared to have
derived some benefit to his general health, though it afforded little
alleviation of the pain in his breast.
A due regard to the sacredness of historic truth demands, that

some circumstances which occurred while Mr. Rittenhouse was yet a
youth, and one which it is believed had a very considerable influence
on his subsequent pursuits and reputation, should now be made
known. Because the writer of these memoirs conceives he ought not
to be restrained, by motives which would appear to him to arise from
a mistaken delicacy, from introducing into his work such notices of
his own father, long since deceased, as do justice to his memory;
while they also serve to elucidate the biographical history of Mr.
Rittenhouse.
In the year 1751, when David Rittenhouse was about nineteen
years of age, Thomas Barton, who was two years elder than David,
opened a school in the neighbourhood of Mr. Matthias Rittenhouse.
It was while Mr. Barton continued in that place, supposed to have
been about a year and a half, that he became acquainted with the
Rittenhouse Family; an acquaintance which soon ripened into a
warm friendship for young Mr. Rittenhouse, and a more tender
attachment to his sister, Esther.
Two years afterwards (in 1753), the personal attractions and fine
understanding of the sister rendered her the wife of Mr. Barton; who,
for some time before, had officiated as one of the tutors in the then
recently-established Academy, afterwards College, of Philadelphia;
now the University of Pennsylvania. In this station, he continued until
the autumn of 1754; when he embarked for England, for the purpose
of receiving episcopal ordination in the church, and returned to
Pennsylvania in the early part of the following year.
The very intimate connexion thus formed between Mr. Barton and
a sister of Mr. Rittenhouse (who was two years elder than this
brother), strengthened the bands of friendship which had so early
united these young men: a friendship affectionate and sincere, and
one which never ceased until Mr. Barton’s death, nearly thirty years
afterwards; notwithstanding some difference of political opinions had
arisen between these brothers-in-law, in the latter part of that period,
in consequence of the declaration of the American independence.
Mr. Barton was a native of Ireland, descended from an English

family; of which, either two or three brothers settled in that kingdom,
during the disastrous times in the interregnum of Charles I. Having
obtained very considerable grants of land in Ireland, this family
possessed ample estates in their then adopted country. Hence,
flattering prospects of an establishment there, in respect to fortune,
were held out to their descendants. Through one of those untoward
circumstances, however, by means of which the most unexpected
revolutions in the affairs of families and individuals have been
sometimes produced, the expectations of an independent patrimony
which our Mr. Barton’s father had entertained, were speedily
dissipated. Nevertheless, this gentleman, who was the eldest son of
his family, was instructed in the rudiments of a classical education in
the vicinity of his family residence in the county of Monaghan, under
the direction of the Rev. Mr. Folds, a respectable English clergyman;
and at a suitable age, he was sent to the university of Dublin, where
he finished his academical education. Entirely destitute of fortune,
but possessing a strong intellect, stored with useful and ornamental
learning as well as an ardent and enterprizing spirit, this young
adventurer arrived in Philadelphia soon after he had completed his
scholastic studies.
The writer’s principal design, in presenting to the public view these

slight sketches of the early history of the late Rev. Mr. Barton, shall
be now explained.
When Mr. Rittenhouse’s father established his residence at

Norriton, and during the minority of the son, there were no schools in
the vicinity at which any thing more was taught, than reading and
writing in the English language and the simplest rules of arithmetic.
Young Mr. Rittenhouse’s school-education, in his early youth, was
therefore necessarily bounded by these scanty limits of accessible
instruction: He was, in truth, taught nothing beyond these very
circumscribed bounds of literary knowledge, prior to the nineteenth
year of his age; though it is certain, that some years before that
period of his life, he began to be known—at least in his own
neighbourhood—as a mathematician and astronomer, in
consequence of his cultivation of the transcendent genius with which
heaven had endued him.
Under such circumstances as these, the familiar intercourse

between David Rittenhouse and his young friend Barton, which
commenced when the age of the former did not exceed nineteen
years, could not fail to prove highly advantageous to the mental
improvement of both. The one possessed a sublime native genius;
which, however, was yet but very imperfectly cultivated, for want of
the indispensable means of extending the bounds of natural
knowledge: the other had enjoyed the use of those means, in an
eminent degree, and thus justly acquired the reputation of a man of
learning. A reciprocation of these different advantages, as may be
well supposed, greatly promoted the intellectual improvement of
both.
It will be readily conceived, that Mr. Barton’s knowledge of books

must have rendered even his conversation instructive to Mr.
Rittenhouse, at so early a period of his life. But the former so greatly
admired the natural powers of his young friend’s mind, that he took a
delight in obtaining for him access to such philosophical works, and
other useful books, as he was then enabled to procure for his use;
besides directing, as far as he was capable, the course of his
studies.
After Mr. Barton’s removal to Philadelphia and while he resided in

that city, his means of furnishing his friend with books, suitable for
his instruction, were greatly enlarged; an advantage of which he
most assiduously availed himself: and it is supposed to have been
about this time, that a small circulating library was established in
Norriton, at the instance of Mr. Barton, zealously seconded by the
co-operation and influence of Mr. Rittenhouse.
Finally, when Mr. Barton returned from England, in the year 1755
—at which time Mr. Rittenhouse was yet but twenty-three years of
age, he brought with him a valuable addition to his friend’s little
library; consisting, in part, of books which he himself had
commissioned Mr. Barton to purchase for him.[74]
No doubt can be entertained, that Mr. Rittenhouse derived the

great and extraordinary faculties of his mind from nature; and it is
equally evident, that for some years after he arrived to manhood, he
possessed very slender means of improving his natural talents: Nay
further, it is well known to those who were long personally
acquainted with him, that after his removal to Philadelphia, when he
was eight-and-thirty years of age, a period of life at which the place
of his residence, and the condition of his pecuniary affairs, united in
placing within his reach much that is dear to science,—even then,
his long continued professional employment and the various public
stations he filled, in addition to frequent ill health, deprived him of a
large share of those advantages. The vast stock of knowledge
which, under such untoward circumstances, he actually acquired, is
therefore an additional proof of his native strength of intellect.
But, wonderful as a kind of intuitive knowledge he possessed

really was, his mental powers would probably have remained hidden
from the world, they would have been very imperfectly cultivated, at
best, had not an incident apparently trivial, and which occurred when
our Astronomer was a young boy, furnished what was, in all
probability, the very first incitement to an active employment of his
philosophical as well as mechanical genius.
Mr. Rittenhouse’s mother having been already noticed somewhat

particularly, the reason for this being done shall be here stated: it is
connected with the incident just now referred to. This valuable
woman had two brothers, David and Lewis Williams (or William),
both of whom died in their minority. David, the elder of these,
pursued the trade of a carpenter, or joiner. Though, like his nephew
and namesake, he was almost wholly an uneducated youth, he also,
like him, early discovered an unusual genius and strength of mind.
After the death of this young man, on opening a chest containing the
implements of his trade which was deposited at Mr. M.
Rittenhouse’s, (in whose family it is presumed he dwelt,) a few
elementary books, treating of arithmetic and geometry, were found in
it: With these, there were also various calculations and other papers,
in manuscript; all, the productions of David Williams himself, and
such as indicated not only an uncommon genius, but an active spirit
of philosophical research. To this humble yet valuable coffer of his
deceased uncle, Mr. Rittenhouse had free access, while yet a very
young boy. He often spoke of this acquisition as a treasure;
inasmuch as the instruments of his uncle’s calling afforded him some
means of exercising the bent of his genius towards mechanism,
while the books and manuscripts early led his mind to those
congenial pursuits in mathematical and astronomical science, which
Were ever after the favourite objects of his studies.[75]
It being thus apparent, that not only Mr. Rittenhouse’s mother but
her brother David Williams were persons of uncommon intellectual
powers, the writer thinks it fairly presumable, that our Astronomer
inherited his genius from his mother’s family.[76] His surviving brother
has decidedly expressed this opinion: in a letter on the subject of the
deceased, addressed to the writer of these memoirs soon after Dr.
Rittenhouse’s death, he says—“I am convinced his genius was more
derived from his mother, than from his father.”
A casualty that occurred in the year 1756, appeared to have been

very near depriving the world of the talents, services, and example of
our Philosopher, at a very early period of those pursuits in which he
was afterwards so eagerly engaged. This circumstance is thus
narrated by himself, in a letter dated the 26th of July, in that year,
and addressed to the Rev. Mr. Barton, at his then residence in
Redding township, York county.[77]
“I was,” said our young philosopher, “obliged to ride hard to reach

Lancaster, the evening after I left you; and being somewhat tired
myself, as well as my horse, I determined to go to the Dunker’s-
Town,[78] where I staid the remainder of that day and the night
following. I was there entertained with an epitome of all the whimsies
mankind are capable of conceiving. Yet it seemed to me the most
melancholy place in the world, and I believe would soon kill me were
I to continue there; though the people were exceedingly civil and
kind, and the situation of the place is pleasant enough.[79] From
thence I went homewards, through Reading;[80] where I was
agreeably surprised, the number and goodness of the buildings far
exceeding my expectations.
“You have perhaps seen, in one of the last papers, an account of

the prodigiously large hail-stones which fell in Plymouth.[81] The
lightning struck a tall green poplar standing in our meadow, just
before the door, and levelled it with the earth. I was standing
between the tree and house; and, at the same instant that I saw the
flash of lightning, felt a most violent shock through my whole body,—
and was stunned with such a horrible noise, that it is impossible for
imagination to represent any thing like it.”
The advantages and the disadvantages, which Mr. Rittenhouse

respectively enjoyed and encountered, until after he had attained to
the period of manhood, have been mentioned; and it will be readily
perceived, that the latter greatly outweighed the former, in every
other particular than that of his native genius, which alone was
sufficient to preponderate against innumerable difficulties.
The great deficiencies in his education, as well as their causes,

having been misconceived and incorrectly represented in some
publications, a due regard to truth demands a correction of such
mistaken opinions. Soon after his death, there appeared in the
Maryland Journal, “Anecdotical Notices of Mr. David Rittenhouse;”
which, although written with some ingenuity and knowledge of the
subject, contained several errors. It is therein asserted, among other
things, that “his parents, incapable of giving him any other education
than common reading and writing, intended to have brought him up
to country-business; but, being blessed by nature with a mechanical
turn of mind, he soon gave specimens of his ingenuity in making
wooden clocks: This so recommended him to notice, as to give him
an opportunity of learning the clock-making business.”—It has been
already shewn, that Mr. Rittenhouse never received the least
instruction in any mechanic art; and it is not ascertained that he ever
made more than one wooden clock. It is also notoriously an error,
that his parents were “incapable” of giving him any other education,
than the common schooling he received: they were by no means
poor, though not wealthy. His father inherited some patrimony; and
he had, besides, been about nine years concerned in conducting the
paper-manufactory near Germantown, after his one-and-twentieth
year, before he purchased the Norriton farm.[82] This part of his
estate he was enabled to give to his eldest son, David, about the
year 1764; prior to which time the old gentleman removed to a farm
he had purchased, nearly adjoining it in Worcester township, and on
which he had erected a good two-story stone dwelling-house with
suitable out-houses. There Mr. David Rittenhouse’s father and
mother afterwards resided, together with their other son, Benjamin,
(the house being so constructed as, conveniently, to accommodate
two small families,) until the death of old Mrs. Rittenhouse in the
autumn of 1777, at the age of seventy-three years, and of her
husband in the autumn of 1780, in the seventy-eighth year of his
age. The Worcester farm was left to the younger son: and, in
addition to these not inconsiderable establishments for his sons, the
old gentleman had given small portions to each of his five daughters,
when they severally married. The remains of this worthy and upright
man, for he truly merited that character, were interred in the
cemetery belonging to a Baptist congregation, in the neighbourhood,
in which both he and his wife had long attended divine worship. But,
some years before his death, the old gentleman disposed of a lot of
ground very near to his own house,—and gratuitously, if the writer’s
information be correct,—to a Presbyterian congregation, for a burial
place, and site for a church they were then about to erect. If this little
piece of land was a donation to the religious society to whom it
belongs, the grant of it, though not of great value, furnishes an
instance of that liberality of sentiment and goodness of heart which
characterized our Astronomer’s father, and to which some allusion is
before made.
When, therefore, all the circumstances here mentioned, respecting

Matthias Rittenhouse’s property and condition of life, shall be taken
into view, it will be evident that he possessed a decent competency;
with an estate quite independent, though not large: for he never
enjoyed what is now termed affluence.
Concerning our Astronomer’s early life and condition, even his

eloquent eulogist, Dr. Rush, was mistaken in some particulars. His
assertion, that Mr. Rittenhouse was descended from parents
“distinguished for probity, industry, and simple manners,” is perfectly
correct. But, although he was comparatively “humble” in his “origin,”
his father held the highly respectable station of an intelligent,
independent farmer;[83] and it has been also seen, that his paternal
ancestors, for some generations in succession, were proprietors of
considerable manufactories of an article important in commerce and
the arts, and eminently useful in literature and science as well as in
the common affairs of life.
Dr. Rush has remarked, in regard to Mr. Rittenhouse’s talents first

becoming generally known, that “the discovery of his uncommon
merit belonged chiefly to his brother-in-law, the Rev. Mr. Barton, Dr.
Smith, and the late Mr. John Lukens.” Perhaps it might be said, with
greater strictness, that the “discovery” here spoken of, belonged
solely to Mr. Barton; by whom it was communicated, very early, to his
learned and reverend friend, Dr. Smith,—and through him, to the
ingenious astronomical observer, Mr. Lukens, (afterwards surveyer-
general,) as well as some other distinguished characters of that time.
The writer in the Maryland paper before referred to, after having
noticed the prevailing opinion that Mr. Rittenhouse was self-taught,
had corrected the full extent of that misconception, in these words:
“This is not strictly true; for, while engaged in these acquirements,”
(astronomy, &c.) “the Rev. Mr. Barton, a learned episcopal clergyman
of Lancaster, married his sister.”——“Mr. Barton, admiring the
simplicity of manners and natural genius of his brother-in-law,
afforded him every assistance in his power,—not only in
mathematics, but in several other branches of literature: Mr.
Rittenhouse was worthy of his notice; for he lost no time, and spared
no pains, to improve himself in knowledge, as far as his limited
education would permit.”
Hence, as well as from the preceding narrative, it will appear that

Dr. Rush was led into a further mistake, respecting Mr. Rittenhouse.
—In regard to his exalted genius, the learned professor has amply
done justice to his memory. He has, in particular, recorded one
extraordinary fact, in proof of his genius, well worthy of notice; and
which is therefore related in the Professor’s own words.——“It was
during the residence of our ingenious philosopher with his father, in
the country, that he made himself master of Sir Isaac Newton’s
Principia, which he read in the English translation of Mr. Motte. It was
here, likewise, he became acquainted with the science of Fluxions;
of which sublime invention he believed himself, for a while, to be the
author: nor did he know for some years afterwards, that a contest
had been carried on between Sir Isaac Newton and Leibnitz, for the
honour of that great and useful discovery.” Then exclaims the
ingenious eulogist, in terms of well-founded admiration, “What a
mind was here!”—But, immediately after, he adds—“Without literary
friends or society, and with but two or three books, he became,
before he had reached his four-and-twentieth year, the rival of two of
the greatest mathematicians in Europe!”—The circumstance must,
then, have escaped Dr. Rush’s recollection—if indeed he had ever
been made acquainted with it,—that five years before Mr.
Rittenhouse attained to the age of twenty-four, he found at least one
literary friend, in Mr. Barton; whose intimate society he long enjoyed,
prior to that period; and that, through his means, he had access to
many books.[84]
It is not meant to be insinuated, however, that Mr. Barton ever

gave Mr. Rittenhouse any insight into the knowledge of fluxions; or,
indeed, much instruction, if any at all, in other of the higher branches
of mathematics: because the first named gentleman never did
himself pretend to the character of a profound mathematician; and
because, likewise, although always esteemed a man of learning, his
pursuits in science and literature were chiefly directed to objects of a
different nature. That Mr. Rittenhouse derived some instruction and
information from his early acquaintance with Mr. Barton, is certain:
but, whatever may have been the extent of the literary advantages
which the latter was enabled to confer on his young friend and
companion, they could not in any degree derogate from the intrinsic
excellence and greatness of our Astronomer’s innate genius.
That a mind so formed as that of our young philosopher—situated

in life as he was—should have impelled him to assume the business
of clock-making, can not be a matter of surprize: this occupation,
connected with that of a mathematical instrument maker, is such as
may be well supposed to have presented itself to his youthful
ingenuity; being in accordance with the philosophical bent of his
genius in his early years, while yet untutored in science and
unknown to the world.
The great utility of the common clock, in measuring time, is
universally known. It possesses numerous and manifest advantages,
beyond those of sun-dials, clepsydræ, sand-glasses, and other
horological instruments, by reason of its vastly superior accuracy:
the sun-dial, indeed, is oftentimes wholly useless in all situations,
even in the day-time; and always necessarily so, at night.
But the many improvements which have been made in modern

times, in chronometers,—more especially in pendulum-clocks,—
have very much advanced a correspondent accuracy in astronomical
observations: and these improvements, together with those lately
made in telescopes—chiefly by Dr. Herschel, the discoverer of the
Georgium Sidus[85]—afford good grounds for hoping, that yet farther
and more important additions will continue to be made to the recent
discoveries in astronomy.
Further improvements may also be expected to take place, in the

construction of watches and other spring-chronometers; so as to
render them still more useful for the purposes of navigation, by
ascertaining with greater precision the longitude at sea.[86] For this
purpose, the finely-improved English time-keepers of Harrison,
Mudge, and others, have been found of the greatest utility. Mr. de
Zach, (in his Explanation and uses of the Tables of the Motions of
the Sun,[87]) after some observations on determining differences of
longitude by means of astronomical observation, says,[88]—“De
cæteris longitudinem determinandi modis, non est hic disserendi
locus;—de uno vero, horologiâ maritimâ seu nauticâ, quidquam
adjicere non alienum erit. Triginta jam abhinc annis, ingeniosissimi
horologiorum artifices, Harrison, Cummings, Kendal, Arnold, Mudge,
apud Anglos,—Le Roy et Berthoud apud Gallos, varia navigantium
usui, egregia excogitaverant, et ad magnum perduxerant perfectionis
gradum, horologia nautica, (Anglis, Time-keeper.) Cum eorum in
longitudinibus itenere maritimo definiendis, usum quisque norit, plura
hic dicere abstineo; simile horologium ab ingenioso horolopega
Thom. Mudge constructum, in Observatorio Regio Grenovicensi
sæpius exploratum, anno 1784, a Clar. D. Campbell, classis navalis
præfecto[89] ad Terram Novam (Newfoundland) vectum, et reductum,
ab hoc tempore in Observatorio Excellentissimi Comitis de Bruhl,
Londini, Doverstreet, assidue observatum est. Hoc ipsum
horologium maritimum, anno 1786, in terrestribus, iteneris
longitudines determinandi gratia, concreditum mihi fuit, cum â
Serenissimo Duce Saxe-Gothanâ, omnium scientiarum bonarumque
artium patrono, imprimis astronomiæ, faventissimo, Londino
evocatus in Germaniam me conferrem, ubi amplissimæ
splendidissimæ Speculæ, Astronomicæ Gothanæ extruendæ cura
mihi demandata erat;[90] attuli eodem hoc tempore, ad Serenissimi
mandatum, minoris molis horologium, quod in braccis gestari solet
(Anglis, Pocket-chronometer,) a Londiniensi artifice, D. Josiah
Emery,[91] constructum, quod summâ accuratione et subtilitate
elaboratum, nil majoribus cedit horologiis nauticis, ut videre licet ex
tribus horum motuum elenchis ab Ilustr. Comite de Bruhl, et â
aliorum Dr. Arnold, nuperrime publici juris factis. Sub finem anni
1786 et ad initium 1787, Serenissimum in itenere per Germaniam,
Galliam, et Italiam, comitatus sum: hoc itenere quorundam locorum
et Specularum astronomicarum longitudines definitæ sunt ex
comparatione temporis horologii maritimi (quod ad tempus solare
medium Londinense, in Doverstreet incedebat) cum tempore medio
loci, quod sextante Hadleianâ per solis altitudines, quas
correspondentes dicimus, vel ex comparatione cum illo, quod in
Speculis Astronomicis ab ipsis astronomis traditum nobis fuit. Iisdem
itaque automatis, cum primum Gotham advenissem, observatorii
futuri longitudinem maximâ cum curâ atque diligentiâ definivi, quam
paucis post diebus Serenissimus Dux Londinum profectus,
chronometro suo secum deportato denuo perbelle comprobaverat.”
This very respectable testimony of an eminent German

astronomer affords incontestable proof of the great accuracy, of
which nautical chronometers are susceptible, and to which they have
actually been brought by some artists of celebrity, mostly English.[92]
The general use of the common clock ought not to derogate from
the ingenuity of an invention of such universal importance in the
affairs of human life. The pendulum-clock now in use was brought to
some degree of perfection, if not invented, by Huygens,[93] who was
one of the first mathematicians and astronomers of the age in which
he lived: and the date of this invention is about the middle of the
seventeenth century; although Galileo disputed with him the
discovery, a few years earlier. Clocks of some kind date their
antiquity much higher; some writers pretending to carry their
invention back as far as the year 510 of the Christian era. However,
on the authority of Conrad Gesner,[94] the honour of inventing the
clock, before the application of the pendulum to these machines was
made by Huygens, belongs to England: He says, that “Richard
Wallingford, an English abbot of St. Albans, who flourished in the
year 1326, made a wonderful clock by a most excellent art; the like
of which could not be produced in all Europe.”[95] This was forty-six
years before Henry de Vic, a German, made his clock for Charles V.
king of France; and fifty-six years before the duke of Burgundy
ordered one, which sounded the hour, to be carried away from the
city of Courtray, in Flanders.
Within our own day and a short period of time preceding it, great
improvements have been made in the construction of the pendulum-
clock,[96] as well as in other descriptions of Chronometers.[97] Mr.
Rittenhouse’s early zeal in his practical researches into astronomy,
prompted him to desire the greatest possible accuracy in the
construction of time-pieces adapted to astronomical purposes; and
uniting, as he did, operative skill with a thorough knowledge of the
principles upon which their construction depends, he was enabled—
impelled by so powerful a motive—to display to the world, by his own
manual ingenuity, the near approach to perfection to which the
pendulum-chronometer may be brought. Besides his astronomical
pursuits, his early employment in ascertaining the limits and fixing
the territorial boundaries of Pennsylvania, and of some of the
neighbouring states, obliged him to supply himself with
chronometers of the greatest possible accuracy: and these were
either made by his own hands, or under his immediate inspection by
his brother, who, with the aid of his instruction, became an excellent
mechanician. One of these fine instruments, bearing on its face the
name of Benjamin Rittenhouse as the maker, and the date of the
year 1786, is now in the possession of Mr. Norton Prior,[98] of
Philadelphia: but that admirable one, the workmanship of which was
executed by our Philosopher himself, and which was part of the
apparatus of his Philadelphia Observatory, is now placed in the hall
of the American Philosophical Society.[99] This is constructed on a
greatly improved plan of his own, which improvement was afterwards
applied to that now belonging to Mr. Prior; and the latter is the same
chronometer, it is believed, that was used by Mr. D. Rittenhouse, in
fixing the northern line which divides Pennsylvania from New York,
and in establishing the boundary line between the last mentioned
state, and Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, respectively, in the
years 1786 and 1787.—A description of the principles of his
observatory-chronometer here mentioned, together with some
account of its mechanism, will be found in the Appendix: the former
having been communicated to the writer of these memoirs by the
ingenious Robert Patterson, Esq. director of the Mint; and the latter
by that able mechanician, Mr. Henry Voight, chief coiner in that
institution,—a person who, by reason of his well-known skill as a
clock and watch-maker, was employed by Mr. Rittenhouse more than
forty years since, in the fabrication of some of his philosophical
instruments.
The great accuracy and exquisite workmanship displayed in every

thing belonging to the profession he pursued, that came through his
hands, soon became pretty extensively known: and this knowledge
of his mechanical abilities, assisted by the reputation he had already
acquired as a mathematician and astronomer, in a short time
procured him the friendship, respect and patronage, of some
eminent scientific characters; while it promoted his interest, in the
profession he had thus newly chosen. In this he was, nevertheless,
self-taught; for he never received the least instruction from any
person, in any mechanic art whatever: and, therefore, if he were to
be considered as being merely an excellent artist, in an occupation
intimately connected with the science of mathematics—untutored, as
he was, in any art or science,—he would deservedly be deemed an
extraordinary and eminent man. It will be perceived, however, that it
was the union of the almost unbounded powers of his genius, and
his prodigious acquirements in a sublime science, with his wonderful
abilities as a philosophical mechanic—and these faculties and
attainments, moreover, combined with an amiable and virtuous
character,—which constituted that celebrity so justly attached to his
name.
Our young philosopher lived a retired, though by no means an

inactive life, in his father’s family, for several years after he arrived to
(what is usually termed) lawful age. In this situation, which was a
pleasant one in many respects, he long continued to enjoy the
tranquil scenes of rural life, amidst the society of an amiable and
very intelligent family-circle, and surrounded by many worthy and
estimable neighbours, by whom he was both loved and respected.
His chief occupation was the profession he had chosen; but in such
occasional intervals of personal abstraction from the mechanical part
of his business, as the assistance the workmen he employed
enabled him to obtain, he devoted much of the time to philosophical
pursuits and study. Frugal in his expenditures, his industry furnished
him amply with the means of comfort; and in the plentiful and decent
mansion of his father’s family he experienced, with contentment,
almost every gratification that a reasonable mind could desire. Good
health seemed alone to be wanting to complete his happiness, in his
earlier years; a privation which he felt through the greater part of his
life.
Such was the condition of Mr. Rittenhouse, while he remained

under the same roof with his father and mother, and some of their
unmarried children. It was a mode of life which his disposition was
calculated to enjoy; for, strongly attached to his kindred and friends
by the benevolence of his nature, he derived much of his happiness
from the reciprocal affections of a domestic circle and the kind
intercourses of friendly esteem.
There does not appear to have been, for a long time, any
occurrence that could have much disturbed the placid composure of
our philosopher’s mind,—until 1762; in which year his sister Anne
died, in the twenty-sixth year of her age. She was the wife of Mr.
George Shoemaker, a respectable citizen of Philadelphia, and a

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Networks Movements and Technopolitics in Latin America Critical Analysis and Current Challenges 1St Edition Francisco Sierra Caballero Full Chapter

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Networks, Movements and

Technopolitics in Latin America:

Networks, Movements and

Edited by Francisco Sierra Caballero

More information about this series at

Global Transformations in Media and Communication Research – A Palgrave

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017950392

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

Cover credit: KTSDESIGN/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

It is my pleasure and honor to welcome you, reader of Networks,

is characterized by continuities and discontinuities, dead-ends, contra-

necessary. Here I want to refer to Jenkins’s words: “This is in part why

order to maintain the current participatory intensities. And finally, I also

era of the both is characterized by increasing levels of diversity, but this

Shapiro, Ian. (1996). Democracy’s place. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Nico Carpentier is Professor in Media and Communication Studies

Part I Technopolitics: A Theoretical Framework

2 Digital Media Practices and Social Movements.

3 Tracing the Roots of Technopolitics: Towards

4 E-Democracy. Ideal vs Real, Exclusion vs Inclusion 65

5 Technopolitics in the Age of Big Data 95

Part II Dissident Technopolitics Practices in Latin America:

6 The Brazilian Protest Wave and Digital Media: Issues

7 Social Networks, Cyberdemocracy and Social Conflict

8 Communication in Movement and Techno-Political

9 #CompartirNoEsDelito: Creating Counter-Hegemonic

10 #OcupaEscola: Media Activism and the Movement

About the Editors

Francisco Sierra Caballero is Senior Researcher and Professor of

Alejandro Barranquero Carretero is Assistant professor at the

at the Communication Studies Department of the Vrije Universiteit

issues, and at DATACTIVE of Amsterdam. She is also a trainer at the

and Cultural Identity” (https://rowman.com/Action/SERIES/LEX/

Fig. 8.1 Occupy Wall St. Page Like Network, elaborated

Fig. 9.5 The important role of the Electronic Frontier Foundation

Table 8.1 #YoSoy132 Mega-Network pages, elaborated by author 162

Francisco Sierra Caballero and Tommaso Gravante

All knowledge is traversed by social construction and mediation.

© The Author(s) 2018 1

Understanding Technopolitical Ecologies: Main

and confusion of the public and private spheres, traditionally conceived

reasoned, of deploying a generative research culture that contributes to

In Latin America, the processes of cultural hybridization and of reor-

If alternative communication can be defined in relation to the appro-

In a way, any social movement is an internal and informal participatory

The Performative Function of the Media

In Latin America, the digital era has been characterized by decades of

Sierra and Tommaso Gravante suggest a theoretical and methodological

participating in the wave of Brazilian protests, from the “Jornadas de

IAMCR Series, who have supported us in this endeavor. We are also

Technopolitics: A Theoretical Framework

Digital Media Practices and Social

Francisco Sierra Caballero and Tommaso Gravante

F. Sierra Caballero (*)

© The Author(s) 2018 17

1 In Spanish Escuela Latinoamericana de Comunicación.

and the mediation process (Martin-Barbero 1993, 2006) in the Latin

techno-centred rationality of media activism as a simple process of appro-

New Media and Emerging Subjectivities in Latin America

students, cartoneros, housekeepers, etc.),4 which outgrew the classic

process of appropriating digital technology was not limited to know-

Part II Dissident Technopolitics Practices in Latin America:

New Media and Emerging Subjectivities in Latin America